Group items tagged

n March of last year, Covid-19 infection and hospitalization numbers started climbing rapidly -- and deaths followed. At least 80% of the country's population was under stay-at-home orders.That was the first of several crushing surges. More than 33 million Americans have been infected with coronavirus, according to Johns Hopkins University, and more than 594,000 have died -- both numbers likely undercounts of the pandemic's true toll.

But now, the US is heading in the right direction, thanks to a powerful ally in the battle against the pandemic: Covid-19 vaccines.

More than 50% of the US population has received at least one Covid-19 vaccine dose, CDC data shows, and more than 40% of the country is fully vaccinated.

Governors nationwide have eased Covid-19 restrictions, and nearly every state that had a mask mandate has now lifted it. But the pandemic certainly isn't over.

We all have more work to do," White House Covid-19 Response Team senior adviser Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith said recently.

Moderna said Tuesday it's seeking full approval for its vaccine from the US Food and Drug Administration.

Experts say they expect vaccine protection will last much longer than six months, to be confirmed as more data come in.

Both Pfizer and Moderna are also studying their vaccines in children as young as 6 months. Last month, the FDA granted Pfizer's vaccine an emergency use authorization for children 12 to 15.

But in practical terms for the public, there's not a big difference between emergency use authorization and full FDA approval, said Dr. Paul Offit, a member of the FDA's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee.

Both the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines have shown to be extremely safe in both clinical trials and in the real world, he said. Throughout the history of vaccines, he said, any serious side effects have happened within two months after inoculation.

For the first time in more than a year, millions of vaccinated Americans safely enjoyed close holiday gatherings without masks on Memorial Day.

But the majority of Americans still aren't fully vaccinated -- threatening the possibility of yet another post-holiday Covid-19 spike.

Any country that thinks the pandemic is over is wrong, said World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

"We're very encouraged that cases and deaths are continuing to decline globally, but it would be a monumental error for any country to think the danger has passed," he said.

Third, though the world has changed since 2016, the underlying contours of the American electoral map haven’t shifted much. Four years ago, Trump triumphed over Hillary Clinton by winning swing states such as Florida, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. This year, those same states again may be decisive: Trump’s path to a majority is narrow without Michigan and Wisconsin, and it will be extremely difficult for him to win without Florida or Pennsylvania.

Finally, remember: Like many recent races, this contest is still relatively close. We live in an era of tight elections: No candidate since Bill Clinton has won the popular vote by more than eight percentage points.

A decade ago, Republicans controlled the New York State Senate and had a hand in drawing state legislative maps; the final congressional map was drawn by a judge after state lawmakers were unable to come to an agreement.

A top Democratic target is Representative John Katko, a Republican who represents Syracuse and who managed to hold onto his seat even though Democrats have carried the district in recent presidential elections. Democratic mapmakers would almost surely tip the district to be more favorable to the party.

Under the changes that came into force on Monday, pubs and restaurants can serve indoors as well as outside, people can hug each other and mix inside their homes in limited numbers.

A legal ban on all but essential foreign travel ended too, though travelers to any other than a small number of destinations will have to quarantine on their return.

Pakistan and Bangladesh were red listed on April 9 but India was not added until April 23, and Mr. Johnson’s critics have suggested he was reluctant to upset India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, with whom he is trying to strike a trade deal.

While the government will fight hard not to have to reverse the changes introduced on Monday, there are growing doubts about whether it can proceed with the next stage of the road map. That change, scheduled to take place on June 21, would scrap almost all remaining restrictions.

“We must be humble in the face of this virus,” the health secretary, Matt Hancock, told Parliament on Monday, adding that there were now 86 areas with five or more cases of the variant whose higher transmission rate “poses a real risk.”

Mr. Johnson continues to hear criticism for failing to clamp down fast enough on travel from India, even sparing it for some weeks after placing restrictions on travel from Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Altogether, that represents the first real breath of freedom for many in England since the third national lockdown was declared in early January.

But some experts believe that the government should have reacted faster to the emergence of the variant. “Many of us in the U.K., we’re appalled at the huge delay in classifying it as a variant of concern,” said Peter English, a retired consultant in communicable disease control.

In general, Britons are being offered vaccination based on their age, with those oldest treated first. Appointments are to be extended this week to 37-year-olds, Mr. Hancock said.

On Monday, Mr. Hancock also said that of 19 cases in Bolton hospitals, most of the patients were eligible for vaccination but had not had one. That prompted a debate in and beyond Mr. Johnson’s Conservative Party about whether the lifting of lockdown restrictions should be reversed to protect people who refuse a vaccine.

It rained during Trump's inaugural address. Then, at a celebratory ball later that day, Trump told the crowd that the rain "just never came" until he finished talking and went inside, at which point "it poured."

The President would say things that we could see with our own eyes were not true. And he would often do this brazen lying for no apparent strategic reason.

