Month: May 2020

Does President Trump’s favored coronavirus treatment, the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine, make you more likely to die of Covid-19? That was the finding in a recent study published in the medical journal The Lancet. The study looked at more than 96,000 coronavirus patients across the world and found that, after controlling for age, sex, and how sick the patients were, patients receiving hydroxychloroquine or a variant were about twice as likely to die as those who did not.

The result quickly made headlines in top papers, may have spurred the World Health Organization to discontinue the use of hydroxychloroquine in …

On Friday, a Predator surveillance drone operated by United States Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) diverted from its normal route along the Canadian border in order to circle the skies over Minneapolis. Hours earlier, a third night of protests had escalated as thousands demonstrated following the death of George Floyd, a black man who died after a police officer held his knee to Floyd’s neck for several minutes. (The officer has since been fired and charged with third-degree murder.) And while federal authorities say the unarmed drone was there “to provide situational awareness,” the presence of a military-grade …

“The W.H.O. really blew it,” President Donald Trump tweeted on April 7, referring to the World Health Organization. “For some reason, funded largely by the United States, yet very China centric. We will be giving that a good look.”

Trump’s tweet, coincidentally, came on World Health Day, which honors health care workers around the world and celebrates the 1948 founding of the World Health Organization. The global health institution was created in a post-World War II world, based on the belief the planet had to work together to fight diseases and promote the health of all citizens.

And …

On Friday, Taylor Swift became one of the most prominent voices denouncing President Donald Trump’s tweets regarding the unrest in Minneapolis. “We will vote you out in November,” Swift warned Trump, saying that he had “stok[ed] the fires of white supremacy and racism [his] entire presidency.”

In Minneapolis, protests have been raging over the past few days in response to the police killing of George Floyd on Monday. Shortly after midnight on Friday morning, Trump tweeted that he wanted to dispatch military troops to Minneapolis to shoot American citizens, saying, “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.” …

As the Vox Book Club enters its third month, you may have a question about our June book pick. You may want to know if it has sports in it.

To that I say: It has fencing. Fighting. Torture. Poison. True love. Hate. Revenge. Giants. Hunters. Bad men. Good men. Beautifulest ladies. Snakes. Spiders. Beasts of all natures and descriptions. Pain. Death. Brave men. Coward men. Strongest men. Chases. Escapes. Lies. Truths. Passion. Miracles.

That’s right, this June we’re reading William Goldman’s The Princess Bride.

You’ve probably seen the classic 1987 movie adapted from The Princess Bride. If …

Despite President Donald Trump’s threats that Republicans might shut down social media companies in retaliation for fact-checking his tweets, the executive order he signed on Thursday unsurprisingly doesn’t come anywhere close. Even in the order’s more limited scope, legal experts say it will be difficult to enforce.

Trump’s new order aims to limit social media companies’ legal protections if they don’t adhere to unspecified standards of neutrality. It comes just two days after Twitter fact-checked two of his tweets that made misleading claims about voting by mail in the 2020 elections.

“Twitter is completely stifling FREE SPEECH, and I, as …

You may have never heard of it, but Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is the legal backbone of the internet. The law was created almost 30 years ago to protect internet platforms from liability for many of the things third parties say or do on them. And now it’s under threat by one of its biggest beneficiaries: President Trump, who hopes to use it to fight back against the social media platforms he believes are unfairly censoring him and other conservative voices.

Section 230 says that internet platforms that host third-party content — think of tweets on Twitter, …

There is a lot going on right now, to say the least — a global pandemic, an economic recession, millions of people without jobs, riots over police murdering a black man in Minnesota. And yet, the president is in a tizzy over a label Twitter put on two of his tweets.

President Donald Trump, who has spent recent days online pushing a conspiracy theory about a former staffer of a television host he doesn’t like, has spun into a rage after Twitter for the first time added a fact-check label to two of his tweets …

Every time I call my grandmother, she asks me the same question: “When is this going to be over?”

She hasn’t left the house since the first rumblings of the coronavirus reached her in early March, and she misses shopping at the mall, playing with her bridge club, and receiving visits from her great-grandchildren. “This will be over by summer,” she says, “right?”

I hate having to break it to her. This will not be over by summer. Not by a long shot — at least not for people who are, like her, especially vulnerable to severe Covid-19.

The economy …

Many parents have one thing on their minds: Will schools be open in the fall?

States and cities across the country are eager to get restaurants and salons reopened this month, but they’re equivocal as to whether full-time public education will be ready to resume in September.

That’s a shame. The long-term prospects for the United States are more compromised by keeping children out of school for an extended period than they are by making people continue to delay getting their hair and nails done professionally.

There are no zero-risk activities people can undertake during this pandemic, no public health …