This March, as the world marked one full year of the pandemic, my mother and stepfather celebrated their second go at a first wedding anniversary, 25 years after they divorced. I was 13 when they split. If you’d asked me then if I wished my mother, Fawn Waterfield, and my second stepfather, Chilton Allen Bowman…
My mom married a man 10 years ago and became a different person. She is still loving to us, but her politics changed drastically. Among other things, she is now adamantly opposed to vaccines. When my son was born a few years ago, it was a fight to have her get a flu shot before…
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration on Thursday morning announced an ambitious advertising campaign intended to encourage as many Americans as possible to be vaccinated against the coronavirus. The campaign, with ads in English and Spanish that will air throughout April on network TV and cable channels nationwide, as well as online, comes as the administration…
LOS ANGELES — Three days after being released from Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital, Gilbert Torres returned on a stretcher, a clear tube snaking from his nose to an oxygen tank. It was the last place he wanted to be. But Mr. Torres, 30, who had just spent two weeks on a ventilator in…
And now, the United States faces a pandemic that has disproportionately sickened and killed Americans of color, who are overrepresented in the essential work force yet less likely to have access to medical care. As federal and state governments manage the vaccine rollout, access to testing and treatment, and economic relief packages, it’s crucial to…
Someday, when the history of the pandemic is written, it may be a narrative told partly in images: the despair of crowded hospitals and body bags, the fear and isolation of the masks. And then the balm of a smiling individual, one sleeve rolled up practically to the collarbone, with a medical worker poised to…
In Florida, Key West International Airport is busier than normal, while Miami International has half as many passengers as it did before the pandemic. In the West, big-city airports — in San Francisco, Portland, Seattle — are serving a fraction of their typical traveler volume, between 24 percent and 46 percent. But smaller regional airports,…
When it came to judging government-funded research projects — a cleaner enterprise, presumably — I again asked the questions that people in crisis continually asked me. Is this study finding useful for my son, or my sister, in any way? Or, more generously, given the pace of research: Could this work potentially be useful to…
Federal officials have reprogrammed Healthcare.gov, making new benefits available to tens of millions of Americans, weeks after Congress authorized spending billions on additional health law subsidies. The Biden administration has doubled Obamacare’s advertising budget to get the word out, and will now spend $100 million telling Americans about newly affordable options. Nearly everyone with an…
Every two weeks, Sylvia Obell and Deanii Scott get on Zoom from opposite coasts to record their podcast, “Okay, Now Listen,” which is produced by Netflix. They tackle topics that range from breakups to parental abandonment to favorite TV shows, heartbreak and memes in an upbeat, sisterly way. In one episode, the hosts read from…