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One thing that hasn’t changed since last year is the fact that we’re still wearing masks everywhere at all times, a policy Faye Flam says is now unnecessary. We’ve come a long way from the days of Lysoling the fruits and veggies we got at the supermarket. It made sense to wear masks early on in the pandemic when Covid-19 was getting more action than Pete Davidson, but by now we have plenty of tools at our disposal: vaccines, rapid testing, Covid-19 pills and antivirals. (Jessica Karl, 11/9)

Should we pay the unvaccinated to stay home because the COVID-19 vaccine frightens them? It’s a completely absurd, even dangerous idea, but one that Kansas Republicans are barreling toward putting into law during a special session later this month. One bill they’re pushing would actually provide unemployment benefits to workers who lose their jobs for refusing to get the COVID vaccine. Another would create a no-questions-asked, crater-sized religious exemption from the vaccine. So, let’s get this straight: After complaining the past year that too many people were being paid too much money to stay at home so they could stay safe, Republicans now want to pay the unvaccinated to stay home and remain unsafe to others. (11/12)

Seventy years ago, a virus terrorized Americans. Parents kept children indoors rather than risk exposure, and U.S. cities where cases were detected imposed severe curfews. What terrified Americans — especially parents — was that the disease could paralyze its victims. Many of these children could be kept alive only through immense artificial respirators known as “iron lungs.” (Ashish K. Jha, 11/11)

Patients gasping for air in hospital hallways, trailers serving as makeshift morgues, emergency medical tents erected in New York’s Central Park: In March 2020, what we watched happening in high-income settings in the U.S. and elsewhere around the world seemed to us in Uganda like scenes from a science fiction movie. As physician-researchers who are acutely aware of our country’s deficits of Covid-19 diagnostics, personal protective equipment, and intensive care beds with medical oxygen, we grew increasingly worried about the devastation this new virus could bring to Uganda and our medical practices. (Stephen Asiimwe, Edith Nakku-Joloba and Aggrey Semeere, 11/12)