Technologies

After 2 years of the COVID pandemic… we still have big questions

We’ve learned a lot about masks, quarantines and spike proteins in the past two years. We still don’t know enough about long COVID, vaccine protection and the origins of COVID-19.

For the most up-to-date news and information about the coronavirus pandemic, visit the WHO and CDC websites.

In December 2019, a group of people in Wuhan, China, began to experience what was described as an unknown pneumonia, later identified as COVID-19, which quickly blanketed the globe. To date, there have been 280 million infections to date, resulting in 5.4 million deaths.

Since then, advances against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, have come rapidly: Multiple effective vaccines emerged in a single year, far faster than the typical four to 10 years of development. And Pfizer has just received FDA authorization for its COVID antiviral drug Paxlovid, which the pharmaceuticals giant says could cut the risk of hospitalization or death from COVID-19 by up to 89%.

Infectious disease experts have discovered much about the science of COVID-19 and can now quickly identify mutations, like those found in the delta and omicron variants.

However, two years on, as the US passes 800,000 deaths from COVID — and tens of millions more infections and hospitalizations — scientists are still struggling to answer some of our biggest questions. For additional information on COVID-19, here’s what we know about the new omicron variant and how to get free at-home testing kits. And be sure to learn how to put your vaccine card on your phone.

Why does COVID make some people more sick, including long COVID?

We know the virus causes symptoms ranging from headaches, fever and disorientation to nausea and vomiting, and even loss of taste or smell. While scientists continue to piece together who is more likely to get hit with these outcomes, they still lack answers about why some experience serious illness and others don’t.

Age is definitely the biggest correlation for severe disease, Gigi Gronvall, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told CNET. «But there have been 29-year-olds who have died, children who have died, when all indications suggest they should have had a mild disease course.»

Scientists are also trying to get their arms around «long COVID» — a range of symptoms that can run on for weeks or even months after a patient is first infected. The World Health Organization has issued a definition that includes a variety of lingering symptoms — including fatigue, trouble breathing, sleeplessness, difficulty focusing, anxiety and depression — and the list keeps changing. Even so, the condition’s cause is not clearly known.

«After two years, we don’t understand much about long COVID, and don’t know its prevalence with omicron after vaccination,» Bob Wachter, the chair of the department of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, tweeted Wednesday. «It remains a hardship for millions, and a lingering concern for me as I think about the prospect of getting even a ‘mild’ case of omicron.»

While some general symptoms, like loss of smell and taste, appear less common with omicron, Gronvall said, «we just don’t know if people with that variant will suffer long COVID. We just haven’t had enough time to tell.»

How long will immunity from vaccines last with variants like omicron?

The first COVID-19 vaccines went into arms a year ago in the US, and the two most effective in the US — from Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech — took a unique approach: Using Messenger RNA (mRNA) to teach our cells how to make a protein that will trigger an immune response to the virus.

While researchers have been studying mRNA vaccines «for decades,» according to the CDC, this marks the first time they’ve been made available to the public. Scientists continue to gather information on how effective they are — and how long until their effectiveness begins to decline.

«We are definitely still figuring that out,» Gronvall said. «We’re seeing that protection wanes earlier than six months, which is why boosters are being recommended at six months.»

As new variants like the quick-spreading omicron emerge, she added, «whether the booster will be sufficient for a long period of time or not is something we still need to uncover.»

According to the World Health Organization, the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are far less effective in preventing infection by the omicron strain than earlier COVID-19 variants. Other vaccines — including those from Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca, and ones manufactured in Russia and China — do even less to prevent infection by the omicron variant, The New York Times reported.

Still, fully vaccinated individuals are much less likely to experience severe symptoms, hospitalization and death, according to Harvard Medical School, especially if they receive a booster shot.

«It’s not a worst-case scenario, where the vaccines are ineffective,» Gronvall said. «In lab scenarios we’ve seen, vaccines provide less protection. That seems to be borne out in reality, but we can’t project yet into the real world.»

