12.07.20 (Wired.com)
As the news keeps evolving, we’re here to bring you the most reliable coverage of the coronavirus pandemic.
| Biden announces top public health nominees, South Korea implements new measures, and the pandemic offers pathways to change. Here’s what you should know: Headlines Biden taps nominees to lead Health and Human Services and the CDC President-elect Joe Biden has announced his picks for several key public health postings in his administration. Xavier Becerra, California’s attorney general and leader of a legal campaign to protect the Affordable Care Act, has been tapped to lead the Health and Human Services Department, and Harvard Medical School professor Rochelle Walensky has been nominated as the director of the CDC. If confirmed, both will assume massive roles during the nation’s greatest public health crisis in the last century. South Korea implements new testing, tracing, and distancing measures as cases rise South Korea is expanding its testing, tracing, and social distancing measures in response to a steep uptick in cases. Though infections were below 50 per day for much of the summer, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency reported 615 new cases on Sunday and 8,311 patients in quarantine, the most ever for the country. President Moon Jae-in has even called for deploying the military and more people from the public service to help expand testing. The trauma of this pandemic raises questions about how society can and should change With vaccines on the horizon and the end of the pandemic just barely in sight, people are starting to ask: Who will we be when this is all over? Some psychologists underscore that the collective and individual traumas of this year can create the opportunity to think more deliberately about how our world can and should change. This pandemic has accelerated innovation, but it has also highlighted inequities that have long plagued our society, giving us a starting place for exactly where and how we can do better. |