Pandemic Fatigue

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/17/well/live/mammograms-older-women.html

A NYT article about whether women 75 years old and older should receive screening mammograms. It is known that breast cancer becomes extremely more common as women age. Therefore it would seem of utmost importance to screen in order to catch cancer in its early stages so treatment can be more effective  and simpler. The caveat here is, since this population is more likely to die of other causes before untreated and undiagnosed breast cancer becomes a threat to their health and lives. It is also impossible to determine which cancers detected on a mammogram might be slow-growing and therefore not warrant treatment. There is also some evidence that breast cancers detected in older women tend to be less aggressive and resolve favorably. The ACS guidelines specify that women with an average risk of developing breast cancer should have yearly mammograms after age 45, changing to every other year after age 55 and continuing every year or two for as long as they have a life expectancy of ten years or more. This conflicts with the US Preventative Services Task Force, which recommends stopping routine screening mammograms at age 75 regardless of life expectancy.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/17/health/coronavirus-herd-immunity.html

An article from the NYT about how to determine what level of infection can provide herd immunity. At this level, the virus will be unable to find susceptible individuals in order to survive. Scientists suggest that the magic number is 70% but it could be only 50%. Sophisticated modeling has  shown that it is possible that there is no community in the word with enough immune residents to resist a second wave. There are some communities that do have significant immunity. This is calculated by the r-naught, which indicates how many people each infected person passes the virus to. The initial calculations assumed that every person in the community mixed randomly with each other person in the community and passed the virus with the same likelihood, which has been shown to be incorrect., since susceptibility could vary from community to community. Researchers in Mumbai did a random household survey to take blood for antibody testing. The results indicated a wide disparity between the city's richest and poorest neighborhoods. One conclusion about London and NYC was that these cities may have reached herd immunity, possibly because of pre-existing immunity to common cold coronaviruses or memory cells which recognize the new coronaviruses, but other experts reject this theory.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/14/nyregion/freshkills-garbage-dump-nyc.html

An article from the NYT about the recovery of the Fresh Kills Landfill. The Arthur Kill is a tidal straight that separates Staten Island from New Jersey. Twenty years ago barges routinely left College Point, Queens loaded with garbage headed for Fresh Kills but this voyage is made no longer since Fresh Kills has been rebranded as Freshkills and a park has been build at the site of the old dump which will receive its first visitors next Spring. The idea for this transformation came from Major Bloomberg during his first term. A problem in the transition from dump to park is adapting 150 million tons of garbage, which involves capping it with plastic, covering it with fresh soil and planting native grasses in the soil and transforming the four mountains of garbage into soft green hills "straddling the convergence of creeks". Henry David Thoreau lived on Staten Island and walked the shore, climbed the hills and may have boated in the wide open streams of Fresh Kills.  Tidal creeks and salt marshes like Fresh Kills are, according to the author, "the lifeblood of the giant Hudson-Raritan estuary, which includes the lower Passaic and Hackensack watershed referred to as the Meadowlands."