Last November I joined Michelle Mello of Stanford University Law School in a conversation on religious exemptions and vaccines. The Council on Foreign Relations sponsored the event. You can watch it here:
COVID-19
U.S. Senators on the Senate Health Committee who seem to care less about public health
In case you didn’t see it, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease official, testified yesterday before a Senate health committee hearing. Here is his exchange with Kentucky Senator Rand Paul: Here is Fauci last night on CNN: Here […]
I was with Greg Locke for the first fifty seconds…
Watch the Tennessee megachurch pastor: Please get vaccinated and boosted! The vaccine is safe and effective.
Song of the day
Hat tip: Caroline Fea
The Attorney General of Indiana does not believe the COVID-19 stats his own state releases
We are up the creek without a paddle. Here is Rashika Jaipuriar at the Indianapolis Star: Health care workers are pleading for help as Indiana is seeing record numbers of hospitalizations, but one of the state’s top elected officials said he doesn’t believe […]
American Historical Association Annual Meeting Omicron update
Here is the latest on the AHA meeting in New Orleans. I received this in my inbox yesterday: The AHA is carefully monitoring the news about the Omicron variant, particularly in the New Orleans area, as COVID-19 numbers spiral around […]
The threat of Omicron
Ed Yong of The Atlantic is a trusted source on all things COVID-19. He believes that America is not yet ready for Omicron. Here is a taste of his recent piece: The real unknown is what an Omicron cross will […]
Reinhold Niebuhr: “in a given instance the principle of freedom may have to yield to the necessities of social cohesion, requiring a measure of coercion.”
Here is Reinhold Niebuhr in Moral Man and Immoral Society. He wrote this book in 1932: Society may believe that the preservation of freedom of opinion is a social good, not because liberty of thought is an inherent or natural […]
800,156 Americans have died of COVID-19
According to NBC News. The number of deaths due to COVID-19 in the two years the virus has been in the United States is now higher than some of the most liberal estimates of the number of deaths in the […]
Tomasky: The Right’s view of liberty during this pandemic is “incompatible with human life”
Michael Tomasky is the editor of The New Republic. Here is a taste of his piece, “The Right Wants to Freedom Us to Death”: Future historians—that is, if future historians are actual historians and not a bunch of hired-gun fascist […]
What a Charles Willson Peale painting can teach us about vaccinating our children
Central Michigan University historian Andrew Wehrman has been an indispensable guide in this age of COVID-19. Here is a taste of his recent piece at Age of Revolutions blog: For portrait painters like Charles Willson Peale, ignoring smallpox was part […]
Sources on the history of religious-based vaccine resistance in America
I included a lot of history in today’s Current feature on vaccine exemptions. The piece draws on a talk I gave earlier this week to the constituents of the Council of Foreign Relations. I am told that the video will […]
Did Trump try to kill Biden?
The title of Tim Miller’s piece at The Bulwark is provocative, but worth considering. Here is a taste: Of all the insane moments from 2020, this one still stands out: The former president of the United States knowingly and intentionally […]
Another evangelical anti-vaxxer dies of COVID-19
His name is Marcus Lamb. Here is Michelle Boorstein at The Washington Post: Marcus Lamb, founder of the large Christian network Daystar, died Tuesday after contracting the coronavirus. Lamb’s network during the pandemic has made the virus a huge focus, calling […]
Jill Lepore on the state of “society”
Here is a taste of the Harvard historian’s recent piece at The Guardian: In March 2020, Boris Johnson, pale and exhausted, self-isolating in his flat on Downing Street, released a video of himself – that he had taken himself – […]
Tweet of the Day
Andrew Wehrman nails it:
What do we know about the Omicron variant?
“Almost nothing.” But it still warrants attention. Here is Katherine Wu at The Atlantic: Scientists around the world are still scrambling to gather intel on three essential metrics: how quickly the variant spreads; if it’s capable of causing more serious […]
Kareem Abdul Jabbar blasts Aaron Rodgers
The hoops legend pulls no punches on the former Cal-Berkeley student: Professional athletes have come so far from the dark days when the public saw them as perpetually partying adolescents, mean-spirited bullies, and worse: dim-wits one step above tackling dummies […]
Vaccination mandates have a long history. Backlash to vaccination mandates have a long history.
Good to see Andrew Wehrman cited in Maggie Astor’s New York Times piece. A taste: Professor Wehrman this week tweeted an example of what, in an interview, he said was a “ubiquitous” phenomenon: The health board in Urbana, Ohio, Jordan’s hometown, enacted […]
How many people died because we failed to take seriously the lessons of the past?
COVID-19 is now the deadliest pandemic in U.S. history. Here is Elizabeth Gamillo at Smithsonian Magazine: The coronavirus pandemic has become the deadliest disease outbreak in recent American history with tolls surpassing the estimated deaths of the 1918 flu. According to […]