Month: January 2019

January 29, 2019 at 06:34AM by CWC When it comes to childhood sicknesses, most parents expect their kids to suffer through a bout of chicken pox and the occasional ear infection. But measles? It’s 2019—didn’t we eliminate the disease in the United States? (Hint: We did.) Yet, here we are. On Tuesday, health officials declared a state of emergency due to an outbreak affecting two Washington counties, according to NPR. How exactly did this happen? According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, measles—a viral infection causing a fever, rash, and inflammation—was a major problem in the United States in the early 1900s, leading to about 6,000 deaths a year. But after the introduction of a safe and effective vaccine, in 1968, the number of people infected began to plummet. By 2000, the disease was declared eliminated in the U.S. (In countries where a vaccine isn’t readily available, measles is still common.) NPR correlates the resurgence in measles cases with state laws allowing parents to opt out of vaccinating their children. To this end, the CDC is urging parents to vaccinate children as young as 1 year old. The problem with waiting until after you suspect the virus has been contracted, the nation’s health protection agency says, is that it may take up to four days for symptoms to appear. Meanwhile, children easily (and unknowingly) expose others to the disease. Measles is an airborne contagion with a 90 percent infection rate. It spreads so easily that an infected child who coughs in

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January 29, 2019 at 05:00AM by CWC Let’s get real: After you post an Instagram photo and the notifications start rolling in, you totally track who’s giving you digital hearts. If the person you’ve been crushing on has liked your latest, you are almost certainly aware—as is the case when that person views your Instagram Stories. In short, you know when someone is keeping up with you on the reg, but that reality doesn’t stop your stomach butterflies from fluttering or your mind from wandering and wondering about what it means. Because, hey, a sudden uptick in Instagram Story-viewing must mean something, right? And by liking your photo, the object of your desire surely intends to subliminally communicate that what they really like is you, correct? Well, according to one expert, these feelings may just be a case of seeing what you want to see. A big part of how we perceive a person’s interaction with us is how we feel about them, says sex therapist Amie Harwick, PhD, MFT. “Our feelings toward the other person can be projected on a situation. We tend to see what we want through the lens of our own experiences, desires, and fears.” So it’s important to look at the bigger picture of your interaction with your crush—not just their Instagram behavior. Are they texting you, or singling you out to talk to you when you’re with a big group of people? If so, there may well be attraction there. But if your relationship is

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