The pandemic will end when countries stop hoarding vaccines
Omicron. Omicron. Omicron. It seems like every story is about COVID. Text messages from friends are just updates on their rapid tests, and we are all wondering if it's a runny nose because of the cold? Or like... do we have COVID? So for today we are leading with a story about COVID. Sorry.
COVID pandemic will end when countries stop hoarding vaccines
By Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
As 2021 draws to a close, it’s a good time to look back, and to look forward. This has been another tough year, but there’s also a lot to be grateful for. While no country is out of the woods from the pandemic, we have many new tools to prevent and treat COVID-19.
Nearly 9 billion doses of vaccine have been administered globally, saving millions of lives. New treatments have been developed, which should dramatically increase access and lower mortality.
But narrow nationalism and vaccine hoarding by some countries have undermined equity, and created the ideal conditions for the emergence of the omicron variant.
And the longer inequity continues, the higher the risks of this virus evolving in ways we can’t prevent or predict.
Today's Editorial Cartoon
Don't forget the opioid epidemic as we battle COVID-19 pandemic
By Sen. Shelley Moore Capito
The United States passed grim milestone after grim milestone over the course of the coronavirus pandemic. People were forced to live in the shadows, exist in isolation and were oftentimes driven to the brink of despair.
As a result, our nation passed a different, albeit equally heartbreaking milestone: a record number of Americans dying as a result of a drug overdose.
Between April 2020 and April 2021, drugs – mostly synthetic opioids such as fentanyl – took the lives of more than 100,000 of our sons and daughters, loved ones and neighbors, community members and friends. America’s other epidemic – our addiction epidemic – is not confined to a particular subset of our population. No, the plague of drug overdose deaths does not discriminate.
What we know about why people are killed by police
By Rashawn Ray
Recent killings by officers, along with murder charges (such as those for Meade and Potter) and convictions (such as the conviction of Derek Chauvin for killing George Floyd) may give the impression that officers are often held accountable for unjustified killings. But less than 2% of officers are charged with murder despite the approximately 1,000 people killed in a police shooting on average every year.
Every week, a police officer kills someone during a traffic stop who does not have a weapon and is not under investigation for a violent crime.
Among Black men like Goodson, Wright and Floyd, the statistics are even more dire. Roughly “1 in every 1,000 (Black) men can expect to be killed by police,” according to a study published in 2019 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.
Other columns to read today
- Biden's speech on COVID wasn't inspiring at a time we need leadership
- As a gay pastor, I know the trick to navigating family holidays
- Biden's omicron battle plan: At-home tests, hospital support, vaccines
- Joe Manchin reminds Biden that Democrats need him to build back better
Columns on qualified immunity
We are doing a series examining the issue of qualified immunity. For more on the series read here.
- Roadside assistance caught the cop who killed my cousin. Justice shouldn't be so rare.
- 'I had seen that smirk before': Vestiges of slavery still haunt our legal system
- How the KKK Act could help protect and enforce constitutional rights for all of us
- A bad cop sexually assaulted me. Qualified immunity protected him and his boss.
This newsletter was compiled by Jaden Amos.