Psychologist Paul Bloom on the importance of suffering, the shortcomings of hedonism, and why he would never plug into the Matrix.

Can we live a good life without suffering?

Notice that I used the word “good” and not “happy.” It doesn’t make any sense to ask whether we can suffer and be happy at the same time, but can we live a full and meaningful life without certain kinds of suffering? That’s a much harder question.

Barely a week has elapsed since scientists in Botswana and South Africa alerted the world to a fast-spreading SARS-CoV-2 variant now known as Omicron. Researchers worldwide are racing to understand the threat that the variant — now confirmed in more than 20 countries — poses to the world. Yet it might take scientists weeks to paint a more complete picture of Omicron, and to gain an understanding of its transmissibility and severity, as well as its potential to evade vaccines and cause reinfections.

Credit: Adapted from Pfizer, Dec. 8, 2021

There’s been great concern about the new Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. A major reason is Omicron has accumulated over 50 mutations, including about 30 in the spike protein, the part of the coronavirus that mRNA vaccines teach our immune systems to attack. All of these genetic changes raise the possibility that Omicron could cause breakthrough infections in people who’ve already received a Pfizer or Moderna mRNA vaccine.

With Omicron now on so many people’s minds, public health officials and virologists around the world are laser focused on tracking the spread of this concerning SARS-CoV-2 variant and using every possible means to determine the effectiveness of our COVID-19 vaccines against it. Ultimately, the answer will depend on what happens in the real world. But it will also help to have a ready laboratory means for gauging how well a vaccine works, without having to wait many months for the results in the field.

On December 2, President Joe Biden visited NIH for a briefing on the importance of vaccines and booster shots. They remain vital this holiday season to slowing the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, the cause of COVID-19, and saving lives. It was my honor to greet the President, though with a careful fist bump, and I got to speak with him briefly before he delivered his remarks about the White House’s strategy for fighting COVID-19 this winter. Credit: NIH

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Welcoming President Biden

Credit: Lucky Business/Shutterstock

Yes, we can all agree that 2021 has been a tough year. But despite all that, Thanksgiving is the right time to stop and count our many blessings. My list starts with my loving wife Diane and family, all of whom have been sources of encouragement in these trying times. But also high up on the list this Thanksgiving is my extreme gratitude to the scientific community for all the research progress that has been made over the past 23 months to combat the pandemic and return our lives ever closer to normal.

About 70,000 people in the United States are diagnosed with COVID-19 each and every day. It’s clear that these new cases are being driven by the more-infectious Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19. But why does the Delta variant spread more easily than other viral variants from one person to the next?

Credit: Fizkes/Shutterstock

Over the course of this pandemic, significant progress has been made in treating COVID-19 and helping to save lives. That progress includes the development of life-preserving monoclonal antibody infusions and repurposing existing drugs, to which NIH’s Accelerating COVID-19 Therapeutic Interventions and Vaccines (ACTIV) public-private partnership has made a major contribution.

The recently released findings from the 2020 Asia Pacific Healthy Aging Survey by Herbalife Nutrition revealed that Malaysian consumers have a clear vision of what healthy aging means to them, more than four in 10 consumers (44 precent) had the confidence to age healthily, with the fear of falling ill due to lower immunity as their top worry.

Lip-on-lip kissing is not nearly as universal as we might think it is, so can the diverse number of ways that humans kiss reveal what it is about this intimate act that we find important?

Less than half of all societies kiss with their lips, according to a study of 168 cultures from around the world. William Jankowiak, a professor of anthropology at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, found that only 46% use lip-to-lip kissing in a romantic sense, excluding things like parent-child kissing or greetings.

Checking your blood sugar, also called blood glucose, is an important part of diabetes care. This tip sheet tells you:

• why it helps you to know your blood sugar numbers
• how to check your blood sugar levels
• what are target blood sugar levels
• what to do if your levels are too low or too high
• how to pay for these tests

Why do I need to know my blood sugar numbers?

Your blood sugar numbers show how well your diabetes is managed.

In 2019, the top 10 causes of death accounted for 55% of the 55.4 million deaths worldwide.

The top global causes of death, in order of total number of lives lost, are associated with three broad topics: cardiovascular (ischaemic heart disease, stroke), respiratory (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lower respiratory infections) and neonatal conditions – which include birth asphyxia and birth trauma, neonatal sepsis and infections, and preterm birth complications.

Here is a potentially familiar scene. You are exhausted after working a full day, the sort of day when you felt like your attention was drawn in 20 different directions, where you were ricocheting between obligations and meetings and running six minutes late to pick-up and realizing that if you didn’t put that load of laundry in the wash now, at 9 pm, the rest of the week could very well collapse in on itself. You answered emails while stirring something on the stove. You answered different emails while half-listening to a story from a family member or roommate.