Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together. For the last few months, I’ve started my mornings with the same routine: reviewing New York Times readers’ medical bills over coffee. The documents are part of a project I began in August, asking readers…
Beth Harmon was facing a “sudden death” of sorts. The fictional chess star overcame her childhood as an orphan, she battled her addiction to pills and alcohol, and she managed to make it into the world championship in Russia. The problem now? She had spent all her money on clothing and couldn’t afford her $3,000…
Just Me and My Sea Monkeys I was in love and in lockdown in a small flat in Leith, Scotland. I had a lot of feelings and nowhere to put them. So I bought sea monkeys. I poured in the powder and checked the water temperature. For weeks, nothing. My last-ditch effort at finding something…
People with intellectual disabilities and developmental disorders are three times more likely to die if they have Covid-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, compared with others with the diagnosis, according to a large analysis of insurance claims data. The finding raises complex questions about how to allocate new vaccines as they become available in…
Six months into his bid for the presidency, Joseph R. Biden Jr. made his position on pets abundantly clear. “Some Americans celebrate #NationalCatDay, some celebrate #NationalDogDay,” he wrote in a tweet. “President Trump celebrates neither. It says a lot. It’s time we put a pet back in the White House.” In January, when President-elect Biden…
On Monday, Vice President Mike Pence said on Twitter that the news came “thanks to the public-private partnership forged” by Mr. Trump. In July, Pfizer got a $1.95 billion deal with the government’s Operation Warp Speed, the multiagency effort to rush a vaccine to market, to deliver 100 million doses of the vaccine. The arrangement…
Rebecca Sussman got a coronavirus test because town officials in Bedford, N.Y., encouraged her to. “If you haven’t gotten your test yet, please do so for yourself, your family and our community,” Chris Burdick, the town supervisor, said in an email. More tests would mean a lower positivity rate, he said, and a faster path…
It’s been a big puzzle of the pandemic: Why are children so much less likely than adults to become infected with the new coronavirus and, if infected, less likely to become ill? A possible reason may be that many children already have antibodies to other coronaviruses, according to researchers at the Francis Crick Institute in…
Don ArnoldGetty Images Oprah’s Favorite Things 2020 is officially here. It’s full of covetable loungewear and epic gift ideas, but most importantly, this year’s list champions small businesses and businesses owned by people of color. As the legend herself put it in her letter on OprahMag.com: “…This year, there’s a special twist. Because so many…
Dr. Libby Torchia’s pandemic breaking point came one morning in May, when she and her boss got into an argument over whether staff members should wear masks at the Columbus, Ohio, clinic where they worked. (“We should!” said Dr. Torchia, 32, a veterinarian.) Her colleagues knew just how to comfort her: Blast the Spice Girls’…