By Justine Coleman
Read the full article from The Hill, here.
Johns Hopkins data typically show a dip in coronavirus deaths on Saturdays and Sundays amid different reporting patterns of state and county COVID-19 statistics, a situation that may have been exacerbated by the Easter holiday.
By Luke Savage
Read the full article from Jacobin, here.
The pandemic has been taking the existing injustices of capitalism and exaggerating them to the point of cartoonishness. A case in point is a recent study that finds Wall Street bonuses have grown by more than 1,200% since the 1980s — while the federal minimum wage hasn’t been raised in over a decade.
By Kendra Pierre-Louis
Read the full article from Slate, here.
Shame is a form of punishment that derives its power from depriving you of your reputation within the society. When people make blanket proclamations that we should not shame others, what they are criticizing, in a very real way, is the ability to make and enforce social norms. Many of those articles that warn against shame, do so partly because COVID-19 is a systemic issue, but that ignores that even in the presence of clear rules and support, it still requires a bit of social cohesion. And as one popular meme points out: Wearing a mask is a lot like wearing pants. The reason many of us don’t stroll through town naked is not because we fear arrest but because we fear shame. It’s worth noting that early research suggests that collectivist cultures—which tend to employ shame more—better contained COVID early on in their outbreaks.
By Erika Edwards
Read the full article from NBC News, here.
People who are fully vaccinated against Covid-19 can travel freely in the U.S., as long as they remain masked on planes, buses and trains, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Friday.
By Keri Blakinger
Read the full article from The Daily Beast, here.
As a once-in-a-generation snowstorm walloped the Lone Star State this week and led to widespread power outages, prisoners and corrections officers agree: already-dire conditions inside Texas prisons somehow got even worse.
By Emily A Wang & Lauren Brinkley-Rubinstein & Lisa B. Puglisi
Read the full article from The Appeal, here.
Prisons and jails across the country have been breeding grounds for COVID-19. Built to house scores of people in a confined setting, correctional facilities have accounted for a majority of the largest single-site, cluster outbreaks across the country. Nearly 20 percent of the nation’s prison population has tested positive for COVID-19, with an infection rate more than five times higher and an age-adjusted mortality rate three times higher than that of the general population.
