Mitchell S Jackson/Runner’s world:
Let’s not forget about everything else. There’s other news and opinion interspersed with Nu (the new variant) information.
NY Times:
Andrea Grimes/Dame:
“Gauteng is one of the nine provinces of South Africa. The name in Sotho-Tswana languages means "place of gold". Situated on the Highveld, Gauteng is the smallest province in South Africa. Though Gauteng accounts for only 1.5% of the country's land area, it is home to more than a quarter of its population. “ Wikipedia
Jim Tankersley/NY Times:
TPM:
Katelyn Polantz/CNN:
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor/New Yorker:
Twelve Minutes and a Life
Ahmaud Arbery went out for a jog and was gunned down in the street. How running fails Black America
Let me acknowledge that I am one of the rarest of Americans, one otherwise known as a Black Oregonian. As such, I feel compelled to share a truth about my home state: It’s white. I’m talking banned-Blacks-in-its-state-constitution white. At the time that Bowerman was inspiring Eugene residents to trot miles around their neighborhoods in sweatpants and running shoes, Eugene was a stark 97 percent white. One could argue that the overwhelming whiteness of jogging today may be, in part, a product of Eugene’s demographics. But if we’re keeping it 100, the monolithic character of running can be credited to the ways in which it’s been marketed and to the systemic forces that have placed it somewhere on a continuum between impractical extravagance and unaffordable hazard for scores of people who ain’t white.
Let’s not forget about everything else. There’s other news and opinion interspersed with Nu (the new variant) information.
JUST IN: A new coronavirus variant identified in South Africa is the "most worrying" yet, a senior U.K. government health adviser says https://t.co/7oM5eE6Bfc
— Bloomberg (@business) November 26, 2021
NY Times:
What scientists know about the new variant, B.1.1.529 [aka Nu variant]
The new variant, B.1.1.529, has a “very unusual constellation of mutations,” with more than 30 in the spike protein alone, according to Tulio de Oliveira, director of the KwaZulu-Natal Research and Innovation Sequencing Platform.
On the ACE2 receptor — the protein that helps to create an entry point for the coronavirus to infect human cells — the new variant has 10 mutations. In comparison, the Beta variant has three and the Delta variant two, Mr. de Oliveira said.
The variant shares similarities with the Lambda and Beta variants, which are associated with an innate evasion of immunity, said Richard Lessells, an infectious diseases specialist at the KwaZulu-Natal Research and Innovation Sequencing Platform.
“All these things are what give us some concern that this variant might have not just enhanced transmissibility, so spread more efficiently, but might also be able to get around parts of the immune system and the protection we have in our immune system,” Dr. Lessells said.
Everyone keeps talking about covid becoming endemic, but as I listen to the conversation, it’s becoming more & more clear to me that very few of you know what “endemic” means. So here’s a thread on how pandemics end. pic.twitter.com/uuYinUcynb
— Dr Ellie Murray, ScD (@EpiEllie) October 1, 2021
Andrea Grimes/Dame:
WELCOME TO PITY PARTY UNIVERSITY
The new University of Austin, announced earlier this month on Twitter by writer Bari Weiss, describes itself as a necessary and urgent counter to what its founders describe as the “illiberalism and censoriousness” currently dominating the American university system. Someday very soon, university backers promise, the project—“UATX” is its cutesy initialism, at least until the actual University of Texas at Austin comes at the organization with a copyright suit—will be housed at an actual brick-and-mortar location in Central Texas, become accredited, confer degrees, and, most importantly, provide an academic home for ideas that are, they say, simply too hot for the modern academic institution.
That those too-hot ideas—among them the celebration of free-market capitalism, eugenics and white supremacy, xenophobia, and transphobia, per the résumés of some of UATX’s founding trustees and advisors—are also cultural hegemonies championed by the richest and most powerful people and institutions thriving today in the Western world does not seem to be a problem for these self-styled revolutionaries. And why should it? This dippy bunch is not actually engaging in a genuine paradigm shift in the ivory tower; think of it more like the University of Pity Party at Austin.
Because this variant (B.1.1.529) can be detected by a normal qPCR due to deletion at Spike position 69-70 (like Alpha), it will make it easy for the world to track it. We estimate that 90% of the cases in Gauteng (at least 1000 a day are this variant, due to qPCR proxy testing) pic.twitter.com/QFU7javFA9
— Tulio de Oliveira (@Tuliodna) November 25, 2021
“Gauteng is one of the nine provinces of South Africa. The name in Sotho-Tswana languages means "place of gold". Situated on the Highveld, Gauteng is the smallest province in South Africa. Though Gauteng accounts for only 1.5% of the country's land area, it is home to more than a quarter of its population. “ Wikipedia
Jim Tankersley/NY Times:
The Inflation Miscalculation Complicating Biden’s Agenda
Administration officials blame the Delta variant for a prolonged stretch of consumer spending on goods, rather than services, pushing up prices and creating a conundrum for the Fed.
