Check out these recent articles from around the web:

‘Cries for help’: Drug overdoses are soaring during the coronavirus pandemic by William Wan and Heather Long: “Suspected overdoses nationally — not all of them fatal — jumped 18 percent in March compared with last year, 29 percent in April and 42 percent in May, according to the Overdose Detection Mapping Application Program, a federal initiative that collects data from ambulance teams, hospitals and police. In some jurisdictions, such as Milwaukee County, dispatch calls for overdoses have increased more than 50 percent.”

Should We Be Drinking Less? by Anahad O’Connor: “If accepted, the new recommendation would make the United States the latest country to issue stricter guidelines on alcohol consumption. In recent years, Britain, Australia, France and other countries have issued new guidelines lowering their recommended limits on daily and weekly alcohol intake. Health authorities in those countries have said that recent evidence suggests consuming less alcohol is safer and that even one drink a day increases cancer risk.”

America’s child care problem is an economic problem by Anna North: “Experts have been warning for months that this pandemic would cause an unprecedented child care crisis in the United States, a country whose system for caring for children was already severely lacking before the public health emergency began. But policymakers devoted little attention to the problem, and for months this spring, parents were left to figure out, largely on their own, how to do their jobs with schools and day cares closed.”

How the American Worker Got Fleeced by Josh Eidelson and Christopher Cannon: “Long before the pandemic, U.S. workers’ productivity and their median pay, which once rose in tandem, went through an acrimonious divorce. Compensation, especially in some of the country’s fastest-growing industries, has stagnated, while the costs of housing, health care, and education decidedly have not.”

In the Covid-19 Economy, You Can Have a Kid or a Job. You Can’t Have Both. by Deb Perelman: “Let me say the quiet part loud: In the Covid-19 economy, you’re allowed only a kid or a job. Why isn’t anyone talking about this? Why are we not hearing a primal scream so deafening that no plodding policy can be implemented without addressing the people buried by it?”

Is Hamilton a “Bootstraps” Story? by Amber Lapp: “Hard work that is not undergirded by a strong public system will reap fewer rewards than effort unaided. A truly just American system will not expect that individuals rise up by sheer dint of thrift and effort alone, but acknowledge that personal responsibility must be matched by public responsibility.”

As the U.S. Exports Coronavirus, Trump Is Blaming Mexicans by Antonio De Loera-Brust: “Since the beginning of his administration’s abysmal response to COVID-19, U.S. President Donald Trump has cast about for someone else to blame for the devastation the pandemic has wrought. It was only a matter of time before he returned to his favorite scapegoat: Mexicans.”

Not everything happens for a reason, says Kate Bowler by US Catholic: “At age 35, Bowler, now an associate professor at Duke Divinity School, had landed a tenure-track teaching position, married, and given birth to a son. By any prosperity preacher’s standards, she was blessed. Then she was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. While never considering herself a believer in the prosperity gospel, this experience made her realize how deeply engrained the idea of a divine reward system is in American mentalities. Bowler chronicles her experience of navigating intense suffering and the people who try to explain it in her New York Times bestselling memoir, Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved (Random House). She also hosts a podcast, Everything Happens, where she explores how to speak about suffering.”

Bishop McElroy’s hopeful vision for a church transformed by MSW: “This short homily puts the lie to the idea that the church in this country is on its last legs, prostrate under the weight of its own self-inflicted wounds or threatened by a hostile secularism. The text breathes a confidence in the Lord that is quite distinct from the programmatic, managerial or neo-evangelical and individualistic approaches some U.S. Catholics advocate.”