Science

15 Lessons Scientists Learned About Us When the World Stood Still

Published

11 months ago

March 11, 2025

15 Lessons Scientists Learned About Us When the World Stood Still

When the pandemic upended our lives, it gave researchers a rare chance to learn more about who we are and how we live. The simultaneous changes endured by the entire world created experiments that could never have happened otherwise. What happens when sports teams play in empty stadiums? When people see their doctors online? When the government sends people money? When women stop wearing high heels? When children stop going to school?

Research was challenging in such an extraordinary period: It’s impossible to know whether changes were caused by the specific thing scientists were studying, or by some other aspect of the pandemic — or whether we could expect the same result in normal times.

Perhaps one of the most important takeaways from the pandemic was that science is a process. Just as our understandings about masks or vaccines changed as the pandemic went on, these lessons might also change with time. For now, here are 15 things we learned.

1. Flu season doesn’t have to be so bad.

Flu virtually disappeared during the pandemic. The precautions people took to prevent the spread of Covid also played a role in preventing other respiratory viruses, experts found. Slowing their spread doesn’t necessarily require extreme measures, like stay-at-home orders, the studies showed. Simple behaviors — masking, hand-washing and avoiding social gatherings or workplaces when sick — help keep people healthy. Even those precautions haven’t stuck, though: This year, flu is surging.

2. Home-field advantage got less mysterious.

When sports teams started playing in empty stadiums, researchers could more rigorously study why players seem to do better at home. A variety of studies found that, yes, the fans made a difference: Home teams played worse without them around. They were less likely to win at home and had poorer performances — and the effect was smaller for teams that had frequently played in front of smaller crowds before the pandemic. But there was also evidence that it wasn’t just about fans. When the N.B.A. restarted play, the top 22 teams isolated in Orlando, Fla., allowing researchers to study the effects of jet lag. Rebounding, shooting accuracy and wins were all higher among players who didn’t have to travel across time zones.

3. Teenagers need to sleep in, but schools won’t let them.

Most teenagers were sleep-deprived before the pandemic — they don’t naturally tend to feel tired until around 11 p.m. and need around 10 hours of sleep a night. But when schools closed, teenagers around the world started sleeping according to their natural rhythms. They went to bed later (by about two hours, one study found) and slept longer. They woke up naturally, without an alarm or a parent, which doctors say is the sign of sufficient sleep. Teenagers lost these gains when schools reopened at their usual early start times. When high schools start later, other research has shown, it’s associated with improved concentration, behavior, attendance, learning and mental health.

4. High heels aren’t just uncomfortable — they’re dangerous.

Starting in March 2020, the number of women showing up at emergency rooms with injuries they said were from wearing high heels, like fractures or sprains, declined sharply. In 2020, there were 6,300 hospital visits for high heel injuries, down from 16,000 during each of the four years prior, according to data analyzed by Philip Cohen, a sociologist at the University of Maryland. Now he’s looking into whether injuries have increased since people have begun socializing and working in offices again, or whether the pandemic has hastened the trend toward flats and sneakers.

5. Patients don’t always need to see a doctor in person, if at all.

Telehealth, once uncommon, accounted for half of medical visits early in the pandemic, found a study of two billion medical claims in the United States. Mostly, patients and doctors were satisfied with seeing one another online. Telehealth lowered health care costs, and was especially useful for treating chronic illnesses and for psychotherapy. And in some cases, the pandemic revealed, people don’t need to see a doctor at all. The number of people showing up with mild appendicitis decreased, while the number with complicated appendicitis didn’t change, which researchers said suggested that some patients who would typically have had surgery recovered on their own.

6. Women are better patients than men.

During the pandemic, women were more likely than men to wear masks, get vaccinated and follow other public health guidance. This was true in many countries. When men and women lived together, the men were a little more likely to follow health rules, but still less likely than the women. One group of researchers studied professional tennis players at the U.S. Open in 2020. The women were more likely than the men to skip the event because of safety concerns. This aligns with gender differences in health overall, researchers said — women are more likely to seek preventive care, visit doctors and follow health recommendations. It’s probably one reason women tend to live longer.

