Covid-19 is exposing America’s resilience—and vulnerability

IT IS HARD to pick the best illustration of the administration’s failings on covid-19. There have been so many. Having been in the crowd to hear Donald Trump dismiss the virus as the Democrats’ “new hoax” three weeks ago, Lexington is still grappling with the president’s denialism. The predictable result, surveys this week suggest, is that Republican voters are much less likely than Democrats to consider the virus dangerous or to take any measure to avoid contracting it. Given that they also tend to be older, this threatens to bring a dramatic new meaning to the hoary trope about Republicans voting against their own interests…

Doing the Dirty Work: Resilience Workers Deserve Better

Following an extreme weather event, images of devastation and destruction endlessly occupy our TV screens and newsfeeds. Wildfires like the Camp Fire of 2018 left the entire town of Paradise, California destroyed. Flooding like the 2019 Midwestern floods left farms across the region totally inundated. In, 2019 Hurricanes Barry and Dorian and Tropical Storm Imelda pummeled the Carribean and the Gulf and East Coasts. All too often, however, the people who clean up and rebuild affected communities—and the challenges they face along the way—go largely unseen…