The CDC’s new masking rules don’t mean you can unmask just yet

On Thursday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued huge news: If you’ve been fully vaccinated, you can stop wearing a mask. Now, health experts are expressing concern about the new rule and telling Americans to proceed with caution. The CDC’s new guidelines come with a few caveats. Americans must follow the rules of local businesses and mask up on planes, trains, buses, and other transit. But for the most part, vaccinated people can go back to the way they lived life before the pandemic. What these broad recommendations don’t account for, health experts say, is how much COVID-19 is spreading in a given community versus how many people are vaccinated. I remain concerned that we will see summer surges in states with low vaccine rates… but again, those states were largely unmasked to begin with. ????‍♀️????‍♀️????‍♀️ But – at some point, people can do unsafe things ***as long as*** it doesn’t endanger the rest of us. — Megan Ranney MD MPH ???? (@meganranney) May 14, 2021 The problem is the way the recommendation bifurcates Americans into two health statuses: vaccinated and unvaccinated. There are people who do not want to get vaccinated and the new guideline may alienate unvaccinated Americans. The hope is that the recommendation will incentivize unvaccinated Americans to get vaccinated. But that may not be the way it works out. “These guidelines rely on unvaccinated people to keep masking, and to be forthcoming about that status,” writes pediatrician Daniel Summers, in an opinion piece for The Daily Beast . “If you believe the same people who think Naomi Wolf is making good sense about the vaccines are going to cough up the truth to a maître d’ before taking their seat at a restaurant, please see me about a hot new purchase opportunity for shares in a diamond mine.” Doctors and health experts are worried there may be COVID-19 case spikes in areas with low vaccine rates and higher case numbers Read More …

A 20-year Apple veteran just unveiled a wild new kind of speaker

From the still-iconic iPod to the human curation of Apple Music to the meticulous design of the digital instruments in Logic X, it’s pretty clear that music is deep in Apple’s DNA. That’s why it’s worth paying attention when a 20-year veteran of the company’s industrial design group goes off to start his own audio hardware company. [Photo: Cell Alpha] Christopher Stringer helped design the iPhone, iPad, MacBook, Apple Watch, and other Apple hits. Now he’s the cofounder and CEO of Syng , which is unveiling its first product, a large round speaker called Cell Alpha that sits on a stand on your living room floor or a tabletop. The round enclosure contains woofers on the top and bottom and a trio of mid-range drivers in the middle. The design has a retro-future vibe, as if someone set out in 1970 to envision the sound system of 2050. Stringer believes audio hardware has fallen way behind advances in sound design coming from the entertainment industry today. Audio modes are still basically confined to mono, stereo, or surround sound. “It’s not obvious how limiting that is,” he says. Read More …

Pregnancy care sucks. These companies want to rethink it

Right as the pandemic was getting underway in New York in April 2020, Joanne Schneider DeMeireles had a miscarriage. She knew something was wrong when she went in for a prenatal appointment and her obstetrician told her that her embryo was only five weeks along. “I was like, that’s not possible,” she says. Her doctor dismissed her concern and told her to come back the following week for another ultrasound. Schneider DeMeireles had previously worked at a fertility clinic and knew when she ovulated, and she had been tracking her pregnancy obsessively. The small size of her embryo—how doctors track the age of the fetus—meant there might be a problem. The following week when she returned to the doctor, there was no heartbeat. It was a miscarriage, one that hadn’t yet expelled. Read More …

Pregnancy care sucks. These companies want to rethink it

Right as the pandemic was getting underway in New York in April 2020, Joanne Schneider DeMeireles had a miscarriage. She knew something was wrong when she went in for a prenatal appointment and her obstetrician told her that her embryo was only five weeks along. “I was like, that’s not possible,” she says. Her doctor dismissed her concern and told her to come back the following week for another ultrasound. Schneider DeMeireles had previously worked at a fertility clinic and knew when she ovulated, and she had been tracking her pregnancy obsessively. The small size of her embryo—how doctors track the age of the fetus—meant there might be a problem. The following week when she returned to the doctor, there was no heartbeat. It was a miscarriage, one that hadn’t yet expelled. Schneider DeMeireles’s doctor told her she had two options. She could let her body expel naturally, but miscarriages can take days and are painful. Or she could opt for dilation and curettage (D&C), a procedure that removes tissue in the uterus to prevent possible infection. It’s an elective surgery, one she wasn’t able to access under pandemic restrictions. What her doctor didn’t tell her is that she could take a course of pills to help the miscarriage complete. Schneider DeMeireles later found out that her obstetrician used to be religiously affiliated and since they’re the same pills used in an abortion, the doctor didn’t offer them. In the end, Schneider DeMeireles had to go to a different doctor to access the medication. Schneider DeMeireles’s experience is not unique. But now she is one of many women inspired by their experiences with pregnancy, pregnancy loss, and postpartum care who are trying to change how women receive care Read More …

The best 11 ambient noise and music apps to help you stay focused

While research tends to go back and forth on the advantages of noise versus silence for creativity and productivity, I always find myself more relaxed and focused at work after turning on a light amount of ambient sound, usually with some combination of rain, fan noise, and white noise. That habit has turned me into somewhat of an ambient sound connoisseur. Too many ambient noise apps come with cheap sound effects, annoying commercial breaks, or exorbitant subscription fees Read More …