Coronavirus

Unvaccinated people will soon be barred from access to almost all businesses, except for grocery stores and pharmacies, as leaders seek to avoid a return to a wider lockdown.

The Biden administration said it was “pulling out all the stops” with a package announced Thursday in response to surging coronavirus cases and a newly detected variant. But some of the key provisions — like reimbursable at-home tests — just allow the United States to catch up to what other countries have been doing for months. Others — like a shorter window for pre-travel testing — fall far short of the dramatic measures countries in Europe and elsewhere have implemented in the past days and weeks.

Martin McKee, a professor of European public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said covid measures aren’t politicized in most countries to the degree they are in the United States, which has made it easier for foreign leaders to implement sweeping policies and restrictions without much controversy or obstruction. And, McKee said, most wealthy countries offer universal or more affordable health care than the United States does, so offering free or cheap at-home tests was expected in these places.

“This is where the U.S. is an international outlier,” McKee said. “Making testing free is clearly a good idea. Saying something will happen, though, and making it happen are two different things. There is going to be quite of lot of challenges in the supply chain. This is not going to happen overnight.”

Lawmakers in Germany's lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, voted on Friday in favor of updating Germany's infection protection law in a bid to curb the fourth wave of COVID-19 infections in the country.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz's newly inaugurated government has made combating the pandemic a priority, as concerns over a new spike in cases grow as the Christmas holidays draw closer.

In a speech in the Bundestag, Health Minister Karl Lauterbach said it was unacceptable that some people at hospitals and care homes are still not vaccinated.

The latest mutations of the coronavirus call for a new vaccination strategy. In an interview, BioNTech founder Uğur Şahin explains why countries need to administer booster shots faster and argues that a fourth jab will likely also be necessary.
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we lead the world in lots of things , but we dont suffer from a short supply of smart people, rather, we embrace our overabundance of morons.

If you pass a law saying that anyone who hasn't been infected with covid has to get vaccinated, you are incentivizing people to get infected.

This is what happens when politics are more important than sound public health policy.

I suppose, you are serious.

The Supreme Court turned down emergency requests by New York healthcare workers for a religious exemption from state requirements to vaccinate against Covid-19. A federal appeals court in New York previously denied the workers’ requests.

The court denied the requests in brief written orders. As is typical for such emergency actions, the majority didn’t explain its thinking. Three conservative justices—Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch—said they would have allowed the exemptions.