Michaeleen Doucleff
Michaeleen Doucleff, PhD, is a correspondent for NPR's Science Desk. For nearly a decade, she has been reporting for the radio and the web for NPR's global health outlet, Goats and Soda. Doucleff focuses on disease outbreaks, cross-cultural parenting, and women and children's health.
In 2014, Doucleff was part of the team that earned a George Foster Peabody award for its coverage of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. For the series, Doucleff reported on how the epidemic ravaged maternal health and how the virus spreads through the air. In 2019, Doucleff and Senior Producer Jane Greenhalgh produced a story about how Inuit parents teach children to control their anger. That story was the most popular one on NPR.org for the year; altogether readers have spent more than 16 years worth of time reading it.
In 2021, Doucleff published a book, called Hunt, Gather, Parent, stemming from her reporting at NPR. That book became a New York Times bestseller.
Before coming to NPR in 2012, Doucleff was an editor at the journal Cell, where she wrote about the science behind pop culture. Doucleff has a bachelor degree in biology from Caltech, a doctorate in physical chemistry from the University of Berkeley, California, and a master's degree in viticulture and enology from the University of California, Davis.
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All it took was one coronavirus to turn the world upside down. But how many more are out there, lurking in animals? And what's the chance they could jump into people and trigger another outbreak?
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Peter Daszak of the investigative team sent to Wuhan says the farms were probably where the coronavirus first jumped from bats to another animal before infecting humans. -
The World Health Organization says scientists need to find out whether the coronavirus can be transmitted through frozen meat shipments — a theory the Chinese government has promoted heavily.
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Scientists are looking at a possible link between the mutations in the U.K. and South Africa — and those in a patient in Boston who had living, growing virus in his body for five months. -
They don't yet understand why the coronavirus variant called P.1 has spread so explosively there. Its set of mutations seem especially dangerous. And this week P.1 was confirmed in the U.S. -
It appears to be 50% more infectious, and researchers predict the new coronavirus variant could start to dominate in the U.S. by March. The time to prepare is now, they say. -
There's cause for concern. But how concerned should we be? Here's a rundown of the current thinking on key issues as transmission, severity of disease — and effectiveness of vaccines. -
Dr. Chizoba Barbara Wonodi of Johns Hopkins University explains why a strategy to vaccinate everyone may not be the best approach to fighting the virus in lower-income countries such as Nigeria. -
Experts say low-risk people in the U.S. will likely be immunized before many high-risk people in poor countries.
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At least three coronavirus vaccines have been deemed effective. Some Western countries will start vaccination as early as this month. But it's unclear when less wealthy nations will get the vaccines.
