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my colleague David Leonhardt suggested one possible answer in a recent edition of his Morning newsletter. Right now, he noted, “the U.S. accounts for 4 percent of the world’s population, and for 22 percent of confirmed Covid-19 deaths.” But suppose that “the United States had done merely an average job of fighting the coronavirus,” meaning that our country “accounted for the same share of virus deaths as it did global population.” How many Americans would still be alive? “The answer: about 145,000” — which is to say, the large majority of the roughly 185,000 Americans reported to have died.

it probably makes more sense to compare the U.S. death toll to similarly positioned and sized countries — meaning the biggest countries in Western Europe and our major neighbors in the Americas — than to compare us to a global average. And when you compare deaths as a share of population within that group of peer countries, the U.S. starts to look more mediocre and less uniquely catastrophic.

Of the five most populous countries in Western Europe, only Germany has been a great success, with less than one-fifth our coronavirus death rate. Three of the remaining five, Spain and Italy and the United Kingdom, have higher death rates than the U.S., and the fourth, France, isn’t that far below

In April, at least 70% of people in most parts of Latin America said they always wore masks when going out, compared with less than 30% across most of the U.S. and the U.K.

he region has also been home to some of the worlds’ longest lockdowns, although many weren’t strictly enforced

Over half of Latin Americans work in the informal sector, often with little or no savings, meaning that they had no choice but to go out to earn a living. Densely packed urban areas and multigenerational households also allowed the disease to spread more easily.

For centuries, jungle-covered mountains, swamps and poisonous snakes scared people away from the Darién Gap, the dense rainforest separating North and South America. It's still the only spot where the Pan-American Highway, that runs from Alaska all the way to the tip of South America, dissolves into mud. But thanks to the large numbers of migrants trying to get to the United States, the Darién Gap is no longer a no man's land.

In fact, when NPR first reached the region in September, birds singing and monkeys howling could not be heard. The main sound came from dozens of motorcycles. The passengers sitting on the back were migrants from Haiti, Venezuela, Cuba, India and African countries. But because they lacked U.S. visas, they had to travel overland, first through South and Central America and then Mexico.

The hardest part is crossing the roadless, 60-mile-wide Darién Gap. To cover the first few miles, migrants can pay to ride on the back of motorcycles that navigate muddy trails. But soon the jungle thickens, and they must start walking.

One reason that the idea of free trade has fallen out of fashion in recent years is the perception that trade agreements reflect the wishes of big American corporations, at everybody else’s expense.

U.S. officials fought for trade agreements that protect intellectual property — and drug companies got the chance to extend the life of patents, raising the price of medicine around the world. U.S. officials fought for investor protections — and mining companies got the right to sue for billions in “lost profit” if a country moved to protect its drinking water or the Amazon ecosystem. And for years, U.S. officials have fought for digital trade rules that allow data to move freely across national borders — prompting fears that the world’s most powerful tech companies would use those rules to stay ahead of competitors and shield themselves from regulations aimed at protecting consumers and privacy.

That’s why the Biden administration, which came into office promising to fight for trade agreements that better reflect the interests of ordinary people, has dropped its advocacy for tech-friendly digital trade rules that American officials have championed for more than a decade.

For most of his 40-year career, Carlos Moreno, a scientist and business professor in Paris, worked in relative peace.Many cities around the world embraced a concept he started to develop in 2010. Called the 15-minute city, the idea is that everyday destinations such as schools, stores and offices should be only a short walk or bike ride away from home. A group of nearly 100 mayors worldwide embraced it as a way to help recover from the pandemic.

In recent weeks, a deluge of rumors and distortions have taken aim at Mr. Moreno’s proposal. Driven in part by climate change deniers and backers of the QAnon conspiracy theory, false claims have circulated online, at protests and even in government hearings that 15-minute cities were a precursor to “climate change lockdowns” — urban “prison camps” in which residents’ movements would be surveilled and heavily restricted.

Many attacked Mr. Moreno, 63, directly. The professor, who teaches at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, faced harassment in online forums and over email. He was accused without evidence of being an agent of an invisible totalitarian world government. He was likened to criminals and dictators.