Science unscripted

Remember those jokes about "2020 vision"? Well a new study suggests that stay-at-home measures during that year may have caused irrevocable damage to children's eyes — and to ours, by extension. Also, how Germans feel about their country's faltering vaccination strategy, and the misleading video from inside a hospital that's been shared a quarter million times.

Nearsightedness, or myopia, has gone up dramatically during periods of lockdown — that's according to a study of more than 100,000 children in China. Though the damage is irreversible, there are things that all of us (including parents) can do to slow its progress.

This year's going to be a fun one for stargazers — with planets lighting up the summer nights, a telescope that'll take us back to the birth of stars, and a solar eclipse that... well, very few people are actually going to see. But if that's not your thing, how about an astronomer with a brass nose, a pet moose addicted to alcohol, and a murderous streak?

Of all the places in the world for there to a shortage of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, it seems odd for it to be happening in the country of its creation. And while the selfless, European motivations that led to this conundrum are admirable, are those motivations actually shared by Germans?

They're all false or misleading: A distressing video of a woman convulsing in a hospital bed. Another singling out nasty-sounding chemicals 'used in COVID-19 vaccines.' And finally, the cherry-picked data behind the '19-29% efficacy' argument.

As Germany doubles down on the lockdown, new data suggests vaccines will keep us all safe for a long, long time. But even as health care workers get vaccinated, their suffering will continue well beyond the pandemic. And finally, yes, it is OK to laugh about COVID-19 — and it might even help.

A news story, if delivered with a joke or a punchline, is remembered more clearly and shared more often — that's the indication of a new US study. But does that mean that the news should be funny? And how does that work when the topic is tragic?

Over half of healthcare workers on the frontline of the COVID-19 pandemic are already suffering mental illness, according to an ongoing investigation. What can be done to help these people?

Our immune system will remember the coronavirus for a long time, years maybe, according to new data. This is potentially huge news for global vaccination efforts.

We are told that contagious mutations of Sars-CoV-2 have ushered in a new phase in the pandemic. How important are anti-viral therapies now that the vaccines are out? And — when is the right time to close schools during a pandemic?