(CNN) -
When lost soldiers flee a battlefield, or people emigrate in search of a better life, they are voting with their feet.
The "vote by foot" allows people to control their own destiny, argues law professor Ilya Somin.
In America today, people are also voting with their arms, rolling up their sleeves to get vaccinated against COVID-19, and the impact is likely to be momentous.
Nearly 70% of Americans are "voting with their arms" - they expect to be vaccinated or have already done so, according to the Pew Research Center survey.
By contrast, in November, voter turnout soared, but still only about 62% of people of voting age voted in the elections for the Biden-Trump binomial.
More than 114 million Americans have received at least one dose of a vaccine.
By receiving a vaccine, Americans are voting for science and a return to normal life.
They are participating in a large public health effort, incorporating into their bloodstream vaccines that were developed and proven to be safe years faster than most.
Still, the nation's ability to fully recover from COVID-19 may depend on how many of the hesitant 30% escalate.
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"With more and more vaccinations, the probability that a non-immune person will come into contact with an infected person is progressively reduced until, poof, the risk of contracting the infection almost disappears (although it is never zero)," he wrote.
Dr. Kent Sepkowitz, infectious disease expert.
The goal is "herd immunity," but determining the level of vaccination necessary to achieve this is difficult, Sepkowitz said.
“Things vary from one community to another.
For example, in a locality, people can move a lot: by car, bus, or on foot.
Each has an impact on the risk of transmission (and therefore the number of immune people needed to protect the rest of the 'herd').
Climate, social customs, and the transmissibility of individual virus variants play an important role.
"Setting ourselves up for a major failure by forcing public health leaders to produce a magic number ... will further undermine people's faith in science, slowing our emergence from the long shadow of COVID-19."
While deaths are declining in the US, COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations have stalled at a high level.
"When the pandemic began more than a year ago, the elderly were more vulnerable, and the first few months saw the coronavirus race through an older generation, with tragic consequences," observed the editorial board of The Washington Post.
“Now, three-quarters of the American population 65 and older has received at least one dose of the vaccine, and the tide of infection is turning toward younger people.
They must not be complacent with dangers.
Exiting the pandemic safely will be a difficult adjustment for many.
Face masks remain the gold standard for preventing the spread of the disease.
“Walking through my Brooklyn neighborhood as the country emerges from a long, depressed covid winter, I notice that almost everyone participates in a curious pandemic ritual: as we pass brownstone houses, we all put on our masks as soon as we see each other. someone to come »wrote Jill Filipovic.
“We are shifting to a new normal, and that will be difficult: our social skills are rusty and our anxieties high.
Just being around strangers throws many of us into hypervigilance.
And we want to show that we are doing our part to protect our communities.
It is possible to achieve herd immunity and then lose it, repeatedly.
Here's what you can do to help prevent that from happening
End apathy for gun violence
When mass shootings occur, as happened this week in South Carolina and Texas, media coverage is drawn "for a few days," Nicole Hockley noted.
“There is news, sadness and anger underlying a clamor for change… but then we move on.
And I was as guilty as anyone else, "he wrote.
But then her six-year-old son, Dylan, “was murdered in his first grade classroom along with 19 of his classmates and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
My beautiful butterfly that brought so much joy and love to my life is gone.
It felt like my heart had been ripped out of my chest.
No one should have to feel the pain of losing their child to gun violence.
It is a pain that never goes away.
President Joe Biden announced six executive actions Thursday to tackle the problem of gun violence, but Hockley said that's not enough.
“Americans need Congress to vote on common sense gun reform, to get things like universal background checks and stop the sale of assault weapons.
Voters must hold legislators to account. '
The Second Amendment to the US Constitution was never intended to create an individual right to a gun, historian Dominic Erdozain wrote.
“The mass shootings would not have surprised the founders.
A government that tolerates them would.
James Madison and the other framers of the Constitution “equated freedom not with firepower, but with life.
With 43,543 lives lost to firearms in a single year, of which 24,156 were suicides, is it time to admit they were right?
Controversy over the use of virtual reality to train employees in mass shootings 0:56
Joe Manchin: immovable object?
Sen. Jove Manchin is pointing out that Biden's $ 2 trillion infrastructure plan could get through that chamber without a single Republican vote.
However, the West Virginia top senator, whose vote would be crucial to that effort, doesn't think it's a good idea.
In an op-ed for The Washington Post, Joe Manchin warned: “If obstructionism is removed or budget reconciliation becomes the norm, it will set a dangerous new precedent for passing radical partisan legislation that changes the direction of our nation. each time it is a change in political control.
