How has cancer and this encounter with your own mortality changed how you see your life and how you see death?

On an emotional level, we really do deny the fact that we’re mortal and our time is limited. The day after my diagnosis, one of the words I put down in my journal was “focus.” What are the most important things for you to be spending your time doing? I had not been focused.

The second change was you realize that there’s one sense in which if you believe in God, it’s a mental abstraction. You believe with your head. I came to realize that the experiential side of my faith really needed to strengthen or I wasn’t going to be able to handle this.

It’s one thing to believe God loves you, another thing to actually feel his love. It’s one thing to believe he’s present with you. It’s another to actually experience his presence. So the two things I wrote down in my journal: one was focus and the other one was “Know the Lord.” My experience of his presence and his love was going to have to double, triple, quintuple or I wouldn’t make it.

Read it all.

I'm thankful to @Tish_H_Warren who interviewed me for this article. It was a joy to discuss the impact the resurrection has on our lives (and my cancer).

How a Cancer Diagnosis Makes Jesus’ Death and Resurrection Mean More https://t.co/dIQn4VMmU4

— Timothy Keller (@timkellernyc) April 11, 2022

For centuries, they called the foreboding building on a hill above this capital city the Kissy Lunatic Asylum. It was built in the early 1800s by the British colonial administration, and behind the high walls, patients were kept in chains. People here say the stench seeped from the brick walls, and the screams of patients, whose psychosis and trauma were untreated by medication or therapy, echoed out the narrow, barred windows.

Today a small wooden sign hangs over the front desk in the outpatient department: “Sierra Leone Psychiatric Teaching Hospital: Chain-free since 2018.” The sunny corridors of the newly renovated facility flash with the fuchsia uniforms of psychiatric nursing students. The shelves of the pharmacy are lined with the latest antipsychotics and antidepressants. Children bounce on a trampoline at a cheerful clinic just for them. And six residents are on their way to being the first psychiatrists ever trained in this country.

The transformation at Kissy is part of an extraordinary effort to build a mental health care system from scratch in one of the poorest countries in the world. The residents work the wards and see patients in the packed outpatient clinic, under the supervision of three consulting psychiatrists. They are the only three in the country’s entire health system — a staggering ratio, but a threefold increase from decades when there was just one, who paid the patients at Kissy a weekly visit.

Read it all.

[Highlight] This Psychiatric Hospital Used to Chain Patients. Now It Treats Them. @ https://t.co/pSWBOBk3BB #MentalHealthAwareness #MentalHealthMatter #mentalhealth

— Mental Health Updates (@mental_updates) April 11, 2022

Treatment for opioid use disorder (oud) is woefully inadequate across the country, but African-Americans often face extra barriers. Studies have found that medications for treating oud, as well as naloxone (a life-saving medication that reverses opioid overdoses), are doled out unevenly. A study of data from Medicaid, the government insurance programme for the poor, across several states with some of the highest opioid-overdose rates found that between 2014 and 2018 black people with oud were 28% less likely to use oud medications.

Studies in various cities, including San Francisco and Los Angeles, suggest that African-Americans have less access to naloxone, too. In Detroit between 2019 and 2020, white addicts received 28% of naloxone administrations, though they accounted for 17% of the city’s opioid overdoses; although 80% of overdoses were among black people, they received only 67% of naloxone administrations. This does not necessarily mean black addicts are being denied naloxone. Those who use opioids alone, are homeless or live in communities with little trust in first responders might be less likely to call for help.

Such disparities strengthen the case for local interventions that deal with the unique hurdles certain communities face. Other solutions are more sweeping, like expanding access to Medicaid and reducing red tape around oud medications. But underlying all these is a straightforward calculus that applies to all Americans, black or white: “It has to be easier to get treated than it is to continue using,” says Dr Kolodny. “You have to flip it.”

Read it all.

African-Americans used to be far less affected. But that has changed https://t.co/lyAbakVt5M

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) April 9, 2022

Parents have organized petitions, imploring the government not to separate children infected with the coronavirus from their families. Patients have demanded to speak with higher-ups about shoddy conditions at isolation facilities. Residents have confronted officials over containment policies that they see as unfair or inhumane, then shared recordings of those arguments online.

