Many children are heading back to school, Halloween candy is lining the grocery store shelves and pumpkin spice everything is already available at Dunkin’, but fall feels a long way off.
Heat waves swathed much of the U.S., tropical storms Grace and Henri are making landfall and then there’s COVID-19.
It’s been a wild week, so let’s dive in to the latest safety-adjacent news, and other headlines you might have missed.
The COVID-19 Battle Wages On
The latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that nearly all the nation has a high level of community transmission of COVID-19.
In Texas, doctors may start rationing ICU beds and treatment to the vaccinated based on the assumption those patients will be more likely to survive.
One shimmer of hope is that Thursday, for the first time since early July, more than 1 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccines were reported administered. Oklahoma and Louisiana, where vaccination rates have lagged, are now outpacing the national average.
There’s speculation that full FDA approval for Pfizer/BioNTech’s vaccine is forthcoming, which will likely change the conversation about vaccine mandates. Still, the next several weeks will be harrowing, as it takes five weeks to have full immunity from the two-dose vaccines.
In the meantime, more institutions and organizations are requiring proof of vaccination, or a negative COVID-19 test result for admittance to work, school and even concert venues. In our neck of the woods, the band Maroon 5 has implemented a policy for a concert at an outdoor venue, and a number of smaller venues announced a new joint COVID-19 policy.
Read more about the evolving situation here.
Go for a Walk
We know we should be pumping iron, but, well, we’re better at lifting popcorn up to our lips while watching Netflix.
But we can (and often do) stroll around the neighborhood after dinner. It didn’t seem like much—walking doesn’t build a six-pack, after all—but this article suggests that walking is better for our health than we thought.
"Walking is the most underrated, corrective, mind-body, fat-burning exercise available to humans," said Dana Santas, a CNN fitness contributor, certified strength and conditioning specialist, and mind-body coach in professional sports. "I walk every single day."
The article explains some of the health benefits of a walking regimen, including weight loss; lower blood pressure and cholesterol; reduced risk of heart disease, diabetes and cancer. Even better, we don’t need to talk 10,000 steps a day to see some of these health benefits.
Santas offers suggestions for ramping up the intensity of the walk, but it’s still putting one foot around the other. And as with many larger goals, it’s that simple persistence of small steps that can lead to big changes.
Read the full article here, then if you have the good fortune of being able to, go take a lap!
Pulling Double Duty
This last story made us scratch our heads and say “What?”
The Wall Street Journal found a small number of white-collar workers who have been juggling work and work during the pandemic. More specifically, they are working two full-time remote jobs.
One software engineer says he was encouraged to work two jobs because of the website Overemployed, which reporter Rachel Feintzeig describes as a site that “aims to rally workers around the concept of stealthily holding multiple jobs, framing it as a way to rest back control after decades of stalled wages for some and a pandemic that led to unpredictable layoffs.”
We don’t want to give too much away because this is an unbelievable tale, but we will note that according to an employment attorney, working two jobs isn’t illegal. Rather, it’s bold and risky.
Read the full article here.
