Tag: pandemics
The 2 Pandemics Ravaging America
EDITOR’S NOTE: This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com.
Even as Omicron Wanes, New York City’s Teachers Are in a Holding Pattern
On any given day this January, Sabina McNamara, an English Language Arts teacher at a middle school in Brooklyn, has taught a total of about seventy students. But, while the number itself is relatively fixed, she said, the kids themselves keep changing. “There’s a core of about thirty students who have been coming every day, and the other forty—it varies,” she told me. “Every morning is, ‘Who’s coming to school today?’ ” Some of her students have been out owing
How to Think About the Risks of Omicron
For much of the past year, Americans have guided their behavior using a kind of cognitive triangulation. First, we’ve judged the risks of a coronavirus infection; second, we’ve assessed our willingness to accept those risks; and third, we’ve mulled the value, or perhaps the necessity, of our proposed activities. You may be willing to risk an encounter with the virus to do your job, or to attend your daughter’s graduation, but a trip to the dentist? Maybe not.
The last
What COVID Burnout Is Doing to New York City’s Schools
M. told me that her school’s rate of staff absences is markedly higher than in years past. “We have people who’ve had deaths in the family, and the effect is compounded by the multiple deaths they experienced during COVID. We have people with small children who have to quarantine, so they need to stay home. We have people who are exhausted, overworked, not feeling well.” She went on, “COVID has created crises in people’s lives that extend far
A Botched Circumcision and Its Aftermath
Dr. Funnyman took out a pair of forceps and in a matter of seconds had cut the hair tourniquet from the skin bridge. “I’m amazing!” he said. I was overcome with gratitude and relief. I took a photo of the offending hair to memorialize my liberation. Dr. Funnyman told me that the skin bridge had been strangled by the hair to such an extent that it would probably soon separate into two pieces hanging off the penis. If this happened,
My Accidental Visit to Kyiv, the Pandemic’s Party Capital
My beginner’s guide to Kyiv: There is a courtyard in the old city with a beloved old raven living in it. Address: Reitarska Street, a three-block stretch full of restaurants and bars. Name of raven: Krum. Age: at least 25, which is apparently very old for a raven, although his age is not his defining characteristic. Defining characteristic: He is visited daily by a steady stream of people who intuitively understand that there is something special about the fact of
Have You Already Had a Breakthrough COVID Infection?
For most of the year, Provincetown, Massachusetts, on the northern tip of Cape Cod, has around three thousand residents. In summertime, however, it becomes a vacation destination and gay mecca. Thousands of visitors typically descend for festivals, concerts, parades, comedy shows, and parties organized around themed weeks. Almost all of this has been suspended during the pandemic; in June, Provincetown didn’t record a single coronavirus case. Then, in early July, thousands of gay men arrived for Circuit Party week. The
How Will the Coronavirus Evolve?
In 1988, Richard Lenski, a thirty-one-year-old biologist at UC Irvine, started an experiment. He divided a population of a common bacterium, E. coli, into twelve flasks. Each flask was kept at thirty-seven degrees Celsius, and contained an identical cocktail of water, glucose, and other nutrients. Each day, as the bacteria replicated, Lenski transferred several drops of each cocktail to a new flask, and every so often he stored samples away in a freezer. His goal was to understand the mechanics
Coexisting with the Coronavirus | The New Yorker
In the spring of 1846, a Dutch physician named Peter Ludwig Panum arrived on the Faroe Islands, a volcanic chain about two hundred miles northwest of Scotland. He found the Faroes to be a harsh and unforgiving place. The islands’ eight thousand inhabitants, who were Danish subjects at that time, spent their days outdoors, buffeted by sea winds, fishing and tending sheep. The conditions, Panum wrote, were unlikely “to prolong the lives of the inhabitants.” And yet, despite the scarcity