7. Not even being stuck at home makes men do more housework.

During lockdowns, there was a lot more domestic labor to do. More dishes piled up, with more needy children underfoot. But even when men worked from home, women still handled more of the work. Eight in 10 mothers said they managed remote schooling (fathers overestimated their contribution). That could be a reason mothers’ antidepressant use increased when schools were closed, but not fathers’. Mothers were also more likely than men to cut back at work — though they returned as soon as they could. Only couples who really wanted egalitarian relationships, researchers wrote, could overcome “the stickiness of gender inequality in household work.”

8. Alcohol restrictions can save lives.

Many places had curfews or bans on selling alcohol during lockdowns — and it appeared to have saved lives. In South Africa, hospital admissions to trauma units and deaths declined. In Southern India, traumatic brain injuries decreased. In other parts of the world, however, alcohol use increased significantly — and, along with it, domestic violence and other problems.

9. Office workers don’t need to be chained to their desks.

Even without in-person meetings, work travel and days spent in cubicles, business continued on. The lesson, said Nick Bloom, a Stanford economist: “Work from home works.” Researchers are still studying how remote work affects productivity, collaboration and creativity. But some version of it seems here to stay: Just over a quarter of paid work days are now worked from home, compared with about 7 percent prepandemic. Remote work has downsides — for innovation, mentorship and service jobs in downtowns. But it also has benefits that workers aren’t eager to give up, like no commutes, more focused work time and making it easier for parents to juggle child care. As a result, it also improves retention.

10. Computers are no replacement for classrooms.

Five years later, the data is clear: When it came to learning, remote school wasn’t enough. Across the country, in rich and poor districts, and among students of different races, test scores in reading and math fell. Many students still haven’t caught up. There was learning loss even in countries with much shorter school closures than the United States. Other factors hampered students’ learning, including poverty and stress, but the importance of attending school in person is clear: The sooner children returned to classrooms, even part-time, the better they did.

11. There’s a simple way to bring children out of poverty.

The monthly checks that the U.S. government sent most parents during the pandemic were enormously successful in bringing children out of poverty, a variety of research has found. Families used the money to pay for food, child care, health care and housing. The benefits weren’t just financial — the checks improved parents’ mental health and family well-being. In 2022, when the checks ended, child poverty doubled. The expanded child credit was part of a rapid $5 trillion expansion of the social safety net.

12. Premature births might be prevented by taking care of moms.

The first reports came from Denmark and Ireland in 2020: The number of babies born premature or at a very low birth weight plummeted early in the pandemic. Soon it became clear that this trend was global: One study estimated that worldwide, 50,000 premature births — a leading cause of infant mortality — had been prevented in just the first month of the pandemic. Researchers aren’t sure exactly why, but a leading theory is that staying home benefited pregnant women — they could rest more, and were exposed to fewer stressors, pollutants and viruses. Perhaps giving pregnant women a break would make them, and their babies, healthier.

13. Dolphins talk more when people aren’t around.

When humans were less active — what scientists call the anthropause — animals began breeding more and traveling farther. Dolphins whistled longer, birds changed their songs, sea turtles laid more eggs. But the anthropause also revealed the ways in which animals have adapted to people, and humans’ disappearance disturbed delicate balances. In some places, predators or invasive species arrived. Urban wildlife that had become accustomed to coexisting with humans, like crows or raccoons, retreated. It revealed the ways in which humans both threaten and protect the natural world, scientists said.

14. Trees and plants make people happier.

Unable to spend time in indoor public spaces, people flocked to natural areas when they could, and were better off for it. A study in Hong Kong compared people who lived near urban green spaces with those who didn’t, and found that parks provided physical activity and a refuge. A study in nine countries found that access to nature — even a balcony or garden at home — buffered the stress of lockdowns and improved people’s moods. And a study in Taiwan analyzed the “window/wall ratio” in people’s quarantine rooms and found that more windows, especially if people could see vegetation, made them happier.

15. There’s no substitute for human contact.

Across the globe, when people didn’t see other people, their mental health — as measured by loneliness, depression and anxiety — got worse. Social media was not a substitute, and often made mental health deteriorate. The pandemic made clear that socializing is particularly important for two age groups, researchers said: young adults and older adults. The older group had better mental health, as well as cardiovascular and cognitive health, when they had structured socializing, like activities at community centers or weekly visits or phone calls.

