Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, many of us have kept saying we can’t wait for things to get back to normal. We want to be able to go out again, see our friends, and be in public places without feeling like we’re risking our health or that of others. Now that Covid-19 case counts have gone down and restrictions are starting to lift, it seems we’re at last on the path back to some semblance of normalcy. But as recent events have shown, the status quo before the pandemic wasn’t all that great for large swathes of the population, both in the US and around the world.

spent last weekend thinking about what makes me different from Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. I was trying to convince myself that “I’ll be OK” – that under similar circumstances, I would experience a different outcome. How much larger of a smile do I need to stretch across my face when I walk through whiter neighborhoods? How much more polite can I be to a police officer who only sees the darkness of my skin? These are the questions that have wrestled control of my mind.

No one should have been surprised by President Donald Trump’s co-opting of the symbols of American Christianity — a church, the Bible — to speak Monday to the white evangelical base that made his election possible. Every American president since George Washington has sworn his oath upon the Bible.

The president’s true believers saw a message to appreciate. Many others saw something more alarming.

An important lesson of the #MeToo movement has been that perpetrators of sexual assault include people who have been previously dismissed as potential predators — that sexual assaults can be and are committed by respected members of elite communities, including beloved comedians, Hollywood power players and prominent, well-paid journalists. No one, by virtue of their social or economic status, should be written off as incapable of assault.

The dollar and the US is not immune to the same kind of progressive degeneration suffered by the pound sterling and the UK in the 20th century, says Professor Benjamin J Cohen. SANTA BARBARA, California: With the onset of the COVID-19 crisis, the United States seems to have developed a severe case of what psychologists call dissociative identity disorder: it is simultaneously projecting two distinct personalities. On the one hand, the US Federal Reserve has responsibly assumed a leadership role in international finance, as it did during the 2008 global financial crisis.

In 2016, I was coming back to my apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, after a long afternoon of playing basketball with old friends. I was about to head upstairs, but I saw a missed call that I figured I’d return outside rather than annoy my roommates through the thin walls. A few minutes later, I looked up and saw that two NYPD officers had cornered me. They wanted to see my ID, which I didn’t have.

Our nation is in the midst of the greatest crisis in generations, with the Covid-19 pandemic impacting Americans’ physical and emotional well-being, while plummeting the nation’s economy into the worst economic downturn in our lifetimes. As the country begins what is likely to be a slow climb out of economic morass, federal, state, and local governments will be looking for new sources of revenue to replenish dwindling budgets and provide jobs to millions of Americans who find themselves out of work.

The sun rose again this morning on a state emerging from a “stay-at-home” spring caused by a pandemic that has claimed over 3,500 of our family members, neighbors and friends. Since COVID-19 hit Connecticut, we have seen and heard about inspiring acts of humanity, we have practiced this newly found — and lifesaving— practice of social distancing, we have self-isolated and now we all await the return to work call so we can rebuild our lives and fire up our state’s economy.

Since the pandemic began, pollution levels have dropped, animals are returning to areas they had previously abandoned and more people have taken to travelling on foot and by bicycle. Although short-lived, we have already seen some of the effects changing our behaviour can have on our own lives and on the natural world.

When clinging to America’s individualistic ideals in a pandemic means letting poor people die in service of the economy, society cannot hold. Human societies fall somewhere on a spectrum, with individualism on one end and collectivism on the other. The collectivist end could be summarized as, “We’re all in this together” — think propertyless Indigenous tribes that share everything — and the individualist end by Margaret Thatcher’s famous declaration that, “There’s no such thing as society; there are individual men and women, and there are families.” It could also be summarized as, “You’re on your own.”

This brutal spring, the U.S. faces two great crises. Over the past 14 weeks, 84,000 Americans have died of COVID-19. That’s 28 times the death toll of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, more than the U.S. combat deaths in the Vietnam War, and one-quarter of the total global casualties from the coronavirus pandemic.

The United States is in a deep recession, but the official numbers are missing something big. They don’t reflect the immense value of the sacrifices being made by millions of people who have stayed at home to stop the spread of the coronavirus. Because we don’t charge one another for saving lives, one of the most herculean efforts ever undertaken isn’t being counted in gross domestic product.

To scholars and activists left and right, human nature is the enemy. If it were not for human nature, the environmentalists believe, the forests and fields and natural wonders of the world would be pristine and perfect. If it were not for human nature, believe the behavioral economists, we would make better choices – save more, eat better, gamble less, and not get tricked by framing effects that marketers and retailers so expertly wield against us.

Nearly 7.7 million American workers younger than 30 are now unemployed and three million dropped out of the labor force in the past month. Combined that’s nearly one in three young workers, by far the highest rate since the country started tracking unemployment by age in 1948. Nearly 40 percent worked in the devastated retail and food service sectors.

Don’t be fooled by the unfounded, Malthusian belief that overpopulation is the roots of all evils when it comes to sustainability. Population growth is just one of many issues that we should keep an eye on – for sure – but it would be an unforgivable mistake – and a racist one – to give it our undivided attention.

We frequently hear advice that workers should stay home when they don’t feel well, but there are a lot of reasons why that option isn’t realistic or feasible for many workers. Presenteeism — when employees are unwell and should be away from work, but continue to work — at a time of a global pandemic is especially dangerous for co-workers, managers and employers.

When Death Stranding launched last year, I thought, boy, this is a timely game. That it was all an allegory for working at Amazon in some dystopian future. Maybe, but now, the game seems more relevant than ever.

The novel coronavirus that’s reached pandemic proportions has already seen more than 13,000 U.S. cases, close to 4,000 of them here in New York. Neighboring New Jersey is seeing one of the highest death tolls, with one family hit particularly hard. And in an attempt to curb the spread of the disease despite a late start, social distancing has become the catchphrase most Americans are living by.

Life has changed a lot in the past few days, weeks, or months, depending where you live. As efforts to contain the novel coronavirus ramp up, it’s likely going to change even more. But we’re already sick of being at home all the time, we miss our friends and families, everything’s been canceled, the economy is tanking, and we feel anxious and scared about what’s ahead.