�������ýҕ�l

Hoarding is not a new issue, nor is our fascination with it. Reality television shows have been chronicling extreme cases of hoarding for years: “Clean House” debuted in 2003, for example, and “Hoarders” in 2009. But, according to a study published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research in November 2021, hoarding disorder symptoms have “significantly worsened” during the pandemic, perhaps because of heightened stress or extra time at home — in some cases, alone. (Haupt, 3/7)

The COVID pandemic is not just a public health crisis. It is also an environmental one. After more than 430 million reported cases of the disease around the world, the pandemic has generated huge amounts of medical garbage in the form of test kits, gloves, masks, syringes and other products that people at clinics and hospitals use once and then toss away. A recent report by the World Health Organization found the problem was global, but extreme in poorer countries where much of the refuse is simply burned in open pits and decrepit incinerators that lack pollution controls. (Schmidt, 3/7)

Mike Bowen has spent much of the pandemic saying, “I told you so,” and you can hardly blame him. Back in 2005, just as low-cost Chinese manufacturers were taking over the personal protective equipment industry, Bowen joined a friend who had started a small surgical mask company called Prestige Ameritech. The plan was to market his company’s masks to American hospitals and distributors as a way to provide resilience — a means of ensuring domestic supply if the supply chain ever broke down. “Every company had left America,” he recalled recently. “The entire U.S. mask supply was under foreign control.” He remembers warning customers, “If there’s a pandemic, we’re going to be in trouble.” (Nocera, 3/5)

There were so many bodies in Hari Close’s funeral home one day last month that he arrived to begin embalming them at 2 a.m. It was his 61st birthday, but he had to get to work. Later that day, the Baltimore funeral director counseled the family of a 13-year-old who had died of covid-19, after weeks on a ventilator. He tried to help them navigate their grief even as he struggled with his own, thinking of his grandchildren around the same age. Close phoned a friend to vent. Then he headed back to the embalming room, where his work would stretch into the evening. (Chason, 3/8)

Like many high school athletes, Bobby, 16, a junior from Long Island, has spent years whipping his body into shape through protein diets and workouts. Between rounds of Fortnite and homework, Bobby goes online to study bodybuilders like Greg Doucette, a 46-year-old fitness personality who has more than 1.3 million YouTube subscribers. Bobby also hits his local gym as frequently as six days a week. (Hawgood, 3/5)

Think back to the last time you walked into the living room and forgot what you came for, or tugged on the car door handle only to realize your keys were on the kitchen counter. Each week, patients in my memory clinic recount similar stories and ask me: Is this normal? Surveys show that half of middle-aged adults worry about getting dementia. People who feel isolated, get less sleep or have taken care of someone with memory loss tend to be particularly concerned. Fear of cognitive maladies is widespread; scientists have found that people are more scared of dementia than of other top causes of death, such as heart disease and strokes. (Peskin, 3/5)

Dr. Warren Hern doesn’t have to imagine what could befall many women in America if the Supreme Court strikes down Roe vs. Wade. In 1963, he was a resident working nights at Colorado General Hospital in Denver. Women would arrive in septic shock, some probably hours from death. “Nobody talked about why they were there,” Hern recalled. He soon discovered they were suffering complications from illegal abortions. In one case, a woman shot herself in the belly and drove to the emergency room. (Hennessey-Fiske, 3/10)

Decades of federal housing discrimination did not only depress home values, lower job opportunities and spur poverty in communities deemed undesirable because of race. It’s why 45 million Americans are breathing dirtier air today, according to a landmark study released Wednesday. The practice known as redlining was outlawed more than a half-century ago, but it continues to impact people who live in neighborhoods that government mortgage officers shunned for 30 years because people of color and immigrants lived in them. (Fears, 3/9)

Deforestation in the Amazon can seem like a remote problem over which we have no control — but forest advocates say that’s not true. They argue that smarter choices at the dinner table would go a long way toward safeguarding the world’s largest rainforest. (Schiffman, 3/9)