The most dangerous lie: The coronavirus was under control

This was more like a family of lies than a single lie. But each one -- the lie that the virus was equivalent to the flu; the lie that the situation was "totally under control"; the lie that the virus was "disappearing" -- suggested to Americans that they didn't have to change much about their usual behavior.

more than 386,000 Americans have died from the virus.

The most alarming lie saga: Sharpiegate

Trump tweeted in 2019 that Alabama was one of the states at greater risk from Hurricane Dorian than had been initially forecast. The federal weather office in Birmingham then tweeted that, actually, Alabama would be unaffected by the storm

Trump, however, is so congenitally unwilling to admit error that he embarked on an increasingly farcical campaign to prove that his incorrect Alabama tweet was actually correct, eventually showcasing a hurricane map that was crudely altered with a Sharpie.

The most ridiculous subject of a lie: The Boy Scouts

When I emailed the Boy Scouts of America in 2017 about Trump's claim that "the head of the Boy Scouts" had called him to say that his bizarrely political address to the Scouts' National Jamboree was "the greatest speech that was ever made to them," I didn't expect a reply. One of the hardest things about fact checking Trump was that a lot of people he lied about did not think it was in their interest to be quoted publicly contradicting a vengeful president.

A senior Scouts source -- a phrase I never expected to have to type as a political reporter in Washington, DC -- confirmed to me that no call ever happened.

The ugliest smear lie: Rep. Ilhan Omar supports al Qaeda

The most boring serial lie: The trade deficit with China used to be $500 billion

It was a problem for the country that the President was not only a conspiracy theorist himself but immersed in conspiracy culture, regularly stumbling upon ludicrous claims and then sharing them as fact.

So he said well over 100 times that, before his presidency, the US for years had a $500 billion annual trade deficit with China -- though the actual pre-Trump deficit never even reached $400 billion.

The most entertaining lie shtick: The burly crying men who had never cried before

according to the President, they kept walking up to him crying tears of gratitude -- even though they had almost always not previously cried for years.

The most traditional big lie: Trump didn't know about the payment to Stormy Daniels

he also lied when he needed to. When he told reporters on Air Force One in 2018 that he did not know about a $130,000 payment to porn performer Stormy Daniels and that he did not know where his then-attorney Michael Cohen got the money for the payment, it was both audacious -- Trump knew, because he had personally reimbursed Cohen -- and kind of conventional: the President was lying to try to get himself out of a tawdry scandal.

The biggest lie by omission: Trump ended family separation

ere's what he told NBC's Chuck Todd in 2019 about his widely controversial policy of separating migrant parents from their children at the border: "You know, under President Obama you had separation. I was the one that ended it." Yes, Trump signed a 2018 order to end the family separation policy.

The most shameless campaign lie: Biden will destroy protections for pre-existing conditions

When Trump claimed in September that Biden would destroy protections for people with pre-existing health conditions -- though the Obama-Biden administration created the protections, though the protections were overwhelmingly popular, though Biden was running on preserving them,

Trump himself had tried repeatedly to weaken them

The lie he fled: He got Veterans Choice

Trump could have told a perfectly good factual story about the Veterans Choice health care program Obama signed into law in 2014: it wasn't good enough, so he replaced it with a more expansive program he signed into law in 2018.

That's not the story he did tell -- whether out of policy ignorance, a desire to erase Obama's legacy, or simply because he is a liar. Instead, he claimed over and over -- more than 160 times before I lost count -- that he is the one who got the Veterans Choice program passed after other presidents tried and failed for years.

The Crazy Uncle lie award: Windmill noise causes cancer

At a White House event in 2019, Trump grossly distorted a 2013 quote from Rep. Ilhan Omar to try to get his supporters to believe that the Minnesota Democrat had expressed support for the terrorist group al Qaeda.

his 2019 declaration that "they say" the noise from windmills "causes cancer."

The most hucksterish lie: That plan was coming in two weeks

Trump's big health care plan was eternally coming in "two weeks."

My personal favorite lie: Trump was once named Michigan's Man of the Year

Trump has never lived in Michigan. Why would he have been named Michigan's Man of the Year years before his presidency?He wouldn't have been. He wasn't.

The most depressing lie: Trump won the election

Trump's long White House campaign against verifiable reality has culminated with his lie that he is the true winner of the 2020 presidential election he clearly, certifiably and fairly lost.

“When you’ve aroused your supporters with political arguments about us versus them, they are not opponents but enemies who must be fought with all means, and it both leads to violence and makes conceding power impossible.”

In France, Marine Le Pen, head of the far-right National Rally, is expected to mount another significant challenge to President Emmanuel Macron in the 2022 election. She was firm in supporting Mr. Trump, praised his election and Brexit as precursors to populist success in France and echoed his insistence that the American election was rigged and fraudulent.

after the violence, which she said left her “very shocked,” Ms. Le Pen pulled back, condemning “any violent act that aims to disrupt the democratic process.

