Month: April 2022

September 7 was Brazil’s Independence Day, and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro used the occasion to continue his assault on the country’s democratic institutions. Bolsonaro had called on his hardcore supporters to rally, as he battles Congress and the judiciary over their refusal to go along with his attempts to rewrite electoral rules ahead of the 2022 election and over probes into him and his allies that could imperil them criminally. He addressed crowds in Brasilia…

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America’s evacuation of Afghanistan is over. But that doesn’t mean the US has fulfilled its obligation to vulnerable Afghans, some of whom are still trapped in their home country. Even if the decision to withdraw from the country was ultimately the right one, the ensuing humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan is the product of America’s ill-conceived and failed attempts at nation-building. The US therefore has a responsibility to ensure that Afghans facing danger or persecution as…

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The US is struggling with a resurgence of the coronavirus in the South and West. But the severity of Arizona’s Covid-19 outbreak is in a league of its own. Over the week of June 30, Arizona reported 55 new coronavirus cases per 100,000 people per day. That’s 34 percent more than the second-worst state, Florida. It’s more than double Texas, another hard-hit state. It’s more than triple the US average. Arizona also maintained the highest…

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A few months ago, California looked like a success story in the face of the coronavirus pandemic. As New York state’s coronavirus outbreak reached its peak, California’s Covid-19 death rate was less than a tenth of New York’s. Now, California’s Covid-19 outbreak has gotten so bad that the state is partly closing back down — with Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday announcing that the state will halt indoor operations for restaurants, wineries, and movie theaters,…

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Many schools across the US gambled on offering in-person classes in early August, even as their states were still battling uncontrolled spread of Covid-19. In some of those schools, it hasn’t gone well. In Georgia’s Cherokee County School District, for example, there have been at least 80 positive cases since August 3, and more than 1,100 students, teachers, and staff have had to quarantine. At the high school in Paulding County School District, which came…

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One month ago, I asked epidemiologist Tara Smith if she was worried about states loosening their stay-at-home orders, despite most not meeting the government’s criteria for doing so. “I am really fearful that by June 1 or June 15, after we’ve seen a couple weeks to a month of [state reopenings], that our cases are going to be climbing,” said Smith, a professor at the Kent State University College of Public Health. Well, here we…

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Around the world, people’s mental health is in trouble. Even before the pandemic hit, rates of depression and anxiety were rising globally. Now that we also have Covid-19 to contend with, the problem is even more glaring. Studies show that all the virus-induced losses — of life, of jobs, of social connection — have come with serious upticks in mental illness worldwide. In the US, for example, the prevalence of depression is four times as…

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Most people who get the coronavirus will fully recover and go right back to their lives. But the latest research suggests that at least 10 percent have long-term symptoms, even after their body has apparently cleared the virus. The condition, known as “long Covid,” has emerged as a scary feature of the pandemic — a reminder that even as hospitalizations and deaths come down, millions of people will continue to suffer from the aftermath of…

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The US rollout of Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose Covid-19 vaccine was halted Tuesday as regulators race to investigate rare blood-clotting complications linked to the shot. The move may force thousands of people scheduled to receive the shot this week to scramble for an alternative. Both the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended a pause in distributing the vaccine after six reported cases of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST).…

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