A woman wears a face mask at an art gallery to protect against coronavirus transmission. Image source: Sputnik via AP
By Chris Smith
As if the novel coronavirus pandemic wasn’t enough to ruin normal life, 2020 brought us additional contagious scares that we weren’t expecting. Congo experienced a new Ebola outbreak just as it was trying to end a years-long epidemic hundreds of miles away from the secondary flare-up, and China just announced the reappearance of the bubonic plague in Inner Mongolia. Add a warning from the CDC that the tick season could be even worse this year, combined with reports that mosquitos can carry the dengue fever (Florida) or the West Nile virus (Massachusetts and Texas), and you’ve got a near-complete picture of this year’s dangerous infectious diseases. But 2020 is far from over, and Chinese authorities in Kazakhstan are warning that the country is dealing with an “unknown pneumonia” that’s even deadlier than the coronavirus. Read more >>