Thierry Baudet, another high-profile Dutch populist, has aligned himself with Mr. Trump and the anti-vaccination movement, and in the past has called the independence of the judiciary and a “phony parliament” into question.

Even if populist leaders seem shaken by the events in Washington and nervous about further violence at the inauguration on Jan. 20, there remains considerable anxiety among mainstream politicians about anti-elitist, anti-government political movements in Europe, especially amid the confusion and anxiety produced by the coronavirus pandemic.

“Now the most pressing issue is Covid-19, but it’s not at all clear how politics will play out post-pandemic,” he said. “But,” he added, “the fear of the worst helps to avoid the worst.”

If economies tank and populists gain power in France or Italy, he said, “God forbid when Europe faces the next crisis.”

In Poland, the government has been very pro-Trump and public television did not acknowledge his electoral defeat until Mr. Trump did himself, said Radoslaw Sikorski, a former foreign and defense minister who is now chairman of the European Parliament’s delegation for relations with the United States.

“With Trump’s defeat, there was an audible sound of disappointment from the populist right in Central Europe,” Mr. Sikorski said. “For them, the world will be a lonelier place.”

Similarly, Prime Minister Victor Orban of Hungary, a firm supporter of Mr. Trump, declined to comment on the riot. “We should not interfere in what is happening in America, that is America’s business, we are rooting for them and we trust that they will manage to solve their own problems,”

Enrico Letta, a former prime minister of Italy who is now dean of the Paris School of International Affairs at Sciences Po, said that Mr. Trump “gave credibility to the disruptive attitudes and approaches of populist leaders in Europe, so having him out is a big problem for them.” Then came the riot, he said, “which I think changed the map completely.”

Now, like Ms. Le Pen, Italian populist leaders have felt “obliged to cut their ties to some forms of extremism,”

“We even start to think that Brexit has been something positive for the rest of Europe, allowing a relaunch,” Mr. Letta said. “Nobody followed Britain out, and now there’s the collapse of Trump.”

Meanwhile, the economic ramifications of heat waves become clearer every year. In 2017, 120-degree heat grounded flights in Phoenix. In Washington, D.C., and London, train service abruptly halted when tracks melted

According to the International Labour Organization, heat stress is also projected to reduce total working hours worldwide by 2.2 percent by 2030—“a productivity loss equivalent to 80 million full-time jobs.”

The direct physical threat may be most acute in cities, where temperatures on a scorching summer day can vary by as much as 45 degrees from a well-shaded area to one without trees. This is one more way in which poor Americans bear the brunt of broiling temperatures. As noted by the nonprofit American Forests, a map of tree cover in America’s cities is in many cases a map of income and race.

Heat season is upon us. We must acknowledge our risks to manage and survive them, and that process begins by calling the silent killer by its real name.

In Arizona, astronaut Mark Kelly (D) has proven to be a dynamite fundraiser, ending September with $9.5 million in the bank -- more than Joe Biden had on hand at the same time for his presidential bid. And Republicans continue to worry about Arizona Sen. Martha McSally's (R) abilities as a candidate.

And then there are a slew of other races in states -- Georgia, Texas, Iowa -- where Trump won by single-digits in 2016 and where Democratic challengers are likely to be well-funded enough to be in a position to capitalize if a) the national political environment goes even more south for Republicans or b) the GOP incumbents make a major mistake or slip-up between now and next November.

To be clear: Democrats are not favored to retake the Senate -- particularly given the fact that Jones is a near-certain loser unless Republicans nominate Roy Moore (which they might do!). But the last few months have made clear that what once looked like a long-shot bid by Democrats for the Senate majority has turned into a much more plausible possibility.

They were incredibly efficient.

they often followed a remarkably straight trail across the countryside

weary travelers could guide themselves by a detailed collection of mile markers.

their design always employed multiple layers for durability and flatness.

Roads were built with a crown and adjacent ditches to ensure easy water drainage, and in some rainy regions they were even nestled on raised berms known as “aggers” to prevent flooding.

They were easy to navigate.

They were expertly engineered.

“all roads lead to Rome,”

They included a sophisticated network of post houses and roadside inns.

Roman roads were also lined with state-run hotels and way stations.

horse changing stations, or “mutationes,” which were located every ten miles along most routes.

Switching horses was especially important for imperial couriers, who were tasked with carrying communications and tax revenues around the Empire at breakneck speed.

They were well-protected and patrolled.

most Roman roads were patrolled by special detachments of imperial army troops known as “stationarii” and “beneficiarii.”

hey also doubled as toll collectors.

They allowed the Romans to fully map their growing empire.

the Peutinger Table is a 13th century copy of an actual Roman map created sometime around the 4th century A.D.

They were built to last.

Roman roads remained technologically unequaled until as recently as the 19th century.

Many Roman roads were used as major thoroughfares until only recently,

Rome’s enduring engineering legacy can also be seen in the dozens of ancient bridges, tunnels and aqueducts still in use today.

