Lessons From Macau, the Densely Populated Region Beating Back COVID-19

The United States has refused to institute a carbon tax, but Canada has agreed to a carbon tax in all provinces by 2018. The carbon tax has received support across party lines, however, some elections remain to see if the carbon tax favoring candidates are elected.

Vermont's passage of a law requiring food that is genetically modified to be labeled spurred action at the national level to create one standard, rather than a patchwork of state laws, that offers food companies several ways to label foods with GMOs. The national bill did eventually pass, but as this piece illustrates, no one seems very happy about it. Environmentalists feel it leaves large loopholes and while the food industry likes one standard, it does not like the stigma the GMO label confers.

In Mancos, Colorado, the school board voted “no” to arming school staff in the traditionally Western town. Across the United States, the question of arming teachers is being brought up as a response to the increase in school shootings. The policy is highly contested, with some saying it provides students with a feeling of safety, but others saying the risks associated are too high. For the Mancos community, such a vote is a surprise given the town’s gun-friendly history, but is explained by the increase in new residents.

Australia has found a promising model to make high-priced medicine cheaper for patients, including expensive treatments for Hepatitis C, which the country is now on track to eradicating by 2026. The strategy works similar to the business strategy of subscription streaming services- by paying a lump sum to drug producers, Australia gets an unlimited amount of the drug for 5 years, allowing all patients to get help while ensuring stable profits for drug companies.

In 2018, Baltimore passed a harm-reduction bill that allowed the distribution of fentanyl testing strips to assess if fentanyl has been laced into drugs. The decriminalization of these follow similar harm reduction trends that allow for the distribution of safe syringes and naloxone. While proving effective in reducing drug overdoses, because such stigma is attached to addiction, states like Arizona are hesitant to implement such measures, even as advocates and experts call for it.

The United States and Italy have been playing catch up in the mitigation of the coronavirus pandemic and were resistant to implementing social distancing, while other countries took more aggressive approaches. Now both countries are looking to China and South Korea to learn how sweeping actions and industrialized scaling of measures such as fever clinics, temperature check points, portable CAT scanning, and social isolation, have helped to contain the pandemic.

Voting by mail will increase dramatically due to Covid-19 and drop boxes are one way to collect these ballots. Although fears of fraud have been unfounded, the GOP initiated lawsuits to block or limit drop boxes if they are not monitored so some states and districts place the boxes in government buildings and other places, such as libraries, that are staffed. While this slightly limits the hours that voters can drop off their ballots, it uses existing resources to provide supervision and increases voter confidence that their ballots will be received, especially among ongoing issues with the postal service.

When news of COVID-19 arrived in the West African Village of Dirty Box Junction, community members and local government were ready to act due to lessons learned from mistakes made during the Ebola outbreak of years earlier. The village along with the rest of sub-Saharan Africa immediately enacted measures – state of emergencies, mandatory screenings, and contact tracing, to name a few – that have kept their case count low, while the U.S. continues to see cases and deaths increase.

A grassroots campaign ended gerrymandering in Michigan by passing an initiative requiring districts be drawn by citizen-commissions rather than politicians. The all-volunteer campaign went door-to-door collecting enough signatures to get the initiative on the ballot and used creative voter-engagement techniques to sustain the support. Once the ballot initiative passed, 9,300 people applied for the first commission. A third-party firm ultimately selected four Democrats, four Republicans, and five non-partisan people as commissioners, who worked together very well to redraw districts.

Alaska’s first primary election since it instituted a “top four” election system that places all candidates – regardless of party –on the same primary ballot, resulted in a less partisan campaign because people have to appeal to a more diverse group than their base in order to win. The all-mail primary also led to higher voter turnout, the highest since 2014.