The CDC needs social science

The CDC needs social science

By Robert A. Hahn, Sapiens, December 11, 2020 The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as the primary agency in the United States that monitors, predicts, and responds to chronic disease, injury, outbreaks, and pandemics, should have social science at its heart. It does not. Despite decades of trying to get the agency to take the social sciences more seriously, and some movement on its part, insights from anthropology, along with other social sciences, have yet to penetrate the…

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To prevent the next Covid-19, we must prioritize biodiversity

To prevent the next Covid-19, we must prioritize biodiversity

Susan Lieberman and Christian Walzer write: From the most remote terrestrial wilderness to the most densely populated cities, humans are inexorably changing the planet. We have put 1 million species at risk of extinction, degraded soil and habitats, polluted the air and water, destroyed forests and coral reefs wholesale, exploited wild species, and fostered the proliferation of invasive species. And we have caused a global climate crisis. This planetary neglect and mismanagement helped pave the way for the Covid-19 pandemic….

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Human-made stuff now outweighs every living thing on Earth

Human-made stuff now outweighs every living thing on Earth

ScienceAlert reports: All of the Amazon’s splendid greenery. Every fish in the Pacific. Every microbe underfoot. Every elephant on the plains, every flower, fungus, and fruit-fly in the fields, no longer outweighs the sheer amount of stuff humans have made. Estimates on the total mass of human-made material suggest 2020 is the year we overtake the combined dry weight of every living thing on Earth. Go back to a time before humans first took to ploughing fields and tending livestock,…

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The ‘Trump won’ farce isn’t funny anymore

The ‘Trump won’ farce isn’t funny anymore

Jamelle Bouie writes: To tell a joke to a crowd is to learn a little something about the people who laugh. For our purposes, the “joke” is President Trump’s ongoing fight to overturn the election results and hold on to power against the wishes of most Americans, including those in enough states to equal far more than the 270 electoral votes required to win the White House. “#OVERTURN,” he said on Twitter this week, adding in a separate post that…

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Senate Republicans shun House GOP bid to overturn the election

Senate Republicans shun House GOP bid to overturn the election

Politico reports: Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy this week joined 125 House GOP colleagues in support of an effort to subvert the presidential election. Most Senate Republicans weren’t going anywhere near it. Not a single GOP senator signed a “friend of the court” brief for the long-shot Texas lawsuit to throw out other states’ results in a bid to keep President Donald Trump in power. And there was no coordinated effort to get Republicans on board, according to interviews with more…

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Rallying behind Trump, most House Republicans joined failed lawsuit

Rallying behind Trump, most House Republicans joined failed lawsuit

The New York Times reports: In the hours before the Supreme Court rejected it, another 20 House Republicans — including their top leader — joined a legal brief on Friday supporting an extraordinary lawsuit seeking to overturn President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory, underscoring the increasingly extreme lengths to which many in the party are willing to go to invalidate the election results. The Supreme Court on Friday rejected the suit brought by Texas to throw out the results in…

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Manhattan district attorney intensifies investigation of Trump

Manhattan district attorney intensifies investigation of Trump

The New York Times reports: State prosecutors in Manhattan have interviewed several employees of President Trump’s bank and insurance broker in recent weeks, according to people with knowledge of the matter, significantly escalating an investigation into the president that he is powerless to stop. The interviews with people who work for the lender, Deutsche Bank, and the insurance brokerage, Aon, are the latest indication that once Mr. Trump leaves office, he still faces the potential threat of criminal charges that…

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White House orders FDA chief to authorize Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine Friday or submit his resignation

White House orders FDA chief to authorize Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine Friday or submit his resignation

The Washington Post reports: White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows on Friday told Stephen Hahn, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, to submit his resignation if the agency does not clear the nation’s first coronavirus vaccine by day’s end, according to people familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss what happened. The threat came on the same day that President Trump tweeted that the FDA is…

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After the U.S. election, key people are leaving Facebook and torching the company in departure notes

After the U.S. election, key people are leaving Facebook and torching the company in departure notes

BuzzFeed reports: On Wednesday, a Facebook data scientist departed the social networking company after a two-year stint, leaving a farewell note for their colleagues to ponder. As part of a team focused on “Violence and Incitement,” they had dealt with some of the worst content on Facebook, and they were proud of their work at the company. Despite this, they said Facebook was simply not doing enough. “With so many internal forces propping up the production of hateful and violent…

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How the first life on Earth survived its biggest threat — water

How the first life on Earth survived its biggest threat — water

Michael Marshall writes: On 18 February next year, a NASA spacecraft will plummet through the Martian atmosphere, fire its retro-rockets to break its fall and then lower a six-wheeled rover named Perseverance to the surface. If all goes according to plan, the mission will land in Jezero Crater, a 45-kilometre-wide gash near the planet’s equator that might once have held a lake of liquid water. Among the throngs of earthlings cheering on Perseverance, John Sutherland will be paying particularly close…

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The Republican Party’s widening assault on American democracy

The Republican Party’s widening assault on American democracy

Ronald Brownstein writes: Republicans’ tolerance, if not active support, for President Donald Trump’s ongoing bid to overturn the 2020 election has crystallized a stark question: Does the GOP still qualify as a small-d democratic party—or is it morphing into something very different? Even with the Supreme Court still deciding whether to consider a last-ditch legal effort to invalidate the results from the key swing states, there appears little chance that Trump will succeed in subverting Joe Biden’s victory. But Trump’s…

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‘Seditious abuse of the judicial process’: States reject Texas effort to overturn Biden’s election

‘Seditious abuse of the judicial process’: States reject Texas effort to overturn Biden’s election

Politico reports: Officials from four presidential swing states forcefully criticized an effort by Texas and President Donald Trump to enlist the Supreme Court to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election, with Pennsylvania calling the last-ditch legal effort “seditious” and built on an “absurd” foundation. “The Court should not abide this seditious abuse of the judicial process, and should send a clear and unmistakable signal that such abuse must never be replicated,” Pennsylvania said in a 43-page brief signed…

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What really saved the republic from Trump?

What really saved the republic from Trump?

Tim Wu writes: Americans are taught that the main function of the U.S. Constitution is the control of executive power: curtailing presidents who might seek to become tyrants. Other republics have lapsed into dictatorships (the Roman Republic, the Weimar Republic, the Republic of China and so on), but our elaborate constitutional system of checks and balances, engineered largely by James Madison, protects us from despotism. Or so we think. The presidency of Donald Trump, aggressive in its autocratic impulses but…

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Trump and his cronies got coronavirus care many others couldn’t

Trump and his cronies got coronavirus care many others couldn’t

The New York Times reports: Ben Carson, Chris Christie and Donald J. Trump are not the sturdiest candidates to conquer the coronavirus: older, in some cases overweight, male and not particularly fit. Yet all seem to have gotten through Covid-19, and all have gotten an antibody treatment in such short supply that some hospitals and states are doling it out by lottery. Now Rudolph W. Giuliani, the latest member of President Trump’s inner circle to contract Covid-19, has acknowledged that…

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