We highlight the approaching 800,000 deaths from COVID-19 in the United States and the sentencing of Jimmy Lai in Hong Kong.
America is approaching 800,000 deaths
As the pandemic approaches the end of its second year, the US faces more than 800,000 coronavirus deaths.
No group has suffered more than older Americans. Seventy-five percent of US deaths are 65 or older. Covid-19 has killed one in 100 Americans in this age group. For people under 65, the ratio is closer to 1 in 1400.
Increased risk for older people has dominated the lives of many, in part because friends and family are trying to protect them. “They seem to forget about you,” said Pat Hayashi, 65, from San Francisco. “During the pandemic, isolation and loneliness worsened. We have lost our freedom and lost our services. “
Many have seen other members of their communities return to normal, and companies are pushing to get people back into jobs. “There are all these ways – hidden, explicit, direct, indirect – we are not taking into account the needs of older people in this pandemic,” said Louise Aronson, geriatrician and author of Old Age.
Current data: Vaccines are widely available in the United States, and older Americans have been vaccinated much more frequently than younger adults: 87 percent of people age 65 and older have been fully vaccinated. But over the past two months, the proportion of older people dying from Covid has increased. More than 1,200 people in the United States die from the virus every day, most of them 65 and over.
Here are the latest updates and maps of the pandemic.
In other developments:
Jimmy Lai sentenced to prison
A Hong Kong court on Monday sentenced former media tycoon Jimmy Lai and seven other prominent Democratic activists to jail for their role last year in an attempt to mark the Tiananmen Square crackdown.
The sentences ranged from four to 14 months. In statements read in court ahead of the sentencing, Lai and his co-defendants made it clear that they did not regret defying the government ban.
Chow Hangtung, one of the defendants, issued an impassioned statement condemning the government for using public health considerations to justify what she called explicitly political persecution. “Let’s not kid ourselves that it’s all about Covid-19,” she said.
Background: Activists gathered on June 4 last year before the annual vigil to commemorate the victims of Beijing’s crackdown on protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989. The government has banned the meeting, which has been held for three decades, citing concerns over the coronavirus.
What’s next: Lai and the other defendants individually face charges under the National Security Act that could be sentenced to life in prison.
Big meeting between the UAE and Israel
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed met for four hours – two hours longer than planned – on the Israeli leader’s first official visit to the UAE, in the latest sign of deepening ties between Israel and parts of the Arab world.
“I am flying back to Israel, very optimistic that this relationship can serve as an example of how we can make peace here in the Middle East,” Bennett said in a video released shortly before he left for Israel.
The couple did not discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, according to an Israeli official, who declined to comment on which regional geopolitical issues were mentioned.
Reporters were barred from the meeting, but photographs show the leaders chatting and laughing informally. According to a joint statement, the leaders have pledged to establish a joint Emirati-Israeli research and development fund and a business council.
Main problems: Iran remains a serious threat to the security of the Emirates, and the Emirati share Israel’s fears that Iran will receive a nuclear bomb. But their country is Iran’s major trading partner and prefers a less confrontational approach than Israel. The couple said in a statement that they also discussed trade, economics, climate and food security.
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Enjoy your virtual life
Given both technological progress and the business behind it, we are more likely than our predecessors to actually embrace the perspective of life in the virtual world, according to David J. Chalmers, a philosopher at New York University. “It doesn’t have to be about dystopian beliefs,” he told The Times in an interview about his forthcoming book Reality +.
“My analogy would be more like we are moving to a new desert country and creating a society,” Chalmers said.
In addition, he added, the recent evolution of virtual reality means we need to take more seriously the age-old philosophical debate that we are already living in a simulation, which could be graceful.
“Finding that we are in a simulation also tells us that there is potentially a reality outside of the reality we experience, which is the reality of the simulated world,” Chalmers said, “and who knows what’s going on there?”
In the near future, Facebook is trying to stake out the metaverse for itself. The term’s author, Neil Stevenson, told Kara Swisher that we need to unionize so that virtual worlds don’t turn into dystopias.
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