Free Republic

SANTIAGO, June 10 (Reuters) - Chilean health authorities announced a blanket lockdown across the capital Santiago on Thursday following some of the worst COVID-19 case numbers since the pandemic began, despite having fully vaccinated more than half its population. The development, which will alarm authorities elsewhere who are debating how fast to reopen as vaccination campaigns gather steam, comes as Chile's confirmed daily caseload surged 17% in the past two weeks nationwide and 25% in the Metropolitan region that includes Santiago and is home to half the country's population. Intensive care beds in the capital region are now at 98%...

As everyone knows, New York City is the main center of COVID-19 infection and fatality in the U.S., with something like 40% of all American deaths. The reasons why shouldn’t be a mystery. When the Black Death struck Europe in the 14th Century, people had no idea what caused the disease, and all of their theories were wrong. But experience showed, as was the case in later plagues, that the countryside was safer than the city. Most people who could decamped from cities to the country. And New York City, with more than 28,000 people per square mile, is by...

It’s no surprise that people are not evenly spread out across the Earth. But seeing the population concentrations mapped out visually can be quite striking.

... Kanazawa and Li theorize that the hunter-gatherer lifestyles of our ancient ancestors form the foundation for what make us happy now. "Situations and circumstances that would have increased our ancestors’ life satisfaction in the ancestral environment may still increase our life satisfaction today," they write. They use what they call "the savanna theory of happiness" to explain two main findings from an analysis of a large national survey (15,000 respondents) of adults aged 18 to 28. First, they find that people who live in more densely populated areas tend to report less satisfaction with their life overall. "The higher...