21 articles from SUNDAY 16.1.2022

Don’t demonise those who refuse the Covid vaccine | Letters

One reader’s experience of the effects on family members of the conspiracy theories surrounding vaccinationsI read David Green’s letter on anti-vaxxers (12 January) and empathised with the letter written in response (13 January). The week before Christmas my dad died of Covid. The intensive care consultant couldn’t have been clearer that, in her opinion, if he had been vaccinated he would...

Archaeology’s sexual revolution

Graves dating back thousands of years are giving up their secrets, as new ways to pin down the sex of old bones are overturning long-held, biased beliefs about gender and loveIn the early summer of 2009, a team of archaeologists arrived at a construction site in a residential neighbourhood of Modena, Italy. Digging had started for a new building and in the process workers unearthed a cemetery,...

Life after lockdown: how do we best recover from the pandemic?

Two years of Covid have wreaked havoc with the nation’s mental health. What can be learned from the survivors of other traumas and is there a way of thinking ourselves to a happier, healthier place?It was October 2020 when I realised I was going to have to ask for help. I’ve always been anxious, but thanks to the pandemic, I developed debilitating health anxiety. A dire winter was coming and...

Swine fever in wild boars worries Italy's pork industry

The discovery of African swine fever in northern Italy has Italian pork producers fearing significant economic damage to a major agricultural export and has forced curtailing of the official seasons to hunt for game and to gather prized truffles.

How antivirals provide hope to vulnerable Covid patients

Pfizer says its recently approved Paxlovid drug has almost 90% success in preventing severe illness if taken soon after infectionThe recent decision by regulators to approve the antiviral agent Paxlovid for use in the UK adds a formidable new weapon to the arsenal of treatments for Covid-19. Pfizer says the drug has almost 90% success in preventing severe illness in vulnerable adults if taken soon...

Trail of African bling reveals 50,000-year-old social network

Study finds ancient hunter-gatherers traded eggshell beads over vast areaScientists have uncovered the world’s oldest social network, a web of connections that flourished 50,000 years ago and stretched for thousands of miles across Africa.But unlike its modern electronic equivalent, this ancient web of social bonds used a far more prosaic medium. It relied on the sharing and trading of beads...