Month: May 2020

When Jess Noé logged on early one February morning to buy tickets to a highly anticipated My Chemical Romance reunion show, she was prepared to pay up. My Chemical Romance, a band deified by lovers of 2000s emo, hadn’t played live since its breakup in 2013, and there was no promise that the band would play any more shows after the select dates it announced as part of its short 2020 reunion tour. Jess had to see MCR, and she had to see them from the best seats possible.

What Jess hadn’t prepared for was just how much she’d …

You don’t need me to tell you that the world is out of control right now. We’re living in the midst of a global pandemic, we’ll be living like this for months longer at the bare minimum, and there’s basically nothing any of us can do about it. Being alive right now means feeling powerless.

And so the question I pose to myself on a daily basis is: How do I keep from going feral with rage? And one of the answers I have found is: Read Home Comforts.

Home Comforts is a housekeeping manual written by Cheryl …

Former Vice President Joe Biden is no stranger to the political gaffe. And on Friday, he stepped in it once again.

After putting it off for months, Biden finally sat down for an interview on “The Breakfast Club,” a radio show that’s earned a place in the black cultural canon for its buzzy, confrontational interviews of entertainers and political leaders. While the 18-minute interview with host Charlamagne Tha God was tense overall, it wasn’t until its final moments that Biden uttered the sentence that would set social media aflame: “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re …

Alice M., who works as a benefits manager for a health insurance company, primarily used her personal laptop for Netflix binges and Facebook updates before the coronavirus pandemic. Since March, and for the foreseeable future, she’s had to give it a new task: handling confidential medical records. Alice worries her home equipment isn’t up to the job of her job.

“My company usually does give us necessary tools to feel secure, but because of Covid, they had to send everyone home,” Alice told Recode. “If you didn’t have their setup already, you had to use yours.”

“I’d argue that …

Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, more than 90,000 health care workers have been infected with the virus, and many have died. To name a few, these have included: a beloved doctor who came out of retirement, a patient transporter in Illinois, a pharmacist in upstate New York, and a nursing home worker. And those are just the deaths from physical illness and don’t take into account mental health consequences.

If you follow the news, you’ll read and hear over and over again that we are at “war” with the virus and that physicians like us, along …

Federal public health officials worked to remind Americans celebrating Memorial Day weekend of the importance of maintaining social distancing Sunday, highlighting that although the coronavirus crisis appears to be gradually improving in many regions of the United States, many still remain at risk of infection.

“With the country starting to open up this holiday weekend, I again remind everyone that the coronavirus is not yet contained,” Stephen Hahn, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, tweeted. “It is up to every individual to protect themselves and their community. Social distancing, hand washing and wearing masks protect us all.”

And …

A single church service in Frankfurt, Germany, held in early May appears to have led to at least 40 reported cases of coronavirus in the area, according to a report from German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel.

The outbreak highlights the risks that accompany easing lockdowns even in countries that have managed to control the spread of the virus relatively well. And it also serves as a reminder of the acute threat posed by “superspreader” events involving crowds, a pressing concern in the US as President Donald Trump encourages churches nationwide to reopen their doors to worshippers.

Rene Gottschalk, the Frankfurt health …

Memorial Day weekend is meant to be a somber occasion for commemorating the men and women who have lost their lives while serving in the United States military — and it’s a particularly tragic one in light of the rapidly mounting death toll from the coronavirus in the US, which is fast approaching 100,000 lives. But President Donald Trump spent the weekend tweeting conspiracy theories and deriding his political opponents’ physical appearance.

And in the few tweets he sent addressing the coronavirus pandemic, Trump shared misleading information. He did all this while playing golf for the first time …

Thousands of demonstrators filled the streets of downtown Hong Kong on Sunday, defying social distancing protocols to protest Beijing’s announcement of a sweeping new national security law that could unravel many of the civil liberties residents enjoy in the semi-autonomous region of China.

Police used water cannons, tear gas, and pepper spray to disperse protesters, and there were reports of protesters throwing objects like plastic bottles and umbrellas at the police. At least 120 people were arrested.

The protest — the largest in the territory since the spread of coronavirus-caused lockdowns across China — reflects an intensification of longstanding …

America’s public health experts are working hard to map out a plan to combat the coronavirus in America. And there are indeed many proposals — from academic centers, from think tanks, and from the government.

While the plans differ, nearly all of them rely on some combination of surveillance, mass testing, isolation, and contact tracing. Many of them point to countries like Singapore, South Korea, and Germany as examples of how to intelligently respond to the pandemic.

But what if the successful strategies in those countries just won’t work in America?

This question was posed by …