U.K. reports no new covid-19 deaths for first time since March 2020

The coronavirus vaccine seems to be making our nation weirder.

No, not like a side effect after the injection. I mean, our behavior around the vaccine is making some Americans act in bizarre and irrational ways, whether it is even in our bodies.

The nation stopped to give a Memorial Day salute and to honor the Americans who sacrificed their lives for our country this week. Yet nearly half of their fellow citizens won’t get a needle in their arms — for our country.

Just two months ago, we were road-tripping, lying, cheating, flying and conspiring to get appointments for a shot of a coronavirus vaccine.

Alice Herb, 88, an intrepid New Yorker, is used to walking miles around Manhattan. But after this year of being shut inside, trying to avoid covid-19, she has noticed a big difference in how she feels.

“Physically, I’m out of shape,” she told me. “The other day, I took the subway for the first time, and I was out of breath climbing two flights of stairs to the street. That’s just not me.”

Emotionally, Herb, a retired lawyer and journalist, is hesitant about resuming activities even though she’s fully vaccinated.

A day after Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s chief of staff cast doubt on the country’s ability to host the Copa América soccer tournament, Bolsonaro reaffirmed the nation’s intent to host the continental event.

“As far as it is up to me, and all the ministers, including the health minister, it is all decided,” Bolsonaro said Tuesday, speaking to supporters in the capital, Brasília.

CONMEBOL, the South American soccer body, announced Monday its plans to move the tournament from Argentina to Brazil two weeks before the start of the event. Luiz Eduardo Ramos, Bolsonaro’s chief of staff, said those plans were not finalized later that evening. He added that fans would be barred from games in host cities, which are yet to be announced.

Six restaurants in Washington, D.C., joined together earlier this year to sell a subscription supper club. They offered home delivery of a gourmet meal from a different chef each week for six weeks for $360. It sold out in six days.

Subscriptions boomed during the coronavirus pandemic as Americans largely stuck in shutdown mode flocked to digital entertainment and signed up for regular home delivery of boxes of items such as clothes and chocolate. But what really set the past year apart was the increase in subscriptions in the hard-hit services sector. Owners of restaurants, hotels, home-repair companies and others upended their traditional business models to try subscriptions and often found more interest — and revenue — than they anticipated.

Last Wednesday, 22-year-old Abbigail Bugenske became a millionaire thanks to Ohio’s new lottery scheme aimed at boosting coronavirus vaccination rates. Gov. Mike DeWine (R) enacted the program, which enters all vaccinated adults in weekly lottery drawings for $1 million and awards five lucky vaccinated teenagers full scholarships at an Ohio public university of their choice. The plan seems to have worked: In the program’s first week, the state recorded “a 28 percent increase in the vaccination rate of those 16 and older.”

With a year of mostly virtual learning winding down, and fewer than a third of D.C.’s public school students in classrooms part of the week, Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) made an ambitious assertion: School buildings are to open full time in the fall with all students attending in person. All teachers must report to their classrooms. And students will be required to return unless — and the mayor delivered a big caveat — they demonstrate a need to continue with virtual learning, she said at a news conference last month.

A Canadian panel of scientists said Tuesday that people who received a first dose of AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine can choose to receive their second dose from Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna, joining several European countries that have adopted similar guidance.

Canada’s National Advisory Committee on Immunization said it considered the risk of rare but serious blood clots associated with AstraZeneca’s vaccine when making the decision. Howard Njoo, the nation’s deputy chief public health officer, said officials wanted to give people enough information to “make an informed decision.”

Coronavirus cases are soaring. Hospitals are growing crowded. And officials are warning that doctors may soon have to decide who lives.

While India’s covid-19 crisis is far from over, the number of new coronavirus infections per million people in Malaysia has overtaken that of the more populous South Asian country. Malaysia, with its roughly 32 million people, now registers more new cases per capita than any medium- or large-sized country in Asia, according to Our World in Data, which tracks publicly available figures.