NewsScience & Society5 years after COVID-19 became a pandemic, are we ready for whats next?Researchers reflect on lessons learned and shifts in managing the disease A U.S. Army soldier immunizes a woman with the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine in Miami on March 9, 2021. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States excelled at bringing new, life-saving vaccines from the lab to the public. But experts now worry what the U.S. withdrawal from the World Health Organization will mean for the future.Joe Raedle/Getty ImagesBy McKenzie Prillaman44 seconds agoFive years ago, on March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. Whether it still is depends on who you ask. There are no clear criteria to mark the end of a pandemic, and the virus that causes the disease SARS-CoV-2 continues evolving and infecting people worldwide.Whether the pandemic ended or not is an intellectual debate, says clinical epidemiologist and long COVID researcher Ziyad Al-Aly of Washington University in St. Louis. For the family that lost a loved one a week ago in the ICU, that threat is real. That pain is real. That loss is real.

Nature, Published online: 10 March 2025; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-00702-2Tiny plastic particles are being found everywhere, including in the human brain. But it is not yet clear which findings can be trusted and what they might mean.

Nature, Published online: 10 March 2025; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-00208-xMaking our way through security each week is a slog, but teaching incarcerated people has been an incredible career experience.

An AI model can scan your brain with non-invasive equipment and convert your thoughts into typed sentences with no implants required.

Varda Space Industries' W-2 space capsule reentered Earth's atmosphere and touched down in the Australian outback last month, becoming the first commercial spacecraft to land Down Under.

Capcom has released a new update for Monster Hunter Wilds, which mainly fixes for some frustrating bugs that made customizing equipment or collecting monster parts more frustrating. You can find the full patch notes below.Monster Hunter Wilds launched on the last day of February and has already sold over 8 million copies, according to Capcom. While Monster Hunter Wilds is a great game overall, players did spot several issues that made the hunting process more frustrating. New content is on the way in Title Update 1 next month, but in the meantime Capcom has addressed a number of the issues in Monster Hunter Wilds Ver. 1.000.05.00.That notably includes a glitch where cut-off monster parts would change into different monster parts and issues that would revert certain customization changes when using the Equipment Loadout menu. You can check out the full list of issues Capcom plans to resolve in Ver. 1.000.05.00 below. courtesy of the official support page for Monster Hunter Wilds.Continue Reading at GameSpot

Barbarian director Zach Cregger may be helming the next Resident Evil movie, but Paul W.S. Anderson--the man who directed or produced the first six Resident Evil movies--is turning his attention to bringing Sega's House of the Dead back to the big screen. According to Anderson, that film may begin production as soon as this year."The script is almost done," Anderson told Variety. "We're aiming to shoot in the fourth quarter of this year. I'm really going to push the envelope on this one. It's going to be something different for me."Anderson added that he's attempting to recreate the feel of the arcade game by dropping audiences in on the story and letting it play out in real-time until the end of the movie.Continue Reading at GameSpot

There are many ways to win a game in Civilization 7. You can go the scientific route and launch a satellite, you can pursue culture and drown the globe in your artifacts, you can display your military might with Project Ivy, or you can even win over the world with nothing but cold hard cash.

Pokemon Legends: Z-A taking place entirely within Lumiose City is a bold choice, as it stands almost in direct contrast to Legends: Arceus' map set across the Hisui Region. However, the recent gameplay trailer for Pokemon Legends: Z-A showcased how Lumiose City has undergone a significant transformation in the years since its debut in Pokemon X and Y, opening up the city to feature new Wild Zones where players can capture wild mons. With the new areas potentially becoming accessible in Legends: Z-A, Lumiose City shouldn't miss the chance to feature one creepy area based on a real-world location.

