Safety

The U.S. and U.K. Were the Two Best Prepared Nations to Tackle a Pandemic

The U.S. and U.K. Were the Two Best Prepared Nations to Tackle a Pandemic—What Went Wrong?

Post published:July 17, 2020
Post category:Articles Health History Politics Safety Science Society

By Gavin Yamey and Clare Wenham July 1, 2020 6:00 AM EDT Yamey is a physician and professor of global health and public policy at Duke University, where he directs the Center for Policy Impact in Global Health. Wenham is an assistant professor of global health policy at the London School of Economics, where she directs the master of science degree program in global health policy. On Oct. 24, 2019—45 days before the world’s first suspected case of COVID-19 was announced—a new “scorecard” was published called the Global Health Security Index. The scorecard ranked countries on how prepared they were to tackle a serious outbreak, based on a range of measures, including how quickly a country was likely to respond and how well its health care system would “treat the sick and protect health workers.” The U.S. was ranked first out of 195 nations, and the U.K. was ranked second.…

Gavin Newsom Declares California a ‘Nation-State’

Post published:April 10, 2020
Post category:Articles Economics Environment Health History Politics Regimes Safety Society

California this week declared its independence from the federal government’s feeble efforts to fight Covid-19 — and perhaps from a bit more. The consequences for the fight against the pandemic are almost certainly positive. The implications for the brewing civil war between Trumpism and America’s budding 21st-century majority, embodied by California’s multiracial liberal electorate, are less clear.

Gun Safety

The Smart Gun Doesn’t Exist for the Dumbest Reasons

Post published:April 16, 2019
Post category:Safety

Firearms makers have resisted Silicon Valley-sponsored digital innovation that could transform public safety. By Polly Mosendz , Austin Carr , and Neil Weinberg Smith & Wesson still feels the wound it suffered two decades ago when it decided to invent smart guns. The idea was to invest heavily in the development of personalized weapons that could be fired only by a single person: the gun’s owner. This was considered a nearly science-fictional proposition in the late 1990s, years before the world was filled with smartphones and finger sensors. But consumer backlash against the project drove the gunmaker to the verge of ruin, and Smith & Wesson recently told shareholders that the corporate bleeding touched off by this long-ago episode has never fully stopped. “Sales still suffer from this misstep,” the company said in a February filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The ordeal also didn’t lead to technical…