The Week Magazine December 23, 2022

My mom died a year ago, and her passing brought me a disorienting mixture of grief and relief. She was 98, and had suffered from dementia for more than a decade. In her last two months, my mother’s joy in eating (“Yum, yum!”) finally faded, and seeing her laboring to breathe tortured me. When her body finally gave out, it was no surprise, but the sudden absence death creates is always a shock. In ensuing weeks, I found myself with what is referred to in our Last Word this week (see p.36) as “dreadful freedom.” I’d spent afternoons with my mom virtually every Saturday and Sunday for the 13 years since my father died, took her on my family’s vacations, drove her to doctors, hired and managed caregivers, winced as…

What happened Health officials this week warned of a likely Covid surge during the holidays amid a “tripledemic” of three viruses: Covid, influenza, and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV. Daily Covid case counts have more than doubled over the past two weeks, according to the CDC, while deaths are up 65 percent and hospitalizations 22 percent. At the same time, the U.S. is suffering the worst flu outbreak in over a decade, with more than 13 million cases and 7,300 deaths, and case counts are continuing to climb. The result for some hospitals is a crush of patients not seen since last winter’s Omicron surge. Mississippi is down to 65 ICU beds and sending overflow to neighboring states; in Southern California, hospitals have put beds in parking lots and auditoriums; in…

Celesta Byrne first sent a letter to England’s Geoff Banks in 1938, as part of a pen-pal program at her New Jersey school. The pair stayed in touch, trading stories about their daily life and families, and Banks even sent Byrne mail while serving in the Pacific during World War II. The two met in person in 2002 for their 80th birthdays, and this year, after eight decades of correspondence, they connected on Zoom to celebrate turning 100. “She’s a very interesting person,” Banks said of Byrne. “She’s always been there to write to.” When only two people showed up for her book launch event in Ohio, debut author Chelsea Banning vented about the poor turnout on Twitter. Within hours, several best-selling writers—including Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, and Min Jin Lee—comforted…

What happened As snow blanketed Ukrainian cities shivering with only sporadic heat and power, the U.S. this week redoubled its support for Ukraine’s military. Biden administration officials said the U.S. was preparing to send Patriot missile systems to Ukraine, while Congress reached a budget deal that reportedly includes up to $38 billion in additional aid. Long-range Patriot missile batteries are the Pentagon’s most advanced ground-based defense system against aerial attack, and the Biden administration had previously resisted Ukrainian requests for them, as they are in short supply and require extensive training. Ukraine is desperate for Patriots because Russia has been hammering away at its electrical grid, hitting nearly every substation at least once. Airstrikes last weekend knocked out power to 1.5 million people in the major port city of Odesa, while…

What happened The biggest scandal to shake the crypto-currency world became a criminal matter this week when Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of the crypto exchange FTX, was arrested in the Bahamas and charged by the Department of Justice. In the Southern District of New York, prosecutors charged the 30-year-old with eight criminal counts, including lying to investors, wire fraud on lenders and customers, and conspiring to violate campaign finance laws. The Securities and Exchange Commission also filed civil charges alleging that he misled investors while defrauding customers from the company’s inception, transferring customer deposits to his trading firm, Alameda, and taking huge risks with the funds. When a rush on withdrawals revealed an $8 billion shortfall last month, FTX declared bankruptcy. It was a “house of cards built on a foundation of…

What matters is that she’s home, said Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post. Brittney Griner, 32, the WNBA star arrested in Moscow in February for possession of cannabis oil, was freed from a Russian penal colony last week, after President Biden brought her back in exchange for Viktor Bout, 55, a notorious Russian arms dealer. The trade “might look unequal,” but Biden “was absolutely right to make it.” Nicknamed the “Merchant of Death,” Bout sold weapons to brutal African warlords, the Taliban, and Islamic terrorists. Bout had served 11 years of a 25-year-sentence in an Illinois federal prison. Some on the Right are professing outrage that Biden traded for Griner without also freeing Paul Whelan, an ex-Marine and security expert jailed in Russia since 2018 on trumped-up espionage charges. The…