The vaccination slowdown has slowed down Philip Bump Julian Boyce, 14, receives his first Pfizer coronavirus vaccination at NYC Health + Hospitals/Harlem from nurse Kenia Georges in New York on May 13. (Richard Drew/AP) Thursday was a landmark day in the fight against the coronavirus in the United States. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that fully vaccinated people no longer need to wear masks either outdoors or indoors, except in rare circumstances. With at least 154 million people having received at least one dose of the vaccine and children ages 12 and up now eligible for the Pfizer vaccine, the country appears to be on the brink of putting the pandemic behind us.
Emily Tamkin’s column on the US’s weak moral authority in international affairs (World View, 19 February) coincided with the death of Dianna Ortiz, an American nun who was tortured in Guatemala in 1989 by security forces trained and equipped by the US. Once recovered, she revealed evidence of decades-long US complicity in human rights abuses in a war that cost more than 200,000 lives. The US’s methods in Latin America have changed since then but its agenda remains the same: protect regimes favourable to US policy even when they perpetrate gross abuses (Honduras, Haiti); undermine or overthrow elected leaders whose policies are viewed unfavourably (Honduras, Nicaragua, Bolivia); or impose illegal economic sanctions (Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua) that affect the poorest people. Were Joe Biden to “begin to repair America’s moral standing in the world”, in Latin America it would require a reversal of more than a century of US policy.