[Ghostface voice] Do you like scary movies? [Slightly less Ghostface voice] Do you, like 300 million other human beings on the planet Earth, have a Netflix account? Then, logically, youve probably found yourself scrolling around, looking to find the best horror movies on the service. Unlike Jamie Kennedy in Scream, we have answers.But rather than wade through that ever-shifting glut of films pouring in and out of the service every month trying to separate the wheat from the chaff, weve got you covered with a list of our own written and curated by Polygons own resident horror aficionados. (And if youre looking for a list of the best horror movies to watch across multiple streaming platforms, weve got you covered there, too.)Weve slashed our way through the horror offerings on Netflix to find you a heap of movies worth an evening alone with the lights off and surely no one watching you through the window right nowApostleFans of the classic 1973 horror movie The Wicker Man (let us not speak of the 2006 Nicolas Cage version and its beeeeeees) should be warned: The Raid director Gareth Evans 2018 movie Apostle deliberately starts in the exact same place, and then takes the same scenario to much bloodier and more graphic ends. Set in 1905, it opens with addled addict Thomas (Legion and The Guest star Dan Stevens) getting a letter that says his sister is being held prisoner by a cult on a distant island. So he fakes his way into what looks like a quaint religious community, but is actually the kind of place where people routinely leave bowls of their own blood in front of their doors at night and something is audibly crawling around under the floorboards. Tense, gory, and in places almost ludicrously over-the-top, Apostle has a lot to say about the nature of religious fanaticism, both for the obedient flocks doing whatever their leader says God wants, and for the manipulators that weaponize whoever they can find whos willing to be led. But this isnt just Wicker Man redux its a creative, relentless spin on the same idea, leading to its own unique horrors. Tasha RobinsonArmy of the DeadAny movie where a team of misfits, led by Dave Bautista, has to rob a Las Vegas vault is automatically great. Army of the Dead adds zombies to the equation. The movie takes place in a near future in which a deadly virus creates zombies, but the outbreak ends up contained inside Las Vegas, which becomes infected territory. This is among the biggest and loudest heist movies on this list, blending the zombie-killing of later Resident Evil movies with all the tension of safe cracking. The real key to this movies greatness and fun, though, is Bautista, who is without question the most interesting and sensitive of the giant-man action stars. He counterbalances the bombastic premise with genuine heart and is endlessly watchable as a zombie-killing, one-man army. Austen GoslinCamMadeline Brewer stars in Daniel Goldhabers Cam as Alice, an ambitious camgirl trying desperately to reach the coveted number one spot of the site she streams for. After a particularly intense show, she wakes to find that her account has been taken over by a mysterious doppelganger, one who will seemingly go to any and all lengths to achieve what Alice herself could not. As Alice fights to regain control of her show and expose the identity of her impersonator, shell have to deal with the consequences of her offline and online identities blurring into one. Cam is a chilling psychological horror that leaves the audience wondering at every turn how, if at all, its heroine will manage to overcome and survive the horrors that assail her life. Toussaint EganCreep & Creep 2Leave it to indie darling Mark Duplass and his regular collaborator Patrick Brice (The Overnight) to keep the found-footage horror movie kickin 15 years after The Blair Witch Project. In Creep, Josef (Duplass) recruits Aaron (Brice), a videographer, off Craigslist with the intention of filming a goodbye letter to his unborn son. Josef is dying at least, thats how he convinces his new buddy Aaron to spend the night in the woods drinking whiskey with him. The batshit revelations are best left unsaid, and just how Creep 2 picks up the story, with Girls actress Desiree Akhavan front and center as a hopeful YouTube star, is even more of a hoot. Creep is the deranged, internet-friendly horror franchise we deserve. Matt PatchesThe Dead Dont DieThe world is full of zombie movies, and there are always more on the way, but few of them are as entertaining and odd as Jim Jarmuschs The Dead Dont Die. The legendary indie filmmakers take on the genre