Pandemic

WASHINGTON — President Biden probably will not put it quite this way when he gets up before Congress to address the nation this week, but the state of America’s union is disunion. To see that, he will need only turn around to find a Republican House speaker seated behind him, determined to block his every move. So Mr. Biden’s message of unity, a hard sell already during his first two years in office, may prove even more out of sync on Tuesday night as he delivers his first State of the Union address of this new era of divided government. Yet for a president who prides himself on working across the aisle, a unity pitch may paradoxically be a useful cudgel to hammer his newly empowered opponents. Mr. Biden plans to present himself to what is likely to be his largest television audience of the year as the adult in the room, willing and able to reach bipartisan compromises in an age of deep partisanship, according to advisers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the … [Read more...] about For Biden, a Chance for a Fresh Start in a New Era of Divided Government

Doctors have long diagnosed many of our sickest patients with “ demoralization syndrome ,” a condition commonly associated with terminal illness that’s characterized by a sense of helplessness and loss of purpose. American physicians are now increasingly suffering from a similar condition, except our demoralization is not a reaction to a medical condition, but rather to the diseased systems for which we work. The United States is the only large high-income nation that doesn’t provide universal health care‌ to its citizens. Instead, it maintains a lucrative system of for-profit medicine. For decades, ‌ at least tens of thousands of preventable deaths have occurred each year because health care here is so expensive. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the consequences of this policy choice have intensified. One study estimates at least 338,000 Covid deaths in the United States could have been prevented by universal health care. In the wake of this generational catastrophe, many … [Read more...] about Doctors Aren’t Burned Out From Overwork. We’re Demoralized by Our Health System.

In Albany, an outbreak of the coronavirus erupted among nurses and patients in the cancer unit of a hospital. Across the state, nurses at hospitals in the Buffalo area bought their own masks and face shields out of concern about the quality of supplies in stock. And when an emergency room nurse in New Rochelle began her shift, she was asked to care for 15 patients, after her co-workers called out sick. The accounts recall the early days of the pandemic, when the virus ravaged New York — but these scenes took place over the past several weeks. Nurses and other health care workers in the state have begun to warn about the conditions in hospitals, as virus patients are checking in at an alarming rate. “We’re worse off in some ways than we were in the beginning,” said Shalon Matthews, an emergency room nurse in New Rochelle. “We need staff, we need help, we need resources. I’m fearful for my patients and I’m fearful that the same thing that happened back in March, it’s … [Read more...] about Nurses Are Anxious and Angry in 2nd Wave: ‘We’re Not Prepared’

HOUSTON — The United States is winding up a particularly devastating week, one of the very worst since the coronavirus pandemic began nine months ago. On Friday, a national single-day record was set, with more than 226,000 new cases. It was one of many data points that illustrated the depth and spread of a virus that has killed more than 278,000 people in this country, more than the entire population of Lubbock, Texas, or Modesto, Calif., or Jersey City, N.J. “It’s just an astonishing number,” said Caitlin Rivers, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “We’re in the middle of this really severe wave and I think as we go through the day to day of this pandemic, it can be easy to lose sight of how massive and deep the tragedy is.” In California, where daily case reports have tripled in the last month, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a new round of regional stay-at-home orders to address a mounting crisis over intensive-care beds. Some counties in the Bay … [Read more...] about The Virus Is Devastating the U.S., and Leaving an Uneven Toll

Each night at dusk, in an otherwise desolate Times Square, hundreds of nurses in blue scrubs gather to board buses that take them to hospitals across New York City. Of the thousands of nurses who have come from other states to shore up New York’s hospitals, more than 4,000 are staying in Midtown Manhattan. During the day, many rest at their hotels, amid darkened Broadway marquees, quiet streets and boarded up shops. At night, they face crowded hospital corridors, panicked patients and strained intensive care units . And death. “I have never seen patients so sick before,’’ said Tamara Williams, a 40-year-old nurse from Dallas. “And dying, despite everything that we’re doing.” Even as the daily death toll has fallen in recent weeks, the coronavirus is still spreading. The number of new hospital admissions in New York, the hardest-hit state, has remained high, at about 1,000 a day, down from more than 3,000 a day in early April. Out-of-state nurses have … [Read more...] about Hundreds of Miles From Home, Nurses Fight Coronavirus on New York’s Front Lines

