Free Republic

Face masks are emerging as one of the most powerful weapons to fight the novel coronavirus, with growing evidence that facial coverings help prevent transmission—even if an infected wearer is in close contact with others. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said he believes the pandemic could be brought under control over the next four to eight weeks if “we could get everybody to wear a mask right now.” His comments, made Tuesday with the Journal of the American Medical Association, followed an editorial he and others wrote there emphasizing “ample evidence” of asymptomatic spread...

White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx told Fox News on Saturday night that the U.S. significantly underestimated the number of asymptomatic cases that existed of the coronavirus. “I think we’re learning every day about the virus and how it interacts with us as human hosts. And that’s been very important to constantly be triangulating data,” Birx said. “I think we underestimated very early on the number of asymptomatic cases. And I think we’re really beginning to understand there are people that get infected that those symptoms are so low-grade that they don’t even know that they’re infected.”

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Popular low-carbohydrate diets are leading Americans to poor health and are spawning a rip-off industry of "carb-friendly" products, health experts and consumer advocates said on Tuesday. They announced a new group, called the Partnership for Essential Nutrition, to help educate Americans about the need for healthy carbohydrates such as vegetables, fruits, beans and whole grains. "When unproven science becomes a sales pitch, some people get rich and the rest of us get ripped off," Jeffrey Prince of the American Institute for Cancer Research told a news conference. "Eating vegetables, fruits, whole grains and beans, which are all...