Evening Briefing: The U.S. nears 800,000 Covid deaths

December 13, 2021

By Victoria Shannon

Briefings, Newsdesk

Good evening. Here's the latest at the end of Monday.

A Covid-19 patient in a hospital in Marseille, France, last week.Eric Gaillard/Reuters

1. Covid, two years later: A mood of exhaustion and anger simmers around the world.

Vaccines look like deliverance, until they don't. National responses diverge with no discernible logic. Schools open, and then close. Travel becomes easier, only for new obstacles to arise. Sickness from Covid-19 subsides, only to be replaced by long Covid. The feeling grows that the Covid era will go on for years, like plagues of old.

"I know it will only get worse, it won't stop, the pandemic will only turn more life-consuming," said Natalia Shishkova, a teacher in Moscow. "It is all chaos, like a fantasy film." Said a French epidemiologist who specializes in mental illness: "We no longer know when we will get back to normal."

Just today, health authorities in Denmark and Norway warned of a sharp increase in Omicron cases, predicting that it would soon dominate both countries on top of a surge from the Delta variant. Their forecast followed similar findings from England.

In the U.S., Covid has been responsible for almost 800,000 deaths. Seventy-five percent of those who have died from the virus in the country — or about 600,000 people — have been 65 or older.

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An apartment complex in Dawson Springs, Ky., was nearly erased by the storm.William Widmer for The New York Times

2. At least 74 people are confirmed dead in Kentucky, with more than 100 unaccounted for.

Gov. Andy Beshear braced the public for more victims to be announced in the wake of Friday's swarm of tornadoes across six states. Officials estimated that around a thousand homes statewide had been damaged or destroyed.

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The White House said that President Biden would travel to Kentucky on Wednesday and visit Mayfield and Dawson Springs, which were particularly devastated.

In Illinois, where six people were killed at an Amazon warehouse in Edwardsville, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said an investigation was underway into the building's partial collapse.

Here's how to help victims of the tornadoes, and the latest updates.

A relative looked at the damage after a U.S. drone strike killed 10 civilians in Kabul in August.Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

3. The Pentagon said no U.S. troops would be punished for a deadly Kabul strike.

The military initially defended the August strike, which killed 10 civilians, including seven children, but ultimately called it a tragic mistake.

A subsequent high-level investigation found no violations of law but stopped short of exonerating those involved, saying it was up to two senior commanders to decide if any administrative action would be taken. Both commanders recommended against any punishment.

The acknowledgment of the mistake came a week after a Times investigation challenged assertions by the military that it had struck a vehicle carrying explosives meant for Hamid Karzai International Airport.

From left, the gymnasts McKayla Maroney, Aly Raisman, Kaylee Lorincz and Maggie Nichols after testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee in September.Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

4. Athletes who were sexually abused by the former team doctor of the U.S. national gymnastics team agreed to a $380 million settlement.

The settlement is among the largest ever for a sexual abuse case. The funds will compensate more than 500 gymnasts — including the Olympic gold medalists Simone Biles, McKayla Maroney and Aly Raisman — who were abused by Lawrence Nassar or someone else in the sport.

Many Nassar survivors have been waiting for years for compensation to help pay for mental health treatment, said Rachael Denhollander, a survivor who was involved in the settlement talks. Some have attempted suicide because of Nassar's abuse.

Jair Bolsonaro spoke to supporters during Brazil's Independence Day celebrations in São Paulo in September.Victor Moriyama for The New York Times

5. Inflation becomes the enemy of strongmen and grass-roots workers.

Skyrocketing prices are galvanizing political opposition in Turkey, Hungary and Brazil in a way that few would have predicted just months ago, as their leaders are facing national elections.

Their personalized approach to politics, and years in office, make it difficult for Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan; Hungary's prime minister, Viktor Orban; and Brazil's president, Jair Bolsonaro, to sidestep blame for economic conditions.

At the same time, inflation has flared up in labor contract talks in Europe. Last month, inflation reached a eurozone record of 4.9 percent.

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A van took Jimmy Lai and other activists to the Wanchai district court last week for their trial.Bertha Wang/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

6. Jimmy Lai was sentenced to prison in Hong Kong over a Tiananmen vigil.

A Hong Kong court sentenced the former media mogul and seven other pro-democracy activists to prison for their roles last year in trying to commemorate Beijing's 1989 crackdown on peaceful protesters in Tiananmen Square.

Lai and the other activists participated in the annual June 4 vigil, held for the past three decades. But the government banned the gathering last year, citing the coronavirus pandemic, and again this year.

The case was not prosecuted under the stringent national security law imposed on Hong Kong by Beijing last year, but Lai and other defendants also face charges under that law.

A street food vendor preparing an egg dish for a customer in Ahmedabad.Rebecca Conway for The New York Times

7. Vegetarianism is the new flashpoint in India's religious and cultural divide.

Citing complaints from Hindus — many of whom are vegetarians — as well as health concerns, local officials in Ahmedabad, in the state of Gujarat, and at least four other cities banned the sale and display of meat, fish and eggs on the street last month.

The authorities weren't expecting the backlash. Facing a lawsuit and protests by street vendors, officials in Ahmedabad allowed sales of previously forbidden food to resume, though the dispute is now in court.

Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has a Hindu nationalist base, the national government has taken steps in recent years to promote the religion and to sideline Muslims and other groups. Emboldened local governments have followed suit.

Rachel Levit Ruiz

8. The other vaccine hesitancy — against a shot that can prevent cancer.

A University of Texas study released this year showed that parental intent not to vaccinate their adolescent children against HPV rose to 64 percent in 2018, from 50.4 percent in 2012. The vaccine can prevent as many as 90 percent of six potentially lethal cancers.

The vaccine protects against sexually transmitted infection by HPV, the human papillomavirus, for which there is no treatment. While most infections clear on their own, enough persist to cause many thousands of cancers years later. But the vaccine works only if it's administered before people become infected.

The Primary Wave Music deal is being described as a major step toward underwriting scholarships for children that James Brown had outlined in his will.Meyer Liebowitz/The New York Times

9. An estate that has taken 15 years to settle.

James Brown died in 2006, but his plan to leave the bulk of his estate to scholarships for needy children has been delayed by torrents of litigation.

Now, a New York company that specializes in marketing estates and song catalogs, Primary Wave Music, is buying the assets of the Brown estate, including music rights and control over the name and likeness of the soul music icon. The price is estimated at about $90 million.

The money from the transaction will be used to endow the scholarship trust "in perpetuity," said Russell Bauknight, Brown's executor. He said he hoped that the first scholarships would be awarded by the end of next year.

Thea-Mai Baumann's Instagram account was erased after Facebook changed its name to Meta.Matthew Abbott for The New York Times

10. And finally, the power of Facebook over the metaverse.

In 2012, Thea-Mai Baumann started an Instagram account with the handle @metaverse, a name she used in her creative work in Australia. Five days after Facebook — the owner of Instagram — changed its name to Meta, she found herself blocked.

Baumann appealed to Instagram to restore her account, but weeks passed without a response. It was only after The Times contacted Meta that a spokesman said that the account had been "incorrectly removed for impersonation" and that it would be restored. It is now back online.

"Facebook has essentially unfettered discretion to appropriate people's Instagram user names," said Rebecca Giblin, an intellectual property expert in Melbourne.

Have a metaphysical evening.

Bryan Denton compiled photos for this briefing.

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