One of the most perplexing and enduring mysteries of the pandemic is also one of the most fundamental questions about viruses. How can the same virus that kills so many go entirely unnoticed in others?The mystery is hardly unique to COVID-19. SARS, MERS, influenza, Ebola, dengue, yellow fever, chikungunya, West Nile, Lassa, Japanese encephalitis, Epstein-Barr, and polio can all be deadly in one person but asymptomatic in the next.
After a year of layoffs, cuts and austerity, the faculty and staff of four unions at Rutgers University have voted in support of an unusual and pioneering agreement to protect jobs and guarantee raises after the school declared a fiscal emergency as a result of the pandemic. A key part of the deal is an agreement by the professors to do “work share” and take a slight cut in hours for a few months in order to save the jobs of other lower-paid workers.
As the first anniversary of the police killing of George Floyd approaches, we speak with author and journalist Victoria Law, who says despite the mass movement to fight systemic racism sparked by Floyd’s death, persistent myths about policing, incarceration and the criminal justice system still hinder reform.
This week at the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, numerous members of the Minneapolis Police Department have taken the stand and testified that Chauvin violated policy by kneeling on Floyd’s neck for nine-and-a-half minutes, and the emergency room doctor who tried to save Floyd’s life said his chances of living would have been higher if CPR had been administered sooner.
Writing about Titus Andronicus in 1948, the scholar John Dover Wilson bemoaned how Shakespeare’s bloodiest play “seems to jolt and bump along like some broken-down cart, laden with bleeding corpses from an Elizabethan scaffold, and driven by an executioner from Bedlam.” You couldn’t say the same for Gangs of London.
Parenting advice on bilingual babies, autism adjustments, and motherly meddling.
A surprising, very real possibility for our post-pandemic lives.
The opportunity for a competent administration to do something historic was helped by timing, weather, and, yes, Trump.
“We’ve already been f—ing smoking weed the whole time.
Activists fear the police-enforced closure will inspire similar actions across the city.
After its diesel fraud, the carmaker tries lying to reporters about its electrical vehicle marketing.
Gayle Smith, who led the agency under former President Barack Obama, will serve as coordinator of global Covid response and health security.
The Republican warned the measure amounted to government overreach, but Republican lawmakers are likely to override his veto.
Officials are telling AstraZeneca to cut ties with Emergent entirely, a senior health official said.
The numbers signal the U.S. is well on its way toward a revival, one that’s widely expected to reach record levels of growth later this year.
The president’s team is preparing a $3 trillion spending proposal to power through Congress. They’re betting markets and the economy will cooperate long enough to pass it.
Structural inequities in the U.S. labor market that have affected Black and Hispanic workers’ ability to advance out of low-paying jobs, as well as discrimination in hiring practices, are also likely having an effect.
Central bank officials now expect the unemployment rate to drop to 4.5 percent by the end of 2021.
Janet Yellen said the greater risk was not strengthening the economy as it recovers from the impact of the pandemic.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated 53 years ago, on April 4, 1968, at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, at the age of 39. While Dr. King is primarily remembered as a civil rights leader, he also championed the cause of the poor, organized the Poor People’s Campaign to address issues of economic justice, and was a fierce critic of U.S. foreign policy and the Vietnam War.
While Republicans continue to fume and promise consequences for corporations that are objecting to the party’s newest voter suppression laws, the Democratic Senate got some very good procedural news that will allow new infrastructure programs to move forward despite Republican vows to block them.
The first major comprehensive study of those arrested for participation in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol strongly indicates that the true motivation of these rioters was not some quasi-patriotic reaction to Donald Trump’s fanciful assertions of election fraud. Rather, the root cause underlying that day of violence boils down to out-and-out racism by insecure whites, alarmed about the prevalence of darker-skinned Americans in their hometown environments.
As Americans get vaccinated in record numbers nationwide, people are taking to social media to share that they have been vaccinated. To date, over 100 million Americans have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. While some are posting selfies or pictures of themselves getting the shot, others are posting their vaccination cards after getting one or both doses. Social media users are calling this the new “flex” or way to show off.
The number of people locked up in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention is right now at its lowest in two decades. That’s a good thing. But due to very lucrative agreements, private prisons contracted by the federal government to detain immigrants are getting paid for thousands of empty beds anyway. “At the median rate of $75 per bed, the estimated daily cost to taxpayers for these empty beds is $1.34 million per day,” NPR reports.
The Republican congressman is under investigation for alleged sex trafficking and allegedly having a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl.
Just a few months into 2021, we’ve already seen Republicans push dozens of anti-trans bills across the nation. Some bills, as Daily Kos has covered, center on keeping trans girls out of girls’ sports, even beginning as early as kindergarten. Other bills aim to prevent transgender and nonbinary folks from updating their birth certificates. And, in yet another area, some legislation seeks to bar transgender youth from receiving gender-affirming medical care.
A new analysis raises questions about whether more could have been done to prevent a contamination that ruined more than 15 million vaccine doses.
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), under investigation for alleged sex trafficking and having sex with a minor, is slated to speak Friday at a Women for America First event.
The public health effort has been stymied by a shortage of disease trackers.
The U.S. Office of Special Counsel said Patton violated the Hatch Act during Trump’s presidency and will not be allowed to serve in government for four years.