News Room

College basketball has kicked off, with hundreds of games on the schedule over the next few weeks. At the same time, holiday travel and celebrations sparked fears of new surges in COVID-19 cases across the nation. If ever there was a perfect storm of uncertainty surrounding college sports, this is it. The college basketball season has not started under ideal conditions. Infections have been reported among several high-profile coaches, including Scott Drew of Baylor (ranked No. 2 in the coaches' preseason poll), Tom Izzo of Michigan State and Jim Boeheim of Syracuse.

For supply chains hobbled in 2020 by the COVID-19 pandemic, it won’t be easy to hobble the pandemic in 2021 by distributing millions of doses of vaccine in the U.S. alone. Airlines and trucking companies tasked with delivering the vaccine will need to figure out how to keep the vaccines as cold as minus 70 degrees Celsius. The airline industry will need to be ready to transport millions of doses despite being pummeled so badly by the pandemic that it was forced to slash services and reduce fleets.

Have you experienced any discomfort using new communication tools for the past 10 months (hint hint)? Zoom conferences are the new norm since the start of covid-19 pandemic and these days, you are probably spending way too many hours seating still, staring at your screen. But the continuous use of any of the video conferencing software tools demand our full attention and we, human beings, are not yet properly wired for that matter. At the end of the day, some of us may feel exhausted, worried, irritable and, or anxious. For the most severe ones, it can even lead to a burnout and disastrous health issues. This, is the zoom fatigue.

As the Western world was first hit by mass spread of the novel coronavirus last spring, governments acted with near uniformity in enacting shutdowns of society, shuttering schools and all establishments deemed “non-essential.” Amid spiking rates of hospitalizations, deaths, and fears about the virus, the vast majority of Americans accepted the multifaceted challenges of lockdown. There were factors that pushed the public to give elected officials much leeway. A pandemic of this sort had never been dealt with in the nation’s recent memory and lack of preparedness was understandable. 

This week, a widely shared tweet falsely claimed that because a COVID-19 vaccine is stored at ultracold temperatures it is not a vaccine, but rather a transfection agent used to genetically modify human beings. “Any vaccine that needs to be shipped and stored at -80 degrees isn’t a vaccine. It’s a transfection agent, kept alive so it can infect your cells and transfer genetic material. Don’t let them fool you. This is genetic manipulation of humans on a massive scale. Shut it down,” the tweet falsely stated.