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Reality has endorsed Bernie Sanders

Reality has endorsed Bernie Sanders

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor writes: The debate over the role of government in addressing income inequality, housing insecurity, debt accumulation, and health care continues, now against the grim backdrop of the raging coronavirus. It is difficult to articulate the speed with which the U.S. and, indeed, the world, has descended into an existential crisis. We are experiencing an unprecedented public-health event whose diminution and potential resolution rests with a series of prescriptions, including settlement-in-place orders, that will annihilate the economy. The deadly…

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Trump finally submits to reality

Trump finally submits to reality

Eugene Robinson writes: I realize it’s always dangerous to be optimistic where Trump is concerned. Perhaps I’m going with hope over experience, but for the first time, I have the sense that the White House accepts the scientific consensus about the threat covid-19 poses. I heard Trump’s usual bluster and bombast at his Rose Garden performance this weekend, but I also heard realism. Trump’s decision to keep in place national social-distancing guidelines until April 30 abandoned his insane notion that…

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How will coronavirus change the world?

How will coronavirus change the world?

Peter C Baker writes: Everything feels new, unbelievable, overwhelming. At the same time, it feels as if we’ve walked into an old recurring dream. In a way, we have. We’ve seen it before, on TV and in blockbusters. We knew roughly what it would be like, and somehow this makes the encounter not less strange, but more so. Every day brings news of developments that, as recently as February, would have felt impossible – the work of years, not mere…

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What came first, cells or viruses?

What came first, cells or viruses?

Viviane Richter writes: Do humans really mark the pinnacle of evolution, or do viruses? While we’ve evolved along a pathway of ever-increasing complexity, viruses have streamlined, successfully jettisoning all but a handful of essential genes, research published in Science Advances in September [2015] suggests. Gustavo Caetano-Anolles and his colleagues at the University of Illinois reached this conclusion after pioneering a new way to map the microbial family tree. Viruses did not evolve first, they found. Instead, viruses and bacteria both…

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Social distancing is a privilege of the middle class. For India’s slum dwellers, it will be impossible

Social distancing is a privilege of the middle class. For India’s slum dwellers, it will be impossible

CNN reports: For two days, Jeetender Mahender, a 36-year-old Dalit sanitation worker, has not dared to leave his family’s shanty in the Valmiki slum of northern Mumbai, India, except to go to the toilet. His situation is desperate. The tiny home has no running water or toilet, his family is low on food — and when he doesn’t go to work, he doesn’t get paid. Mahender is trying to comply with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 21-day nationwide lockdown, intended to…

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Endangered people: Indigenous South Americans blockade villages to avert coronavirus catastrophe

Endangered people: Indigenous South Americans blockade villages to avert coronavirus catastrophe

The Guardian reports: Indigenous groups across South America are blockading their villages and retreating into their traditional forest and mountain homes in a bid to escape the potentially cataclysmic threat of coronavirus. In recent days, as the number of cases in South America has risen to almost 8,000 – with many more cases likely to be unreported – indigenous groups in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru have all started taking steps to protect themselves from what they call a historic…

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Coronavirus unemployment rate may peak at a rate higher than during the Great Depression

Coronavirus unemployment rate may peak at a rate higher than during the Great Depression

CNBC reports: Millions of Americans already have lost their jobs due to the coronavirus crisis and the worst of the damage is yet to come, according to a Federal Reserve estimate. Economists at the Fed’s St. Louis district project total employment reductions of 47 million, which would translate to a 32.1% unemployment rate, according to a recent analysis of how bad things could get. The projections are even worse than St. Louis Fed President James Bullard’s much-publicized estimate of 30%….

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The contrarian coronavirus theory that informed the Trump administration

The contrarian coronavirus theory that informed the Trump administration

Isaac Chotiner writes: President Trump, who at one point called the coronavirus pandemic an “invisible enemy” and said it made him a “wartime President,” has in recent days questioned its seriousness, tweeting, “WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF.” Trump said repeatedly that he wanted the country to reopen by Easter, April 12th, contradicting the advice of most health officials. (On Sunday, he backed down and extended federal social-distancing guidelines for at least another month.) According…

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‘We need to be alert’: Scientists fear second coronavirus wave as China’s lockdowns ease

‘We need to be alert’: Scientists fear second coronavirus wave as China’s lockdowns ease

Nature reports: For the first time in months, the Chinese province of Hubei, where the coronavirus first emerged, is getting attention for a good reason. COVID-19 cases there have dropped to practically zero, and last week authorities lifted travel restrictions in and out of the province, some 60 days after much of it was dramatically locked down. Now scientists — and the rest of the world — are watching closely to see whether easing the intense measures to keep people…

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As Moscow enters strict quarantine, Putin has been notably silent

As Moscow enters strict quarantine, Putin has been notably silent

The Washington Post reports: Muscovites got a four-hour notice Sunday night on a sweeping quarantine that will keep them inside their homes unless they are walking a pet, taking out the trash or visiting the nearest grocery store. Mayor Sergei Sobyanin’s decree did not take effect until midnight, but the confusion was immediate. Within an hour, prominent Russian lawmaker Andrei Klishas questioned the legality of Sobyanin’s order, arguing that only federal authorities could impose such restrictions. While some state media…

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Coronavirus pandemic leading to huge drop in air pollution

Coronavirus pandemic leading to huge drop in air pollution

The Guardian reports: The coronavirus pandemic is shutting down industrial activity and temporarily slashing air pollution levels around the world, satellite imagery from the European Space Agency shows. One expert said the sudden shift represented the “largest scale experiment ever” in terms of the reduction of industrial emissions. Readings from ESA’s Sentinel-5P satellite show that over the past six weeks, levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) over cities and industrial clusters in Asia and Europe were markedly lower than in the…

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Antibodies from survivors will be given to some coronavirus patients in experimental treatment

Antibodies from survivors will be given to some coronavirus patients in experimental treatment

The New York Times reports: Can blood from coronavirus survivors help other people fight the illness? Doctors in New York will soon be testing the idea in hospitalized patients who are seriously ill. Blood from people who have recovered can be a rich source of antibodies, proteins made by the immune system to attack the virus. The part of the blood that contains antibodies, so-called convalescent plasma, has been used for decades to treat infectious diseases, including Ebola and influenza….

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Last-minute airlift of urgently needed medical supplies from China begins arriving in New York

Last-minute airlift of urgently needed medical supplies from China begins arriving in New York

Reuters reports: A planeload of desperately needed medical supplies arrived in New York from China on Sunday, the first in a series of flights over the next 30 days organized by the White House to help fight the coronavirus, a White House official said. A commercial carrier landed at John F. Kennedy airport carrying gloves, gowns and masks for distribution in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, three hard-hit states battling to care for a crush of coronavirus patients. The…

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Desperate for medical equipment, states encounter a beleaguered national stockpile

Desperate for medical equipment, states encounter a beleaguered national stockpile

The Washington Post reports: On Feb. 5, with fewer than a dozen confirmed novel coronavirus cases in the United States but tens of thousands around the globe, a shouting match broke out in the White House Situation Room between Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and an Office of Management and Budget official, according to three people aware of the outburst. Azar had asked OMB that morning for $2 billion to buy respirator masks and other supplies for a…

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