Will there be more variants like delta and omicron?

Viruses constantly mutate. Sometimes these mutations result in new disease strains that emerge quickly and disappear, according to the CDC. Other times, they persist and create spikes in the rate of infection and disease. In two years, COVID has mutated into five «variants of concern,» according to WHO, based on the severity of disease, the effectiveness of medical countermeasures and the strain’s ability to spread from person to person.

The alpha, beta and gamma variants were all downgraded to «variants being monitored» in September, with delta and omicron still considered variants of concern. This week federal health officials declared the omicron variant the dominant strain in the US, accounting for nearly three-quarters of new infections. Preliminary studies indicate illness caused by omicron may be less severe than delta, which doubled the hospitalization rate of the original alpha strain, but is also far more contagious.

Health officials warn that the longer the pandemic lasts and the longer large groups remain unvaccinated, the more time the virus will have to spread and mutate. While researchers can quickly map and identify variants, they need time to see how dangerous a new strain is as they gather data on hospitalizations and deaths.

«We’re still not great at looking at new variants and projecting what that means in the real world,» Gronvall said. «We have better tools to read genetic material and determine when variants emerge. But we can’t read them like a book.»

Where did COVID-19 come from?

Experts are still not certain how COVID-19 emerged. The prevailing theory is that it leaped from an animal to a human. The first symptoms of COVID-19 were reported in Wuhan among people who either worked or lived near Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, an open-air «wet market» that sold fresh beef, poultry, fish and produce.

According to numerous sources, including a June 2021 study in Scientific Reports, the market also traded in exotic animals as pets and food, including badgers, hedgehogs, civets and porcupines.

Others, however, claim that SARS-CoV-2 emerged in a lab — with a naturally occurring or human-engineered virus infecting a researcher, who spread it to others. While there has been no solid evidence to back the lab-leak theory, former President Donald Trump and his supporters pushed the lab-origin theory through 2020.

«There’s a lot of people using this as a vehicle for other agendas,» Gronvall said. «And certainly the Chinese have been lying.» Government officials originally claimed that there were no contraband animals present at the market, she added, but researchers looking for a separate tick-borne disease photographed many illegal animals there, «stuffed together in close quarters, in poor health and stress conditions, in the months before cases were identified.»

«People are looking to blame [someone],» Gronvall said. «They’re not looking for an explanation that is very human and plausible. But there’s no virus that’s been identified in the laboratory that’s at all close to what ended up spreading around the world.»

Because the Chinese government shut down the Huanan market and removed all evidence almost as soon as cases of COVID were being associated with it, Gronvall said, researchers are not likely to ever find the exact animal culprit.

«It wasn’t like SARS in 2003, when you had these palm civets there that were all infected and it was a pretty quick thing,» she said.

To uncover more about the emergence of COVID-19, this summer, President Joe Biden directed the federal intelligence community to «redouble their efforts» to investigate the virus’ origins.

What we do know, heading into the third year of the disease, is we have a medicine cabinet of tools — including vaccines and antiviral pills — we didn’t have when we first learned of COVID-19. For more, here’s what we know about the Moderna and Pfizer vaccine boosters and how to pick which one to get.

The information contained in this article is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as health or medical advice. Always consult a physician or other qualified health provider regarding any questions you may have about a medical condition or health objectives.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Mini Crossword Answers for Friday, Jan. 16

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for Jan. 16.

Looking for the most recent Mini Crossword answer? Click here for today’s Mini Crossword hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Wordle, Strands, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Need some help with today’s Mini Crossword? I thought it was exceptionally tough today, and was convinced 1-Across was «MAD» Max. (Spoiler, it’s not.) I also figured 1-Down was BOOZE, which did not work with 1-Across, and was wrong either way. Read on for all the answers. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini Crossword

Let’s get to those Mini Crossword clues and answers.

