Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad:
Dec. 29
The Post and Courier on the COVID-19 vaccine campaign and convincing the public to take the vaccine:
The first shot of the second wave of COVID-19 vaccinations in South Carolina came Monday at a nursing home in Greenville. Now the question becomes: How do we get enough Americans to take the shots so the nation soon reaches âherd immunityâ? There is no single answer.
Recent polls on the willingness of people to be vaccinated point in different directions. The New York Times reports that repeated surveys by Gallup, the Kaiser Family Foundation and Pew have found a general increase in willingness to be vaccinated for the disease, from around 50% of Americans last summer to over 60% in December.
Editorial Roundup: US
Last Updated Dec 30, 2020 at 3:58 pm EDT
Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad:
Dec. 29
The Post and Courier on the COVID-19 vaccine campaign and convincing the public to take the vaccine:
The first shot of the second wave of COVID-19 vaccinations in South Carolina came Monday at a nursing home in Greenville. Now the question becomes: How do we get enough Americans to take the shots so the nation soon reaches “herd immunity”? There is no single answer.
Recent polls on the willingness of people to be vaccinated point in different directions. The New York Times reports that repeated surveys by Gallup, the Kaiser Family Foundation and Pew have found a general increase in willingness to be vaccinated for the disease, from around 50% of Americans last summer to over 60% in December.
This article is more than 2 months old
The combination of Boris Johnson, Covid and Brexit is creating a constitutional crash that is waiting to happen in 2021
A demonstration calling for Scottish independence in Glasgow on 31 January 2020. There has been majority support in Scotland for breaking away from the UK in 17 successive opinion polls. Photograph: Andy Buchanan/AFP via Getty Images
A demonstration calling for Scottish independence in Glasgow on 31 January 2020. There has been majority support in Scotland for breaking away from the UK in 17 successive opinion polls. Photograph: Andy Buchanan/AFP via Getty Images
Tue 29 Dec 2020 11.00 EST
Last modified on Tue 29 Dec 2020 23.36 EST
The Guardian view on the future of the union: Britain faces breakup Editorial
The Covid year has intensified potentially terminal strains within the UK’s four-nation union. When Boris Johnson began to grapple with the seriousness of the outbreak, the impact on the union was probably low on his list of concerns. But, as 2021 beckons, Mr Johnson’s approach to Covid has become a catalyst of the possible breakup of the United Kingdom. Covid’s most lasting political legacy in these islands may be that, in its aftermath, the UK will no longer exist.
When the pandemic began, Mr Johnson seemed to assume that he was acting for the whole of the UK. He gradually discovered that, as far as Covid was concerned, this was untrue. In practice, he was the prime minister only of England. Health policy had been devolved since 1919 in Scotland, and has been under the control of devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland since Tony Blair’s era. And since