Among health care workers, nurses in particular have been at significant risk of contracting Covid-19, according to a new analysis of hospitalized patients by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The findings were released Monday as a surge of new hospitalizations swept the country, with several states hitting record levels of cases. About 6 percent of adults hospitalized from March through May were health care workers, according to the researchers, with more than a third either nurses or nursing assistants. Roughly a quarter, or 27 percent, of those hospitalized workers were admitted to the intensive care unit, and 4 percent died during their hospital stay. The study looked at 6,760 hospitalizations across 13 states, including California, New York, Ohio and Tennessee. Health care workers “can have severe Covid-19-associated illness, highlighting the need for continued infection prevention and control in health care settings as well community mitigation … [Read more...] about Nurses Are at High Risk for Covid Among Health Workers, C.D.C. Says

TAIPEI, Taiwan — The job offer from a Chinese semiconductor company was appealing. A higher salary. Work trips to explore new technologies. No matter that it would be less prestigious for Kevin Li than his job in Taiwan at one of the world’s leading chip makers. Mr. Li eagerly moved to northeast China in 2018, taking part in a wave of corporate migration as the Chinese government moved aggressively to build up its semiconductor industry. He went back to Taiwan after two years, as Covid-19 swept through China and global tensions intensified. Other highly skilled Taiwanese engineers are going home, too. For many, the strict pandemic measures have been tiresome. Geopolitics has made the job even more fraught, with China increasingly vocal about staking its claim on Taiwan, a self-ruled democracy. The Taiwanese government has begun to discourage local engineers from going to China, concerned that they were taking proprietary information with them. “Some who went to … [Read more...] about Engineers From Taiwan Bolstered China’s Chip Industry. Now They’re Leaving.

In downtown Nanjing, China, a fishmonger sold a lot more ribbon fish than usual for Lunar New Year family gatherings two weeks ago. A florist in a run-down shopping mall on the south side of the city sold more roses. But a lamp vendor a few steps away in the mall has seen no recovery in sales. And at an Infiniti car dealership on Nanjing’s edge, customer visits have jumped 20 or 30 percent, but have not yet translated into extra car sales. “The economic impact of the epidemic lingers in some ways, but we estimate that things will get better this year,” Edith Xu, the marketing manager for the dealership, said on Thursday. Two months after China abruptly abandoned its stringent “zero Covid” policies and let the virus sweep through its population with deadly effect, the country’s economy has begun to recover. Consumers are spending again after taking a long pause during lockdowns in Shanghai last spring and in many Chinese cities in late autumn. Factories and ports are running … [Read more...] about Flowers, Fresh Fish and Movies: China Is Spending Again, Cautiously

WASHINGTON - President Biden and former president Donald Trump may have each drawn a record number of votes in 2020, but at this early stage in the 2024 election cycle, Americans show little enthusiasm for a rematch between the two well-known yet unpopular leaders, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll. Neither Biden nor Trump generate broad excitement within their own party, and most Americans overall say they would feel dissatisfied or angry if either wins the general election. Biden, who has said he intends to seek reelection, has no current opposition for the Democratic nomination. Trump is likely to face at least several challengers in his bid to lead his party for a third consecutive election. Among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, the Post-ABC poll finds 58 percent say they would prefer someone other than Biden as their nominee in 2024 - almost double the 31 percent who support Biden. That is statistically unchanged since last September. Among … [Read more...] about Few Americans are excited about a Biden-Trump rematch, Post-ABC poll finds

Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter A woman has been fined $18,500 (125,000 CNY) after she posted a video of herself illegally buying, preparing, and eating a great white shark . The food blogger , who goes by the online name Tizi, was identified by officials as Jin Moumou. According to a statement from officials in Nanchong, in the southwestern province of Sichuan, Jin reportedly purchased the great white shark in April 2022 and posted a video of herself preparing and eating the wild animal in July that year. The video was in violation of the “Wild Animal Protection Law of the People’s Republic of China,” the statement said. Illegal possession of a white shark can also lead to a prison term of between five to 10 years. In the clip, which was posted to social media sites Douyin and Kuaishou, Tizi … [Read more...] about Chinese food blogger fined $18,500 after cooking and eating great white shark