The Atlantic Daily: 4 Unusual Developments From This Week
Outrage over vaccine passports, Amazon’s weirdly aggressive Twitter campaign, and more
Every weekday evening, our editors guide you through the biggest stories of the day, help you discover new ideas, and surprise you with moments of delight. Subscribe to get this delivered to your inbox.
Let’s talk through just a few unusual developments from this topsy-turvy week. Then: Is it COVID-19 or just your spring allergies acting up?
1. The sudden conservative outrage over vaccine passports
The party is prioritizing cultural scuffles over property rights, David Frum argues: “With guns, with COVID-19, with tech, the new post-Trump message from the post-Trump GOP is: Private property is socialism; state expropriation is freedom.”
2. Amazon’s weirdly aggressive Twitter campaign
“No matter the outcome of the Alabama unionization effort, the implications of Amazon’s turn toward social-media hostility will reverberate longer and more broadly,” Ian Bogost argues.
3. The city with a surprisingly high rate of vaccine hesitancy
Timothy McLaughlin writes from Hong Kong: “An abundance of vaccines, officials are discovering, means very little when trust is in such short supply.”
4. Baseball’s unusually quiet stadiums on opening day
And Mets fans will need to wait a little longer to see their team at bat: Its matchup with the Nationals was postponed over COVID-19 concerns. It’s more bad luck for the best worst team in sports. But do Americans really want to watch big-money athletics during a pandemic anyway?
One question, answered: Is it COVID-19 or just your spring allergies acting up?
Jacob Stern reports on how to tell the difference:
Though not nearly so COVID-like as flu symptoms, allergy symptoms are alike enough to prompt a moment—or more than a moment—of panic. Thankfully, COVID-19 and seasonal allergies each have distinct symptoms that can help differentiate the one from the other. Most symptomatic COVID-19 patients develop a fever, and some have diarrhea or nausea, which allergy sufferers never do. Allergies, by contrast, can cause sneezing, a scratchy throat, and red, itchy eyes, which COVID-19 rarely does. (The Mayo Clinic and a number of other hospitals have put together helpful charts comparing the symptoms of COVID-19, allergies, a cold, and the flu.)
Tonight’s Atlantic-approved isolation activity:
Buy new socks. “This is sad, but even the smallest novelties help,” Paul Bisceglio, our Health, Science, and Technology editor, writes. “I ordered two pairs the other week just to have something to feel excited about.”
Today’s break from the news:
A scientific mystery is solved: We finally know what killed dozens of eagles in Arkansas, 25 years later.
Every weekday evening, our editors guide you through the biggest stories of the day, help you discover new ideas, and surprise you with moments of delight. Subscribe to get this delivered to your inbox.