Show me the data

Show me the data

Zeynep Tufekci writes: Who should get vaccine booster shots and when? Can vaccinated people with a breakthrough infection transmit the virus as easily as unvaccinated people? How many people with breakthrough infections die or get seriously ill, broken down by age and underlying health conditions? Confused? It’s not you. It’s the fog of pandemic, in which inadequate data hinders a clear understanding of how to fight a stealthy enemy. To overcome the fog of war, the Prussian general and military…

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How a cheap antidepressant emerged as a promising Covid-19 treatment

How a cheap antidepressant emerged as a promising Covid-19 treatment

Vox reports: Since Covid-19 patients started showing up at clinics and hospitals a year and a half ago, doctors and researchers have been hard at work trying to figure out how to treat them. Most drugs and treatments haven’t panned out, producing either no results or small ones in large-scale clinical trials. Many of the few that work are expensive and difficult to administer. Hydroxychloroquine, enthusiastically endorsed by President Trump last year, has been shown to have no measurable benefits….

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The lesson that California never learns

The lesson that California never learns

Mark Arax writes: As he guided me out to the almond orchard in the colony of Fairmead on the county’s northern fringe, Matt Angell, the well fixer, a big man with kind eyes, wasn’t sure what role he had assumed. Was he a whistleblower? Was he a communitarian? When I suggested that he had the tone and tilt of an agrarian Cassandra, he paused for a second and said, “I like that.” We pulled into the orchard, row after row…

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Russian ‘low-carbon’ climate plan sees rising emissions offset by forests

Russian ‘low-carbon’ climate plan sees rising emissions offset by forests

Bloomberg reports: Russia expects to increase greenhouse gas emissions over the next 30 years and instead rely on its trees to meet its international climate obligations, according to a draft of the nation’s low-carbon development strategy. Emissions are seen rising 8.2% from 2019 levels to 2.29 billion tons of CO2 equivalent by 2050, according to the base-case scenario in the draft prepared by the Economy Ministry. The plan says the growth will be more than compensated for by doubling the…

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Why walking helps us think

Why walking helps us think

Ferris Jabr writes: In Vogue’s 1969 Christmas issue, Vladimir Nabokov offered some advice for teaching James Joyce’s “Ulysses”: “Instead of perpetuating the pretentious nonsense of Homeric, chromatic, and visceral chapter headings, instructors should prepare maps of Dublin with Bloom’s and Stephen’s intertwining itineraries clearly traced.” He drew a charming one himself. Several decades later, a Boston College English professor named Joseph Nugent and his colleagues put together an annotated Google map that shadows Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom step by…

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Inside the hidden war between the Taliban and ISIS-K

Inside the hidden war between the Taliban and ISIS-K

The Wall Street Journal reports: Two days before he was shot dead by the Taliban, Abu Omar Khorasani, a onetime leader of Islamic State in Afghanistan, sat slumped in a dingy Afghan prison interview room, waiting for his soon-to-be executioners. Mr. Khorasani saw the Taliban’s advance as a harbinger for change. For years both organizations had sworn to rid Afghanistan of nonbelievers. “They will let me free if they are good Muslims,” he told The Wall Street Journal in an…

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ISIS-K, the group behind the deadly Kabul airport attack, and its rivalry with the Taliban

ISIS-K, the group behind the deadly Kabul airport attack, and its rivalry with the Taliban

ISIS-K, an affiliate of the Islamic State group, has claimed responsibility for the Kabul terrorist attack. Wakil Kohsar/AFP/Getty Images By Amira Jadoon, United States Military Academy West Point and Andrew Mines, George Washington University An attack on a crowd gathered outside Kabul’s airport on Aug. 26, 2021, has left at least 100 people dead, including at least 13 U.S. troops. ISIS-K claimed responsibility for the coordinated suicide bomb and gun assault, which came just days after President Joe Biden warned…

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ISIS-K attack signals West’s least bad option for Afghanistan: the Taliban

ISIS-K attack signals West’s least bad option for Afghanistan: the Taliban

Reuters reports: The deadly attack on Kabul airport has underlined the realpolitik facing Western powers in Afghanistan: engaging with the Taliban may be their best chance to prevent the country sliding into a breeding ground for Islamist militancy. Almost two weeks after the Taliban’s surprise return to power, officials in Europe are beginning to acknowledge that their pragmatic option is to put aside distaste for the country’s new leaders and work with them instead. “It is clear: the Taliban are…

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In its last days in Kabul, U.S. turns to Taliban as a partner

In its last days in Kabul, U.S. turns to Taliban as a partner

The Wall Street Journal reports: Twenty years ago, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan to get rid of the Taliban. Today, American forces, battered by one of the bloodiest attacks of the war, are relying for their own security on that same group, whose members they were trying to kill just weeks earlier. Fighters of the Taliban’s elite Badri 313 unit, dressed in the latest tactical gear, patrol the same Kabul airport parking lot as U.S. Marines, separated by a few coils…

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The right-wing Americans who admire the Taliban

The right-wing Americans who admire the Taliban

Michelle Goldberg writes: As the Taliban swept through Afghanistan in August, a Gen Z alt-right group ran a Twitter account devoted to celebrating their progress. Tweets in Pashto juxtaposed two laughing Taliban fighters with pictures meant to represent American effeminacy. Another said, the words auto-translated into English, “Liberalism did not fail in Afghanistan because it was Afghanistan, it failed because it was not true. It failed America, Europe and the world see it.” The account, now suspended, was just one…

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Ivermectin for Covid-19: abundance of hype, dearth of evidence

Ivermectin for Covid-19: abundance of hype, dearth of evidence

Peter G. Lurie writes: In striking testimony before the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in December 2020, Pierre Kory, a critical care physician who formerly worked for the University of Wisconsin Health University Hospital, described the “immense potency” of ivermectin, characterizing it as effectively a “miracle drug.” “All studies are positive,” he testified, “with considerable magnitude benefits, with the vast majority reaching strong statistical significance.” Unfortunately, and not for the first time in the Covid-19 pandemic, the…

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Why the media is worse for Biden than Trump

Why the media is worse for Biden than Trump

Jonathan Chait writes: Over the last week, the media has hammered Joe Biden with relentlessly critical coverage of his pullout from Afghanistan, resulting in noticeable drops in his approval ratings. Put aside for a moment whether this reflects failures by Biden or biases by the media. One conclusion we can draw is that this sort of dynamic is a regular feature of Democratic presidencies, and — as the Trump administration showed — a near impossibility during Republican ones. But wait,…

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Islamic State affiliate is prime suspect for Kabul airport suicide bombing

Islamic State affiliate is prime suspect for Kabul airport suicide bombing

Jason Burke reports: The prime suspect for the suicide bombing at Kabul airport is the Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan known as Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP). The US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said on Sunday there was an “acute” and “persistent” threat to the continuing evacuations from the Afghan capital from ISKP – which takes its name Khorasan from that used by a series of Muslim imperial rulers for a swath of land stretching from Iran to the…

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U.S. officials provided Taliban with names of Americans, Afghan allies to evacuate

U.S. officials provided Taliban with names of Americans, Afghan allies to evacuate

Politico reports: U.S. officials in Kabul gave the Taliban a list of names of American citizens, green card holders and Afghan allies to grant entry into the militant-controlled outer perimeter of the city’s airport, a choice that’s prompted outrage behind the scenes from lawmakers and military officials. The move, detailed to POLITICO by three U.S. and congressional officials, was designed to expedite the evacuation of tens of thousands of people from Afghanistan as chaos erupted in Afghanistan’s capital city last…

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