All About COVID-19
Debt ceiling deal will mean even less COVID-19 funding
By Betsy Ladyzhets You’ve probably seen the news that last weekend, President Joe Biden and Congressional leaders reached a deal to raise the U.S. government’s debt ceiling. The deal passed both houses and Biden signed it yesterday. In order to reach this bipartisan deal, Biden had to make a lot of compromises—including limiting funding for…
Era of ‘Free’ Covid Vaccines, Test Kits, and Treatments Is Ending. Who Will Pay the Tab Now?
Julie Appleby, Kaiser Health News February 10, 2023 Time is running out for free-to-consumer covid vaccines, at-home test kits, and even some treatments. The White House announced this month that the national public health emergency, first declared in early 2020 in response to the pandemic, is set to expire May 11. When it ends, so…
Ethnic Disparity in COVID Deaths
Last weekend we honored two Indigenous women who died at a young age of COVID-19. This is notable both because of the rich history of native peoples on this continent and because of the singular accomplishments of both women. Their deaths also highlight the ethnic disparity in COVID deaths. Every COVID-19 death is tragic. Each…
Combatting Pandemic Fatigue With Solidarity
This article, written by Betsy Ladyzhets, originally appeared on the COVID-19 Data Dispatch. In the last few weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about how to remain hopeful. COVID-19 continues to spread—in fact, the U.S. is likely in the second-largest surge of the entire pandemic right now—but we aren’t counting the majority of cases, much…
Watch: UVA Doctor Talks About the State of the Pandemic and Health Equity
Just as COVID-19 vaccines were rolling out, Dr. Taison Bell spoke with KHN about why Black Americans were getting vaccinated at lower rates than white Americans were. More than a year later, we checked in with Bell, an assistant professor of medicine and an intensive…
COVID-19 Grief: A Special Kind of Pain
The COVID-19 pandemic has taken an enormous toll on American society — not just the nearly million dead, most of them elderly, that have perished thus far, but the millions more, mostly close family members, that have watched their loved ones perish, virtually overnight in many cases. It’s a modern tragedy, but one made even…
Book Review: Pandemic, Inc.
The new non-fiction book, Pandemic, Inc.: Chasing the Capitalists and Thieves Who Got Rich While We Got Sick, by J. David McSwane, was published in April. Since Covid-19 entered the United States in January of 2020, the government has spent billions of dollars to keep the nation economically afloat. One million lives have been lost. While I feel that we have…
The CDC’s New Guidelines on COVID Risk and Masking Send Confounding Signals
When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last month unveiled updated covid-19 guidelines that relaxed masking recommendations
A Semester of In-person Class Behind Them, Uncertainty Lingers for Some Teachers
When Karen Rinehart returned to the classroom fully in person for the first time since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, she noticed that her pre-K students’ hands…
The Lockdown and Its Lessons About the Environment
In the wake of the lockdown early last year, it seemed nature had a much-needed break from humans.
