Hello and, for the final time from me this year, happy Friday! If you’re new to this newsletter, you’ve joined just in time for the final correspondence of 2020—you lucky dog! If you’re a regular reader, it’s great to have you back.
Over the last seven months, we’ve had 16 correspondences, 160 sign ups, and a partridge in a pear tree. I’m extremely grateful to all of you for taking part in this one-sided dialogue and, as a way of saying thank you, I’d like to gift a one-year Atlantic subscription to the first person who responds to this email. If thats you, you’ll hear from me sometime this weekend. If you don’t hear from me but would still like to support The Atlantic’s journalism, you can do so here. I’m biased, but it makes a great holiday gift.
Finally, if you’ve enjoyed the newsletter and think your friends and colleagues might too, please share it with them below!
What I’ve written
The clips of people in Britain and the U.S. receiving some of the very first doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine are proof that there is light at the end of what has felt like a very long, very dark tunnel. But that light is a bit brighter for some countries than it is for others.
The reason for that is simple: Wealthy countries have secured the lion’s share of the vaccine doses that will be available in the short term—so much so that some are even projected to have enough vaccines to inoculate their population several times over. But by claiming the vast majority of doses for themselves, they have left little else for other countries, many of which cannot afford to hedge their bets on multiple vaccine trials.
While there are global efforts underway to equalize vaccine distribution, those aims are largely being undermined by vaccine nationalism. Without equal distribution, public-health experts warn that the pandemic could continue to live on residually for years, bringing with it even more death and further economic collapse.
The main takeaway: If the virus remains endemic anywhere, it will continue to pose a threat everywhere. Keep reading here
What I’ve read
While the pandemic has shown humanity at its best (healthcare workers, carers, and essential workers—thank you), it has also demonstrated the human tendency to be the absolute worst. This piece about what wedding photographers in Texas have endured will make your blood boil:
“The wedding photographer had already spent an hour or two inside with the unmasked wedding party when one of the bridesmaids approached her. The woman thanked her for still showing up, considering ‘everything that’s going on with the groom.’
When the photographer asked what she meant by that, the bridesmaid said the groom had tested positive for the coronavirus the day before. ‘She was looking for me to be like, “Oh, that’s crazy,” like I was going to agree with her that it was fine,’ the photographer recalls. ‘So I was like, “What are you talking about?” And she was like, “Oh no no no, don’t freak out. He doesn’t have symptoms. He’s fine.”’”
This beautifully written essay by my colleague McKay Coppins on Mormonism, America, and the future of this “achingly American” faith:
“What happens when a religious group discovers that it’s spent 200 years assimilating to an America that no longer exists? As their native country fractures and turns on itself, Mormons are being forced to grapple with questions about who they are and what they believe. And a loose but growing liberal coalition inside the Church is pushing for reform.”
For those who have been following the repression of the Uighurs in Xinjiang, this report about the suppression of China’s small Jewish community is no less distressing:
“That such a small group can attract the Communist Party’s ire shows how far the crackdown has spread. Only about 1,000 people in Kaifeng claim Jewish heritage, and of those, only around 100 or are practising Jews, experts say – barely a splash in China’s sea of 1.4 billion. Even at its peak in the 1500s, the community only numbered around 5,000.”
This sound piece of advice from Zeynep Tufekci about your upcoming holiday gatherings: Hang on for three more months.
“[T]his Christmas will be a particularly terrible time to catch the coronavirus. Hospitals nationwide are already overwhelmed, ICUs stretched to their limit. A surge of cases tied to the holidays could further challenge hospitals’ capacity to provide lifesaving care. Meanwhile, treatments are improving, testing is expanding, and vaccines are arriving. If your loved ones can stay healthy a few months longer, they might be much likelier to survive the disease—or to avoid contracting it entirely.
What I’m thinking about
If anything is certain about 2021, it’s that there will probably be a lot more newsletters (more on this from Ann Friedman, who has been doing this longer than anyone). With that in mind, I want to know how I can make Foreign Correspondence better in the New Year and not just another space invader in your inbox.
What would you like to see more of in this correspondence? What does it already have that you can live without? I’d be grateful for your thoughts and feedback, so please get in touch if you have any.
Until 2021,
Yasmeen
P.S. For our virtual holiday party, The Atlantic’s global team was challenged to a great gingerbread bake off. Who was star baker? I’ll let you be the judge.