If we want people to trust disease epidemiologists during the COVID-19 pandemic - and the next pandemic after that, since this was the third one of just coronavirus in 17 years - then we have to start holding suspect epidemiologists accountable.

During the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, 28 states experienced higher gun deaths, including suicides. New York, Minnesota, and Michigan saw numbers go up more than 100 percent, according to a recent paper. Only Alaska, which often leads the US, had significantly lower rates of gun deaths during that period.

Children have a higher tolerance for thrills than most parents believe.  In 1989, when Disney returned to form with "The Little Mermaid", Ursula was among the scariest villains ever. She got impaled by the mast of a ship. That didn't bother kids a bit.

It's more often parents that are overthinking this stuff. I am not saying you should hand your 6-year-old a "Saw" DVD but for the second consecutive year of the pandemic let's stop the usual apocalyptic worry about sugary treats plus the concern about COVID-19. They'll be okay on both counts. 

Here are 4 reasons why we as a society need to dial it down on Sunday, and maybe every day after that.

Recent survey results by SciDev.Net/CABI reveal that the majority of science journalists (633 respondents from 77 countries) believe that the field is not consolidating the way some other mainstream/legacy journalism specialties are.

For most of this century, anyone in London has been photographed and filmed an average of 300 times each day. Their reasoning to start such intrusive scrutiny was that England, Wales, and Scotland led the developed world in crime, and a tourist attraction like London needed extra monitoring.

When Daniel Craig was announced as the new James Bond, he took a lot of criticism. I will be honest, I was among the critics. I have read every book, seen all the films, I wear both Charvet and Turnbull  &  Asser shirts for no other reason than they were in the books (the French brand for villains, naturally, and then Turnbull for the man himself) and I was firmly on Team Clive Owen for the role.

Craig was clearly a Sean Connery and not a Roger Moore, who was most like the Eton-schooled Bond in the books. He was too short but author Ian Fleming was creating an idealized version of himself, much like Dan Brown fictionalized himself as an Indiana Jones for art history majors, yet I conceded there is no reason all spies had to be 6 feet and up.