Worldcrunch
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/embed/TMpEOF_VtbE expand=1] This past week India has seen more new COVID-19 cases than any other country since the crisis began, as hospitals struggle to deal with a massive influx of patients and shortages of oxygen. Meanwhile, the country has surpassed the grim milestone of 200,000 death, with crematoriums overwhelmed. The facilities are running out […]
Technology is turning education into a data-driven, personalized learning process. It’s up to humans to be sure it serves the needs of students, and societies.
Family members who lost a loved one in the early months of the pandemic, at the height of the restrictions, are now demanding a national day of mourning.
When I blew the candles on my 29th birthday cake, on March 27th 2020, it was only 10 days after the first lockdown had begun in France. Still, I felt lucky. I remember telling myself that, even though the day included no friends, at least in 2021 for the much more momentous passage into la […]
As part of a medical study, the mid-sized Brazilian city of Serrana is now nearly 100% vaccinated, even as the rest of the country is crumbling under COVID’s toll.
Residents of the state’s ‘bastis’ get free rations and state-provided services on the back of ID documents with proof of address. But their homes are also subject to frequent demolition on the grounds that they are illegal encroachment.
By closing bars and restaurants, we are not only depriving the sharing of meals but also the real exchange of ideas.
Only about 150,000 of the country’s 100 million people have been vaccinated so far against COVID-19, and in some crowded health centers, people wait hours only to be turned away.
There was only one problem: the weather.
The presence of the faithful at Mass, regardless of the threat to their health and lives, is essential for the Church to physically survive. And the state is an accomplice.
A century ago, during the Spanish flu pandemic, Americans were eager let down their guard and get on with normal life. The consequences were enormous.
The French have been under a strict curfew for months. Now they’re being ordered back into lockdown, but with little evidence that these Draconian measures even work.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/embed/SvrqUfd_El8 expand=1] One year into the coronavirus pandemic, Brazil registered its deadliest month in March. In the 31 days that have just passed, 66,573 people were killed by COVID-19, more than double the previous monthly high. The explosion of cases is largely blamed on the local virus variant, believed to be more contagious, having […]
ROME — A deep dive into Italian anti-vaxxer social media groups leaves me stunned. For them, AstraZeneca, Pfizer/Biontech, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson and the others are very dangerous, lethal poisons. They keep track of all the alleged casualties of the vaccine roll-out — even if they are just a repetition of the same articles, drawn […]
A year after the world’s second most populous nation went into quarantine, a new study aims to calculate the cost in terms of mental health illness, suicide and inability to receive medical care.
A pandemic and a maritime accident teach us the same lessons: humility, fragility and ultimately human ingenuity. Risk is impossible to predict, except that we know it always exists.
Up against a microscopic virus, the world’s leaders have failed myriad different ways to do what was necessary to beat the pandemic. Was another fate possible?
Chile planned its COVID vaccinations in advance, and reserved millions of doses while Argentina dithered.
They haven’t actually gone anywhere. But because of the pandemic, the city’s celebrated cafés are off limits — and sorely missed.
The official announcement came Thursday evening from European Union health officials, but it simply confirmed what we already knew: the AstraZeneca vaccine is safe. And most European countries will recommence distributing the jab, as the vaccination campaigns continue to be far slower than promised. For Guy Vallancien, a member of the French Academy of Medicine, […]
The pandemic and subsequent closing of the border with Ceuta, a Spanish enclave in Morocco, put an end to the ‘atypical trade’ that sustained the Fnideq region.
You’re hungry and restaurants aren’t serving because of COVID lockdowns, but at least there are always vending machines. Hmmm? What looks tempting from behind that plexiglass?A Snickers bar or a bag of chips? Or maybe a pair of plastic-wrapped triangle sandwiches and a can of Coke? Otherwise, if you’re in the Franche-Comté region of eastern […]
Delays in vaccination, bureaucracy and a lack of solidarity between member states are putting new strains on the already fragile Union.
Imagine yourself as the first naturalist to stand in a place where little recorded scientific knowledge exists, like Alfred Russel Wallace in the Malay Archipelago or Alexander von Humboldt in the Americas in the early 1800s. The notes you record will expand humanity’s scientific knowledge of the natural world, and the specimens of plants and animals you collect are destined to be used for centuries to describe past and present biodiversity and make new discoveries in biomedicine and beyond. Now, imagine if those specimens were never collected. That’s what it’s like if samples from the field are not archived. Natural […]
For a brief, strange moment this week, the geopolitics of the COVID-19 pandemic shifted from world capitals and pharmaceutical giants to a small town in Argentina. That’s where Juan Carlos Gasparini, district mayor of Roque Pérez, population 10,000, went for his second dose of the Sputnik V vaccine with the intention of sending a message […]
It was nearly nine years ago that Mario Draghi first burst onto the world stage. The Italian-born Draghi, who had recently taken over as the President of the European Central Bank, declared that he would do “whatever it takes’ to save the Euro from speculative attacks. “And believe me,” he added, “It will be enough.” […]
People around the world and around Latin America are wary of the vaccination campaigns to fight COVID-19. But there is a particular hesitancy toward the vaccine solution arriving from China that by now should be discarded, along with stereotypes.
Like the rest of us, street hustlers are adjusting to pandemic conditions. In Laval, a small city in western France, a young man who might have otherwise been taking passersby for a ride with Three-Card Monte or Find The Lady tricks, concocted a COVID-inspired scam for easy money. The Ouest France daily reports that the […]
Sugar dating, where an older partner provides ‘a little assistance’ to those who are usually younger and ‘needy’ has quietly found a niche in the land of Latin lovers.
Locals can’t tell whether it’s a second or third wave … or just a continuation of the first wave when Northern Italy was the West’s first epicenter of the coronavirus.
The pandemic has caused an overall drop in clothing sales. But is it also changing how we dress? External shocks have had an impact on fashion trends throughout history.
Funds sent back by emigrants to Africa are helping residents in Zrariyeh, about 75 kilometers south of Beirut, survive Lebanon’s full-blown economic crisis.
An 86-year-old identified as the last male member of the Juma, a Brazilian tribe on the verge of extinction, died of the coronavirus last week, Rio-based daily O Globo reported. Amoin Aruká died in a hospital Feb. 18 in Porto Velho, in the northern Brazilian state of Rondonia, where he was receiving treatment since earlier […]
Authoritarianism allows for swift, decisive action, and when it comes to controlling a viral outbreak, that may be an advantage. But that’s only part of the equation.
Racial and ethnic minority communities that lack internet access have been left behind in the race to get a COVID-19 vaccine. The average monthly cost of internet access, about US$70, can be out of reach for those who can barely afford groceries. Reporters and scholars have written about the effects of lack of internet access in rural areas in the U.S. and developing countries, but they have paid less attention to the harm of lack of internet access in racial and ethnic minority communities in major cities. We are researchers who study health disparities. We are concerned that even when […]
Faced with an unprecedented health crisis, the López-Obrador administration has proven itself to be incompetent, overpoliticized and self-involved.
Talk about the use of documents proving immunity evokes a measure invented more than a century ago by French authorities.
For Leitizia Moratti, head of welfare policy in the Lombardy region and former Milan Mayor, it wasn’t the first outrageous statement on Covid-19.
What’s an enterprising idea born out of lockdown? Get paid to take online courses for other people, as no teacher can actually see who is taking their course.
Are the lives of the youth impacted by coronavirus restrictions worth less than the extended lives of the elderly? This is the debate we must have when faced with the prospect of another lockdown.