As the coronavirus races through Shanghai, in the city’s worst outbreak since the pandemic began, the authorities have deployed their usual hard-nosed playbook to try and stamp out transmission, no matter the cost. What has been different is the response: an outpouring of public dissatisfaction rarely seen in China since the chaotic early days of the pandemic, in Wuhan.

The crisis in Shanghai is shaping up to be more than just a public health challenge. It is also a political test of the zero tolerance approach at large, on which the Communist Party has staked its legitimacy.

For much of the past two years, the Chinese government has stifled most domestic criticism of its zero tolerance Covid strategy, through a mixture of censorship, arrests and success at keeping caseloads low. But in Shanghai, which has recorded more than 70,000 cases since March 1, that is proving more difficult.

Read it all.

China has deployed its usual Covid playbook in Shanghai, chasing elimination at any cost. But Shanghai — the country’s most populous city, with a thriving middle class — has proved unusually resistant. https://t.co/2zSsKa6KIc

— New York Times World (@nytimesworld) April 7, 2022

After an insect bite on his back became infected, David Donner, a retired truck driver in rural Alabama, waited six hours in a packed emergency room with his wife, before coronavirus vaccines were widely available. A few days later, they both began experiencing the telltale symptoms of Covid-19.

Debra Donner quickly recovered, but Mr. Donner, 66, landed in the I.C.U. “The virus barely slowed her down, but I ended up surrounded by nurses in hazmat suits,” he said. His halting recovery has left him dependent on a wheelchair. “I walk 20 feet and I’m huffing and puffing like I ran 20 miles.”

The Donners see little mystery in why they fared so differently: Mr. Donner has diabetes, a chronic disease that hobbles the body’s ability to regulate blood sugar and inexorably wreaks havoc on circulation, kidney function and other vital organs.

After older people and nursing home residents, perhaps no group has been harder hit by the pandemic than people with diabetes. Recent studies suggest that 30 to 40 percent of all coronavirus deaths in the United States have occurred among people with diabetes, a sobering figure that has been subsumed by other grim data from a public health disaster that is on track to claim a million American lives sometime this month.

Read it all.

After older people and nursing home residents, no group perhaps has been harder hit by the pandemic than people with diabetes. Recent studies suggest that 30 to 40% of all coronavirus deaths in the U.S. have occurred among people with diabetes. https://t.co/N2Ubjxjob8

— The New York Times (@nytimes) April 4, 2022

There are no Covid fears here.

The district’s Covid-19 response center has registered just 11 cases since the start of the pandemic, and no deaths. At the regional hospital, the wards are packed — with malaria patients. The door to the Covid isolation ward is bolted shut and overgrown with weeds. People cram together for weddings, soccer matches, concerts, with no masks in sight.

Sierra Leone, a nation of eight million on the coast of Western Africa, feels like a land inexplicably spared as a plague passed overhead. What has happened — or hasn’t happened — here and in much of sub-Saharan Africa is a great mystery of the pandemic.

The low rate of coronavirus infections, hospitalizations and deaths in West and Central Africa is the focus of a debate that has divided scientists on the continent and beyond. Have the sick or dead simply not been counted? If Covid has in fact done less damage here, why is that? If it has been just as vicious, how have we missed it?

The answers “are relevant not just to us, but have implications for the greater public good,” said Austin Demby, Sierra Leone’s health minister, in an interview in Freetown, the capital.

Read it all.

It’s a pandemic mystery: Why has Covid been so much less lethal in sub-Saharan Africa? Research shows at least two-thirds of people have been exposed to the virus. Yet they’re not getting sick or dying. Are they? https://t.co/WphNh2Jdfq

— NYT Science (@NYTScience) March 24, 2022

With another pandemic surge possibly on the way, vaccination for the coronavirus in the United States has all but ground to a halt, with initial doses and boosters plummeting to the lowest levels since the program began in late December 2020.

On Wednesday, the seven-day average of vaccinations fell to fewer than 182,000 per day, according to data compiled by The Washington Post. That is lower than at any time since the first days of the program.

The daily total has been in free fall for the past six weeks. On Feb. 10, the nation was averaging more than 692,000 shots a day. Booster shots have been more common than first or second doses since October, and the low rates have long caused concern among some experts.