The consequences will be profound: our nation may never see a stable government again.
Biden cannot accept that view if his party wants to be successful in future elections, Julian Zelizer wrote.
“As Democrats address voting rights and infrastructure, they face a critical tipping point, with Manchin posing a major political hurdle.
Biden and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer must remember that their party is larger than a single senator… tick.
Democrats must solve their Manchin problem before it is too late.
The West Virginia senator should be applauded for his views on the Senate, Scott Jennings wrote.
“Our narrowly divided country could benefit from leaders who can produce problem-solving results without trampling over half of the country's opinions.
Getting rid of obstructionism and abusing reconciliation is simply not respecting the spirit of the body, and Manchin knows it.
Republicans have criticized Biden's broad definition of infrastructure.
Giovanna Gray Lockhart observed that family care “is silent, mostly invisible and mostly by women.
It also forms the basis of many people's lives.
It is what allows them to leave home to work and go to college, provide for their families and get ahead.
Call it economic infrastructure, because that's what family care is.
Our economy would collapse without him.
Corporate power awakens
Cartoon: "Corporations should stay out of politics" / "Wait a minute. I was not referring to his money.
Senior corporate executives are increasingly speaking out on social and political issues, including Georgia's new law limiting voter access.
And that doesn't sit well with Republicans.
"Stay out of politics," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell warned CEOs.
"From electoral law to environmentalism, to radical social agendas and the Second Amendment, parts of the private sector continue to dabble in behaving like an awakened parallel government."
Lincoln Mitchell noted that: “These comments sound particularly absurd coming from a leader of a Republican Party that for generations has been the party of big business, especially since CEOs and other business leaders have long been an important source of influence. fundraising for the Republican Party and for McConnell specifically.
More than 70 black executives signed a letter last month urging corporations to support voting rights.
As Peniel E. Joseph wrote, “Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of the 'fierce urgency of now' in the context of the need for America to overcome its tragic racial and political history by confronting it honestly, with love and justice, in public. … The fact that this sentiment is being expressed by black business leaders and CEOs attests to the extraordinary political crisis this nation continues to face.
It also exemplifies the importance, now more than ever, of speaking the truth to power on issues that transcend partisanship, ideology and politics to occupy the very recesses of the American soul. "
The number of bills introduced in 47 states to limit voter access is now more than 360, Norman Eisen and Joanna Lydgate noted, stemming from former President Donald Trump's lie that the election was stolen from him by fraud.
"There is no need to suppress voting everywhere to address alleged large-scale fraud that never existed anywhere," Eisen and Lydgate wrote.
They outlined steps that courts, state legislators, and Congress could take to protect voting rights.
Derek Chauvin's trial
As prosecutors in Derek Chauvin's trial reviewed their witness list last week, attention turned to questions about police procedures and George Floyd's cause of death.
“At least 10 law enforcement witnesses have testified,” Elliot Williams wrote, “and all have largely agreed with each other around the same general principle: that Chauvin used excessive force that went beyond the training he received from the Department. Minneapolis Police Department.
Witness to Floyd's arrest: A man was being killed 4:02
Why so many members of the security forces? ».
For reasons deeply rooted in American culture and its legal system, a conviction could be incredibly difficult to obtain in this case.
It is in the prosecution's interest to overwhelm the jury with evidence from police officers, ”Williams observed.
"The medical evidence for George Floyd's death is complex, and likely key to determining whether Derek Chauvin, the former agent accused of killing Floyd, will be convicted," wrote Coroner's Pathologist Dr. Judy Melinek.
“The Hennepin County Medical Examiner discovered that a combination of injuries, natural diseases and drugs were responsible for his death.
Some of these findings, individually, could have caused his death, and yet in this case, they seem to have worked together. '
In Politico, Rosa Brooks asked a question that goes beyond Chauvin's fate.
What about the other three officers who were on the scene?
His sheer passivity was, in a way, more astonishing than Chauvin's casual cruelty.
They all stood idly by and watched as Chauvin pressed Floyd's face to the ground and Floyd's pleas for help grew more and more desperate.
In the end, they stood aside and watched him die.
The role of fellow officers in reporting abuses is crucial to proper policing, wrote Louis Dekmar, chief of police in LaGrange, Georgia, and Collette Flanagan, founder of Mothers Against Police Brutality.
