LIVE SCIENCE – April 27, 2020 | The coronavirus is not only controlling how we live, but increasingly what happens after we die.

In early April, New York City’s Council Health Committee chair Mark Levine generated buzz after tweeting that the city was considering temporary burials in local parks for victims of COVID-19. News outlets and social media users eagerly circulated his tweets, which seemed to be an ominous sign of the disease’s toll.

Although city officials assured residents that such temporary burials had not yet taken place, aerial footage of workers in protective gear interring bodies on Hart Island, the city’s “potter’s field,” seemed to confirm that the epidemic was overwhelming both our health care and our death care industries.

For people who expect a “proper” send-off when they die, the images were shocking, but for thousands of poor Americans, the prospect of burial in such a grave is a growing reality. It also is nothing new.

Cost of dying
Rich and fulfilling death
Permanently parked

LIVE SCIENCE – April 28, 2020 | The novel coronavirus tends to affect men more severely than it does women. Though nobody can yet explain the oddity, researchers are hot on the case.

It’s possible that the sex hormones estrogen and testosterone play a role, according to previous research on respiratory illnesses. Or perhaps it’s because the X chromosome (which women have two of, but men have only one) has a larger number of immune-related genes, giving women a more robust immune system to fight off the coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2. Or, maybe the virus is hiding in the testes, which has abundant expression of ACE2 receptors, the portal that allows SARS-CoV-2 into cells.

Uncovering the real reason is, of course, imperative because it could help improve patient “outcomes during an active public health crisis,” according to an editorial published April 10 in the Western Journal of Emergency Medicine (WJEM)TEXT.

What are the numbers?
Are men more susceptible?
Hiding in the testes?
What about smoking?