Now, with authorities bracing for a possible increase in covid-19 cases caused by the BA.2 subvariant, 65.4 percent of Americans are fully vaccinated and just 44 percent have received a booster shot. That is substantially less than the totals in many Western European nations — which nevertheless have seen a sharp rise in cases in recent weeks and months.

Read it all.

With another wave possibly coming, covid vaccination in the US has all but ground to a halt, plummeting to the lowest level since shots became available in December 2020. ⁦@britsham⁩ ⁦@dtkeating⁩ ⁦@rizzoTK⁩ ⁦@LennyMBernstein⁩ https://t.co/Nfu91JEckb

— Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt) March 26, 2022

Borys Zabarko was six years old when the Nazis invaded what is now Ukraine in 1941 and his hometown, Sharhorod, became a Jewish ghetto. Women, children and old men slept in packed rooms with no bathrooms or water, he said. As typhus epidemics raged, the ground was too cold to dig graves, and bodies were thrown on top of each other. Mr. Zabarko’s father and uncle, who fought with the Soviet army, died in combat.

After the liberation, Mr. Zabarko said he became convinced that nothing like that would ever happen again.

Now 86, he spent a recent night in the freezing train station in Lviv, in the west of Ukraine, standing on a crowded platform, as he tried to get on a train to escape another war.

“It’s a frightening repeat,” he said by phone from Nuremberg, Germany, where he fled with his 17-year-old granddaughter, Ilona, before eventually settling in Stuttgart. “Again, we have this murderous war.”

Read it all.

For some older Ukrainians, Russia’s invasion has revived painful memories of World War II, in which more than five million people were killed in Ukraine, even if the toll and scale of the current conflict are incomparable.https://t.co/EFteorWoQs

— The New York Times (@nytimes) March 24, 2022

Four years ago, inside the most prestigious hospital in Tennessee, nurse RaDonda Vaught withdrew a vial from an electronic medication cabinet, administered the drug to a patient and somehow overlooked signs of a terrible and deadly mistake.

The patient was supposed to get Versed, a sedative intended to calm her before being scanned in a large, MRI-like machine. But Vaught accidentally grabbed vecuronium, a powerful paralyzer, which stopped the patient’s breathing and left her brain-dead before the error was discovered.

Vaught, 38, admitted her mistake at a Tennessee Board of Nursing hearing last year, saying she became “complacent” in her job and “distracted” by a trainee while operating the computerized medication cabinet. She did not shirk responsibility for the error, but she said the blame was not hers alone.

“I know the reason this patient is no longer here is because of me,” Vaught said, starting to cry. “There won’t ever be a day that goes by that I don’t think about what I did.”

Read it all.

Nurses are right to watch this with eyes wide open and the potential it has to put a microscope on their profession in a time when it's hard to staff nursing roles.

As a Nurse Faces Prison for a Deadly Error, Her Colleagues Worry: Could I Be Next? https://t.co/patERTQJI0

— Gunnar Esiason (@G17Esiason) March 22, 2022

….time to muse is valuable in virtually every role. To take one example, customer-service representatives can be good sources of ideas on how to improve a company’s products, but they are often rated on how well they adhere to a schedule of fielding calls. Reflection is not part of the routine.

The post-pandemic rethink of work is focused on “when” and “where” questions. Firms are experimenting with four-day workweeks as a way to improve retention and avoid burnout. Asynchronous working is a way for individuals to collaborate at times that suit them. Lots of thought is going into how to make a success of hybrid work.

The “what is work” question gets much less attention. The bias towards familiar forms of activity is deeply entrenched. But if you see a colleague meandering through the park or examining the ceiling for hours, don’t assume that work isn’t being done. What looks like idleness may be the very moment when serendipity strikes.

Read it all.

Loafing about might look like the opposite of work. But it can be very useful indeed https://t.co/8GtTzOVKnh

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) March 21, 2022

But as more than half a million people have fled Ukraine to neighboring countries, global health officials fear that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will be the latest reminder of a grim lesson — that war and disease are close companions, and the humanitarian and refugee crises now unfolding in Eastern Europe will lead to long-lasting health consequences, exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic.