“Forging a culture that encourages officers to step up when they witness misconduct will not be accomplished with some new rules and harsh messages from watch commanders.
It requires end-to-end changes in recruiting, hiring, oversight, accountability, discipline, and technology… and often, amending state laws and community standards. ”
Hunter Biden's Memoirs
Hunter Biden, one of the favorite targets of Trump and his allies, published a memoir this week titled "Beautiful Things."
In the first presidential debate last fall, Nicole Hemmer wrote, Joe Biden's defense of his son "demonstrated the stark difference between the two candidates, one driven by grievance and the other driven by empathy, and also showed how sharply American attitudes toward addiction have changed in recent years.
She noted, “There is a real advantage for Hunter and Joe Biden in addressing the challenges of Hunter's addiction.
Now that Americans have come to treat addiction with more empathy, both Biden understand that a history of addiction would not aggravate the conspiracies swirling around Hunter, but offers a possible escape from them. "
"The story it tells is one of addiction in a context of intense loss and love: a united and interdependent family torn apart over and over by an inexplicable tragedy," observed Hemmer.
Anti-transgender laws
In addition to focusing on voting access, conservative state legislators across the country are pushing bills to disqualify transgender athletes.
"State legislators across the country have introduced dozens of bills that would prohibit transgender girls from competing in women's sports," wrote former Congressman Joe Kennedy, who led the House Trans Equality Task Force.
The measures stem from what he called a "misguided concern that his participation would somehow harm his cisgender teammates and competitors."
"It's such an absurd claim that you almost laughed at first," Kennedy said.
“The examples of this happening are essentially zero.
School districts, universities, and the NCAA have protocols in place to ensure fair treatment for children of all genders and gender identities.
One of the plaintiffs who recently filed a lawsuit in Connecticut alleging that transgender girls "have an advantage over cisgender girls and then defeated one of the trans athletes targeted in the lawsuit a few days after it was filed."
In Arkansas, the General Assembly overrode Governor Asa Hutchinson's surprising veto of what Allison Hope called "perhaps the most egregious anti-transgender bill in modern American history ... making his state the first in the country. in banning gender-affirming treatment for trans youth ”.
Jeff Bezos: Charge me taxes
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who is believed to be the richest man in the world, is not usually a supporter of higher taxes, and his company has been known for paying very little.
But this week he backed Biden's infrastructure plan and supported an increase in the corporate tax rate.
"There is a time for everything, even taxing and spending," wrote tax expert Edward J. McCaffery.
Jeff Bezos gets it.
Wall Street does too;
Goldman Sachs and others have come out with lukewarm support or at least quiet criticism of the proposed tax increase. "
Corporate taxes have plummeted in recent decades, while workers have been paying higher income and payroll taxes.
"If taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society, as Oliver Wendell Holmes once said," wrote McCaffery, "it is time that the wealthiest corporations in the history of civilization paid their fair share, before May our civilization fall and collapse.
Even the man with the most to lose agrees.
Bezos says he supports corporate tax increase 0:46
Y …
Prince philip
The demanding life of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh 4:54
When Prince Philip was born in 1921 in Corfu, Greece, George V, Queen Elizabeth's grandfather, sat on the throne of Great Britain and served double duty as Emperor of India.
The king of England had been a military man in the royal navy, as would be Philip during the Second World War.
But there was little reason to think that Philip, prince of Greece and Denmark, would ever become a central figure in the British royal family.
However, Philip married Princess Elizabeth in 1947, and his passing this week was felt by many in the UK as "a death in the family," wrote Kate Maltby.
"Like the death of Pope John Paul II in 2005, or Elizabeth Taylor in 2011, the death of the queen's consort is one of those great hand-overs that breaks our sense of the continuity of the world," Maltby observed.
"The world is dark, unstable and changing rapidly: the loss of the Duke of Edinburgh will be for many Britons a farewell to an old order."
However, there is more here than the mere death of a long-lived celebrity.
In Britain, we have a tendency to project our private family dynamics onto the Royal Family.
Like our own family, they are born into a relationship with us, unless like Felipe, they marry young and stay for decades.
We carefully examine the photos of the real children that they carry by the hand to their first day at school;
we observe their weddings and mourn their funerals.
As our families adapt to an evolving world, they adapt too, but in public.
It's the price you pay for the royal family's greatest trick: pretending to be normal.
Felipe, 99, “navigated this public scrutiny with pragmatism, despite his visible frustration and a few missteps along the way.
He always made it clear that he understood that there was a price to pay for privilege.
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