“The biggest lesson learned from the pandemic is you don’t need to settle, and if people aren’t giving you the energy that you deserve, and even if they’re family, you don’t need to participate,” Sarah says.

“They really are just saying yes to themselves. They’re saying no to travel. They’re saying no to the hustle and bustle of getting somewhere … They’re not saying no to their family. They’re saying no to the process,” she says. “And what they’re saying yes to is, I just need some down time for me.”

“Is the decision to go home and spend time with family based on a desire to be with them, or based on guilt about being ‘the one who doesn’t go home’? Are you willing to sacrifice some of your own peace of mind in order to not feel guilty or [be] labeled as selfish?”

"The inspection staff is trying to ensure the animals in a shelter facility are receiving humane care. Humane care is defined as the provision of adequate heat, ventilation, sanitary shelter and adequate food and water, consistent with the normal requirements and feeding habits of the animals, size, species and breed," the department's website states regarding these inspections.

Over the last week, Washington broke two records for highest daily case count since the coronavirus pandemic began, according to Department of Health data.

Health officials in Washington state are warning of an increase in COVID-19 transmission in the coming months.

Dr. Kathy Lofy, the state health officer, advises people to stop socializing so we can flatten the curve and prevent another economic shutdown.

“Accelerated growth in (COVID-19) cases in past two weeks… at this point in time, it's the highest number of cases we’ve ever had, and our case count is accelerating," Lofy said.

Some folks just can't help themselves. If they see a baby, it's like they must make faces at them, wave to them, or just say hi before they burst. (It's me. I'm some folks.) Sometimes this goes well. Other times the baby is terrified. But when are babies scared of strangers? I would like to know so I don't cause a meltdown by waving to a baby who is just minding their own business.

A mother's depression and anxiety from conception through the first year of the baby's life is associated with negative developmental outcomes through adolescence, according to a study published Monday in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.

That could affect a lot of women: About 15% to 23% of women worldwide experience anxiety during pregnancy, while 15% deal with anxiety after childbirth. Depression through pregnancy is estimated to affect 10% of women, and 15% face postpartum depression. The burden is greater for women who are experiencing poverty or are teen parents, according to Postpartum Support International.

For the baby, the perinatal stage — which is defined as the time from conception through pregnancy (antenatal), birth and the first year of the baby's life (postnatal) — is "a time of unprecedented growth and sensitivity," the study said. That's when exposures and early life experiences may modify development starting from when he or she is in the womb to that critical first year as a growing child and onward.

A mother experiencing depression and anxiety before and after birth was moderately linked with her child's deficits in language and cognitive and motor development in infancy.

People often throw the phrase "obsessive-compulsive disorder" (OCD) around as jokey shorthand for being excessively particular or high-strung, casting the disorder as a sort of innocuous, yet desexualizing, set of anxieties.

But OCD isn’t a quirk. It's a mental health condition that more than 2 percent of people experience at some point. It takes the random thoughts that flash through people's heads—that irrational fear of having done something wrong, or an unbidden, bizarre fantasy—and, instead of allowing them to quickly fade, forces them to the forefront of their minds in distressing spirals. Because these obsessions don’t respond well to reason, people with OCD develop rituals in an attempt to bring themselves relief from those anxieties. But that relief is fleeting, and people get stuck in this cycle of obsession and ritual. Many become dependent on a growing list of compulsions, which can become their own sources of anxiety and shame.

Obsessions and rituals can bleed directly into sex, as well. People with contamination obsessions often talk about fixating on the perceived dirtiness of genitals or bodily fluids and putting up hard limits on how they have sex. By some estimates, at least one in 10 people with OCD will also at some point develop obsessions about sex, constantly questioning their sexualities or worrying they might be developing harmful urges and building rituals into their relationships, their masturbation habits, their engagement with porn, to test or reassure themselves about their desires. Fears of being misunderstood—or actually dangerous—force some people with sexual obsessions to avoid intimacy altogether. Often, current or potential romantic partners who face the realities of OCD write those with the condition off as just too much.

The rate of suicide among those aged 10 to 24 increased nearly 60% between 2007 and 2018, according to a report released Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The rise occurred in most states, with 42 experiencing significant increases.

"It's a real trend that has been demanding, for a while, a serious public health and research effort to understand what is happening and why," said Anna Mueller, an associate professor of sociology at Indiana University Bloomington who studies suicides in adolescents. "I don't buy that it's just social media, which is one of the explanations that I most consistently see."

"We absolutely need to be really careful to not think about suicide as just a white kid problem," Mueller said. "It's absolutely not. Kids across racial and ethnic groups and sexual orientations experience suicidal thoughts, and even attempt at significant rates."

But Mueller cautioned not to lose sight of the fact that suicidal thoughts are not uncommon, especially among young people.