Ms. Warren did highlight her status as the top-polling female contender at several points in the debate, ending her closing statement with a reference to the possibility of electing the first woman president.

Warren makes her electability pitch.

One of Ms. Warren’s biggest political obstacles is the perception among some voters that she would face daunting challenges in a general election — both thanks to her boldly progressive outlook, and to societal sexism that many Democrats believe damaged Mrs. Clinton in 2016. @charset "UTF-8"; /*********************** B A S E S T Y L E S ************************/ /************************************* T Y P E : C L A S S M I X I N S **************************************/ /* Headline */ /* Leadin */ /* Byline */ /* Dateline */ /* Alert */ /* Subhed */ /* Body */ /* Caption */ /* Leadin */ /* Credit */ /* Label */ /********** S I Z E S ***********/ /******************** T Y P O G R A P H Y *********************/ .g-headline, .interactive-heading, .g-subhed { font-family: "nyt-cheltenham", georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; } .g-alert, .g-alert.g-body, .g-alert_link, .g-byline, .g-caption, .g-caption_bold, .g-caption_heading, .g-chart, .g-credit, .g-credit_bullet, .g-dateline, .g-label, .g-label_white, .g-leadin, #interactive-leadin, .g-refer, .g-refer.g-body, .g-table-text { font-family: nyt-franklin, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; } .g-body, .g-body_bullet, .g-body_link { font-family: "nyt-imperial", georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; } /* Light text */ .g-asset-leadin.g-caption_heading, .g-chart, .g-headline, .interactive-heading, .g-label, .g-label_white, .g-leadin, #interactive-leadin, .g-refer, .g-refer.g-body, .g-table-text { font-weight: 300; } /* Normal text */ /* Medium text */ .g-alert, .g-alert.g-body, .g-alert_link, .g-body, .g-body_bullet, .g-body_link, .g-caption, .g-credit, .g-dateline, .g-refer, .g-refer.g-body, .g-refer_link, .g-subhed { font-weight: 500; } /* Bold text */ .g-byline, .g-caption_bold, .g-caption_heading, .g-chart-header, .g-credit_bullet, .g-subhed, .g-table-heading { font-weight: 700; } strong { font-weight: 700; } /* Type Mixins *************************/ /* MODULE : GUIDE */ /**********************/ .g-electionguide-list-circle p, .g-electionguide-list-circle div, .g-electionguide-list-circle li { position: relative; padding-left: 1.75em; } @media (min-width: 740px) { .g-electionguide-list-circle p, .g-electionguide-list-circle div, .g-electionguide-list-circle li { padding-left: 0; } } .g-electionguide-list-circle p:before, .g-electionguide-list-circle div:before, .g-electionguide-list-circle li:before { position: absolute; content: "•"; top: 2px; left: 1em; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px; } @media (min-width: 740px) { .g-electionguide-list-circle p:before, .g-electionguide-list-circle div:before, .g-electionguide-list-circle li:before { top: 3px; left: -1em; } } .g-electionguide { background-color: #F4F5F2; text-align: left; margin-top: 30px; margin-bottom: 30px; } @media (min-width: 740px) { .g-electionguide { max-width: 690px; margin: 40px auto; border-radius: 10px; } } .g-electionguide-container { margin: 0 15px 0px 15px; height: 100%; padding: 20px 0 60px 0; } @media (min-width: 740px) { .g-electionguide-container { padding: 40px 0 60px 0; } } @media (min-width: 740px) { .g-electionguide-logo { padding-left: 25px; } } .g-electionguide-date { font-family: nyt-franklin, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; color: #666666; max-width: 600px; margin: 0px auto 25px; } #g-electionguide-headline { font-family: nyt-cheltenham, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-size: 26px; margin-top: 10px; font-weight: 600; max-width: 600px; margin: 10px auto 6px; line-height: 32px; } @media (min-width: 740px) { #g-electionguide-headline { font-size: 35px; line-height: 40px; margin: 20px auto 6px; } } /* LINKS */ #g-electionguide-id a { text-decoration: none; } .g-electionguide a { color: #326891; text-decoration: none; border-bottom: 2px solid #CCD9E3; } .g-electionguide a:visited { color: #333; text-decoration: none; border-bottom: 2px solid #ddd; } .g-electionguide