As Russia’s military campaign accelerates, Ukraine’s hospitals are running out of critical medical supplies as travel is increasingly choked off by the conflict. The country’s health workers and patients are relocating to makeshift shelters, seeking to escape explosions. Meanwhile, officials at the World Health Organization, United Nations, U.S. State Department and other organizations warn of rising civilian casualties and new pressures on the region’s fragile health-care systems.

“What we’re dealing with now in Ukraine is a double crisis,” said Máire Connolly, a global health professor at the National University of Ireland Galway who has studied the link between conflict and disease. In an interview, Connolly said she was worried not just about threats from the coronavirus pandemic but also those from Ukraine’s polio outbreak, which global experts had sought to quell for months. She also said she fears the potential resurgence of tuberculosis during the current conflict.

Read it all.

– Ukraine’s hospitals are running out of critical supplies
– Health workers, patients being forced to makeshift shelters
– Global experts fear covid, polio spikes

A look at war + disease, twin companions.

With @LovedayM, reporting from Lviv, Ukraine.https://t.co/sQ513ea3V9

— Dan Diamond (@ddiamond) March 1, 2022

The S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control announced it would provide new guidance to help schools and child care centers transition from Test to Stay quarantine and isolation.

“Our updated guidance recognizes that COVID-19 is an illness that we now need to treat and manage as endemic, and will help our schools, child care centers, and ultimately all of us make that transition,” Dr. Edward Simmer, director of the state health agency, said. “It also allows us to respond quickly should another surge or impactful new variant arise.”

According to DHEC, the guidance resembles pre-COVID-19 guidance for influenza, allowing schools and child care centers to suspend Test to Stay or quarantine once they have had two consecutive weeks with less than 10 percent of all students and staff having COVID-19.

Read it all.

From P&C: SC DHEC eases COVID-19 school guidance as number of new cases declines https://t.co/irYlbdqEkF #chsnews

— Sam Tyson (@SamInteractive) February 22, 2022

Vanessa Franklin lost her mother, her father, and her husband in a 12-month span. But the grief of their deaths paled in comparison to parting with her three teenage daughters in the same year, 2008, when she went to prison for fraud.

“Being separated from them was worse,” said Franklin, who served four years in Oklahoma.

She couldn’t imagine a deeper hurt until a few years later, when her daughter, Ashley Garrison, was sentenced while pregnant. The 20-year-old went into labor the day she checked into prison.

Garrison had a boy and named him William. She held him for an hour before she was forced to relinquish custody to his father’s family.

Read it all.

As the female prison population continues to rise, there are more horror stories of pregnant women giving birth behind bars.

Christian ministries and advocates are stepping in. @MariaforW reports:https://t.co/sxCor4u8UP

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) February 22, 2022

Just who does Justin Welby think he is? In an interview this week the Archbishop of Canterbury declared “I am not the Pope”. But to some Anglicans, there was a hint of The Boss in the way he dealt with Covid-19 in the early days, when the Church of England locked down, shutting its doors not only on churchgoers but on its own clerics, banning them from their altars. The evidence was that this came from the top, though he now says not.

But back in March 2020, Archbishop Welby and the then Archbishop of York, John Sentamu wrote to all priests that they were bringing in measures to shut down churches. It meant an end to weddings, funerals, baptisms and Sunday services – the first time that churches in this country had entirely closed their doors since the days of King John. Services went digital with vicars live-streaming from their kitchen tables or rectory studies – and it infuriated many Anglicans. They couldn’t understand why the vicar could not celebrate at the church altar, alone, with that service live-streamed. After all, that was what Roman Catholics were doing – although decisions about worship came from local bishops, not directed by Rome.

The familiar altar table, with its candles, its altar cloth, and glimpses of the much-loved nave where countless generations had worshipped down the years – all these were banished and invisible for months at a time when they might have brought comfort to those at home.

Read it all.

"The trips abroad, the photocalls, and the constant Twitter updates give the impression that Welby is the apex of the pyramid" | Writes Catherine Pepinster https://t.co/p0WceJx1rk

— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) February 16, 2022

The omicron surge is declining fast in the U.S. One state after another is lifting their mask mandates.

But more than 175,000 people are still catching the virus, and more than 2,200 people are still dying from COVID-19, every day. And federal officials say it’s too soon to loosen restrictions.

Is your head spinning? Are you feeling anxious?