The problem is obvious: “gender identity” has no basis in physical reality. It is impossible for a doctor to tell from simply examining a patient what his or her (or hir or zir) “gender identity” is. A person’s “gender identity” is totally subjective and has no connection to one’s physical body.

However, health care is very much connected to the physical body. Whether one is biologically male or female makes a great deal of difference in how one ought to be treated — from finding the right medicine dosages to judging the risks of getting certain diseases. To place “gender identity” above biological sex would be to ask medical professionals to ignore their education and their training and instead operate solely on what a patient believes to be true — a dangerous idea if there ever was one.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on Sunday characterized his state as “God’s waiting room” for seniors during an update on COVID-19.

“Florida is ground zero for the nursing home; I mean we’re God’s waiting room,” DeSantis said at a news briefing in Orlando. “We have a huge number of facilities, a huge number of residents.”

“God’s waiting room” is a decades-old derogatory phrase about the large number of retirees in the state, noted WPLG Local 10 TV.

DeSantis commented on Florida’s vulnerable nursing home population while discussing plans to reopen the state for business. As of Sunday, Florida had recorded 31,500 cases of COVID-19 and 1,074 deaths. However, DeSantis said that parts of the state were now on “the other side” of the coronavirus outbreak.

The number of daily new cases in Florida in the last week peaked last week at 1,232, but the tally appeared to be climbing again Saturday with 823 cases, up significantly from the previous day.

Should you wear a mask during the coronavirus pandemic? The city of Laredo, Texas, has decided that yes, you do. And if you don’t wear one, they could fine you.

The city’s emergency mandate, which went into effect on April 2, states that every person over the age of five must wear “some form of covering over their nose and mouth” when using public transportation, taxis, ride shares, pumping gas or when inside a building open to the public. That face covering can include a homemade mask, scarf, bandana or handkerchief. The penalty for violating the order is a Class C misdemeanor, punishable by a fine up to $1,000.

The Trump administration’s goal of halting HIV transmission by 2030 is being swamped by the coronavirus crisis, with many sexual health clinics closing their doors and local health departments' infectious disease staff being redeployed to emergency response roles.

That's raising concern about the large population of people living with undiagnosed and untreated HIV, whose compromised immune systems could put them at higher risk of succumbing to coronavirus.

“Those individuals are going to be susceptible to opportunistic infections and would be at considerable risk if they are exposed to Covid-19,” said Christopher Hall, an infectious disease physician in San Francisco and the chairman of the clinical advisory council for the National Coalition of STD Directors.

It's an especially vulnerable population, Hall said. Nearly half of people living with HIV in the U.S. are over 50 years old. Up to half smoke cigarettes, potentially worsening their outcomes from respiratory infections like the coronavirus. And many have preexisting health conditions like diabetes and hypertension that dramatically increase the odds of mortality.

Focus on this, contact lens wearers of the world: To reduce the spread of the pandemic virus that causes Covid-19, experts suggest it's time to put your contact lenses on the shelf and dazzle the world with your frames.

That's because wearing glasses can help you stop touching your face, according to the American Academy of Ophthalmology, a key way any virus is spread, including the novel coronavirus currently spreading across the world.

Why contact lens?

Contact lens users not only touch their eyes to put in and remove their lens twice or more a day, they also touch their eyes and face much more than people who don't wear contacts, said Dr. Thomas Steinemann, a clinical spokesperson for the American Academy of Ophthalmology.

"You touch your eye and then you touch another part of your body," said Steinemann, an ophthalmologist at MetroHealth Medical Center in Cleveland, Ohio.

Well-intentioned crafters have been flocking to JoAnn Fabrics this week for free, do-it-yourself mask and gown kits so they can make crucial medical gear that’s currently in short supply at hospitals treating coronavirus patients around the country.

But several employees who spoke to VICE News felt the company hadn’t considered their health and safety — or their customers’ — before making the decision to declare stores “essential,” remain open during states’ lockdowns, and launch an effort to draw even more shoppers.

At one store location in Colorado Springs, employees even picketed outside their store Wednesday. They stood a safe distance apart while holding signs that read “our health over their profit” and “fair wages for retail workers.”

A Tallahassee, Florida, worker says she was fired from her job after she asked to work from home amid coronavirus concerns.

Katherine Webster, 25, has an autoimmune illness called interstitial cystitis, and her 9-year-old son has diabetes and asthma.

As health authorities advise social distancing and local schools close through March, the local mom was afraid of potentially getting the virus from the office and bringing it home to her already-ill son.

She's a project engineer for Tower Construction Management, which is contracted by Robert Finvarb Companies to build the interior of the AC Hotel by Marriott being constructed as part of the Cascades Project, a $158 million mixed-use development in downtown Tallahassee.