Crisis on the border, the last old juma of the Amazon, a bacterium that eats the skin and more to start the day.
It’s Tuesday! Ready to start your day? This is the express edition of our newsletter. If someone forwarded this email to you, you can do click here to receive it twice a week.
How do you know if it is time to go out again?
In a few days, the incessant hum of billions of cicadas will be heard throughout the United States. After 17 years underground, your internal regulation system and warm climate will tell these insects it’s time to surface.
Humans in quarantine do not have an internal – or external – clock that tells us with certainty when and how to go out into the world again.
Historians argue that sometimes the end of a pandemic has nothing to do with a public health decision but with collective exhaustion: “People can get so tired of restrictions and declare that the pandemic is over”.
And it is that, before the contradictory messages of the authorities, the chaotic deployment of vaccination campaigns and the emergence of new variants of the coronavirus, our compass to get out and regain some normalcy is a combination of impatience and caution. The truth is that we continue to have more questions than answers.
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–Going out also implies reuniting with our friends. However, do we really want to see you all again?
In a wonderful essay, Alex Williams observes that the pandemic has served as a kind of “social sieve” that has forced us to reevaluate Who do we really want to be close to?. The answer may confront us with uncomfortable truths.
Younger people may not miss their loved ones so much but the ones yet to know and love. For them, who wonder if it is safe to go back to the bars or kiss a stranger, the experts offer some guidelines.
If, as it happens to me, the prospect of living with other people again causes you a bit of anxiety, it is worth remembering that “nothing happens if you don’t feel ready to go back to socializing with others.” Maybe they will serve you these practical recommendations to decide with whom and how to socialize.
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–???? Let’s go to vaccines ????
Here are some news about COVID-19 that you might be interested in:
Before you go, enjoy this postcard:
Green light for normality?
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–Israel, which and vaccinated 54 percent of its population, has become a laboratory for post-pandemic life. Our correspondent Isabel Kershner reports what a society looks like in which it is possible to go to the theater, concerts, weddings and restaurants just by showing the vaccination “green pass”.
???? The gifts of the pandemic: three finished books ????
Dozens of subscribers to this newsletter have written to tell us about the joys of the pandemic year. Here are the testimonies, slightly condensed, of three literary confinements:
I had the privilege of keeping my mother in my city for several months. Living with her, and listening to her life story on those hot afternoons, allowed me to help her make a cherished dream come true: to write and publish a book, A beautiful gift and legacy to his daughters and sons, his 93-year-old grandchildren and great-grandchildren. –Celita Alamilla, Monterrey, Mexico.
The pandemic brought me my first book. Thanks to the amount of hours that resulted from not having to drop off my son from school and from his extracurricular classes, not being able to go shopping, I was able to finish and post the story I had been working on. I decided to self-publish it on Amazon. About 200 books have been sold and I have received quite a few positive comments. – Margarita González, 50 years old, Miami, United States.
I know that 2020 was a year of loss and pain (in my family we lost an uncle to COVID-19), but for me it also had two very positive things. First, I adopted a cat that makes me very happy. And secondly, because of the closure I had time to start and finish my first book, and it will be published this year! – Juliana Abaúnza Jaramillo, 33 years old, Bogotá, Colombia.
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