• In 2018, diplomats warned of risky coronavirus experiments in a Wuhan lab. No one listened.: why COVID could have come from a lab — just not the way everyone's saying; excerpt from Josh Rogin's Chaos Under Heaven — Politico
• New studies show that open-label placebos work just as well as double-blind ones, perhaps due to expectations and conditioning to the act of taking a drug — note that placebos primarily work on subjective symptoms like pain, fatigue, depression — Vox
• The promise of pills that do nothing: more on the wild potential of open-label placebos — NEO.LIFE
• The shortage of lifesaving medical equipment during COVID was a searing example of the government's failed response. As health workers resorted to wearing trash bags, one Maryland company profited by selling anthrax vaccines to the country's emergency reserve — New York Times
• Ancient human faeces reveal gut microbes of the past: a study of ancient human faeces sheds light on how microbial populations in the gut have changed over the past 2,000 years — Nature
• According to research on people living in extreme northern latitudes, SAD is a myth — we may actually be more neurologically efficient in winter — Aeon
• How low can America's birth rate go before it's a problem? Lower than it is now — and when it does get worrying, one solution involves investing in people already born — FiveThirtyEight
• On serial disability claim filers — New York Times
• 'These numbers are incredibly important': doctors and lawmakers call on FDA to address racial disparities in pulse oximeters: pulse oximeters are not accurate for people with darker pigmentation — implications for healthcare and needed regulatory reforms to ensure devices work for the entire population — Erin Brodwin and Nicholas St. Fleur, STAT
• The unlikeliest pandemic success story: how Bhutan handled the pandemic so well — Madeline Drexler, The Atlantic
• 5 pandemic mistakes we keep repeating: five flawed aspects of public-health messaging by public officials, media, and academic communities — Zeynep Tufekci, The Atlantic
• The hazards of medicine by tweet: the case of anti-cytokine therapy for Covid-19: how the polarizing, all-or-nothing dynamic of science on Twitter is affecting the execution of rigorous clinical trials and decision making — Paul Monach and Westyn Branch-Elliman, STAT
• With Covid-19 vaccines, 'fair' isn't always fair enough: "So while delaying the vaccination of lower-priority individuals when doses sit idle may well contribute to the abstract goal of fairness, the greatest good is served by making vaccines available to the greatest number of individuals as quickly as possible." An interesting framework for vaccine distribution and balancing objectives — Martin Shell, STAT
• Philanthropy and COVID-19: measuring one year of giving: MacKenzie Scott is responsible for over 40% of all COVID-giving; recommendations: give unrestricted grants, target marginalized communities, support operational and administrative costs — Candid
• A personal and scientific view of a congenital heart defect that is a leading killer of young athletes — David Epstein
• The staggering scale of COVID deaths — Axios

Related

• How the West Lost COVID — David Wallace-Wells
• The Man With the Plan to Beat the Pandemic — Ezra Klein, Vivek Murthy
• A Terrible Thing to Waste — Harriet A. Washington
• Superman's Not Coming — Erin Brockovich
• How Science Beat the Virus — Ed Yong
• The Hospital — Brian Alexander
• Novo Nordisk (Ozempic) — Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal, Acquired