Is the United States entering a ‘fourth wave’ of the pandemic? Experts disagree. - The Washington Post washingtonpost.com/health/2021/04…
Over the past week, Michigan has reported an average of 6,500 new cases per day, rivaling levels seen during its record-setting winter surge.
It has recorded the second-most cases of the variant first identified in the UK.
Virus Variants Threaten to Draw Out the Pandemic, Scientists Say - The New York Times nytimes.com/2021/04/03/hea…
“We don’t have evolution on our side,” said Devi Sridhar, a professor of public health at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.
“This pathogen seems to always be changing in a way that makes it harder for us to suppress.”
Just this week, an outbreak of P.1, the variant that crushed Brazil, forced a shutdown of the Whistler Blackcomb ski resort in British Columbia.
Earlier this week, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC, pleaded with Americans to continue to practice masking and social distancing, saying she felt a sense of “impending doom.”
In continental Europe, a wave of B.1.1.7 cases was building for months, mostly unnoticed beneath a steady churn of infections. The variant wave is now cresting.
Millions of Americans are immunized every day, but even now only 31 percent have received a single dose of a vaccine, and just 17 percent of the population have full protection, leaving a vast majority susceptible.
In laboratory studies, the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines seem to be slightly less effective against B.1.351, the variant identified in South Africa.
Multiple variants may be circulating in the country at the same time, as is the case for common cold coronaviruses and influenza. Keeping them at bay may require an annual shot, like the flu vaccine.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
The first American immigration laws were written in order to keep the country white, a goal that was explicit in their text for more than 150 years. theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…
Harry Laughlin, whose work would provide a model for Nazi Germany’s sterilization laws, served as the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization’s “expert eugenics agent.”
Beginning during World War II, geopolitical and economic interests became important factors in the development of new immigration laws, but protecting the nation’s whiteness remained a priority.
The Europeans have defined China as a 'systemic rival', meaning that the success of China's political system will be seen as a cost to the attractiveness of their liberal democracies that they are proud of.
This could explain the kind of anti-China paranoia that is bedeviling too many Western capitals today.
China is ramping up its Covid-19 vaccination push, aiming to be twice as fast as the U.S. by pressuring Communist Party members, bank workers and college staff to get shots, bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
The inoculation effort has been stepped up markedly in recent weeks, with China now administering an average of 5 million doses a day from less than a million at the start of the year.
Some party members have been summoned to meetings where they’ve been told to get shots as soon as possible in order to set an example, according to people familiar with the matter.
The smartphone business is the smallest of LG's five divisions, accounting for just 7.4% of revenue. Currently its global mobile phone market share is about 2%.
Once considered a rival to Samsung, LG’s recent high-end smartphones have struggled to compete, while its more affordable handsets have faced stiff competition from Chinese rivals.
At a time of crisis when a national response is needed, regional centers of decision-making can woefully undermine national cohesion.
In fact, Merkel herself complained bitterly about just that in an exclusive TV talk show only last Sunday. telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/04/0…
Rather like the US, Germany's 16 states hold considerable political power.
Article 70 of Germany's constitution explicitly states that all lawmaking rests in the states' hands unless stated otherwise in the Basic Law itself. dw.com/en/covid-how-g…
Top state politicians can comfortably earn six-figure annual salaries, as can their ministers.
Interesting story on the dysfunctions of the Chinese state during the late-Qing period from the bureaucratic and fiscal points of view, mp.weixin.qq.com/s/JTgUJDdIJ42o…
Emperor Guangxu’s Hundred Days’ Reform may be well-intentioned, but it broke many institutional rules of the day, sparking opposition from the political establishment m.bjnews.com.cn/detail/1614396…
Institutional reforms and ruptures, especially in a country as conservative as China, were bound to be treacherous and unpredictable.