is full of unsurprisingly offbeat jokes, bizarre plot points, and far more heart than you might be expecting. Alongside Jarmuschs excellent script, The Dead Dont Die also sports an unreal cast that includes Tom Waits, Chlo Sevigny, Steve Buscemi, Bill Murray, Danny Glover, Caleb Landry Jones, RZA, Carol Kane, Tilda Swinton, Iggy Pop, Selena Gomez, Austin Butler, and more including Adam Driver giving one of the funniest line readings of his entire career. AGHereditaryOver the past decade, arguably no other filmmaker has had a more consequential role in establishing what a so-called A24 movie looks and feels like than Ari Aster. Alongside films like Moonlight and Uncut Gems, Asters 2018 feature debut Hereditary is a touchstone in the aesthetic trifecta of what audiences expect from the brand that is A24.Toni Collette stars in the psychological horror film as Annie, a miniature artist and mother of two who is grieving the death of her mother, Ellen. Not long after the funeral, Annies family is hit with a second inexplicable tragedy, one that threatens to tear them apart and usher forth a darkness unlike anything they could have ever imagined. Macabre, unsettling, and pitch-black in its occasional comedicism, Hereditary was the highest-grossing film ever produced by A24 until the release of Everything Everywhere All at Once. All that being said, youve likely already seen it, but even if you have, its a film worthy of rewatching and reappraising on the merit of its production quality and editing alone. TEHis HouseHis House turns the trials of immigration into a shock-filled ghost story. Gangs of Londons Sope Dirisu and Lovecraft Countrys Wunmi Mosaku play a Sudanese couple seeking asylum in Britain, where they encounter supportive but not exactly friendly social workers (including House of the Dragon star Matt Smith) who cant accept that the home theyve been given is haunted. Caught between the ghosts at home and an inflexible system ready to send them back to a war-torn country, the couple struggle with their past and their highly questionable future. TRThe RitualEven in our post-Cabin in the Woods world, there are still opportunities for clever filmmakers to spook us with creepy-shack-in-the-middle-of-nowhere-why-the-hell-would-you-go-in-there-what-was-that-in-the-shadows-no-no-no-no-no stories. The Ritual follows four friends who trek along northern Swedens Kungsleden trail as a tribute to a fifth friend, who was recently murdered in a convenience store. The death especially weighs on Luke (Prometheus Rafe Spall), whose drunken belligerence put his buddy in harms way in the first place. Luke is also the member of the group who realizes that, after discovering a wooden deer altar in an abandoned house along their unadvised detour, the group is being haunted by more than memories. Like a unique mix of Euro-horror and The Hills Have Eyes, The Ritual twists a familiar journey with creature-feature instincts to keep the genre fresh. MPThanksgivingFirst, a word of caution. If you have difficulty with gore in movies, you are better off with just about any other movie on this list. Go ahead, there are plenty of great ones for you to choose from here just not this one.Now, for the rest of you freaks (I say that with love), you are in for a treat.Thanksgivingis unofficially the best Scream movie sinceScream 4, Wes Cravens final entry in the franchise. Its a delightful slasher with a firmly tongue-in-cheek tone and some extremely gnarly holiday-themed kills.The movie has the kind of twisted kills youd want from a holiday-themed slasher, and while the dialogue is occasionally uneven, I was particularly impressed by the character work.Thanksgivinghas the perfect mix of characters you really want to see get killed and characters you want to survive. Thats a hard balance to strike in the genre, but a vital one.Pete VolkUnder the ShadowDuring a string of Iraqi airstrikes in late-1980s Tehran, the Iranian government bars medical student and political activist Shideh (Narges Rashidi) from continuing her studies. She retreats to her familys apartment, and despite her husbands wishes, remains with her young daughter in the war-torn capital this is her home, and shes not leaving. But when a missile blasts directly through her building, the normal life Shideh and her daughter knew becomes marked by an invisible, nefarious presence. Is it a djinn? Much like in The Babadook, first-time director Babak Anvari allows the question of the supernatural to orbit the action of Under the Shadow as he captures the erosion of his plain main set and Shidehs very existence. MP