When many Americans talk about returning to “normal life” after the pandemic, they might mean going back to the office, resuming in-person school or child care, or preparing for the best summer ever. For plenty of other people, though, their true barometer is the simple ability to once again eat indoors at restaurants. The past…

I’ve learned more about how to think and reason well from Julia Galef than from almost anyone. Galef, a writer, researcher, and podcaster, is obsessive about improving her own reasoning processes and helping other people improve theirs. For years, she led a group offering seminars and workshops for people to improve their reasoning skills. But…

President Joe Biden on Tuesday unveiled a new Covid-19 vaccine goal: 70 percent of US adults getting at least one shot by July 4. With this, the Biden administration expects the country will be able to move much closer to the pre-pandemic normal than it has over the past year. It’s a shift for the…

Click Here: The Biden administration has announced that it will work with the World Trade Organization (WTO) to negotiate a deal to suspend intellectual property rights associated with the Covid-19 vaccines — a surprise move for the administration, which had initially resisted taking such a step. The reversal came as Covid-19 deaths are mounting in…

The world may have undercounted Covid-19 deaths by a staggering margin, according to an analysis released Thursday by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington School of Medicine. The actual count may actually be 6.9 million deaths, more than double official tolls. The United States alone is estimated to…

There’s a scene in The West Wing’s second season in which one of the protagonists is told a Chinese satellite is falling to Earth, but no one knew exactly when or where. “A satellite is crashing to Earth, and NASA sent us a fax?” Donna Moss says, clearly concerned. But few in the show shared…

While here in the US some are tentatively removing their masks and resuming small outdoor gatherings, others around the world are searching for air. In India, people need oxygen, and they need it now. Last week, Covid-19 became India’s No. 1 killer. One million people in a country with a population of 1.3 billion are…

White House chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci said he will not go into restaurants or movie theaters, even though he’s vaccinated. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says vaccinated people should continue masking up indoors and avoiding large gatherings. News outlets have reported on “breakthrough infections” of Covid-19 among the fully vaccinated. All of…

About four years ago, my wife and I moved into a house just outside DC. It was our first house and it happened to have an extra bedroom, which was a plus since we were thinking about having a kid. We had lived together for several years before we bought the house, and one of…

Now that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has said that people who have been vaccinated against Covid-19 can shed their masks, there are obvious questions: How do you verify that people are vaccinated? Especially in situations in which some people can’t get vaccinated, including young children, or may remain vulnerable after, like…