Although 19th-century parties were more fluid and the idea of bipartisanship did not exist, many moderates who served in the period before the Civil War were similarly concerned with forging national compromise — not among parties, per se, but between the slave states of the South and the nonslaveholding states of the North.

What emerges on omicron in coming days will determine what the final wave of 2021 consumer spending looks like. After hospitality businesses missed out on their most lucrative trading period in 2020, and given the high expectations for the so-called golden quarter this year, a significant scaling back would be a double blow.

Attorney Jon Krell often comes into children’s lives when they have been taken from everything they know and relatives are working to get them back home. He describes parents telling him of their visitations, “It hurts so much — I get to hug them and then I have to give them back.”

If we are to be honest with ourselves, few physical reflexes inflict a more distressing assault on our senses than a cough. The sundry sounds that a cough can produce — wheezy or hoarse, high-pitched or raspy, barking or crowing — are among the most irritating noises the human body can produce.