Month: March 2022

The power was still out in my Dallas housing complex early last Tuesday, so I grabbed the survival hatchet from my emergency bag to chop up a couple of fallen trees, which were covered with six inches of down-soft snow dropped by Winter Storm Uri. The trees broke easily, and after 30 minutes of hacking,Read moreRead more

When Hilda Bastian and I first caught up over Skype to talk about Covid-19 vaccines last autumn, she showed me the boxes and unfinished rooms in her new home in Victoria, Australia. She’d been so busy tracking the global vaccine effort, she hadn’t had time to settle in. Bastian — an expert in analyzing clinicalRead moreRead more

All of a sudden, the news on the US Covid-19 vaccine front seems immensely positive. It’s so positive, in fact, that the words Americans have been waiting to hear now seem true: You will almost certainly get a vaccine soon. President Joe Biden shared the good news on Tuesday. As he told reporters, “We’re nowRead moreRead more

When many Americans talk about returning to “normal life” after the pandemic, they might mean going back to the office, resuming in-person school or child care, or preparing for the best summer ever. For plenty of other people, though, their true barometer is the simple ability to once again eat indoors at restaurants. The pastRead moreRead more

I’ve learned more about how to think and reason well from Julia Galef than from almost anyone. Galef, a writer, researcher, and podcaster, is obsessive about improving her own reasoning processes and helping other people improve theirs. For years, she led a group offering seminars and workshops for people to improve their reasoning skills. ButRead moreRead more

The Biden administration has announced that it will work with the World Trade Organization (WTO) to negotiate a deal to suspend intellectual property rights associated with the Covid-19 vaccines — a surprise move for the administration, which had initially resisted taking such a step. The reversal came as Covid-19 deaths are mounting in India andRead moreRead more

The world may have undercounted Covid-19 deaths by a staggering margin, according to an analysis released Thursday by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington School of Medicine. The actual count may actually be 6.9 million deaths, more than double official tolls. The United States alone is estimated toRead moreRead more

There’s a scene in The West Wing’s second season in which one of the protagonists is told a Chinese satellite is falling to Earth, but no one knew exactly when or where. “A satellite is crashing to Earth, and NASA sent us a fax?” Donna Moss says, clearly concerned. But few in the show sharedRead moreRead more

While here in the US some are tentatively removing their masks and resuming small outdoor gatherings, others around the world are searching for air. In India, people need oxygen, and they need it now. Last week, Covid-19 became India’s No. 1 killer. One million people in a country with a population of 1.3 billion areRead moreRead more

White House chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci said he will not go into restaurants or movie theaters, even though he’s vaccinated. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says vaccinated people should continue masking up indoors and avoiding large gatherings. News outlets have reported on “breakthrough infections” of Covid-19 among the fully vaccinated. All ofRead moreRead more