Opinion: How we get to herd immunity

In America today, people are also voting with their arms, rolling up their sleeves to get vaccinated against Covid-19 -- and the impact will likely be momentous.

Nearly 70% of Americans are "arm voting" -- they either expect to be vaccinated or already have been, according to Pew Research's polling.

More than 114 million Americans have gotten at least one dose of a vaccine.

By getting a vaccination, Americans are voting for science and a return to normal life.

"Americans need Congress to vote on common-sense gun reform, to achieve things like universal background checks and stopping the sale of assault weapons.

"As Democrats tackle voting rights and infrastructure, they face a critical turning point -- with Manchin posing a huge political hurdle.

Democrats need to solve their Manchin problem before it's too late."

The West Virginia senator should be applauded for his views about the Senate, wrote Scott Jennings.

"From election law to environmentalism to radical social agendas to the Second Amendment, parts of the private sector keep dabbling in behaving like a woke parallel government." Lincoln Mitchell noted, "These comments sound particularly absurd coming from a leader of a Republican Party that for generations has been the party of big business, not least because CEOs and other business leaders have long been an important fundraising source for the Republican Party and for McConnell specifically."

More than 70 Black executives signed a letter last month urging corporations to support voting rights.

"There is no need to suppress voting everywhere to address purported wide-scale fraud that never existed anywhere," wrote Eisen and Lydgate.

They outlined steps that the courts, state legislators and Congress could take to protect voting rights.

Derek Chauvin trial

As prosecutors in the Derek Chauvin trial moved through their slate of witnesses last week, attention turned to questions about police procedures and the cause of George Floyd's death.

"The medical evidence in George Floyd's death is complex -- and likely key to whether Derek Chauvin, the former officer accused of killing Floyd, will be convicted," wrote Dr.

It requires top-to-bottom changes in recruitment, hiring, supervision, accountability, discipline and technology -- and often, amending state laws and community standards."

Hunter Biden's memoir

Hunter Biden, a favorite target for Trump and his allies, came out with a memoir this week titled "Beautiful Things." At the first presidential debate last fall, wrote Nicole Hemmer, Joe Biden's defense of his son "demonstrated the stark difference between the two candidates -- one fueled by grievance, the other by empathy -- and also showed how sharply Americans' attitudes toward addiction have shifted in recent years."

She noted, "there is a real upside for both Hunter and Joe Biden in centering Hunter's challenges of addiction.

Now that Americans have come to treat addiction with more empathy, both Bidens understand that a story of addiction would not compound the conspiracies swirling around Hunter, but offer a potential escape from them."

"The story he tells is one of addiction against the backdrop of intense loss and love: a close-knit and interdependent family shattered again and again by inexplicable tragedy," Hemmer observed.

Anti-transgender laws

Along with targeting voting access, conservative state legislators around the country are pushing bills to disqualify transgender athletes.

"State legislators across the country have introduced dozens of bills that would bar transgender girls from competing in girls' sports," wrote former congressman Joe Kennedy, who headed the Trans Equality Task Force in the House.

The King of England had been an officer in the royal navy, as Philip would be during World War II.

But there was little reason to think that Philip, Prince of Greece and Denmark, would ever become a central figure in the British royal family.

Yet Philip married Princess Elizabeth in 1947, and his passing this week was felt by many in the UK as "a death in the family," wrote Kate Maltby.

"Like the death of Pope John Paul II in 2005, or Elizabeth Taylor in 2011, the death of the Queen's consort is one of those great passings that ruptures our sense of the world's continuity," Maltby observed.

"The world is dark, unstable and changing rapidly: the loss of the Duke of Edinburgh will feel to many British people like a farewell to an old order."

"There is more here, however, than the mere death of a long-lived celebrity.

In Britain, we have a tendency to project our private family dynamics onto the Royal Family.

Like our own family, they are born into a relationship with us -- unless like Philip, they marry in young and stick around for decades.