This Physicist Says We Don’t Take COVID Seriously Enough

Published by: The Tyee
Published on: October 31, 2025
By Andrew Nikiforuk

If you think the COVID pandemic is done and ever-evolving variants pose no significant threat, consider these two realities.

The first is a recent U.S. study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. It tracked 150 million workers and their absences in the workplace in the United States since the end of the so-called public health emergency in 2023.

Its central conclusion: “Health-related absences from work continued to track COVID-19 circulation and were 12.9 per cent higher in the post-pandemic period compared with before the pandemic (140,000 monthly absences).” Absences were highest in occupations with the greatest exposure to the public.

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HIV

US aid cuts halt HIV vaccine research in South Africa, with global impact

Published July 13, 2025

Published by: The Associated Press
Published on: July 13, 2025
By Mogomotsi Magome

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Just a week had remained before scientists in South Africa were to begin clinical trials of an HIV vaccine, and hopes were high for another step toward limiting one of history’s deadliest pandemics. Then the email arrived.

Stop all work, it said. The United States under the Trump administration was withdrawing all its funding.

The news devastated the researchers, who live and work in a region where more people live with HIV than anywhere else in the world. Their research project, called BRILLIANT, was meant to be the latest to draw on the region’s genetic diversity and deep expertise in the hope of benefiting people everywhere.

But the $46 million from the U.S. for the project was disappearing, part of the dismantling of foreign aid by the world’s biggest donor earlier this year as President Donald Trump announced a focus on priorities at home.

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war on science

Rollout of ‘miracle’ HIV prevention drug is threatened by Trump cuts to global AIDS relief program

Published April 1, 2025

Published by: STAT
Published on: April 1, 2025
By Ed Silverman, Jason Mast

The Trump administration’s enormous cuts to a global AIDS relief program threaten to upend the planned rollout of a groundbreaking HIV prevention drug that was expected to save countless lives.

The medicine, lenacapavir, made by Gilead Sciences, has caused a stir because clinical trial data showed a single set of injections every six months could provide virtually complete protection against infection, a form of prevention known as pre-exposure prophylaxis, or (PrEP). The drug, which is under regulatory review, has raised hopes that the deadly infectious disease can be mitigated around the globe. Early data for an even newer formulation suggest it might need to be given only once a year. “This is magical,” UNAIDS chief Winnie Byanyima declared last year.

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AIDS

UN warns millions more will die from AIDS after US cuts

Published March 24, 2025

Published by: DW
Published on: March 24, 2025
By Alex Berry with AFP, Reuters

The UNAIDS program head has said millions more will die as a result of the sudden cuts to funding by the Trump administration. She also warned that the AIDS pandemic could return to 1990s levels.

The head of the United Nations program on HIV/AIDS, UNAIDS, said on Monday that over 6 million additional deaths from the disease are expected after the US slashed its funding.

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USAID

I Ran U.S.A.I.D. Killing It Is a Win for Autocrats Everywhere.

Published February 6, 2025

Published by: The New York Times
Published on: February 6, 2025
By Samantha Power

We are witnessing one of the worst and most costly foreign policy blunders in U.S. history. Less than three weeks into Donald Trump’s second term, he, Elon Musk and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have halted the U.S. Agency for International Development’s aid programs around the world. In so doing, they have imperiled millions of lives, thousands of American jobs and billions of dollars of investment in American small businesses and farms while severely undermining our national security and global influence — all while authoritarians and extremists celebrate their luck.

I am shocked by the gleeful assault perpetrated by our own government against U.S.A.I.D.’s programs and the public servants who work on them. But after running the agency for four years, I am not surprised that the attacks are being cheered by Moscow and Beijing. They understand what those seeking to dismantle the agency are desperate to hide from the American people: U.S.A.I.D. has become America’s superpower in a world defined by threats that cross borders and amid growing strategic competition.

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Trump regime

Trump Administration Halts H.I.V. Drug Distribution in Poor Countries

Published January 27, 2025

Published by: The New York Times
Published on: January 27, 2025
By Apoorva Mandavilli

The Trump administration has instructed organizations in other countries to stop disbursing H.I.V. medications purchased with U.S. aid, even if the drugs have already been obtained and are sitting in local clinics.

The directive is part of a broader freeze on foreign aid initiated last week. It includes the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, the global health program started by George W. Bush that is credited with saving more than 25 million lives worldwide.

The administration had already moved to stop PEPFAR funding from moving to clinics, hospitals and other organizations in low-income countries.

Appointments are being canceled, and patients are being turned away from clinics, according to people with knowledge of the situation who feared retribution if they spoke publicly. Many people with H.I.V. are facing abrupt interruptions to their treatment.

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Tag: HIV