Mini across clues and answers

1A clue: ___ Max
Answer: HBO

4A clue: Where Marco Polo is played
Answer: POOL

5A clue: Overwhelming amount, metaphorically
Answer: FLOOD

6A clue: Reason for success in games like Candy Land and Chutes and Ladders
Answer: LUCK

7A clue: «That’s just the worst»
Answer: UGH

Mini down clues and answers

1D clue: Liquor, informally
Answer: HOOCH

2D clue: Winner of a Booker prize, fittingly
Answer: BOOK

3D clue: Antiquated
Answer: OLD

4D clue: Give a short promotion for
Answer: PLUG

5D clue: Winter malady
Answer: FLU

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Technologies

If the Verizon Outage Left Your iPhone Stuck in SOS Mode, Here’s How to Fix It

Even when you’re in an area with good cellular coverage, your iPhone status might read SOS. Here’s what to know.

Did you get caught up in Verizon’s massive outage this week? Millions of customers saw «SOS» at the top of their phone screen instead of the usual graph of connection bars. Verizon has since restored service, but some people are still seeing those three letters or getting spotty reception.

Unfortunately, when the network is down, there’s not a lot you can do to get reconnected — you have to wait for service to resume. But you could also see the same thing with any mobile provider when you venture out of cellular range or even when riding the subway. Still, seeing «SOS» on your iPhone can still make you anxious.

Let’s take a look at what Apple’s Emergency SOS modes are and see what you can do when your iPhone gets stuck in them, even after service is back online.

What exactly are Apple’s Emergency SOS modes?

When you see «SOS» as the status, it refers to a feature on the Apple iPhone (14 and newer) called Emergency SOS via Satellite, which lets you contact emergency services and share your location with them, even if you don’t have cellular network service. It’s a way to stay connected even when you’re out of coverage areas. For example, if you’re hiking in a remote wilderness and get injured, you can still contact emergency services.

Emergency SOS via Satellite is a separate feature from another feature on every iPhone, called simply Emergency SOS. That one requires an active service connection and calls your local emergency number, and shares your location information with emergency services.

So what’s the problem with SOS mode?

Once your iPhone loses service and enters its SOS mode, your device may struggle to reconnect to your network, even if you’re back in an area with service. You might notice that someone else in the area has service while you don’t, or vice versa. Fortunately, there are several ways to address this issue.

Read more: Best iPhone in 2026

What to do if you’re stuck in SOS mode

According to Apple, if you see «SOS» or «SOS only» in the status bar, you can do the following to help your device find a cellular network:

Make sure that you’re in an area with cellular network coverage. You can check in with people around you who appear to have service or verify with your service provider.
Turn your cellular data off and on. Go to Settings > Cellular and toggle Cellular Data on and off.
Restart your iPhone. On the iPhone X and later models, hold either of the volume buttons and the side button until the power off slider appears, and then drag the slider. Wait 30 seconds, then press and hold the side button to turn your iPhone back on. If you have an older iPhone model, here’s how to restart it.
Check for a carrier settings update. Your carrier may send out a carrier settings update to improve your cellular network connectivity and performance. As long as you’re connected to the internet, go to Settings > General > About and check to see if an update is available.
Turn your cellular line off and on. Go to Settings > Cellular > your phone number and toggle your cellular line on and off. If you’re not using an eSIM, remove the SIM card from your phone and reinsert it.
Update your iPhone. If the software has a bug, it may be causing issues with your cellular service. To check for a software update, go to Settings > General > Software Update. You’ll need internet for this to work, so Wi-Fi would be your only option if you can’t connect to cellular.
Reset your network settings. WARNING: This will reset all your Wi-Fi networks and passwords, cellular settings, and VPN settings. Only do this if you’ve tried all of the above first. If you’re fine with that, go to Settings > General > Transfer or Reset iPhone > Reset > Reset Network Settings.

