Editor's Note 17:4

Before introducing our last issue for the year 2020, it seems apropos to make explicit note of the global context within which this issue is published. At this writing, the global pandemic involving the coronavirus identified as COVID-19, which has been detected in almost every country in the world, “has sickened more than 59,325,100 people” and “at least 1,398,200 people have died” (New York Times: 11/24/20).

At the time of this writing, in the latter part of November, 2020, the United States accounts for more than 257, 600 deaths, with Brazil having lost more than 169,485 people, and India has incurred the third greatest number of deaths—losing more than 134, 218 of its citizens as of November 24, 2020 (The New York Times, 2020). These numbers provide us with an abstract hint of the enormity of the human suffering this pandemic has brought to human beings all over the globe. Moreover, at the present time, public health officials continue to warn of an increasingly rapid surge in the spread of the virus, with the number of deaths expected to increase to over 470,000 by the beginning of March, 2021, in the U.S. alone (Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, Univesity of Washington, 2020 November 19).

Here in the United States, with the pandemic as backdrop, the country has endured a bruising election campaign involving a president whose supporters often claim that the virus is a hoax, and that the mandating of mask wearing for prevention of the spread of the virus is an infringement on individual liberty. To this day, more than 3 weeks since the U.S. presidential election, the president refuses to concede the election, even though the Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, has clearly won far more than the necessary 270 votes in the Electoral College, and has received more than 6,000,000 more votes than the incumbent in the popular vote count; and, with unprecedented obstructionism, the incumbent has thereby delayed the beginning of the transition of power for almost 3 w