Covid-19

A recent IRS ruling tying up a loose end in the 2020 economic-relief law could force many small businesses to pay taxes on government aid meant to help through the pandemic.The agency on Nov. 18 said the businesses cannot deduct expenses such as payroll and rent, paid for with money from the Paycheck Protection Program of the CARES Act. Such deductions are common when those expenses are paid for with revenue from running a business.The ruling hardened a divide between the Trump administration and the main tax writers in Congress, who have sought since the corona­virus outbreak produced an econ...

In an op-ed published by the New York Times on Thanksgiving, Pope Francis defended some of the social distancing restrictions that have been enacted in response to the COVID-19 pandemic — applauding governments that have been "acting decisively to protect health and to save lives" by "imposing strict measures to contain the outbreak." And some right-wingers have responded by slamming the Pope as a "socialist" or a "communist."

Companies are implementing their own plans to rapidly distribute coronavirus vaccines.

The coronavirus is clouding "Black Friday" much as it has overshadowed 2020 in general, but some leading experts still expect strong overall sales even as shopping patterns are altered.

This Tuesday, Idaho Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin proposed spending millions of dollars of the state’s CARES Act funds for technology that included “walk-through disinfectant cubes” to be installed at the state Capitol to fight against coronavirus, the Idaho State Journal reports.

FORT WORTH, Texas — Meredith McKee rushed to the hospital in June after taking her blood pressure at a CVS pharmacy and seeing it was dangerously high. The emergency room staff at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital admitted her but insisted on testing for COVID-19.“I laughed at the team and said I had already had it,” said McKee, a 45-year-old Dallas resident. “There’s no way I could have COVID again.”But the test proved her wrong.“I didn’t have any symptoms other than high blood pressure,” she said. “If it wasn’t for the second test, I would have never known.”McKee was first diagnosed with CO...

Remember in the spring, the pot-banging? People would come out on their porches in the evening to rally for the health workers — to say, collectively for just a minute or two, that we were thankful for the effort.That spirit seems years away to Anna Halloran.“There’s a large segment of the population that hates the health department right now, that thinks we’re lying,” says Halloran, a communicable disease epidemiologist in Spokane, Washington.Halloran works for the Spokane Regional Health District, which recently fired its top health officer, Dr. Bob Lutz. He was sort of the Dr. Anthony Fauci...

(tca/dpa) - Last spring was the busiest season Michael K. Donohue can remember for his family's six funeral homes in the Philadelphia suburbs. Covid-19 was the primary reason, of course, with 160 funerals in April alone — double the usual number.But this fall, even as the daily totals of new infections have surged past where they were in the spring, business at Donohue Funeral Homes remains fairly normal — so far. Donohue, the president of the 122-year-old business based in Upper Darby, sees the trend as well as any epidemiologist."It's just not hitting the elderly," he said.Since the start o...

Masks that cover the mouth and nose have proven to be one of the most effective ways of containing the COVID-19 pandemic.

Vietnam so far has only recorded fewer than 1,400 cases of the novel coronavirus, a far cry from the world-record 12 million-plus cases recorded so far in the United States.

Writing in The Bulwark this Thursday, Tim Miller says that America should be experiencing a time of national solidarity in the midst of a global pandemic. Instead, "we have a president whose focus is entirely on his effort to perpetrate a fraud on the American public."