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The public’s waning concern over Covid is main reason cited for plunging stock prices and impending layoffs at Pfizer. The company bet big that people would sign up for annual Covid-19 mRNA boosters the way they do for flu shots. But people aren’t: On Friday, Dec. 15, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that only 18% of adults had gotten the latest Covid shot, compared with 42% who’d gotten a flu shot. (F.D. Flam, 12/19)

The military is currently experiencing a mental health crisis, with suicide now the second leading cause of death for service members. Brain injuries suffered by service members are a big part of this crisis, and new information has revealed the risk that service members face even if they don’t deploy. (Daniel Johnson, 12/18)

More than 50 years ago my parents took a big chance. They fell in love, got married and had three daughters, not knowing that they both carried the genetic trait for sickle cell disease. (Janice Blanchard, 12/18)

A big reason widespread predictions of a 2022 midterm election “red wave” for Republicans got it wrong was the failure of polling to pick up the power of abortion rights to motivate voters. The 2024 election could see a similar dynamic, with major benefits for Democrats. Consider the results six weeks ago in Ohio — a state that twice voted for Donald Trump — when amending the state constitution to establish a right to abortion was on the ballot. It passed easily. (Jennifer Rubin, 12/18)

We are abandoning women and girls caught in crises. They are in a meat grinder of war and the calamity of natural disaster. We have left them to anguished suffering and even death. I’m saying this with propulsive sorrow because once again the world is failing to pay for half of the sexual and reproductive health care needed in humanitarian settings, care that's so intrinsic to human life. (Ashley Judd, 12/18)

According to the 2020 Census, the second most common race in America, after white, is “Some other race,” an option chosen by an astonishing one out of seven people. The nationwide failure to accurately measure the variety of races and ethnicities that make up the U.S. population makes underrepresented groups invisible in public health data, resulting in policies informed by inadequate or misleading information. (Juan Carlos Gonzalez Jr., 12/19)