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Category: Society

In the pandemic, the United States stands out as an exceptional failure

In the pandemic, the United States stands out as an exceptional failure

The New York Times reports: Nearly every country has struggled to contain the coronavirus and made mistakes along the way. China committed the first major failure, silencing doctors who tried to raise alarms about the virus and allowing it to escape from Wuhan. Much of Europe went next, failing to avoid enormous outbreaks. Today, many countries — Japan, Canada, France, Australia and more — are coping with new increases in cases after reopening parts of society. Yet even with all…

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Landlord-leaning eviction courts are about to make the coronavirus housing crisis a lot worse

Landlord-leaning eviction courts are about to make the coronavirus housing crisis a lot worse

Eviction moratoriums have already begun to expire. Valerie Macon/AFP via Getty Images By Katy Ramsey Mason, University of Memphis The United States is on the verge of a potentially devastating eviction crisis right in the middle of a deadly pandemic. Federal, state and local eviction moratoriums had put most of the pending cases on hold. But as the moratoriums expire and eviction hearings resume, millions of people are at risk of losing their homes. That’s because the court process is…

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A prophet of uncertainty

A prophet of uncertainty

Adam Tooze writes: If it is true that we are now faced with pervasive risks generated and brought upon us by the forces of modernity and yet not accessible to our immediate senses, how do we cope? Until you start suffering from radiation poisoning, until your fetus suffers a horrific mutation, until you find your lungs flooding with pneumonia, the threat of the radiation or a mystery bug is unreal, inaccessible to the naked eye or immediate perception. In risk…

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Countries with levels of police brutality comparable to that in the U.S. are called ‘police states’

Countries with levels of police brutality comparable to that in the U.S. are called ‘police states’

Laurence Ralph writes: Public outcry over the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd earlier this year has ignited mass demonstrations against structural racism and police violence in the United States. The protests have reached every American state and spread to countries around the world; they arguably constitute the most broad-based civil rights movement in American history. Protests against the brutalization of communities of color by the U.S. criminal justice system have been growing for years, but the…

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Forging a right-left coalition may be the only way to end the War on Drugs

Forging a right-left coalition may be the only way to end the War on Drugs

Conor Friedersdorf writes: Nearly 30 years ago, the PBS program Firing Line convened a debate about the War on Drugs, which has contributed more than any other criminal-justice policy to deadly street violence in Black neighborhoods and the police harassment, arrest, and mass incarceration of Black Americans. Revisiting the debate helps clarify what it will take to end that ongoing policy mistake. Congressman Charlie Rangel led one side in the 1991 clash. Born in 1930, Rangel served in the Korean…

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How California went from coronavirus success story to disaster — and how it can regain control

How California went from coronavirus success story to disaster — and how it can regain control

George Rutherford writes: In the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic, California seemed to be a success story. Today, however, the state’s case count is surging, recently topping 400,000 total and surpassing New York. Compared with levels around Memorial Day in Southern California and around the second week in June in Northern California, daily cases have increased fourfold. In recent weeks, the average number of daily deaths statewide has increased by 50 percent. What is driving this surge, and how…

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Global ‘catastrophe’ looms as Covid-19 fuels inequality

Global ‘catastrophe’ looms as Covid-19 fuels inequality

The Observer reports: The pandemic has exposed and reinforced deep inequalities across the world, with the true extent yet to be seen, according to a major new report. The crisis in the poorest countries threatens to escalate into a catastrophe as job losses and food insecurity mount. “The economic, social and political impacts are only starting to unfold,” says Building Back with Justice: Dismantling Inequalities after Covid-19, to be published by Christian Aid later this month. The number of people…

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Inside the ideology of American policing — and how it justifies racist violence

Inside the ideology of American policing — and how it justifies racist violence

Zack Beauchamp reports: Arthur Rizer is a former police officer and 21-year veteran of the US Army, where he served as a military policeman. Today, he heads the criminal justice program at the R Street Institute, a center-right think tank in DC. And he wants you to know that American policing is even more broken than you think. “That whole thing about the bad apple? I hate when people say that,” Rizer tells me. “The bad apple rots the barrel….

