Life has gone sideways for millions of Americans due to the coronavirus pandemic. Businesses and schools have closed, many are unemployed and more than 212,000 people in the U.S. have died from COVID-19. As the country continues to grapple with the health crisis, the majority of Americans believe there is some kind of lesson to be learned from the tragedy.

The oil and gas industry is laying off workers at an unprecedented pace to cope with a pandemic that crashed energy prices and raised doubts about the future of fossil fuels. A staggering 107,000 jobs vanished from the US oil, gas and chemicals industry between March and August 2020, according to an analysis published this week by Deloitte. That's the fastest rate of layoffs in the industry's history -- and it doesn't even include the untold number of people on furlough or taking pay cuts.

A druggable pocket in the SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein that could be used to stop the virus from infecting human cells has been discovered by an international team of scientists led by the University of Bristol. The researchers say their findings, published today [21 September] in the journal Science, are a potential 'game changer' in defeating the current pandemic and add that small molecule anti-viral drugs developed to target the pocket they discovered could help eliminate COVID-19.

Last week on the TV’s Top 5 podcast, Star Trek producer Alex Kurtzman dropped some numbers that made hosts Lesley Goldberg and Dan Fienberg, two jaded, longtime television writers, stop in their tracks. As talk turned to the strange new world of Covid-19, Goldberg asked how much Kurtzman’s budget had increased on the small-screen Trek franchise as a result of precautionary measures. Kurtzman’s estimate: PPE alone has added between $300,000 and $500,000 in costs to each episode.

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Many states reopened too quickly, but the damage to the US economy may not be as bad as first feared.

LOS ANGELES: Looking for a new way to communicate during the pandemic? A Los Angeles company has created phone booth-sized machines to beam live holograms into your living room. The device made by PORTL Inc lets users talk in real time with a life-sized hologram of another person.