It’s not surprising, according to psychologists, sociologists and medical anthropologists.

“It’s very confusing,” says Ayelet Fishbach, a professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago. “You wake up in the morning and and you wonder: ‘Maybe we are over it and no one told me.’ Or maybe: ‘It’s terrible and I should not do my shopping in person.’ ”

Read it all.

It's another discombobulating moment in the pandemic, with conflicting signs of where the virus is heading and what people should do about it on a daily basis. If you feel that way, you're not alone.https://t.co/H3fGDY3tAN

— MPR News (@MPRnews) February 16, 2022

It had only been about six months since Katie Ripley finished radiation therapy for Stage 4 breast cancer. But now the 33-year-old was back in the hospital. This time, it wasn’t cancer – she was still in remission – but she’d come down with a nasty respiratory infection.

It wasn’t COVID, but her immune defenses had been weakened by the cancer treatments, and the infection had developed into pneumonia.

By the time Ripley made it to Gritman Medical Center, the local hospital in Moscow, Idaho, on January 6, her condition was deteriorating quickly. The illness had started affecting her liver and kidneys.

Her father, Kai Eiselein, remembers the horror of that night, when he learned she needed specialized ICU care.

“The hospital here didn’t have the facilities for what she needed,” he says. “And no beds were available anywhere.”

Read it all.

Small rural hospitals — also known as critical access hospitals — have struggled with an influx of critically ill COVID-19 patients during the omicron surge.

Staff at small hospitals often have to scour the region for available beds while patients wait. https://t.co/GlPyOjeGQl

— NPR (@NPR) February 11, 2022

Last week I was delighted to visit Cotswold School with Lucy Taylor (Diocesan Director of Communications and Engagement) to discuss our Liedentity work and to make plans for a future visit. It was good to hear of all that the school have put in place regarding mental health and I’m looking forward to making a podcast on the issue next month which will involve some of the students at the school.

Also last week I heard the story from a speaker in another diocese, of a young person with many struggles in her life. Someone rather tentatively invited her to a church youth event where she heard about Jesus Christ for the first time and at the end of it expressed some anger and frustration. This was not because of the event, but because she couldn’t understand why no one had told her of this good news before.

That is a sobering challenge for all of us who are adults. It is not an issue simply to be placed at the feet of youth ministers or Christian teenagers, teachers or parents, but rather I believe it is something God longs for each of us to hear and to respond to with lament, hope, action and prayer.

In LIFE Together in this diocese, local stories have resulted in the shining of a spotlight on ‘Investing in people and programmes which excite young people to explore and grow in faith’.

Read it all.

"… I believe it is something God longs for each of us to hear and to respond to with lament, hope, action and prayer."

~ @BishGloucester's message for #ChildrensMentalHealthWeek
👉 https://t.co/SFQME9sLzX 👈 pic.twitter.com/jBZEi69QFN

— The Diocese of Gloucester (@GlosDioc) February 9, 2022

The BBC has heard reports of young people killing themselves or harming themselves and others.

Medical staff in the capital Freetown say that 90% of the male admissions to the central psychiatric ward are due to Kush use.

Police are battling to win the war against the drug.

Read it all.

Kush: Sierra Leone's new illegal drug https://t.co/JEfuTP7fUl pic.twitter.com/qtzw2hcazM

— World News (@Worldnews_Media) February 7, 2022

For a small church, Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Downingtown, Pennsylvania, has a surprising reach.

Most church members live in and around Downingtown, a small town about an hour west of Philadelphia. Some live as far away as Bermuda.

“But that’s one of the beauties that has come out of the pandemic,” Downingtown pastor Ivy Berry said. “We can meet in the sanctuary, but still maintain a worship presence via Zoom and on Facebook Live, so members who may not be able to travel to the sanctuary can still receive the same worship service.”

A report on churches and technology during the pandemic found that by offering online services, churches were able to expand their reach, often connecting with people outside their community or reconnecting with former members who had moved away. Even small congregations that had once struggled to reach outside the walls of the church were able to expand their reach, according to “When Pastors Put on the ‘Tech Hat,” a report from the Tech in Churches research project, led by Heidi Campbell, professor of communication at Texas A&M University.

