clock menu more-arrow no yes mobile

Infectious Disease

What you need to know about infectious disease, from symptoms and treatments to the latest outbreaks and issues across the globe.

Could bird flu cause a human pandemic?

Can effective altruism stay effective?

A deadly new outbreak is testing Africa’s ambitious public health efforts

How political gridlock could kill the best global health program the US ever passed

Bird flu is surging again on poultry farms. The US is normalizing the cruelest mass killing method to stop it.

I’m getting malaria to help eradicate it (and you can too)

Why the world should celebrate Smallpox Eradication Day

How the US can stop the spread of Candida auris, a drug-resistant fungus

The Covid mask wars have left us unprepared for the next pandemic

How bad of a norovirus wave is the US in for? 

How to make Covid the last pandemic

Will America continue to turn away from vaccines?

This flu season is looking really scary, in one chart

Malawi scientists have a plan to fight one of their country’s biggest killers

New RSV vaccines are coming. This is very, very good news.

Why everybody you know is sick right now

How to read a controversial preprint paper on Covid’s origins

Our buildings are making us sick

Why do labs keep making dangerous viruses?

Rising rates of syphilis in babies should set off all our alarm bells

Why monkeypox is a repeat of the data mistakes made with Covid-19

Monkeypox should have been easily controllable. How did we fail so badly?

Finally, an answer to the question: AI — what is it good for?

Why the WHO finally declared monkeypox a global public health emergency

Carrick Flynn may be 2022’s unlikeliest candidate. Here’s why he’s running.

What the media needs to get right in the next pandemic

How sewage can warn us about the next pandemic

There’s no good way to roll back mask mandates

What the Doomsday Clock is really counting down to

Why pandemics activate xenophobia

The evidence on travel bans for diseases like Ebola is clear: they don't work

“Designer bugs”: how the next pandemic might come from a lab

Scientists are waging a war against human aging. But what happens next?

New York's 1888 blizzard had smallpox, bonfires, and rubber boot shortages

The Ebola epidemic might (might) finally be over

I got typhoid. Then dengue fever. Here’s what it taught me about my love of travel.

The Ebola outbreak is under control, but the developing world remains rife with life-threatening diseases that we in the West barely notice. I should know  —  I caught three of them in three months.

The Ebola epidemic nearly over, Paul Farmer has ideas about how to prevent the next one

I married an anti-vaxxer. Here's what I learned trying to convince her to change.

I spent years trying to convince my wife to get her daughter vaccinated. What I learned is that we can't argue people out of their fears, and only empathy will end anti-vax hysteria.

Play

Why people die early in each country, explained in 3 minutes

A new Ebola vaccine shows promise. But there's good reason for caution.

Sign up for the newsletter Today, Explained

Understand the world with a daily explainer plus the most compelling stories of the day.