Author: TheGuardian

From dining mannequins to tables with bumpers, restaurants and attractions around the world are using creative ways to ensure guests keep their distance. Restaurants and bars around the world are starting to reopen, often at just 50% capacity. But how do you make a half-empty bar look buzzing? And how can owners ensure that diners stay a safe distance from one another? Here are five creative answers to the problem of socializing while social distancing. Mannequins Some enterprising owners are using mannequins to get bums on seats. The idea started in the US, where the three-Michelin-starred Inn at Little...

Why do Americans represent less than 5% of the world’s population but nearly a third of the known coronavirus death toll? Not because of government incompetence, the Trump administration is arguing, but because Americans are very unhealthy. The United States organized response to the pandemic had been “historic”, Trump’s health secretary, Alex Azar, told CNN on 17 May, but America “unfortunately” has a “very diverse” population, and black Americans and minorities “in particular” have “significant underlying disease”. Jake Tapper, the CNN anchor interviewing Azar, paused and squinted. Surely, he asked, Azar was not arguing that “the reason that there...

A failed state is one that can no longer claim legitimacy or perform a government’s core function of protecting the people’s basic security. Lately, the Wisconsin supreme court seems to be doing its level best to make its state qualify for “failed” status. Multiple decisions have both undermined the government’s legitimacy and endangered the people. First, there was the primary. Because voting in person is clearly risky during a pandemic, several states delayed their primaries to make sure everyone was able to mail in a ballot instead of having to go to a polling place. Not so Wisconsin. The...