Mr. Biden’s advisers, along with economists and some scientists, believed that widespread availability of coronavirus vaccinations would speed the return to prepandemic life, one in which people dined out and filled hotel rooms for conferences, weddings and other in-person events.
Instead, the emergence of the Delta variant of the virus over the summer and fall slowed that return to normalcy. Americans stayed at home, where they continued to buy goods online, straining global supply chains and sending the price of almost everything in the economy skyward.
2. Kids under 10 now have the highest case rate of any age group in Vermont, and that's driven, unsurprisingly, by kids in school - you can see how kids aged 5 to 11 have seen their case numbers rise much more steeply than older or younger kids in recent weeks. pic.twitter.com/PC95pnpwk4
— James Surowiecki (@JamesSurowiecki) November 24, 2021
TPM:
Where Things Stand: Fauci Is Getting Increasingly Annoyed With A Few Specific Conspiracy Theorists
The nation’s top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci has been the target of right-wing ire for some time, as unhinged conspiracy theories about his handling of the COVID-19 outbreak in the U.S. have seeped from far-right corners of the internet to the chambers of Congress. While Donald Trump was president, he mostly shrugged off the bad-faith criticism — which ranged from bizarre takes about his mental state due to the CDC’s evolving public health guidance in the early days of the pandemic to debunked conspiracy theories about his supposed role in the origins of the coronavirus.
But, after fielding nearly two years of death threats and getting a personal security detail to protect himself and his family, Fauci has taken a different tone in recent months. He’s pointedly taken aim at Republicans and those in the right-wing media who have spread disinfo about the virus for the better part of the last two years.
His latest target: Tucker Carlson.
During an interview with MSNBC this week, Fauci went after his critics, accusing them of “killing people” as they “weaponize lies” about basic public health measures needed to pull the U.S. out of this pandemic. He named Carlson specifically.
"When the city of Charleston announced this week that it had reached 99.7% compliance with its vaccine mandate, few should have been surprised," our editorial board writes.https://t.co/QNGw14nZuy
— The Post and Courier (@postandcourier) November 26, 2021
Katelyn Polantz/CNN:
Trump argues January 6 committee could damage the presidency in quest for his records
Former President Donald Trump is accusing the House select committee investigating January 6 of being so aggressive in its pursuit of his White House records that it could permanently damage the presidency, according to a court filing from his legal team on Wednesday.
Trump is appealing a lower court's decision that his records should be turned over to the committee. The Biden administration and the US House are unified in opposing the former President's efforts to keep the records secret, arguing that more than 700 pages including White House call logs and notes from his top advisers should be available to the probe.
A federal appeals court will hear oral arguments on November 30 in the historic case.
NEW: detailed thread on Europe’s winter wave and the contrast vs UK What’s happening? Why the difference? Can boosters help? First, the wave itself: cases, hospitalisations & deaths surging in Europe, several western countries shooting past UK ? Story: https://t.co/7Kqn8eTkoG pic.twitter.com/rtj633K97j
— John Burn-Murdoch (@jburnmurdoch) November 24, 2021
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor/New Yorker:
There is a new variant of concern, soon to be called Nu:“Wokeness” Is Not the Democrats’ Problem
Some in the Party chastise the left for driving away moderate voters, but they fail to consider why their own base isn’t turning out in larger numbers.
The Democratic Party has not been captured by the left and forced into espousing an agenda of political correctness. It does, however, face the problem of having made big promises to its core constituencies—including African Americans—that it has been unable to fulfill. Moreover, the Party is raising doubts about whether it’s capable of delivering the kinds of economic and political reforms that can radically improve voters’ quality of life. Last January, when Biden took office, his approval rating among Black voters stood at eighty-one per cent. That was the high point; by early October, it had dropped to forty-three per cent. Even as census reports indicate that the proportion of eligible nonwhite voters in Virginia has grown, according to exit polls, their participation has shrunk since 2017. Participation among eligible voters under thirty in Virginia this year, compared with last year’s Presidential election, fell by more than half, from fifty-six per cent to twenty-five per cent. In the week before the election, a Monmouth University poll showed forty-nine per cent of Republican voters saying that they were more enthusiastic than usual to vote in the election, compared with only twenty-six per cent of Democrats. Obama understood this as a possibility when he campaigned in the state. In a speech at Virginia Commonwealth University, he said, “When you’ve got someone in your corner who has shown that they will work for you, who has a track record of accomplishments, then you have to go out there and work for them. Not because everything suddenly is going to be perfect but because it’s going to be better.”
UK going right ahead and banning travel from countries with known/suspected spread of B.1.1.529 https://t.co/KYdWL03LTc
— Dr Ed (@notdred) November 25, 2021
BREAKING: Israel bans travel from South Africa, Lesotho, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Namibia and Eswatini due to new coronavirus variant
— BNO Newsroom (@BNODesk) November 25, 2021