“With the shift online, churches were shocked to discover the ways that an online service can become a wide-reaching net to whoever is interested in tuning in or watching,” according to researchers. “One pastor described this widening reach and shift as ‘shut-ins being no longer shut out.’”

Read it all.

One thing that is pretty clear – streaming worship services and other options for online spiritual interaction have been really important during COVID – and likely will be going forward. https://t.co/9Ife1mUfHn

— Bob Smietana (@bobsmietana) February 2, 2022

Unlike English, which uses the word hope broadly, the French language uses two words that derive from the word espérer (to hope): espoir and espérance. Both can first refer to something hoped for. In this sense, the word espoir usually refers to an uncertain object; that is, someone who hopes for something in this way does not have the certainty that it will happen (“I hope the weather will be nice tomorrow”). On the other hand, espérance describes what, rightly or wrongly, is hoped for or expected with certainty. It often refers to a philosophical or eschatological object (“I hope in the goodness of human beings”; “I hope for the return of Jesus Christ”).

When we speak of espoir or espérance, we then have in mind different types of objects hoped for. This difference matters, because both terms also commonly refer to the state of mind that characterizes the hopeful. And this state of mind will be different precisely according to the object hoped for.

Having espoir for an uncertain yet better future in these difficult times may be a good thing, but it is not enough. Such hope can be disappointed and easily fade away when our wishes and expectations (our hopes) do not materialize.

The opposite is true with espérance, which is deeper than our desire and wish for an end to a crisis or a future without pain and suffering. To face the trials of life, we need peace and joy in our hearts that come from expecting certain happiness. This is what espérance is: a profound and stable disposition resulting from faith in the coming of what we expect. In this sense, it is similar in meaning to the English word hopefulness.

Read it all.

Unlike English, which uses the word "hope" broadly, French uses two words that derive from the word espérer (to hope): espoir and espérance.

A writer in Benin explores how these two words shape her theology. Read our French winning essay here: https://t.co/ssQk5nv4S4

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) January 31, 2022

The model and justification of most holidays taken by clergy is Jesus’s custom of going to a deserted place to pray. “He did it: you should too.” From the earliest centuries, Christianity had its contemplative side; these stories are its foundation.

Before that, though, there’s the account of the flight of the Prophet Elijah from the vengeance of Jezebel in the 19th chapter of the first book of Kings. This is the model of clergy burnout. An angel gives him a hot cake baked on a stone, and lets him sleep. Then, when he wakes, he is offered another cake, and sleeps again. Only after that does he go up to the mountain of God where the Lord speaks to him, not in the sound of gale or earthquake, but in sheer silence, the echoing silence when the wind and the earthquake have passed. In that silence, God tells Elijah that there will be a new king, and also that there will be a new prophet, because more people have been faithful than Elijah is willing to credit.

That’s a favourite story of mine, as is the one told by the reclusive 19th-century Hasidic sage Menachem Mendel Morgensztern of Kotzk, better known as the Kotzker Rebbe. It concerns the sacred goat whose horns reached up to the heavens. As he walked through the world, the goat heard a poor old man crying. “Why do you weep?” asked the goat. “Because I have lost my snuffbox.” “Cut a bit from one of my horns,” said the goat, “Take what you need to make a new one.” You can guess what happened next. There are more poor folk in the world who have lost their snuff boxes than you can count.

Read it all.

After Christmas, the things I’d been holding together in the parish had all come loose, writes @AliceGoodman17 https://t.co/dnUpfie724

— Prospect Magazine (@prospect_uk) January 30, 2022

Twenty-three long months after the first cases of COVID-19 were detected in South Carolina, there’s reason to hope the current surge of the pandemic may be shorter-lived than previous waves.

While omicron continues to ravage the state, an epidemiologist with the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control acknowledged this week South Carolina may soon be turning a corner.

“We have begun seeing some incremental decreases in the counts and rates of cases during the surge,” said Brannon Traxler, with DHEC. “While numbers of cases have still been increasing, they’ve been increasing at a lesser rate over the last couple of weeks or so. This is certainly promising.”

Even so, she said, “it may be too early to say that we’ve peaked or are nearing the end of the surge.”

Read it all.

According to Google Trends, the use of search terms such as "endemic" and "end of pandemic" have risen sharply this past month.

