Coronavirus
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NBA Player Karl-Anthony Towns Reveals He's Lost 7 Family Members to COVID-19
As the death toll of COVID-19 continues to accumulate, some families are bearing an especially horrific share of the pain. Minnesota Timberwolves’ basketball player Karl-Anthony Towns, who lost his mother earlier this year due to complications from the coronavirus, revealed this weekend that an additional six members of his family have died from COVID-19. “Last…
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14-Year-Old Honestie Hodges, Handcuffed at Gunpoint by Michigan Police as a Child, Dies From COVID-19
In 2017, 11-year-old Honestie Hodges made national headlines after a horrific confrontation with Grand Rapids, Mich., police, in which they handcuffed the little girl at gunpoint at her home. The incident led to a new policy dictating how the department would interact with minors. A little less than three years later, Honestie has died from…
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Michigan Professor Under Investigation Over Anti-Semitic and N-Word-Laced COVID-19 Conspiracy Tweets
A Michigan college professor has been placed on administrative leave pending an investigation into tweets that appear to show that, despite being a science professor, he hates science and has a bit of contempt for Jewish people. One thing he loves, though, is the n-word. The Associated Press reports that Thomas Brennan, a physical science…
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Distrust in Government, Knowledge of Past Medical Abuses Fuels Black Americans' Aversion to Coronavirus Vaccine, Study Finds
High levels of distrust toward the federal government—as well as a knowledge of historic medical abuses in the Black community—can hamper efforts to get Black Americans to take a free coronavirus vaccine, should one be available, finds a new study. While several studies have come out in recent months gauging potential public responses to a…
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Federal Prisons Will Prioritize Staff, Not Prisoners, for COVID-19 Vaccine, Sources Say
A coronavirus vaccine is coming, and the federal prison system is among the first government entities that are set to receive it. Seeing as there have been numerous reports documenting the threat COVID-19 poses to people in prison, this should be welcome news. There’s only one problem: Sources say that prison staff will be prioritized…
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Black Doctors Release Letter Encouraging Black Families to Take COVID-19 Vaccine When It’s Safe, Avoid Gatherings During the Holidays
Last week, when discussing my hopes and goals for the next year with my mom, the necessity of a vaccine obviously came up. “Uh, I’m not taking it at first, and neither are you,” she told me. “We’re going to let them take it and see what happens”— “them” obviously meaning white folks. This attitude…
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Lawsuit Accuses Tyson Foods Supervisors of Placing ‘Winner-Take-All’ Bets on How Many Employees Would Catch COVID-19
Tyson Foods has been embroiled in controversy since April when supervisors for the company chose to keep a meat-processing plant in Waterloo, Iowa, open despite a surge in employees testing positive for COVID-19. The plant was forced to shut down after more than 1,000 employees tested positive for coronavirus infection. After several of those employees…
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Hope on the Horizon: An Almost 95 Percent Effective COVID-19 Vaccine Is Coming Soon From Moderna
There is light at the end of the tunnel. Moderna, a biotechnology firm, says that it has developed a COVID-19 vaccine, which trials show is 94.5 percent effective against the coronavirus–even for people with severe cases. Moderna announced the news about the promising vaccine on Monday, revealing that its tests on around 30,000 people have…
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'Birthday Sex' Singer Jeremih Hospitalized in ICU With COVID-19
Despite how much we may want it to be over, COVID-19 is not through with us. The latest indication of this is the saddening news that Jeremih, the 33-year-old singer-songwriter from Chicago who broke onto music the scene in 2009 with his massively successful track “Birthday Sex”, has been hospitalized with the coronavirus and is…
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Former Amazon Worker Files Lawsuit Claiming Company Put Black and Latinx Employees at Higher Risk for COVID-19
Christian Smalls, a former assistant manager at an Amazon warehouse who was fired after organizing a protest outside his workplace, filed a class-action lawsuit against the company on Thursday. The suit alleges that Amazon failed to provide protective gear to its “predominantly minority” workforce during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic, but provided more…