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The most powerful forms of deception rely more on emotional manipulation and misdirection than outright lies. That’s what I’ve observed in nearly a year of research into the murky world of medical misinformation. Take the episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast that prompted music legends like Joni Mitchell and Neil Young to remove their music from Spotify, where Rogan is the platform’s most popular podcaster. The guest on that episode, medical researcher Robert Malone, created a distorted picture of alleged vaccination dangers with a combination of anecdote, cherry-picking, innuendo, and wildly improbable speculation — not deliberate lies. (Faye Flam, 2/22)

Amid hopeful signs that maybe — just maybe — the pandemic has peaked here with the help of vaccines, a depressing number of people, mainly in poorer countries, still has yet to receive a single shot. With an unpredictable virus and its variants that show little respect for international borders, that shortfall could come back to haunt more fortunate countries like the United States. Fortunately, a historic mobilization of public and private sector actors and actions has led to 4.9 billion people around the world having received at least one shot, according to the World Health Organization. (2/22)

Boris Johnson followed Denmark on Monday in scrapping most Covid restrictions for England. His “living with Covid” plan shifts the emphasis from government intervention to personal responsibility. The prime minister announced that from Thursday, the government will no longer require people to self-isolate if they’ve had a positive Covid test. The colossally expensive contact-tracing program will be scrapped, and the unvaccinated will not have to self-isolate on coming into contact with someone who has Covid. (Therese Raphael, 2/22)

Local governments are relaxing pandemic restrictions at a dizzying pace, removing mask requirements and vaccine entry rules for businesses. Politicians are generally pushing for a return to normalcy. But for one group, change is not forthcoming: children. The removal of mask mandates in schools is likely weeks, if not months, away in some parts of the country. Quarantine and testing requirements remain in many child-care and school settings, even as they disappear from adult life. My burning question is simply: Why? I can imagine three arguments in favor of a kids-last approach, none of which I find convincing. (Emily Oster, 2/21)

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is expected to announce more relaxed guidance on indoor masking as soon as this week, on the heels of decisions by Democratic leaders in states from New York to California to loosen mask restrictions. These policies ignore the reality that 18 million Americans under age 5 are ineligible for coronavirus vaccines -- including my own two daughters. Until vaccines are available to every American, ending mask mandates in public places is irresponsible and immoral. Doing so will endanger the health of young children and further drive parents to make impossible choices -- like whether to go to work or the grocery store and risk bringing home a virus that might harm their children. Giving privileged Americans license to act without regard for the health and well-being of the vulnerable will also take us far from our country's original ethos, creating the kind of society that can no longer solve our collective problems. (Kara Alaimo, 2/21)

Think back to late June 2021, when there was containment of the American COVID-19 pandemic with fewer than 12,000 new cases a day and a total of 15,000 patients in the hospital. There was a declaration of independence from the virus on July 4, just as the Delta variant was starting its exponential growth. A major surge ensued, which was followed by yet another one with the Omicron variant, peaking with nearly 160,000 people hospitalized and almost 2,700 deaths per day — the most deaths since vaccinations became widely available. (Eric J. Topol, 2/21)

Pandemic prediction is hard to do. That’s one of the lessons to be taken from Covid-19. Unlike the weather, which depends largely on physical factors (I’ll leave climate change out of this for now), the surge and ebb of Covid-19 depends on biological and human factors. There are three main axes of pandemic prediction: the virus, immunity, and human adaptation. These axes map out a large potential space, the contours of which will vary from community to community — geographically, demographically, and socially. Yet there is one prediction I feel confident in making now: U.S. hospitals are not ready for the new normal. (Céline Gounder, 2/21)