a:hover { border-bottom: none; } /* LIST */ .g-electionguide-list-header { font-family: nyt-franklin, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: 700; font-size: 17px; line-height: 24px; margin-top: 25px; margin-bottom: 5px; } @media (min-width: 740px) { .g-electionguide-list-header { font-size: 19px; line-height: 26px; margin-bottom: 10px; } } .g-electionguide-item-list { margin-top: 0px; font-size: 17px; line-height: 24px; font-family: nyt-franklin, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: 500; } #g-electionguide-item-list li { margin-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 15px; } @media (min-width: 740px) { #g-electionguide-item-list li { font-size: 19px; line-height: 26px; } } #g-electionguide-item-list li:before { color: #C4C4C4; margin-left: -15px; margin-right: 10px; color: #ccc; top: 0; font-size: 15px; } @media (min-width: 740px) { #g-electionguide-item-list li:before { left: 1em; } } ul.g-electionguide-list { max-width: 600px; margin: auto; } /* TABLE */ .g-electionguide-line { border: 0.5px solid #dcddda; width: 100%; max-width: 600px; margin: auto; } .g-electionguide-table { margin-top: 10px; } .g-electionguide-table-header { font-size: 14px; font-family: nyt-franklin, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: 800; padding: 15px 0; } .g-electionguide-table-row { font-size: 14px; font-family: nyt-franklin, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 40px; } .g-electionguide-table tr { border-bottom: 1px solid #dcddda; } /* viewport example .g-element { max-width: 100%; @include viewport('small') { // 600px max-width: 90%; } @include viewport('medium') { // 740px max-width: 80%; } @include viewport('large') { // 1024px max-width: 70%; } } */ .g-electionguide-photogrid-item { display: -ms-flexbox; display: flex; -ms-flex-align: start; align-items: flex-start; -ms-flex-wrap: wrap; flex-wrap: wrap; height: 100%; margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; } .g-electionguide-photogrid-link { display: -ms-flexbox; display: flex; -ms-flex-align: center; align-items: center; -ms-flex-pack: center; justify-content: center; width: 49%; margin: 0px 0px 30px 2px; } @media (min-width: 740px) { .g-electionguide-photogrid-link { width: 20%; -ms-flex-align: center; align-items: center; -ms-flex-direction: column; flex-direction: column; margin: 10px 10px; } } .g-electionguide-photogrid-link a, h2 { text-decoration: none; color: #333333; font-family: nyt-cheltenham, georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px; /* or 118% */ display: inline-block; -ms-flex-align: center; align-items: center; } @media (min-width: 600px) { .g-electionguide-photogrid-link a, h2 { font-size: 17px; } } .g-electionguide-photogrid-name { -ms-flex-wrap: wrap; flex-wrap: wrap; margin-left: 8px; max-width: 50px; } @media (min-width: 740px) { .g-electionguide-photogrid-name { -ms-flex-wrap: nowrap; flex-wrap: nowrap; margin-top: 8px; margin-left: 0px; max-width: 140px; } } .g-electionguide-photogrid-img { background-color: #1980c3; border-radius: 50%; width: 60px; } @media (min-width: 370px) { .g-electionguide-photogrid-img { width: 70px; } @media (min-width: 740px) { .g-electionguide-photogrid-img { width: 90px; } } #photogrid-id { text-decoration: none; border-bottom: 0px solid; } #photogrid-id:hover img { background-color: rgba(25, 128, 195, 0.7); } /*# sourceMappingURL=style.css.map */ @charset "UTF-8"; /*********************** B A S E S T Y L E S ************************/ /************************************* T Y P E : C L A S S M I X I N S **************************************/ /* Headline */ /* Leadin */ /* Byline */ /* Dateline */ /* Alert */ /* Subhed */ /* Body */ /* Caption */ /* Leadin */ /* Credit */ /* Label */ /********** S I Z E S ***********/ /******************** T Y P O G R A P H Y *********************/ .g-headline, .interactive-heading, .g-subhed { font-family: "nyt-cheltenham", georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; } .g-alert, .g-alert.g-body, .g-alert_link, .g-byline, .g-caption, .g-caption_bold, .g-caption_heading, .g-chart, .g-credit, .g-credit_bullet, .g-dateline, .g-label, .g-label_white, .g-leadin, #interactive-leadin, .g-refer, .g-r

