Newsweek 8/21-8/28/2020

1966 Newsweek interviewers polled over 2,000 Americans, divided roughly equally between white and Black. Two-thirds of Blacks surveyed agreed “things had improved since 1963,” but over half also thought progress was moving too slowly. Conversely, 70 percent of white Americans polled said that Blacks were “trying to move too fast.” This summer, a poll by NBC/WSJ found that 56 percent of all Americans agree that U.S. society is racist. It also found that since 2018, public opinion has shifted in favor of kneeling in protest during the national anthem and removing Confederate statues. 1982 For many, wrote Newsweek, “allergy is a year-round misery triggered by a bewildering array of substances from dust and dander to foods and face powder.” Treatment was “still imperfect,” but researchers were “developing more potent and palatable therapy to…

THE OFFICE IS RETURNING TO A LOCATION NEAR you this fall—and, no, we’re not talking about the employees of Dunder Mifflin. Although only an estimated one in four workers is physically back on the job this summer, that’s likely to change soon. In a recent CNBC survey, some 52 percent of companies with a majority of their staff now working remotely said they expect at least half of their employees to return to work in person by the start of September. After six months of attending Zoom meetings from the comfort of your couch, it will likely feel strange, and a little scary, to be back at your desk, particularly with COVID-19 still posing a major threat to public health. What precautions can you expect your employer to take? Do you…

“No words can describe the horror of the disaster that has hit Beirut.”—LEBANESE PRESIDENT MICHEL AOUN“UNTIL YOU SEE IT, YOU MIGHT ACTUALLY THINK THAT THIS IS A JOKE.”—ANDERSON COOPER ON PRESIDENT TRUMP’S AXIOS INTERVIEW“We’ve lost more than 150,000 Americans to COVID-19. Now is not the time to squeeze extravagant costs from hospitals, taxpayers, or families for a vial that costs only $1 to create.”—PENNSYLVANIA STATE TREASURER JOE TORSELLA ON GILEAD SETTING COVID TREATMENT PRICE AT $2-3K“We are in a new phase… This epidemic right now is different and it’s more widespread and it’s both rural and urban.”—DR. DEBORAH BIRX, WHITE HOUSE CORONAVIRUS TASK FORCE COORDINATOR“WE’RE NOT PLANNING ON GOING ANYWHERE.”—TikTok U.S. general manager Vanessa Pappas“THE GOAL IS TO WIN.”—KANYE WEST ON HIS PRESIDENTIAL BID“IF IT DOESN’T WORK OUT, YOU’RE NOT…

KIM JANDA LIKES TO SAY he has engineered immune cells in the lab capable of protecting the human body against virtually “everything that’s walked or crawled”—including some of the most toxic known diseases, including anthrax, botulinum neurotoxin, and ricin. When someone close to Janda developed a drug addiction, it was only natural that the Scripps Research Institute scientist would try to help. Might it be possible, he wondered, to create a pill or a shot that could protect addicts from the consequences of their slips, by neutralizing the drug before it could get them high or cause an overdose? That way, it might be possible to keep addicts from relapsing, which sometimes proves fatal. The need for such an intervention is more urgent than ever. In the more than two decades…

MORE THAN 20 MILLION AMERICANS STRUGGLE with alcohol or drug abuse, and finding truly helpful treatment can be an enormous challenge. As part of Newsweek’s commitment to reporting on all aspects of health care—most crucially, covering what new developments could mean for our readers—we partnered with global market research firm Statista Inc. to rank the best U.S. treatment facilities that focus on addiction. → NANCY COOPER, Global Editor-in-Chief METHODOLOGY → America’s “Best Addiction Treatment Centers 2020” highlights the nation’s top facilities based on quality of service, reputation and accreditation relative to in-state competition. Facilities in the 20 states with the highest number of addiction treatment centers, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), were included in the survey. • Inpatient/residential and long-term addiction treatment centers are included; centers that only…

LAST MONTH ANGEL OLSEN PERFORMED A SOLO show at the virtually empty Asheville Masonic Temple in Asheville, North Carolina. The show wasn’t in the singer-songwriter’s original plan for 2020 which had been a string of dates in North America and Europe in support of her then-latest album All Mirrors. Then the pandemic hit. So Olsen began doing a series of livestreamed performances. Despite the sea of unoccupied chairs, Olsen, 33, performed with her signature conviction and vulnerability—qualities that have endeared her to both fans and music critics for the last 10 years. Standing in front of a painted scenic backdrop with just her guitar and a microphone, she played her introspective and melancholic music and displayed her uncanny ability to shift between different guises, from a folk singer with a haunting…