Author: Lance Garrison
May 14, 2024 – So far, the unexpected jump of bird flu to cattle has not emerged as a new human flu pandemic. Yes, a dairy worker got pink eye this year after being infected, but a larger threat to all of us has not yet materialized.That doesn’t mean experts are not keeping a close eye on the situation. WebMD & CDC Live Briefing on Bird Flu 2024 Bird Flu Outbreak — What to Know Join WebMD and federal health experts to learn more about the dangers bird flu may pose. Live on WebMD.com from 12 p.m. to 1 p.m.…
To the Editor:Re “Moral Dilemmas in Medical Care” (Opinion guest essay, May 8):It is unsettling, and dismaying, to read Dr. Carl Elliott’s account of moral lapses continuing to exist, if not thrive, in medical education. As a neurology resident in the early 1970s, I was assigned a patient who was scheduled to have psychosurgery.He was a prisoner who had murdered a nurse in a hospital basement, and the surgery to remove part of his brain was considered by the department to be a therapeutic and even forward-looking procedure. This was despite its being widely discredited, and involving a prisoner who…
Search for “high-functioning anxiety” on TikTok, and look what happens. “Three signs of high- functioning anxiety.” “With high-functioning anxiety —” “Five things you don’t realize you’re doing because of your high- functioning anxiety.” More than 10,000 videos with millions of young viewers. “No. 1, you tend to have extremely high standards for yourself and might even identify as being a perfectionist.” “You’re nice and easy to be around, but you people-please too much.” Many are made by professional clinicians, and they mean well. But here’s the thing. High-functioning anxiety isn’t a medical diagnosis. It’s a hashtag. “No one cares about…
Chris Gibbs, a farmer who raises soybeans, corn and cattle, spent much of his adult life as a leader of the Republican Party in Shelby County, Ohio. He rose from vice chair of the local executive committee to party chairman, a role he served in for seven years, until 2015. Last fall he was elected to a far tougher job: chairman of the Democratic Party in Shelby County, where registered Republicans outnumber Democrats more than eight to one.The story of his political conversion offers a glimmer of hope to Democrats in otherwise inhospitable terrain and a possible path forward in…
Many interpreted Harvey Weinstein’s conviction and sentencing in 2020 as a painfully overdue moment of reckoning for powerful, sexually abusive men like Mr. Weinstein. As the district attorney who brought the charges against Mr. Weinstein, I certainly felt so.That is why I was surprised and troubled when New York’s highest state court, the Court of Appeals, recently reversed Mr. Weinstein’s convictions on two grounds. The first ground was that the trial judge erred by allowing the prosecution to introduce testimony from three women Mr. Weinstein had allegedly sexually assaulted but were not part of the indictment, or so-called Molineux evidence.…
Soaring rates of anxiety and depression among adolescents. Medical groups declaring a “national emergency.” The surgeon general calling for an “all of society” response to a “devastating” mental health crisis among young people.By all indications, kids these days are in rough shape, giving additional urgency to Mental Health Awareness Month, which began on May 1. But in the Opinion video above, Lucy Foulkes, an academic psychologist at Oxford University, argues that the problem may not be a lack of awareness but rather too much.Amid an enormous societal push to destigmatize mental illness and encourage more conversation about emotions, young people…
For many millions of Americans, time seemed to move differently under President Donald Trump.There was no breathing room — no calm in the eye of the storm. From beginning to end, from the “American carnage” inaugural on Jan. 20, 2017 to the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, it felt as though the country was in constant flux, each week a decade. We lurched from dysfunction to chaos and back again, eventually crashing on the shores of the nation’s worst domestic crisis since the Great Depression.For many, if not most, of these Americans, the choice this November is…
When President Biden signed a bill requiring that TikTok be divested from its Chinese owner, ByteDance, members of Congress hailed the law as a blow to Beijing. They shouldn’t be so quick to celebrate. The law would at best partially mitigate the hazards of misinformation or the risks to national security posed by China. The Communist Party, meanwhile, looks forward to a propaganda windfall, prizing off Washington’s mantle as champion of a free and open internet.America’s moral authority on maintaining open internet platforms will look very different if it bans TikTok. After years of enduring American sermonizing about free speech…
David French, a Times columnist, hosted a written online conversation with Rebecca Roiphe, a former assistant district attorney in the Manhattan district attorney’s office, and Ken White, a former federal prosecutor, to discuss Donald Trump’s Manhattan trial and Michael Cohen’s testimony.David French: Let’s start with a big-picture question. I have less trial experience than either of you, but this deep into a trial, I always had a sense of the momentum of the case, of who is winning and who is losing. Who is more pleased with the course of the trial so far — the prosecution or the defense?Rebecca…
John McEntee — who started out carrying Donald Trump’s bags and rose to become, in the chaotic final days of Trump’s presidency, his most important enforcer — has a TikTok account. In a video he published last week, he explains how he likes to keep “fake Hollywood money” in his car to give to homeless people. “Then when they go to use it, they get arrested, so I’m actually like helping clean up the community,” he said.With his boyish face and slicked-back hair, McEntee, the former director of the White House Office of Presidential Personnel and a man likely to…