And she invoked her 2012 victory over then-Senator Scott P. Brown, Republican of Massachusetts, as she declared herself “the only person on this stage who has beaten an incumbent Republican anytime in the past 30 years.”

Klobuchar throws punches.

Yet while she described herself as a winner tethered to the Midwest, somebody whose friends and neighbors hail from flyover country, she didn’t come out of Tuesday’s debate with any significant headlines of her own.

The only vetting of Buttigieg came from the moderator Abby Phillip on race.

Mr. Buttigieg deftly dodged by suggesting that the black voters who “know me best” — in his native South Bend — chose him twice to lead the city. And he cited recent endorsements from Representative Anthony Brown of Maryland and Mayor Quentin Hart of Waterloo, Iowa, who this week became the two most prominent African-American elected officials to back him.

Biden avoids attacks.

Mr. Biden, who flew under the radar particularly at the last debate, often stayed in his comfort zones — discussing foreign policy and health care — and he was not the center of the kind of memorable exchanges that had dealt his campaign blows earlier in the race.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo appeared to support Mayor Bill de Blasio in his desire to keep schools open, announcing on Monday that the state would not stick with its plan to close schools if the positivity rate hit 9 percent by the state’s metrics, and would instead leave the decision to local leaders.

But the teachers’ union quickly poured cold water on that plan by saying it wanted schools closed if the city hit the 9 percent state mark.

As the virus has spread in the broader New York City community — and a rapidly rising number of schools have been closed when two or more positive cases emerged in the building, and no link could be established between them — the Department of Education decided to change its quarantine policy.

The change is most likely intended to prevent the situation the city found itself in last month, when as many as 201 school buildings were closed for two weeks at one point. The students in the 103 schools that are temporarily closed are learning remotely.

One faction of the United Federation of Teachers called on the union and the city to immediately close all schools for in-person learning, rather than waiting to see if the numbers worsen. “Too many students, families and staff will become sick,” if schools remain open, U.F.T. Solidarity, a left-leaning caucus within the union, said in a recent statement.

Experts have long said the best defenses against surging cases are preventative measures like masks and social distancing, as well as widespread vaccination. So far, at least 22.1 million doses of coronavirus vaccines have been distributed and nearly 6.7 million have made their way into patients' arms. Health officials had hoped to get 20 million people vaccinated at the start of the new year, but the administration of vaccines has undergone delays and roadblocks.

As the surge ratchets up infection, hospitalization and fatality numbers across states, officials are working to make it easier to access vaccinations.

California, an epicenter of the pandemic in the US, added 49,685 new cases on Sunday alone, bringing the total number of cases in the state since the pandemic began to more than 2.6 million.

Starting Monday, the state will boost its vaccine rollout to include health care workers, nursing home residents and staff, and those living in congregate settings such as assisted living or shelters, according to new guidance from the state health department

So far, the state's vaccination efforts have struggled, and only about a third of the more than 2.1 million doses received have made it into the arms of residents.

De Blasio spoke Sunday from a site at the Bathgate Industrial Park, stating that the city is "well on-pace" to reach 100,000 vaccinations by this week

The Georgia Department of Public Health has launched a Covid vaccine locator website in hopes of increasing access in the state that has administered the least vaccines per capita,

More than 28,400 new Covid-19 deaths have been reported in just the first 11 days of 2021, according to data from Johns Hopkins.

At this rate, more people could die from Covid-19 in January than any other month of this pandemic. December had a record high of 77,431 deaths due to Covid-19.

The recent riot at the US Capitol would likely be a "surge event" that "will probably lead to a significant spreading" across the country, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said

"Then these individuals all are going in cars and trains and planes going home all across the country right now.

Mr. Biden is also poised to become the first Democrat in 20 years to carry older adults, the voters who are most at risk with the coronavirus.

But the president is facing an even larger gender gap in the Hispanic community than he is over all: Latinas favor Mr. Biden by 39 points.

Mr. Biden’s performance across the electoral map appears to put him in a stronger position heading into Election Day than any presidential candidate since at least 2008

His strength is most pronounced in Wisconsin, where he has an outright majority of the vote and leads Mr. Trump by 11 points, 52 percent to 41 percent.

Joseph R. Biden Jr. holds a clear advantage over President Trump across four of the most important presidential swing states, a new poll shows, bolstered by the support of voters who did not participate in the 2016 election and who now appear to be turning out in large numbers to cast their ballots, mainly for the Democrat.

Should Mr. Biden’s lead hold in three of the four states tested in the survey, it would almost certainly be enough to win, and if he were to carry Florida, he would most likely need to flip just one more large state that Mr. Trump won in 2016 to clinch the presidency.

In the closing days of the campaign, Mr. Biden has a modest advantage in Florida, where he is ahead of Mr. Trump by three points, 47 percent to 44 percent, a lead that is within the margin of error.

The numbers on new voters represent a setback for the president, whose advisers have long contended he would outperform his polling numbers because of the support he would receive from infrequent or inconsistent voters

Mr. Trump has continued to hold onto most of the coalition that elected him in the first place, made up chiefly of rural conservatives and white voters who did not attend college.

More broadly, Mr. Trump is facing an avalanche of opposition nationally from women, people of color, voters in the cities and the suburbs, young people, seniors and, notably, new voters. In all four states, voters who did not participate in 2016, but who have already voted this time or plan to do so, said they support Mr. Biden by wide margins.

In Wisconsin, voters who did not cast a ballot in 2016 favor Mr. Biden by 19 points. They have a similarly lopsided preference in Florida, where Mr. Biden leads by 17 points. His advantage with people who did not vote in 2016 is 12 points in Pennsylvania and 7 points in Arizona.

While that advantage has varied over time, and has differed from state to state, he has at no point slipped behind Mr. Trump in any of the swing states that are likeliest to decide the election.

Mr. Trump’s apparent weakness in many of the country’s largest electoral prizes leaves him with a narrow path to the 270 Electoral College votes required to claim victory, short of a major upset or a systemic error in opinion polling surpassing even the missteps preceding the 2016 election.