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Science

TrumpRx is launched: How it works and what Democrats say about it

Published

5 hours ago

February 7, 2026

Press Room

TrumpRx is launched: How it works and what Democrats say about it

WASHINGTON — The White House’s TrumpRx website went live Thursday with a promise to instantly deliver prescription drugs at “the lowest price anywhere in the world.”

“This launch represents the largest reduction in prescription drug prices in history by many, many times, and it’s not even close,” President Trump said at a news conference announcing the launch of the platform.

Drug policy experts say the jury is still out on whether the platform will provide the significant savings Trump promises, though it will probably help people who need drugs not commonly covered by insurance.

Senate Democrats, meanwhile, called the site a “vanity project” and questioned whether the program presents a possible conflict of interest involving the pharmaceutical industry and the Trump family.

What is TrumpRx, really?

The new platform, trumprx.gov, is designed to help uninsured Americans find discounted prices for high-cost, brand-name prescriptions, including fertility, obesity and diabetes treatments.

The site does not directly sell drugs. Instead, consumers browse a list of discounted medicines, and select one for purchase. From there, they either receive a coupon accepted at certain pharmacies or are routed directly to a drug manufacturer’s website to purchase the prescription.

The White House said the reduced prices are possible after the administration negotiated voluntary “most favored nation” agreements with 16 major drugmakers including Pfizer, Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk.

Under these deals, manufacturers have agreed to set certain U.S. drug prices no higher than those paid in other wealthy nations in exchange for three-year tariff exemptions. However, the full legal and financial details of the deals have not been made public, leaving lawmakers to speculate how TrumpRx’s pricing model works.

What does it accomplish?

Though the White House has framed TrumpRx as a historic reset for prescription drug costs, economists said the platform offers limited new savings.

But it does move the needle on the issue of drug pricing transparency, away from the hidden mechanisms behind how prescription drugs are priced, rebated and distributed, according to Geoffrey Joyce, director of health policy at the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics.

“This has been a murky world, a terrible, obscure, opaque marketplace where drug prices have been inconsistently priced to different consumers,” Joyce said, “So this is a little step in the right direction, but it’s mostly performative from my perspective, which is kind of Trump in a nutshell.”

Still, for the uninsured or people seeking “lifestyle drugs” — like those for fertility or weight loss that insurers have historically declined to cover — TrumpRx could become a useful option, Joyce said.

“It’s kind of a win for Trump and a win for Pfizer,” Joyce said. “They get to say, ‘Look what we’re doing. We’re lowering prices. We’re keeping Trump happy, but it’s on our low-volume drugs, and drugs that we were discounting big time anyway.’”

Where does it fall short?

Early analyses by drug policy experts suggest many of the discounted medications listed on the TrumpRx site were already on offer through other drug databases before the platform launched.

For example, Pfizer’s Duavee menopause treatment is listed at $30.30 on TrumpRx, but it is also available for the same price at some pharmacies via GoodRx.

Weight management drug Wegovy starts at $199 on TrumpRx. Manufacturers were already selling the same discounted rates through its NovoCare Pharmacy program before the portal’s launch.

“[TrumpRx] uses data from GoodRx, an existing price-search database for prescription drugs,” said Darius N. Lakdawalla, a senior health policy researcher at USC. “It seems to provide prices that are essentially the same as the lowest price GoodRx reports on its website.”

Compared to GoodRx, TrumpRx covers a modest subset of drugs: 43 in all.

“Uninsured consumers, who do not use or know about GoodRx and need one of the specific drugs covered by the site, might benefit from TrumpRx. That seems like a very specific set of people,” Lakdawalla said.

Where do Democrats stand?

Democrats slammed the program this week, saying it would not provide substantial discounts for patients, and called for greater transparency around the administration’s dealings with drugmakers. To date, the administration has not disclosed the terms of the pricing agreements with manufacturers such as Pfizer and AstraZeneca.

In the lead-up to the TrumpRx launch, Democratic members of Congress questioned its usefulness and urged federal health regulators to delay its debut.

