Tag: recent years
Arkansas’s COVID-19 Cases Are Undoing Unvaccinated Places
At a county health department near my hometown in rural Arkansas, almost everyone who comes in for a COVID-19 test is congested and short of breath, with a sore throat and muscle aches. They might have the flu, except for the added telltale symptom of this coronavirus: the loss of taste and smell. Many of the patients now are younger than those in previous months; a nurse who works there told me she saw two cases of young children in
Two Editors Who Showed What Publishing Should Be
Amid the many controversies that have occurred in American book publishing, I still measure the industry by the people who showed me what it could be at its best. For the better part of my 30-plus years as an editor at Alfred A. Knopf, I sat in an office next to Sonny Mehta, the former head of our company. He hired me, and over time we became great friends. When I spoke at his memorial at the New York
America’s Drug-Approval System Is Unsustainable
The byzantine world of pharmaceutical regulation has recently broken into the public consciousness, causing a bit of a panic. Aducanumab—the first new Alzheimer’s treatment in nearly two decades—was approved by the Food and Drug Administration on June 7 despite scant evidence of benefit, and against the nearly unanimous advice of the agency’s expert advisers. Op-eds called the decision, which could trigger billions of dollars in new government spending, a “false hope,” “bad medicine,” and “a new low.” (FDA officials have
Why Is Mitch McConnell So Powerful?
To visit Mitch McConnell at his office in the Capitol, you must first pass through a faded world that he has meticulously preserved. A fireplace in the reception room still bears a crack left by a fire British soldiers set during the War of 1812. Through a doorway, a conference room displays portraits of former GOP Senate leaders, among them the luckless Charles McNary, who landed the job just when Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Democratic Party captured whopping majorities. Looking around