Everyone is clearly ready for this thing to be over. Experts say that doesn't mean it is.https://t.co/4wWeBhqtbd

— The Post and Courier (@postandcourier) January 29, 2022

Drop-in sessions at a Church of England parish, set up to provide a ‘safe space’ for people feeling anxious or lonely in the wake of the pandemic, have proved so popular that they are being expanded to cater for demand.

‘Ric’s bench’, offering tea, coffee, snacks and a place to chat at St Richard’s parish in Haywards Heath, West Sussex, will be launching a fourth session in response to demand.

Father Chris Brading, Vicar of St Richard’s, said the two-hourly sessions are attracting people of all faiths and none to the church and hall.

Volunteers are coming forward from the church and the wider community, he said. The sessions are about listening, engaging with guests and providing signposting to specialist support if needed.

The ‘Ric’s bench’ title is taken from a bench – actually a pew – preserved from the original ‘tin church’, that was demolished to make way for the current church building in the 1930s.

Read it all.

How a church bench helped tackle loneliness. Great to see Ric's Bench @StRichards_HH featured on the @churchofengland stories page https://t.co/dxkNlk7DF4

— Chichester Diocese (@ChichesterDio) January 26, 2022

Older Americans who regularly breathe even low levels of pollution from smokestacks, automobile exhaust, wildfires and other sources face a greater chance of dying early, according to a major study released Wednesday.

Researchers at the Health Effects Institute, a group that is funded by the Environmental Protection Agency as well as automakers and fossil fuel companies, examined health data from 68.5 million Medicare recipients across the United States. They found that if the federal rules for allowable levels of fine soot had been slightly lower, as many as 143,000 deaths could have been prevented over the course of a decade.

Exposure to fine particulate matter has long been linked to respiratory illness and impaired cognitive development in children. The tiny particles can enter the lungs and bloodstream to affect lung function, exacerbate asthma and trigger heart attacks and other serious illness. Earlier research has found that exposure to particulate matter contributed to about 20,000 deaths a year.

The new study is the first in the United States to document deadly effects of the particulate matter known as PM 2.5 (because its width is 2.5 microns or less) on people who live in rural areas and towns with little industry.

Read it all.

Older people in the U.S. who regularly breathe even low levels of pollution from smokestacks, automobiles, wildfires and other sources face a greater chance of dying early, according to a major new study that looked at health data from 68.5 million people.https://t.co/RkgRdufFvB

— The New York Times (@nytimes) January 26, 2022

Bishop Sarah, who chairs the Church of England’s Covid Recovery Group, was speaking as new advice was published by the Church of England ahead of Thursday’s change of national rules.

She said: “When the first measures to curb the spread of Covid-19 were introduced in March 2020, few would have imagined that we would still be making adaptations to the way we live our lives – including our worship – almost two years on.

“It has been a very challenging time.

“People have made huge sacrifices to protect one another – not only those they know and love but strangers they might never meet. We’ve learnt again as society something of what it means to love our neighbour, as Jesus taught.

“And it has certainly not been without cost.

“The loneliness and isolation many have experienced; the impact on people’s mental health; the lost jobs and failed businesses and strained relationships must not be overlooked.

Read it all.

@bishopSarahM thanks parishes and the public as Covid-19 measures lift in England.

"As we can begin to look forward with cautious hope, we once again thank those who have done so much to protect us all."

Read more at https://t.co/HqAGk3Fdz5.

— The Church of England (@churchofengland) January 26, 2022

Middle age is a crowded time. It’s also a lonely one. Work and family demands leave little time for nurturing friendships, particularly for women.

Pre-pandemic, conversations about loneliness often centered on men, with talk of a “loneliness epidemic.” But during lockdown, Generation X women, who range in age from 41 to 57 years old, reported the sharpest rise in loneliness, according to a survey of more than 1,000 adults conducted in the spring of 2020 by the Roots of Loneliness Project, a research organization. And the increase in social isolation reported by women living with children was also greatest among those from Gen X, according to an unpublished portion of the survey shared with The Wall Street Journal.

For women feeling burned out from holding family life and work together, social media has typically been the most convenient place to vent and seek connection. But going online has surfaced feelings of inadequacy and loneliness, many say.

