Innholdsfortegnelse for 4/17-4/24/2020 i Newsweek International

1968  Newsweek reported that tragedy struck: “a white assassin shot and killed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis.” The country was shocked and responded with a national period of mourning and with outrage that led to riots and with the expedited passing of the Fair Housing Act, considered to be the last Civil Rights-era legislation. Newsweek said of Dr. King, “He was, more than any single man, the voice and the instrument of the second American revolution.” Dr. King would be 91 years old, if he were alive today. 1961 A Russian, Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin, “took mankind’s first, triumphant step into space,” wrote Newsweek. This “epochal achievement” was surrounded by “secrecy, rumor, and the struggles of nation against nation.” Currently, two Americans and one Russian astronaut are aboard the…

“One thing I think the coronavirus crisis has already proved is that there really is such a thing as society.”—BORIS JOHNSON “THE SECRET OF GOOD COMMUNICATION? SCREAMING HELPS.”—PHIL DONAHUE “I’m realizing life is really short. You don’t have a lot of time to tolerate s–t, you know?”- RIHANNA “I GET THE SENSE PEOPLE ARE EATING A LOT MORE ICE CREAM THAN USUAL.”—Andrew Yang “Don’t give MyPillo guy doing a song-and-danc up here on a Monday afternoon when people are dying in Queens.”—SPORTS RADIO HOST MIKE FRANCESA “I believe it will happen that we may start seeing a turnaround, but we een it yet.”NTHONY FAUCI “MORE PEOPLE THAN EVER ARE PLAYING SCRABBLE RIGHT NOW BUT IT SURE AS HELL ISN’T BECAUSE SCRABBLE IS FUN.”- Seth Meyers…

AS AMERICANS WATCH DIRE predictions of 100,000 to 240,000 deaths in the United States materialize around us, those who have studied this country’s health care system see the causes of the catastrophe as rooted in decades of policy decisions that prioritize medical care for individuals at the expense of public health. The US has more critical care beds per capita than any other industrialized country and about 20 mechanical ventilators per 100,000 people, and it still may not be enough. Most comparative studies of the US health care system with those of other Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries conclude that Americans enjoy far better access to most high-tech medicine, including MRIs, CT scans and many kinds of diagnostic imaging than most people in the world. The cost…

IN AREAS OF THE COUNTRY hardest hit by COVID-19, clinicians are already being forced to make tragic rationing decisions: about who to admit to the hospital, who to transfer to the ICU and who to place on scarce ventilators. These decisions feel out of character with our national identity. We normally think of ourselves as too wealthy, too committed to preserving American lives, to ration medical care. However, rationing of American health care also takes place every day in subtler ways. We see that when a weekend tennis player with a sore shoulder decides to hold off on getting an MRI, or when a smoker with a touch of heartburn takes a few antacid tablets rather than schedule an appointment with her primary care physician. They delay care because their…

IF YOU ASK PEOPLE WHO WAS THE FIRST WOMAN TO PARTICIPATE IN A presidential debate, or the first black person to run for president, you might hear names like Hillary Clinton or Jesse Jackson. In fact, the late New York Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm was the first woman to run for the Democratic nomination and the first black presidential candidate of any major party. “There are a lot of young people who don’t know the name Shirley Chisolm,” says Uzo Aduba, who plays her in Mrs. America (Hulu, April 15). “There’s a real desire to make sure that you get it right.” Chisholm’s story is just one part of the tapestry of stories told in the nine-part series which chronicles the women behind the various campaigns to help pass the Equal…

“The federal military response is a patchwork. » THIS TRUMP CAMPAIGN AD IS A THROWBACK to a time that’s hard to remember now. Entitled “The Fighter,” it features African American and Latino voters extolling the healthy U.S. economy created by President Donald Trump. ‘’Look at our economy, look what he’s done. How could you not support the president?” asks an African American woman wearing a red MAGA hat. The ad encapsulated what the Trump campaign strategy was going to do: emphasize low unemployment, rising wages and a strong stock market. It was also an effort to increase support for Trump among minority voters—a tack the campaign telegraphed in its Super Bowl ad touting criminal justice reform. Team Trump believed a bump in the African American vote from the 8 percent…

IN CITIES AROUND THE country, the COVID-19 pandemic has moved hospitals from conventional care to crisis care, forcing choices upon us that no one wants to make, and changing the standard of care we have long taken for granted. Triage in a time of crisis must combine hard-headed, evidence-based policies with public understanding and support—even when individual cases tear at our hearts. It goes without saying that every effort should be made to relieve scarcity, by bringing in more beds, equipment and personnel. Contingency standards of care can be used to provide the usual services in non-conventional ways, such as reusing or sharing some forms of equipment. At some point, however, this will not be enough. Once a hospital has arrived at the moment when there simply are not enough…

WHILE BEING HIT WITH coronavirus at rates equivalent to the civilian population, the U.S. military has activated its “defense support of civil authorities” apparatus, establishing liaisons in all 50 states, activating units and command posts, and moving forces to provide medical, transportation, logistics, and communications support in New York and Washington states. Lieutenant Gen. Laura Richardson, the commander of Army North (ARNORTH), has received approval for the deployment of ground units in response to the now declared national emergency. The moves begin to implement two existing contingency plans—CONPLAN 3400 for “homeland defense” and CONPLAN 3500 for “defense support of civil authorities”—as well as numerous new orders specifically relating to coronavirus. Fourteen states have also appointed “dual-status commanders,” presidentially approved National Guard officers who serve in both state and federal chains…

As the rationing debate unfolds, Newsweek asked doctors, lawyers, ethicists and other health care experts to wrestle with the fraught questions involved. Their essays follow: THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC HAS rapidly and radically disrupted any sense of normality in all aspects of medical practice in the United States. Rationing life-saving care is not something American doctors are accustomed to consciously considering in our daily working lives, let alone ever communicating it to patients or their families. At most, we are taught a little about it, typically in school, as a part of a formal course in medical ethics. At Harvard Medical School, where I have taught hundreds of students just such a curriculum for well over a decade, we spend a few hours on the subject in a classroom setting in…

IN THE UNITED STATES, PEOPLE with, and especially without, insurance are used to heading to the emergency room if they need care quickly. Even before the coronavirus crisis, nearly half of all US. medical care came from emergency rooms. A natural reaction to feeling feverish in the era of COVID-19, therefore, is to rush to the ER. The problem is that for most people that is exactly the wrong course of action. If people don’t have COVID-19 and head to the ER, they could be exposed to others who do. And those who have the virus, but who don’t need hospital care, are needlessly endangering doctors, nurses and other medical workers. The ER is becoming the new cruise ship—a petri dish where the infected cross paths with the unexposed. In…