The Week Magazine July 29, 2022

The damn thing finally got me. After two and a half years of dodging the coronavirus, my wife and I gambled on an overseas trip and came back with Covid. We were probably infected at one of the airports, where we were trapped for hours in closely packed throngs of mostly unmasked people, who were sneezing, coughing, and braying with no concern about spreading infection. As we wave the white flag of de facto surrender, the BA.5 variant is surging, with known new infections up 20 percent in two weeks, 40,000 hospitalized, and deaths creeping back up to 3,000 a week. When immersed in aerosolized clouds of this hyper-infectious variant for prolonged periods, even masked people are at high risk. Despite my two boosters and excellent overall health, Covid made…

What happened President Biden and congressional Democrats scrambled this week to salvage the remnants of their domestic agenda, after Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) effectively killed a package of tax increases on the wealthy and corporations, a boost in health-care spending, and a program to cut climate-change emissions by 50 percent by 2030. Since last December, when Manchin scuttled a scaled-down, $2 trillion version of Biden’s ambitious Build Back Better social-spending bill, he and Senate Democrats had negotiated to create a more modest alternative. But last week Manchin infuriated Democrats by pulling the plug on the effort, saying that due to rising inflation he wouldn’t support any climate spending or tax increases. The support of the red-state centrist Democrat, whose state remains dependent on fossil fuel companies and who owns a…

What happened President Biden returned from the Middle East last weekend after reasserting U.S. interests in the region but receiving no immediate promises to increase oil production, support Ukraine against the Russian invasion, or form a defensive alliance against Iran. Biden’s first Mideast trip as president included a stop in Saudi Arabia, a repressive oil-rich state he one vowed to make a “pariah” for its human rights lapses in 2020. In Jeddah, Biden told the leaders of nine Arab nations that the U.S. “will not walk away” from the region “and leave a vacuum to be filled by China, Russia, or Iran.” He also repeated assurances he made in Israel (see Best Columns: International, p.15) that preventing a nuclear-armed Iran remains a U.S. priority. “No matter what,” Biden said,…

Opened just last year, Detroit’s 27th Letter Books was happy to take a series of orders for $35,000 worth of expensive medical and engineering textbooks. But in May, the four co-owners learned the buyer had used a stolen credit card. Their insurer suggested they close shop. Instead, 27th Letter turned to its neighbors for help—hoping its weekly open mic nights, book clubs, and story-time sessions had made an impression. Indeed they had, and the shop earned more money in a fundraiser than it had lost in the scam. Nicholas Bostic was driving in Lafayette, Ind., last week when he spotted a house engulfed in flames. The 25-year-old realized he didn’t have his phone with him to call 911, so he ran inside himself and discovered four children upstairs. Bostic escorted…

“We knew it would be awful,” said Laura Bassett in Jezebel, but only a month after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the horror stories are already “worse than anyone imagined.” The ghoulish landscape of this new “dystopia” became clear with the news that a 10-year-old Ohio girl, pregnant after being raped, had to seek medical care in Indiana because her own state bans abortion with no rape exception. Right-wing pundits and politicians rushed to dismiss the story as a liberal hoax—promptly changing the subject when it was revealed the girl’s rapist had been arrested. Meanwhile, in Texas, a hospital fearing prosecution refused to treat a woman with an ectopic pregnancy until she suffered a rupture and nearly died. All of this was “utterly predictable,” said Michelle Goldberg…

Good week for: Gingers, after Britain’s Showcase Cinemas waived admission costs for people with red hair amid a 100-degree heat wave to help “ensure they stay protected from the sun.” Payback, after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan kept a fidgeting Russian President Vladimir Putin waiting alone for 50 uncomfortable seconds as cameras whirred during a meeting in Iran. Putin had done the same to Erdogan in 2020. Playing catch-up, after Delta Air Lines adopted a “creative” solution to massive baggage problems at London’s Heathrow Airport by packing the cabin of an empty passenger jet with 1,000 pieces of lost luggage and flying them from London to the U.S., so they could be distributed to frustrated customers. Bad week for: Persisting, after Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said Donald Trump called…