Lastly, if network connection issues persist, Apple suggests contacting your phone carrier to determine if there are any issues with your carrier or account that could be affecting your service, such as another outage in your area or an unpaid account.

Technologies

The Sequel to Subway Surfers Is Launching in February, and You Can Preregister Now

Subway Surfers was the most downloaded game of the 2010s, so the sequel has some big shoes to fill.

Of all the mobile games ever released, none of them is as popular as Subway Surfers. The iconic endless runner has put up 4.5 billion downloads since its initial release in 2012. After 14 years of unprecedented success, developer SYBO Games is ready to turn the page with the release of a sequel, Subway Surfers City.

SYBO says the game is set to launch on Feb. 26, and it’s available for preregistration on Google Play and iOS right now. SYBO also released a cinematic trailer showing off some new characters and environments.

The sequel features a new metropolis location with four districts to play through at launch, including The Docks, Southline, Sunrise Blvd and Delorean Park, along with four new characters. SYBO says that fresh content will be released every season, including new parts of the city to explore and a variety of cosmetic goodies to unlock.

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Based on the game’s screenshots, SYBO isn’t deviating too much from the core ideas of the original game, showing characters getting spotted, adding graffiti to a subway tunnel and mercilessly chased by The Guard and his dog until they’re caught.

Subway Surfers City will have several new mechanics that aren’t recycled from the old game, including a stomp mechanic that’ll unlock secrets and alternate paths.

The game also adds some new modes, including a finite runner mode where you can tour through the various environments to achieve specific goals, and an Events mode that will challenge you to a rotating gauntlet of missions. The Classic Endless mode makes its return to the new game, as does the ability to play the game offline, two things players loved about the original Subway Surfers.

Subway Surfers City will be free to play with in-app purchases, just like its predecessor.

Some big shoes to fill

Releasing a sequel that’s as beloved as the original will be tough, and SYBO has its work cut out for it. The original Subway Surfers was released in 2012, and while it’s not necessarily known for popularizing the genre of endless runner (that title goes to Temple Run), it quietly took over as the de facto leader in the genre.

Angry Birds was the first mobile franchise to surpass 1 billion downloads, a feat it accomplished in 2012 across its various games. Subway Surfers was the first to do it in a single game, accomplishing the feat in 2015. It later became the first game to hit 1 billion on the Google Play Store in 2018. It was likely the first game to hit 2 billion downloads, and was definitely the first to hit 3 billion and 4 billion. No other mobile game has ever reached 4 billion downloads.

According to SYBO, Subway Surfers has amassed 4.5 billion downloads as of Jan. 2026 and still boasts millions of monthly active players, despite being nearly a decade and a half old.

Its popularity has remained steady in modern times after many creators started using Subway Surfers gameplay as b-roll in their TikTok videos, a tactic that has been repeated by a professor at the University of California, San Diego during his lectures, which caused his registration rates to skyrocket. Starbucks got in on it with a game that had players collect Starbucks coffee cups for prizes.

Over two dozen companies and celebrities have done events for the game, including Demi Lovato, Walmart, the NFL Players Association and, arguably most famously, Burger King, which helped the game celebrate its 10th birthday with the Burger King Challenge. The prize for that challenge was unlocking the Burger King himself.

There aren’t many niches in gaming where Subway Surfers isn’t present. On top of its massive amount of downloads and use in social media videos, Subway Surfers is also one of the most popular games of all time for speedrunners, and by far the most popular such game for mobile.

The shoes the sequel needs to fill couldn’t be larger, but SYBO believes it’s up to the challenge.

«At its core, Subway Surfers City is the next chapter of Subway Surfers’nearly 15-year-long legacy,» said Mathias Gredal Nørvig, CEO of SYBO.»Subway Surfers City stars reimagined fan-favorite characters, whilesimultaneously introducing never-before-seen content and mechanics. It’sa balance of the classic game our players know and love, with a freshvibrancy that brings the crew’s universe to life in a whole new way.»