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Public health institutions are facing the challenge of a lifetime as social media breeds misinformation and disinformation about everything from Covid vaccines to climate change. (Lisa Jarvis, 3/15)

When the Alabama Supreme Court found on February 16 that frozen embryos are protected by the state’s wrongful-death law in the same way that embryos inside a mother’s womb are, it set off one of those depressing and familiar 21st-century political firestorms. (Yuval Levin and O. Carter Snead, 3/15)

For decades, the U.S. healthcare system has been weighed down by frontline worker shortages, waste and inefficiencies. Organizations have struggled to tap into the massive volume of unstructured data that lives in silos and engage effectively with their most important stakeholders – patients. (Keith Figlioli, 3/15)

It’s hard to explain how it feels to be behind an artillery piece when it fires. First is the roaring sound that no movie can ever match. Then comes the sight: the gun jerking violently, smoke billowing from its tube as the crew scrambles to load the next round. Finally, there’s the physical feeling of the explosion that threw a hundred-pound shell for miles, knocking the breath out of you and causing your bones to shudder. Each firing left me with a dull pain in my head, like I had just gotten hit in the face. But then it would fire again. And again. And again. So imagine experiencing this feeling 1,000 to 5,000 times in the span of less than a year, as some service members on gun crews in Iraq and Syria did. (Daniel S. Johnson, 3/17)

Few workers draw more sympathy and appreciation than the caregivers who tend to the daily needs of elderly people unable to cope by themselves. Working in homes or institutions, they help them eat, dress and bathe. The job is physically strenuous, emotionally demanding and essential to an aging population. But the pay is low — a median hourly $17.19 for nursing assistants. (Virginia Postrel, 3/17)