Monthly Archives: August, 2021

A new COVID-19 variant — named Lambda — has arrived in California. The emerging Lambda variant has been popping up in the news as it spreads rapidly throughout South America. In California, at least 152 cases have been reported, the first as early as September 2020, according to state public health officials.

The deadly infection is caused by a single-celled organism called Naegleria fowleri, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Here are five key facts about these infections.

A young boy who contracted an extremely rare brain-eating amoeba while swimming in a Northern California lake has died. He was 7. Late last month, David Pruitt of Tehama County was brought to the emergency room and then transferred to UC Davis Medical Center, where he was put on life-support with severe brain swelling, according to a GoFundMe page set up in his honor.

More than one million children didn’t show up for school — virtual or in-person — last year, according to a new analysis from researchers at Stanford University and The New York Times. Elementary students were most likely to go unaccounted for, with kindergarten enrollment dropping by 9.3%. The biggest declines were in neighborhoods just above or below the poverty line. “Just as the pandemic lay bare vast disparities in health care and income, it also hardened inequities in education, setting back some of the most vulnerable students before they spent even one day in a classroom,” write reporters Dana Goldstein and Alicia Parlapiano.

The aforementioned article "Facing Afghan Chaos, Biden Defends Exit" and the letters to the editor shown below were first published in The New York Times on August 17th.