Almost sixty years ago, I was a student at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, a thousand miles from my home in New Jersey. Going home for a short Thanksgiving break was not feasible, so my father’s cousin and boyhood friend Bill invited me to share the Thanksgiving holiday with his family in Kentucky. It was a great visit. Bill made sure that I would have a great time. Continue reading
Vaccinations against Covid-19 were first made available to high risk people. These included medical workers who came into close contact with people with an active infection. Also included in the high risk category have been older people, with the risk being highest for the oldest and going down from there. What makes older people more likely to contract severe disease than younger people? What makes them more likely to die of an infection? Continue reading
Ever since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, we have known that it is a highly contagious disease. It first came to the attention of the world when hundreds of people on the Diamond Princess cruise ship became ill and nine passengers died. The ship had taken on an infected passenger who had recently been in Wuhan, China. Even though that passenger left the ship at its next port of call, the damage had been done. Restricting passengers to their cabins did not halt the spread of the virus. Continue reading
Covid-19 is a scary disease. There are a number of unhappy possible outcomes of an infection.
In the world today, people spend huge sums on clothing styles, hair styles, hair color, cosmetics, creams, and potions, all in an effort to look younger than the age noted on their birth certificate. It’s fine to want to look youthful, but an older person who uses such interventions to change their looks is not fooling Father Time. Are there any interventions that could instead roll back the infirmities of age, so that a person would have the functionality and health of a younger person? A lot of research is going into finding such an intervention. So far, the mythical Fountain of Youth alleged to have been sought in Florida by Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon, has not been found. There has been some progress in this effort however. Continue reading