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If musical instruments were people, trumpets would be super spreaders. When a trumpeter blows into the mouthpiece, tiny respiratory droplets, known as aerosols, travel out of the musician’s mouth, whiz through the brass tubing and spray into the air. During a deadly pandemic, when a musician might unwittingly be exhaling an infectious virus, that poses a potential problem for orchestras. And the trumpet is not the only musical health hazard. (Anthes, 6/23)

From the outset of the coronavirus pandemic, the governors of California and Florida have taken almost polar opposite approaches to managing an unprecedented health crisis: California Gov. Gavin Newsom shut down his state early, prioritizing public health; Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis largely kept his state open for business, prioritizing the economy. California just fully reopened on Tuesday, while Florida has been open all year, save for a short lockdown last spring. The split mirrors the political divisions that have bedeviled the United States during the pandemic — with both sides claiming victory at various times. But now, more than a year of data is offering some clear takeaways on which state’s approach has produced better outcomes on a number of fronts. (Lagos and Switalski Muñoz, 6/17)

When the coronavirus pandemic tore through India this year, its ferocity killed tens of thousands of people. But thousands of those who survived were soon back in hospitals with an ominous fungal infection called mucormycosis. The complaints ranged from a blurring of vision to droopy eyelids or discharge from the nose. At high risk were diabetic people or those with very weak immune systems. In many cases, the only treatment is the removal of the fungus from the infected area — and that area is often the eye. (Sen and Masih, 6/22)

“There's been very little molecular genetic work done in reptiles, and so it's fantastic to see an instance where a group has been able to track down the genetic basis of a really interesting trait,” says Douglas Menke, a geneticist at the University of Georgia, who was consulted for the study but was not directly involved in the work. This research could also open new avenues for studying human melanoma, an aggressive cancer of our pigment-producing cells. It is newly diagnosed in about 100,000 people in the U.S. each year and kills more than 7,000 annually. (Bender, 6/24)

Three years ago, Laura Gaither and her family spent their summer vacation in Panama City Beach, Fla. One afternoon, while rinsing sand off her feet, the 35-year-old Alabama resident felt something biting her legs and noticed tiny black bugs on her skin. Gaither brushed them away, and later, when she described the bites to local residents, they told her that she had likely been bitten by sand flies. Three of Gaither's five kids had been bitten, too, but she didn't worry. The marks on their legs and arms looked like ant or mosquito bites, which can cause burning and itching, but usually subside within a week. But about two weeks later, back at home, Gaither noticed that the bites had morphed into small open wounds. They worsened over the next couple of weeks, but when she took her children to their pediatrician, "he just chalked it up to eczema," Gaither said. (Petroni, 6/25)

As yoga grew in popularity in recent years, foreign visitors flocked to the northern Indian town of Rishikesh, which brands itself as the world’s yoga capital. But the pandemic has hit the town of 100,000 on the banks of the Ganges River, with international tourists unable to visit and many of its yoga schools forced to close for much of the past year. (Anand, 6/21)

Many meteorologists who live in tornado-prone parts of the country have had to issue warnings for their own neighborhoods or remain on the job while a twister struck their houses. Even when their loved ones aren’t directly in the storm’s path, the split-second decisions meteorologists must make about whether to issue tornado warnings can have long-lasting effects on their communities. When people are killed, it can be traumatic for the forecasters who were doing everything they could to save lives during the event. (Stone, 6/22)

A Q&A with Mark Robert Rank, 66, professor of social welfare at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis and co-author of "Poorly Understood: What America Gets Wrong About Poverty." (Heim, 6/22)

Right before Richard Scott William Hutchinson was born, his doctors delivered the news that he had “a zero percent chance of survival,” his parents said. Richard, the world’s most premature baby to survive, proved them wrong: He just turned 1.On June 5, 2020 — four months before her due date — Richard’s mother, Beth Hutchinson, abruptly went into labor. She was 21 weeks and two days pregnant, meaning only about halfway to full gestation. (Page, 6/23)

Donna Gould, a 43-year-old aesthetics student in Cocoa Beach, Fla., can’t remember a time when bug bites and scrapes didn’t leave her with dark spots on her skin. “I just assumed I was a slow healer.” Ten years ago, Gould finally asked a doctor about the spots, thinking they were from a vitamin deficiency. “The doctor told me my skin type is prone to hyperpigmentation,” Gould said, “and that the spots were my increased melanin reacting to inflammation.” (Mandell, 6/21)