In the News

The key to this household mystery may lie in our vaccination status, experts say.
 

With a global alarm ringing because of an unprecedented outbreak of monkeypox, we should also consider a different but closely related viral threat.
Gigi Gronvall and Tara Kirk Sell coauthored the piece.

The massacre of children at an elementary school in Texas is adding fresh urgency to the conversation about gun control in the United States, which has been politically fraught and lacking in progress. That’s not because of a lack of support for gun control. That support just needs a little bit of parsing.
 

Baltimore Mayor Brandon M. Scott said Tuesday that the city plans to sue Polymer80, one of the country’s largest manufacturers of “ghost gun” kits — untraceable firearms that have proliferated on city streets and contributed to a surge of violence.
 

The nation is united in grief after mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde. Last week, President Biden called for change, "I am sick and tired of it. We have to act. And don’t tell me we can’t have an impact on this carnage." The Gun Violence Archive counts more than 200 mass shootings in the U.S. this year. Will recent tragedies spur action?
 

Coronavirus cases are up more than 25 percent in the United States over the past two weeks—and those are just the ones we know about. Experts warn that the true size of the current outbreak could be 10, or even 14, times worse than the official counts suggest.

With the United States on the lookout for more monkeypox cases, federal health officials this week said they’re considering expanding testing networks, even as they’ve stressed the current two-step process is not delaying treatment or containment of the outbreak.

A single mass shooting was enough to force legislative change in a number of countries, including New Zealand, Australia, and the U.K

Nineteen children and two teachers have been killed in a mass shooting at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. It’s the second deadliest school shooting on record and the 212th mass shooting in the U.S. — just this year.
 

Gov. Greg Abbott said Wednesday that the Uvalde school shooter had a "mental health challenge" and the state needed to "do a better job with mental health" — yet in April he slashed $211 million from the department that oversees mental health programs.

Surges in COVID-19 cases are causing disruptions in many parts of the U.S., but as the school year wraps up and Americans prepare for their summer vacations, many people have returned to their pre-pandemic routines.
 

Children on lockdown. Armed officers rushing into a school. Parents and loved ones in tears waiting anxiously outside. It's an all-too-common scene in the U.S., where gunfire on school grounds is at a historic levels. And it's not just after mass shootings — smaller-scale incidents at schools are also happening at alarming rates.