Tag: past year
The Delta Variant: What You Can Do If You’re Vaccinated
For the past year and a half, humans around the world have been asked to do something we’re pretty bad at, even in the best of circumstances: figure out what constitutes safety, and act accordingly. A well-understood risk doesn’t necessarily improve our thought processes, thanks to a host of cognitive biases and external pressures that pull some people away from the lowest-level danger and push others toward clear peril. In the United States, at least, the circumstances for making these
Unnecessary Medical Procedures, Sherman Sorensen, and the False Claims Act
The throbbing near Marian Simmons’s temples made her nauseous. She could barely tolerate opening her eyes; the light brought on an excruciating sensation, as if a helmet was cinched too tightly on her head. Simmons, who was 20 years old and healthy, now struggled to get out of bed in her dorm at Westminster College, a small liberal-arts school in Salt Lake City. Simmons asked a friend to drive her to the emergency room. The staff didn’t find anything
Why Millennials Are Obsessed With Dogs
This article was published online on July 29, 2021.
Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, I have asked one question more than any other. It’s come up time and again, day and night, as frequently in my post-vaccination spring and summer as it did in the dark moments of the pandemic’s first wave: Are you my booboo?
The question is never answered by Midge, my agoraphobic chihuahua, but the answer is obvious. She’s
Why the Crime Wave Is a Disaster for Progressives
In early April, Mahmood Ansari was working at his souvenir store in Atlantic City, New Jersey, when a pair of minors, one armed with a knife, robbed him. After a brief altercation, he collapsed. He was rushed to a hospital, where he was soon pronounced dead.
After Ansari’s death, I spoke with Rizwan Malik, one of his friends. Malik said that he and other business owners had unsuccessfully begged the city for additional police protection in the weeks leading up
Donald Trump Jr., Aggrieved Instagram Influencer
Donald Trump Jr.’s highest-performing Instagram post of the year (so far) is a piece of misinformation. Shared in March, it’s a black square with “THIS IS A TEST” written in red across the top. “Instagram has been limiting our posts so that no more than 7% of our friends see our posts,” it reads. “If you see this post, please simply comment with ‘Yes’ and then like it.” This exact text—with its specific choice of 7 percent and its ambiguous
Opponents of Critical Race Theory Are Arguing With Themselves
The United States is not in the midst of a “culture war” over race and racism. The animating force of our current conflict is not our differing values, beliefs, moral codes, or practices. The American people aren’t divided. The American people are being divided.
Republican operatives have buried the actual definition of critical race theory: “a way of looking at law’s role platforming, facilitating, producing, and even insulating racial inequality in our country,” as the law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw, who
Why a Variant’s Deadliness Is So Hard to Define
The coronavirus is on a serious self-improvement kick. Since infiltrating the human population, SARS-CoV-2 has splintered into hundreds of lineages, with some seeding new, fast-spreading variants. A more infectious version first overtook the OG coronavirus last spring, before giving way to the ultra-transmissible Alpha (B.1.1.7) variant. Now Delta (B.1.617.2), potentially the most contagious contender to date, is poised to usurp the global throne.
Alphabetically, chronologically, the virus is getting better and better at its primary objective: infecting us. And