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I’ve seen a future without cars, and it’s amazing

I’ve seen a future without cars, and it’s amazing

Farhad Manjoo writes: As coronavirus lockdowns crept across the globe this winter and spring, an unusual sound fell over the world’s metropolises: the hush of streets that were suddenly, blessedly free of cars. City dwellers reported hearing bird song, wind and the rustling of leaves. (Along with, in New York City, the intermittent screams of sirens). You could smell the absence of cars, too. From New York to Los Angeles to New Delhi, air pollution plummeted, and the soupy, exhaust-choked…

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Another Covid-19 disparity: Black and Hispanic Americans are dying at younger ages than white Americans

Another Covid-19 disparity: Black and Hispanic Americans are dying at younger ages than white Americans

STAT reports: Long after calls for more data on the disproportionate number of Covid-19 infections and deaths among Black Americans and Hispanic Americans, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday released limited additional information, which revealed non-white and Hispanic Americans under age 65 are dying in greater numbers than white people in that age group. The agency reported that more than a third of deaths among Hispanic Americans (34.9%) and almost a third of deaths among non-white Americans…

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Solving the climate crisis is about everything and everyone

Solving the climate crisis is about everything and everyone

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson writes: The Black Lives Matter movement is not a distraction from saving the planet. We can’t solve the climate crisis without people of color, but we could probably solve it without racists. Whether it’s Hurricane Katrina or air pollution, storms and exposure to toxins cause much greater harm to communities of color. (Although, yes, in the longer term, climate change is coming for us all, even if you have a bunker in New Zealand.) So it follows…

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America is refusing to learn how to fight the coronavirus

America is refusing to learn how to fight the coronavirus

David Wallace-Wells writes: Just before the holiday weekend, on the day that Donald Trump stood beneath Mount Rushmore and warned against “a merciless campaign to wipe out our history” and the day before his Washington, D.C., fireworks display generated air pollution 15 times the EPA standard and roughly equivalent to the choking megacities of India and China, the state of Arizona reached a terrible pandemic milestone. For the first time in its history, indeed for the first time in any…

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Women are most affected by pandemics — lessons from past outbreaks

Women are most affected by pandemics — lessons from past outbreaks

Clare Wenham et al write: Women are affected more than men by the social and economic effects of infectious-disease outbreaks. They bear the brunt of care responsibilities as schools close and family members fall ill. They are at greater risk of domestic violence and are disproportionately disadvantaged by reduced access to sexual- and reproductive-health services. Because women are more likely than men to have fewer hours of employed work and be on insecure or zero-hour contracts, they are more affected…

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Do many Americans understand how badly the U.S. is dealing with the pandemic?

Do many Americans understand how badly the U.S. is dealing with the pandemic?

Thomas Chatterton Williams writes: As Donald Trump’s America continues to shatter records for daily infections, France, like most other developed nations and even some undeveloped ones, seems to have beat back the virus. The numbers are not ambiguous. From a peak of 7,581 new cases across the country on March 31, and with a death toll now just below 30,000—at one point the world’s fourth highest—there were just 526 new cases on June 13, the day we masked ourselves and…

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All across America, Black and Latino people have been disproportionately affected by the coronavirus

All across America, Black and Latino people have been disproportionately affected by the coronavirus

The New York Times reports: Teresa and Marvin Bradley can’t say for sure how they got the coronavirus. Maybe Ms. Bradley, a Michigan nurse, brought it from her hospital. Maybe it came from a visiting relative. Maybe it was something else entirely. What is certain — according to new federal data that provides the most comprehensive look to date on nearly 1.5 million coronavirus patients in America — is that the Bradleys are not outliers. Racial disparities in who contracts…

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No one wants to go back to lockdown. Is there a middle ground for containing Covid-19?

No one wants to go back to lockdown. Is there a middle ground for containing Covid-19?

STAT reports: First came the freezes. Governors last month started to “press pause” on the next phases of their reopenings as Covid-19 cases picked back up. Now, in certain hot spots, they are starting to roll back some of the allowances they’d granted: no more elective medical procedures in some Texas counties. Bars, only reopened for a short time, are shuttered again in parts of California. And on Monday, Arizona’s governor ordered a new wave of gym, bar, and movie…

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