The margin of error is 3.2 percentage points in Wisconsin and Florida; 3 points in Arizona and 2.4 points in Pennsylvania.Mr. Biden has consistently held the upper hand over Mr. Trump across the electoral map in polling conducted by The Times since late last spring.

Amid that bleak outlook, the president has continued to baselessly cast doubt on the integrity of the election. On Saturday in Pennsylvania, he told supporters that the nation could be waiting for weeks to learn of a winner and that “very bad things” could happen as ballots are counted in the days after the election.

Many of the those who said they did not vote in 2016 said they had already voted this year. In Florida and Arizona, more than two thirds of nonvoters in 2016 who were identified as likely voters this year said that they had already cast a ballot. That figure was 56 percent in Wisconsin and 36 percent in Pennsylvania.

Based on the poll, however, it seems that Mr. Biden rather than Mr. Trump could be the beneficiary of record-busting turnout.

If the president is defeated, the most obvious explanation may be his weakness with women. Mr. Biden led Mr. Trump by double digits among female voters in each of the four states, and in some states the advantage was so significant that it offset Mr. Trump’s strength among men.

Despite a major surge in new coronavirus infections that have hit dozens of U.S. states in recent weeks, Trump has insisted on the campaign trail that the U.S. is "rounding the turn" on the pandemic that has now killed more than 231,000 Americans.

Trump has also become more vocal in his criticisms of Fauci, who said in an interview published Saturday by The Washington Post that the administration's handling of the crisis had fallen short.

Fauci contrasted the lack of mask-wearing at the White House that likely contributed to a super-spreader event that infected the president and several top aides with the way the campaign of former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Kamala Harris handled a positive coronavirus test in their camp last month.

"In my nearly five decades of public service, I have never publicly endorsed any political candidate," Fauci told CNN.

It was not immediately clear whether the president could directly fire Fauci, who is a career civil servant.

Perhaps the most heartbreaking fact about reaching half a million U.S. deaths, is that the toll is still rising. Though new infections and hospitalizations are slowing after a midwinter peak, the country has a long way to go to end the pandemic.

even with the vaccine rollout, Americans will need to stick to safe behavior to keep the virus from surging badly again.

IHME is now forecasting the U.S. may surpass 600,000 deaths by June.

those that could draw on deep reservoirs of resilience born of relatively recent hardship

Compared to what their people had been through not long ago, the stringent lockdowns seemed less arduous, apparently prompting a larger social buy-in.

The nations include many in the former Communist East, as well as Greece and Croatia

“I was a kid, I remember playing soccer and seeing mortars falling out of the sky,” he said. He believes the disciplined, collected way in which Croats have responded to the pandemic harks back to wartime and the legacy of communism.

“People today are afraid, and the discipline we all learned helps us get in line and creates some sort of forced unity,”

Analyzing the different pandemic responses, academics at Oxford University have developed a stringency scale, an effort to rank the toughness of the measures governments took to stop the spread of the virus.

n Croatia, which has among the world’s top stringency scores on the Oxford scale, 86 people have died of Covid-19, putting the country’s death rate at 2.1 per 100,000. In New York State, that figure is 137 per 100,000.

“Croatia went to the max of our stringency scale, there is a strong official response,” Mr. Hale said. Echoing Mr. Morovic’s thoughts on discipline, he added, “It is possible that people are less willing to push back and they are willing to accept harsher measures.”

A word sometimes applied to societies in these parts of Europe is “resilient,

the trait was best defined as a person or society doing well in spite of experiencing acute stress or long-term adversity.

resilience alone does not explain why some countries are handling the crisis better: The positive outcomes rely on citizens believing the measures a government is taking are appropriate, leading to trust and compliance.

Greece is emerging from a lockdown with a low death toll and relatively high morale, even as it faces a recession.

The country has recorded the relatively tiny number of 151 virus deaths so far, just 1.4 per 100,000 people, and Professor Motti-Stefanidi credited the government’s frank and persuasive approach for motivating citizens to respect the tight lockdown measures.

“We’ve been through a lot, we are hardened, so I think we’re going to be able to rebuild,” she said. “We thought we were spoiled before the financial crisis, but now we can see we are resilient,”

In Croatia, Mr. Morovic said he was confident that the country was on track to stay healthy even as it reopened, but he was ready to go back into lockdown if the virus returned.

CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta said that the coronavirus could spread at protests depending on factors like mask-wearing, how closely people gathered, and how long people stayed in close contact.

"It is a contagious virus. People being outside, people wearing masks, people moving by each other more quickly may reduce the likelihood of significant exponential growth. But that's still the concern."

The virus has particularly impacted African-Americans, who make up a disproportionate percentage of Covid-19 cases and deaths.

For one, the textbook combination of identification, isolation and quarantine for contacts helped stop the potential spread of coronavirus an Air Force basic training camp. Military doctors said their approach kept the case count to just five among 10,000 recruits at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland in Texas in March and April.