Read it all.

Middle age can be lonely. Moms in this often overlooked age group are struggling to find meaningful connections. “Social media has made me feel less isolated, but more lonely,” one said https://t.co/BT00ByollP

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) January 23, 2022

Just after Christmas 2021, Honor Jones, a senior editor at the Atlantic, published “How I Demolished My Life: A Home-Improvement Story.” It’s a self-portrait of a mother who, while wrangling with kitchen renovation plans, decides she doesn’t want a new kitchen.

She wants a divorce.

Jones spends the next three thousand perfectly manicured words trying to justify her decision to break up her family. She displays all the self-congratulatory bravado of middle-aged white women who read Henrik Ibsen’s Doll’s House or Oscar Wilde’s A Picture of Dorian Gray for a high school literature class and then imagine themselves forever in the role of Brave Protestor of Victorian Oppression.

Jones describes her marriage, which produced three children who are still young, as her cage. Her imperfect suburban home is, to her, an icon of her imprisonment.

She doesn’t like the “chaos” of her house and, even with the help of sensible Luba, her hired cleaning woman, she finds the lived-in quality of a home with children irksome.

Read it all.

“She’s swallowed the lie that only by breaking free of commitments and disappointments and the daily grind of life together will she find out who she really is.“
Divorce Wrecks Children’s Lives Too by Erika J. Ahern https://t.co/PfdELHj5XL

— David (@_DavidCSmith) January 12, 2022

Twice last year, Margaret Schulte and her husband, Jason Abercrombie, traveled 11 hours round-trip to Louisiana from their home in Tulsa, Okla., in the hopes of vaccinating their children, who were 2 and 4, against the coronavirus.

The only way they could get shots for their children — among the more than 19 million Americans under 5 years old who are not yet eligible for vaccinations — was to take part in a clinical trial. So they signed up, hoping a successful vaccine would mean that by now, or at least sometime very soon, a semblance of prepandemic life would be on the horizon.

It has not worked out that way.

The Pfizer trial that their children participated in did not produce promising results, the company said last month. Nor have vaccines emerged from other corners. Moderna has yet to release results of its pediatric trials.

Now Ms. Schulte and Mr. Abercrombie are among the millions of parents stuck in an excruciating limbo during a surge of Omicron cases, forced to wrestle with day care closures and child care crises as the rest of the world appears eager to move on.

Read it all.

Millions of parents of unvaccinated children under 5 are stuck in limbo during a rise of Omicron cases in the U.S., forced to wrestle with day care closures and child care crises as the rest of the world appears eager to move on.https://t.co/MO0kCtq2rE

— The New York Times (@nytimes) January 14, 2022

People who choose not to be vaccinated against the coronavirus should be encouraged to change their minds — but not compelled by law to do so, the Archbishop of Canterbury has said.

In an interview on Radio 4’s Today programme on Monday, Archbishop Welby was asked what attitude people should have towards those who do not have health reasons not to be vaccinated but decline anyway.

He replied: “I think we need to be encouraging rather than condemnatory, because condemning people doesn’t do much good. . . Also, it increases the general sense of anger that comes at a time of insecurity and fear and grief.

“I think we need to be encouraging to people to look after their neighbours. Jesus’s great words “Love your neighbour as yourself”: if you do that, it seems to me you go and get vaccinated, and I’d encourage people — I’m not personally in favour of compulsory vaccination by law, but I am very much in favour of encouraging people, of incentivising people — to get vaccinated. It makes a difference. It’s not decisive, it’s not the whole story, but it’s an important part of the story.”

Read it all (registration).

Archbishop @JustinWelby says vaccination should be encouraged by not compulsory.
Report in @ChurchTimes https://t.co/TrdnP6pMsY

— Martin Budd (@MartinBudd) January 11, 2022

Listen to it all (starts just past 2:42 minutes in and goes around 5 minutes).

“One way we grieve well is to reach out to others…”

As we pass the tragic mark of 150,000 Covid deaths, many will be reminded of a loved one we have lost. Let’s look after one another, comfort each other and love our neighbour.

Good to speak with @BBCr4today this morning – listen from 2:43: https://t.co/EQJ6o8cQaK

— Archbishop of Canterbury (@JustinWelby) January 10, 2022