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Category: Society

In Palm Beach, Covid-19 vaccines intended for rural Black communities are instead going to wealthy white Floridians

In Palm Beach, Covid-19 vaccines intended for rural Black communities are instead going to wealthy white Floridians

STAT reports: The winds blew southwest the day of Pahokee’s Covid-19 vaccination drive, which meant the sugarcane fields were ablaze. Growers are banned from burning excess leaves when there’s an eastward breeze, to keep fumes away from the gated communities of Florida’s Gold Coast 40 miles away. Pahokee is in the same county but, with a median personal income of $13,674, its residents live in a different world. A single highway connects the billionaire’s club of Mar-a-Lago to the working-class…

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The most likely timeline for life to return to normal

The most likely timeline for life to return to normal

Joe Pinsker writes: The end of the coronavirus pandemic is on the horizon at last, but the timeline for actually getting there feels like it shifts daily, with updates about viral variants, vaccine logistics, and other important variables seeming to push back the finish line or scoot it forward. When will we be able to finally live our lives again? Pandemics are hard to predict accurately, but we have enough information to make some confident guesses. A useful way to…

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U.S. life expectancy falls by a year in pandemic, most since WWII

U.S. life expectancy falls by a year in pandemic, most since WWII

The Associated Press reports: Life expectancy in the United States dropped a staggering one year during the first half of 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic caused its first wave of deaths, health officials are reporting. Minorities suffered the biggest impact, with Black Americans losing nearly three years and Hispanics, nearly two years, according to preliminary estimates Thursday from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “This is a huge decline,” said Robert Anderson, who oversees the numbers for the CDC….

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The coronavirus is here to stay — here’s what that means

The coronavirus is here to stay — here’s what that means

Nature reports: For much of the past year, life in Western Australia has been coronavirus-free. Friends gathered in pubs; people kissed and hugged their relatives; children went to school without temperature checks or wearing masks. The state maintained this enviable position only by placing heavy restrictions on travel and imposing lockdowns — some regions entered a snap lockdown at the beginning of the year after a security guard at a hotel where visitors were quarantined tested positive for the virus….

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As the pandemic ushered in isolation and financial hardship, overdose deaths reached new heights

As the pandemic ushered in isolation and financial hardship, overdose deaths reached new heights

STAT reports: Among the unrelenting death statistics flowing from the CDC last month, one grim non-Covid-19 statistic stood out: 81,003 deaths. That’s the number of people who died from drug overdoses in the 12-month period ending last June: a 20% increase and the highest number of fatal overdoses ever recorded in the U.S. in a single year. The drug deaths started spiking last spring, as the coronavirus forced shutdowns, and more recent statistics from cities throughout the U.S. and Canada…

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Herd immunity may be out of reach — but normality is in sight

Herd immunity may be out of reach — but normality is in sight

Eric Levitz writes: Nearly 20,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 over the past seven days. The hypercontagious U.K. variant is rapidly spreading through Florida, while a South African strain infamous for its resilience against antibodies has been spotted in California. Our government’s lackadaisical approach to genomic surveillance leaves us blind to precisely how prevalent these mutants are — and yet, even as other nations have responded to the emergence of such strains with lockdowns, our cities are reopening indoor dining…

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Young people’s despair deepens as Covid-19 crisis drags on

Young people’s despair deepens as Covid-19 crisis drags on

The New York Times reports: Life seemed promising last year to Philaé Lachaux, a 22-year-old business student in France who dreamed of striking out on her own in the live music industry. But the onset of the pandemic, leading to the loss of her part-time job as a waitress, sent her back to live at her family home. Now, struggling to envision a future after months of restrictions, Ms. Lachaux says that loneliness and despair seep in at night. “I…

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The internet rewired our brains. Michael Goldhaber predicted it would

The internet rewired our brains. Michael Goldhaber predicted it would

Charlie Warzel writes: Michael Goldhaber is the internet prophet you’ve never heard of. Here’s a short list of things he saw coming: the complete dominance of the internet, increased shamelessness in politics, terrorists co-opting social media, the rise of reality television, personal websites, oversharing, personal essay, fandoms and online influencer culture — along with the near destruction of our ability to focus. Most of this came to him in the mid-1980s, when Mr. Goldhaber, a former theoretical physicist, had a…