“This is just another Donald Trump pet project to rebrand something that already exists, take credit for it, and do nothing to actually lower healthcare prices,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) said Friday. “Democrats will continue fighting to lower healthcare costs and push Republicans to stop giving handouts to billionaires at the expense of working-class Americans.”

Three other Democratic senators — Dick Durbin, Elizabeth Warren and Peter Welch — raised another concern in a Jan. 29 letter to Thomas March Bell, inspector general for the Department of Health and Human Services.

The three senators pointed to potential conflicts of interest between TrumpRx and an online dispensing company, BlinkRx.

One of Trump’s sons, Donald Trump Jr., joined the BlinkRx Board of Directors in February 2025.

Months before, he became a partner at 1789 Capital, a venture capital firm that holds a significant stake in BlinkRx and led the startup’s $140-million funding round in 2024. After his appointment, BlinkRx launched a service to help pharmaceutical companies build direct-to-patient sales platforms quickly.

“The timing of the BlinkRx announcement so closely following the administration’s outreach to the largest drug companies, and the involvement of President Trump’s immediate family, raises questions about potential coordination, influence and self-dealing,” according to an October 2025 statement by Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Both BlinkRx and Donald Trump Jr. have denied any coordination.

What’s next?

The rollout of TrumpRx fits into a suite of White House programs designed to address rising costs, an area of vulnerability for Republicans ahead of the November midterms.

The White House issued a statement Friday urging support for the president’s healthcare initiative, dubbed “the great healthcare plan,” which it said will further reduce drug prices and lower insurance premiums.

For the roughly 8% of Americans without health insurance, TrumpRx’s website promises that more high-cost, brand-name drugs will be discounted on the platform in the future.

“It’s possible the benefits will become broader in the future,” Lakdawalla said. “I would say that the jury remains out on its long-run structure and its long-run pricing effects.”

Science

The loss of healthcare subsidies force Californians to pay more or go without

Published

1 day ago

February 6, 2026

Press Room

The loss of healthcare subsidies force Californians to pay more or go without

For Mikayla Tencer, being self-employed already meant juggling higher taxes, irregular income and the constant pressure of finding her own health insurance. This year, it also meant rethinking how often she could afford to see a doctor.

The 29-year-old content creator in San Francisco paid $168 a month last year for a Blue Shield health plan through Covered California. This year — without enhanced federal subsidies that expired at the end of December — that same plan would have cost $299 a month, with higher copays.

“People assume that because I’m young, I can just pick the cheapest plan and not worry about it,” Tencer said. “But I do need regular care, especially for mental health.”

Tencer is among tens of thousands of middle-class Californians facing steep increases in health insurance costs after Congress allowed enhanced federal subsidies for Affordable Care Act plans to expire Dec. 31.

Those extra subsidies were enacted in 2021 as part of temporary, pandemic-era relief, boosting financial help for people buying coverage on state-run insurance marketplaces such as Covered California. The law also expanded eligibility to people earning more than 400% of the federal poverty level, about $62,600 for a single person and $128,600 for a family of four.

Mikayla Tencer records a TikTok video featuring eyeliners. Her blog showcases Bay Area attractions and local businesses.

(Paul Kuroda/For The Times)

With the expiration of the enhanced subsidies, people above that income threshold no longer receive federal assistance, and many who still qualify are seeing sharply higher premiums and out-of-pocket costs. On top of the loss of the extra federal benefits, the average Covered California premium this year rose by 10.3% because of fast-rising medical costs.

Jessica Altman, executive director of Covered California, said that about 160,000 Californians lost their subsidies when the enhanced federal assistance expired because their incomes were higher than 400% of the federal poverty level.

To lower her monthly bill, Tencer switched to the cheapest Covered California option, bringing her premium down to about $161 a month. But the savings came with new costs. Primary care and mental health visits now carry $60 copays, up from $35.

When she showed up for a psychiatric appointment to manage her ADHD and generalized anxiety disorder, she said, she learned her doctor was out of network.

“That visit would have been $35 before,” she said. “Now it’s $180 out of pocket.”

Because of the higher costs, Tencer said she has cut therapy from weekly to biweekly sessions.

