WaPo:
Ottawa police presence grows as interim chief vows ‘imminent’ action to ‘take back’ city from ‘Freedom Convoy’ protesters
The blockades at the U.S.-Canada border crossings that disrupted traffic and trade have been cleared. But in Ottawa, demonstrators protesting vaccine mandates and the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau continue to jam city streets.
Official urgency is growing to forestall a fourth weekend of raucous protests that authorities have called an illegal occupation.
“We are going to take back the entirety of the downtown core and every occupied space,” [Steve Bell, Ottawa’s interim police chief] told the city council late Wednesday.
The Bulwark:
These Are the Issues Swing Voters Care About (And the Ones They Don’t)
Hint: It’s not what they talk about on cable news.
So what are the issues that will really affect the election? Try these:
COVID: There’s no better indicator of national mood these days than whether COVID case numbers are rising or falling. If swing voters feel the pandemic is finally behind us, and we’ve entered a manageable endemic state, that will help Democrats. In January, all 13 swing voters said we should pivot from a pandemic footing to endemic. If we’re still arguing over vaccines, masks, remote learning, and lockdowns in mid-autumn while numbers spike again, Republicans will romp.
Crime: Eleven of 12 February respondents said crime in their neighborhoods is worse now than before the pandemic. They blame the virus for making people bored at home and empowering them to think they can commit crimes with impunity. They also blame lax district attorneys and prosecutors and laws that don’t punish enough. But one key factor stands out: It’s governors, mayors, and people who hold elective judicial offices whose fates are tied to rising crime. It is unlikely to affect congressional midterms because members of Congress don’t directly govern their constituents.
Fully overturning Roe v. Wade: If this happens as a result of the Mississippi case before the Supreme Court, most respondents told me it will push them towards the Democrats running in congressional elections. But it will also push some social conservatives towards Republicans. On balance, it would likely help Democrats electorally.
Fully embracing Trump’s claims about 2020: Ten February respondents told me they fit into the category of willing to vote for a GOP congressional candidate, but would change their mind if the candidate suggests that the 2020 election was stolen. Significantly, a couple of respondents say it matters how a GOP candidate embraces the claim. If one does it in a Trumpian way—shouting it from the stump—they will be put off. But if one shows some finesse, and balances the claim with other issues that matter, then it’s a much easier pill for them to swallow.
David Rothkopf/Daily Beast:
What Happens to Ukraine Matters to Every American
The global consequences of a Russian invasion will hit Americans where they live, too.
Unfortunately, the president’s speech very likely failed in one crucial respect. It did not make Americans care about Ukraine any more than they did before it was delivered. While pundits from both sides of the aisle praised the speech (including the right-leaning Washington Examiner), it probably lacked the arguments necessary to win average Americans’ support for the costs that a protracted conflict in Ukraine (or further escalating tensions with Russia) might bring.
One hurdle faced by the president in this regard is ignorance. A recent Morning Consult poll showed only about a third of Americans can even find Ukraine on a map. That matters in a practical sense because the same survey showed that half of those who could identify Ukraine were likely to support, for example, shipping arms to that country. Conversely, only 37 percent of those who could not find Ukraine on a map would support such actions. Similarly, support for strict sanctions was higher among the minority who could identify Ukraine than it was among the much larger percentage of the population that could not.
Gregg Gonsalves/ NY Times:
The Moral Danger of Declaring the Pandemic Over Too Soon
Nearly three decades later, we’re in the midst of a different pandemic. And we’ve gotten lucky again: We have vaccines for Covid-19, and they are also revolutionary. The pandemic has changed.
And once more, the desire to get back to normal and to declare the end of another pandemic, at least for some of us, is palpable after more than two years of death, suffering and hardship. Governors’ recent lifting of mask mandates reflects that. There’s a demobilization that many suggest is contingent on what might happen with new variants but could easily become permanent. Much, if not most, of the country has moved on or wants to move on from Covid-19.
It’s also clear that SARS-CoV-2 will be with us for the foreseeable future and that it, too, will follow the fault lines of social and economic inequality in America. It will persist in countries — likely many in Africa — where people have insufficient access to coronavirus vaccines. Some will blame low vaccination rates on the hesitancy of those nations’ residents rather than drug companies withholding their vaccine technology to allow for global scale-up.
Laura Spinney/Nature:
Pandemics disable people — the history lesson that policymakers ignore
Influenza, polio and more have shown that infections can change lives even decades later. Why the complacency over possible long-term effects of COVID-19?
From the beginning of this pandemic, people with disabilities understood that the disease would target them and would swell their ranks. Disability historians knew that there was a penumbra of ill health to previous mass-death events. Health economists warned that, as with tuberculosis, HIV and other diseases, morbidity would stalk mortality. Too many others have clung stubbornly to a belief that COVID-19 is something from which a minority of people die, and that most bounce back quickly and intact, with only their immune system updated. The longer the pandemic drags on, the harder it is to maintain that fiction.
Two years in, the debilitating tail of the pandemic has revealed itself in the form of tens of millions of people living with long COVID1. It is high time to ask whether attitudes to disability will change as a result. Will society grasp that the body can be altered for a long period — even permanently — by infectious disease, just as it seems to have accepted that the body politic will never be the same again? And will it make the necessary accommodations?
These questions have been asked before.
Pew Research:
COVID-19 Pandemic Continues To Reshape Work in America
As more workplaces reopen, most teleworkers say they are working from home by choice rather than necessity
Nearly two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, roughly six-in-ten U.S. workers who say their jobs can mainly be done from home (59%) are working from home all or most of the time. The vast majority of these workers (83%) say they were working from home even before the omicron variant started to spread in the United States, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. This marks a decline from October 2020, when 71% of those with jobs that could be done from home were working from home all or most of the time, but it’s still much higher than the 23% who say they teleworked frequently before the coronavirus outbreak.
Think about the implications for midtown city offices, the businesses that feed them, etc.
Jennifer Rubin/WaPo:
Biden is winning the war against covid. Is anyone noticing?
The White House has good reason to be wary of premature declarations of victory. It’s still possible that another dangerous variant emerges in the future, and the administration must remain prepared to respond quickly.
Nevertheless, Biden should be able to claim credit for a public health triumph. Victory is tempered by the stunning, heartbreaking loss of 900,000 lives to covid over the past two years. But when the pandemic recedes, deaths diminish, life returns to normal and prices recalibrate, there will be plenty to celebrate.