September 18, 2021

Several international airlines begin barring cloth masks in favor of surgical or medical ones, a reversal of the guidance that had told the public for a year that cloth face coverings were adequate. NPR reports that about a quarter of U.S. health care workers had refused the vaccine as of July, complicating the hospitals’ own mandates.

A British government adviser, Professor Adam Finn, warns against “stigmatising” parents who are hesitant about vaccinating children and calls for tolerance on all sides, a note of restraint against the harder messaging elsewhere. The New York Times, by contrast, runs an opinion piece asking readers to imagine a virus ten times deadlier, keeping the sense of threat elevated as case numbers ease.