“The subsidies made it possible for me to be self-employed in the first place,” Tencer said. “Without them, I’m seriously thinking about applying for full-time jobs, even though the market is terrible.”

For another self-employed Californian, the increase was even more dramatic.

Krista, a 42-year-old photographer and videographer in Santa Cruz County, relies on costly monthly intravenous treatments for a rare blood disorder. She asked that her full name not be used but shared her insurance and medical documents with The Times.

Last year, she paid about $285 a month for a Covered California plan. In late December, she received a notice showing her premium would rise to more than $1,200 a month. The rise was due to her loss of federal subsidies, as well as a 23% increase in the premium charged by Blue Shield.

“It terrified me. I thought, how am I ever going to retire?” she asked. “What’s the point?”

Krista ultimately enrolled in a plan costing about $522 a month, still nearly double what she had been paying, with a $5,000 deductible. She said she cannot downgrade to a cheaper plan because her clinic bills her treatment to insurance at roughly $30,000 a month, according to medical statements.

To cut costs and preserve the ability to save for retirement and eventually afford a place of her own, Krista decided to move into an RV on private land. The decision came the same week she received notices showing a rent increase and a steep jump in her health insurance premiums.

Mikayla Tencer, a marketing influencer, with her elder dog, "Lucky" at Alamo Square Park.

Krista said she had been planning for more than a year to find a long-term living situation that would enable her to live independently, rather than continue paying more for an apartment.

“Nobody asks to be sick,” Krista said. “No one should have their life ruined because they get diagnosed with a disease or break a leg.”

Although overall enrollment in Covered California this year has held steady, Altman said, she worries that more people will drop coverage as bills with the higher premiums arrive in the mail.

Those fears are already playing out.

Jayme Wernicke, a 34-year-old receptionist and single mother in Chico who earns about $49,000 a year, said she was transferred from Medi-Cal to a Covered California Anthem Blue Cross plan at the end of 2023. Her premium rose from about $30 a month to $60, then jumped to roughly $230 after the subsidies expired.

“For them to raise my health insurance almost 400% is just insane to me,” Wernicke said.

Her employer, a small family-owned business, does not offer health insurance. Her plan does not include dental or vision care and, she said, barely covers medical costs.

“At a certain point, it just feels completely counterintuitive,” she said. “Either way, I’m losing.”

Wernicke dropped her own coverage and plans to pay for care with cash, calculating that the state tax penalty is less than the cost of premiums. Her daughter remains insured.

Two other Californian residents told The Times that they also decided to go without coverage because they could no longer afford it. They declined to provide their full names, citing concerns about financial and professional consequences.

Under California law, residents without coverage face an annual penalty of at least $900 per adult and $450 per child.

One, a 29-year-old self-employed publicist in Los Angeles requires medication for epilepsy. Last year, she paid about $535 a month for a silver plan through Covered California. This year, the same plan would have cost $823.

After earning about $55,000 last year, she calculated that paying for care out of pocket would cost far less. Her epilepsy medication costs about $175 every three months without insurance, and her annual doctor visits total roughly $250.

“All of that combined is still far less than paying hundreds of dollars every month,” she said.

Another, April, a 58-year-old small-business owner in San Francisco, canceled her insurance in December after her quoted premium rose to $1,151 a month for a bronze plan and $1,723 for a silver plan, just for herself. Last year, April said she paid $566 for both her and her daughter. This year, her daughter’s premium alone jumped from $155 to $424.

The bronze plan also carried a $3,500 deductible for lab work and specialist visits, meaning she would have had to pay thousands of dollars out of pocket before coverage kicked in, on top of the higher monthly premium.

“The subsidies were absolutely what allowed me to sustain my business,” April said. “They were helping me sustain my financial world and have affordable care.”

She rushed to complete medical tests before dropping coverage and hopes to go a year uninsured.

“The scariest part is not having catastrophic coverage,” she said. “If something happens, it can be millions of dollars.”

Tencer, the content creator in San Francisco, believes that in order to make the nation healthier, affordable healthcare should be universal.

“Our government should be providing it.” she said. “People can’t go to the doctor for routine checkups, they can’t get things checked out early, and they can’t access the resources they need.”