The base used techniques including quarantine, social distancing, early trainee screening, rapid isolation and monitored re-entry to slow the transmission, the researchers said in a report published by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Tuesday.

"Climate only would become an important seasonal factor in controlling COVID-19 once a large proportion of people within a given community are immune or resistant to infection," Collins wrote, citing experts in infectious disease transmission and climate modeling.

The US should have 100 million doses of one candidate Covid-19 vaccine by the end of the year, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and a member of the White House coronavirus task force, said Tuesday.

In almost every state, property tax assessments were higher in areas with more black and Hispanic residents

The gap between white families and minority households remains large — 10 percent — when you combine data for Hispanic and black families

“We’ve always considered that in addition to paying your regular tax, there was a black tax that goes along with it,”

“It’s almost like it’s in the soil,” he said. “It stretches all across the board. It’s not just real estate. It’s not just housing. It’s not just food deserts. It’s not just racism on the street. It’s not just that you can’t get a cab at night. It’s everything.”

“The structure of the property tax system operates to disadvantage black Americans,” she said. “That’s how structural racism is. It’s built into the system. The property tax system itself discriminates against black Americans.”

One in five black households have reported missing a mortgage payment since mid-March, compared with about 1 in 20 white ones

Facing the accumulated disadvantages of centuries of repression and systemic racism, black Americans are likely to earn less than similar white workers in lower-paying service jobs, a dynamic that makes it more difficult to buy a home. Now, by hitting those jobs first and hardest, the coronavirus pandemic has made a bad situation worse

“During the Jim Crow era, local white officials routinely manipulated property tax assessments to overburden and punish black populations and as a hidden tax break to landowning white gentry,”

white officials going to extreme lengths to hike black taxes. In one such case in 1932, a black North Carolina resident was taxed for the value of two stray dogs that had been seen on her property.

Many county assessors intentionally overvalued black properties, sometimes in direct retaliation for black political action

As early as 1901, W.E.B. Du Bois showed that because of their unequal tax burden, black people paid more in taxes than they received in public education funds,

The fiction that “black people take services but they don’t pay taxes” remains widespread,

The values of black-owned homes tend to grow more slowly than values of white-owned ones. The white people who make up the vast majority of home buyers tend to avoid black neighborhoods, which cuts black sellers off from many potential buyers.

Given that difference in price appreciation, if an assessor assumes a black-owned home gains value as quickly as a white-owned home, the assessed value of the black-owned home will quickly outstrip its market value.

Nearby white families benefit from the opposite trend: Their homes increase in value more rapidly than their assessments, giving them an ever-growing tax break.

the appeals process illustrates how much of the property tax system functions in a way that penalizes black wealth, even as it appears neutral on its face.

While neighborhood and race are the biggest drivers of the property tax gap, the economists found others

As part of their study, the economists reviewed 3.4 million property tax appeals from Chicago and surrounding Cook County and found black homeowners were significantly less likely to appeal their property tax assessments. When they did appeal, black homeowners were less likely to win. And when they won, they earned smaller assessment reductions.

“White people feel more comfortable working within the system that was set up to make them succeed,”

“It makes sense that a black family who has been disenfranchised from these systems wouldn’t challenge it.” It is also difficult to work within the system for Latinos, many of whom do not speak English as a first language, she added.

was not taught about appealing property taxes or any of the other small strategies white homeowners have used to accumulate generational wealth.

“They feel their property taxes were being used to push them out of their places, especially when communities started gentrifying,” Avenancio-León said. It helped him see how property taxation can be used as a means of social engineering.

the duo, then working on doctorate degrees at the University of California at Berkeley, combined 118 million real estate transactions and assessments from 2005 to 2016 with maps of more than 75,000 local taxing entities — such as counties, school districts, airport authorities and utility districts.

They used the maps to sort homes into areas that faced the same property tax burdens, identified the races of homeowners using federal mortgage data, and looked at every time a dwelling was assessed and then sold in the same year. That allowed them to compare a home’s assessed value and its market value, alongside the homeowner’s race and ethnicity.

The property tax gaps are worst for low earners, but even the highest-earning black Americans pay more on average in property taxes than similarly well-off white peers living nearby.

Whether or not these gaps were caused by explicit racism, Brown said, “you should be just as outraged that this is going on, and we should find a way to fix it.”

The truth is simple and grim. If we don't stop the epidemic, we will face many more deaths and a long and deep depression.

The recent news stories on vaccines have the hallmarks of hype, the kind of stories typically followed by long delays and disappointments. That's not a forecast, just an urgent point that we should not leave the rescue of the republic to unproven vaccines still in the early stages of development.

Thousands more preventable deaths lie ahead unless and until we start focusing as a nation on ending the epidemic.

In this coming week, Congress should return immediately -- online if necessary -- to consider this issue and this issue alone. By the end of the week, Congress should vote for legislation to finance and otherwise support the urgent and immediate scale-up of nationwide contact tracing and safe workplace practices.