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Scientists for the people

Scientists for the people

Deborah R Coen writes: In the 1930s, as Jewish and dissident scientists were forced from their posts in Nazi Germany, many found refuge at universities in the United States. At the time, American scientists were trying to shield themselves from the winds of politics by honing arguments for the value of ‘pure’ science. It was in this spirit that Abraham Flexner had founded the hermetic Institute for Advanced Study in New Jersey in 1930, expressly to pursue research for its…

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The conservative case against the boomers

The conservative case against the boomers

Benjamin Wallace-Wells writes: Everyone’s fed up with the baby boomers. Younger progressives charge them with a form of generational hoarding—of titles and power but mostly of money. The richest generation in the history of the world, the story goes, has squandered its wealth on vanity purchases and projects while leaving younger Americans with a debased environment and crazy levels of debt. During the Presidency of Donald Trump—a boomer himself, who drew some of his strongest support from other boomers—the generation’s…

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U.S. suffers sharpest rise in poverty rate in more than 50 years

U.S. suffers sharpest rise in poverty rate in more than 50 years

Bloomberg reports: The end of 2020 brought the sharpest rise in the U.S. poverty rate since the 1960s, according to a study released Monday. Economists Bruce Meyer, from the University of Chicago, and James Sullivan of the University of Notre Dame found that the poverty rate increased by 2.4 percentage points during the latter half of 2020 as the U.S. continued to suffer the economic impacts from Covid-19. That percentage-point rise is nearly double the largest annual increase in poverty…

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The enduring allure of conspiracies

The enduring allure of conspiracies

By Greg Miller, Knowable Magazine The United States of America was founded on a conspiracy theory. In the lead-up to the War of Independence, revolutionaries argued that a tax on tea or stamps is not just a tax, but the opening gambit in a sinister plot of oppression. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were convinced — based on “a long train of abuses and usurpations” — that the king of Great Britain was conspiring to establish “an absolute…

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‘Toxic individualism’: Pandemic politics driving health care workers from small towns

‘Toxic individualism’: Pandemic politics driving health care workers from small towns

NPR reports: The virus infecting thousands of Americans a day is also attacking the country’s social fabric. The coronavirus has exposed a weakness in many rural communities, where divisive pandemic politics are alienating some of their most critical residents — health care workers. A wave of departing medical professionals would leave gaping holes in the rural health care system, and small-town economies, triggering a death spiral in some of these areas that may be hard to stop. Ten years ago,…

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A ‘great cultural depression’ looms for legions of unemployed performers

A ‘great cultural depression’ looms for legions of unemployed performers

The New York Times reports: In the top echelons of classical music, the violinist Jennifer Koh is by any measure a star. With a dazzling technique, she has ridden a career that any aspiring Juilliard grad would dream about — appearing with leading orchestras, recording new works, and performing on some of the world’s most prestigious stages. Now, nine months into a contagion that has halted most public gatherings and decimated the performing arts, Ms. Koh, who watched a year’s…

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Hang on for three more months before holding family gatherings

Hang on for three more months before holding family gatherings

Zeynep Tufekci writes: Hunkering down to wait out the coronavirus isn’t easy. The costs of isolation are steep. Quarantine fatigue is real. The chance to gather with extended family and friends this holiday season is particularly alluring to those of us battling loneliness. Ritual is the bedrock of human society, and forsaking it feels even more destabilizing in a year that has already thrown us all off-kilter. Even so, I have a simple suggestion for anyone contemplating a large gathering…

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Being kind to others is good for your health

Being kind to others is good for your health

Marta Zaraska writes: Newspapers started writing about Betty Lowe when she was 96 years old. Despite being long past retirement age, she was still volunteering at a cafe at Salford Royal Hospital in Greater Manchester, UK, serving coffee, washing dishes and chatting to patients. Then Lowe turned 100. “Still volunteers at hospital”, the headlines ran. Then she reached 102 and the headlines declared: “Still volunteering”. The same again when she turned 104. Even at 106, Lowe would work at the…

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