Robert A. Weinstein –

Joseph Journell cuddles with his cat, Big Boy, who is recuperating from the H5N1 bird flu on Jan. 2, 2025, in San Bernardino, California. Big Boy spent eight days in a veterinarian hospital. (Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

Doctors: How likely is it that bird flu will spread to humans on a mass scale?

April 18, 2025 at 5:00 a.m.

Preventing a pandemic means early detection of bird flu strains — surveillance of viral spread and influenza infections in hospitals.

U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offices in Atlanta on April 19, 2022.

Cory Franklin and Robert Weinstein: The CDC knows better, but will it do better?

August 25, 2022 at 7:09 p.m.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has performed poorly during the COVID-19 pandemic, and CDC Director Rochelle Walensky promises wholesale changes in the agency. She publicly admits, "We are...

Prairie dogs at Badlands National Park in South Dakota. The first outbreak of monkeypox in the United States in 2003 hit the Midwest and was caused by prairie dogs that caught the virus from infected animals from Africa.

Cory Franklin and Robert A. Weinstein: Monkeypox is not our next pandemic, but it has lessons for us

June 20, 2022 at 4:12 p.m.

Monkeypox is a viral disease, distantly related to its far more deadly cousin, smallpox. So far this year, it has been discovered in dozens of countries that are generally not...

A couple hug and laugh as they have lunch in a restaurant in Stockholm on April 4, 2020. Swedish authorities advised the public to practice social distancing because of the coronavirus pandemic, but still allowed a large amount of personal freedom, unlike most other European countries.

Cory Franklin and Robert A. Weinstein: The current state of COVID-19 should invite hope — not complacency

June 3, 2022 at 1:26 p.m.

The famous Robert Frost poem "The Road Not Taken" begins: "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, / And sorry I could not travel both." The United States and the...

A volunteer stands in a COVID-19 testing site during the lockdown in Shanghai April 1, 2022.

Cory Franklin and Robert A. Weinstein: China’s surge proves the folly of trying to achieve ‘zero-COVID-19’

April 14, 2022 at 1:24 p.m.

From the outset, mystery has shrouded the COVID-19 pandemic in China. The origin of the virus remains unknown, important Chinese journalists and key scientists have been muted, and case and...

A 5-year-old girl receives her first dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine from a nurse in the cafeteria of the Pittsburgh Langley K-8 school in Pittsburgh on Jan. 8, 2022.

Cory Franklin and Robert Weinstein: There is much we still don’t know about giving 5- to 11-year-olds a COVID-19 vaccine

March 28, 2022 at 4:40 p.m.

Should children ages 5 to 11 receive the COVID-19 vaccine? This is a difficult question without an easy answer, something you wouldn't know from the strident opinions of politicians and...

Medical workers move an elderly patient from an ambulance to a hospital in Hong Kong on March 4, 2022. Hong Kong's leader recently said people's movements may be restricted during mandatory testing this month of the entire population for the coronavirus, as health officials reported record daily infections and over a hundred deaths.

Cory Franklin and Robert A. Weinstein: The pandemic highlights a global failure to protect the elderly

March 14, 2022 at 4:12 p.m.

When the COVID-19 pandemic finally ends, our most glaring failure, and our greatest source of shame, will unquestionably be our unwillingness to protect society's most vulnerable group: the elderly. The...

Snow blankets Calvary Catholic Cemetery in Evanston in February 2021.

Cory Franklin and Robert A. Weinstein: COVID-19 isn’t the only reason more people are dying at this time

February 15, 2022 at 3:36 p.m.

In addition to sickness, suffering and death, pandemics wreak havoc in the societies they afflict. Smallpox helped destroy the Aztec Empire, and the Black Death completely changed the social fabric...

Pfizer Paxlovid pills, a treatment for COVID-19, are shown at a pharmacy inside Esperanza Health Center in Chicago's Brighton Park neighborhood on Jan. 13, 2022.

Op-ed: We should pivot from urging vaccination to making COVID-19 medications readily available

January 24, 2022 at 3:21 p.m.

Two years ago, "pandemic" became a household word. Today, the lethal contagion refuses to concede. The omicron wave in the U.S. peaked in mid-January and is beginning to decline, but...

Workers at a drive-up COVID-19 testing clinic prepare coronavirus tests inside a tent on Jan. 4, 2022, in Puyallup, Washington.

Op-ed: So many want to predict COVID-19’s trajectory. But the virus has refused to cooperate.

January 14, 2022 at 2:28 p.m.

When it comes to the COVID-19 pandemic, it now seems that everybody is an expert, at least judging by the daily pronouncements from reporters, columnists, presidents, government officials, union officials,...

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