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How long social distancing for coronavirus will have to last depends on these factors

How long social distancing for coronavirus will have to last depends on these factors

The Washington Post reports: How long are we going to have to keep this up? The closed schools, working from home, six feet of personal space and zombie-apocalypse empty streets? It’s the question now preoccupying America as millions of parents silently scream it into the void amid the coronavirus pandemic. But it is an especially hard one for science to answer. The best and most honest reply, according to epidemiologists and virologists, is simple: “It depends.” It’s not going to…

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The inhumane conditions inside America’s jails and prisons now pose a threat to everyone

The inhumane conditions inside America’s jails and prisons now pose a threat to everyone

Amanda Klonsky writes: If you think a cruise ship is a dangerous place to be during a pandemic, consider America’s jails and prisons. The new coronavirus spreads at its quickest in closed environments. And places like nursing homes in affected areas have begun to take precautions at the behest of families and experts. As this new disease spreads, it has become equally important for all of us to ask what steps are being taken to protect the health of people…

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Trump pretends he anticipated the coronavirus pandemic, but his own words prove him wrong

Trump pretends he anticipated the coronavirus pandemic, but his own words prove him wrong

The New York Times reports: For weeks, President Trump has minimized the coronavirus, mocked concern about it and treated the risk cavalierly. On Tuesday he took to the White House podium and made a remarkable pronouncement: He knew it was a pandemic all along. “I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic,” Mr. Trump told reporters. Here is what Mr. Trump actually said from the beginning of the pandemic. Jan. 22, asked on CNBC whether…

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Before Trump took office, the incoming administration was warned about the danger of a pandemic

Before Trump took office, the incoming administration was warned about the danger of a pandemic

Politico reports: Seven days before Donald Trump took office, his aides faced a major test: the rapid, global spread of a dangerous virus in cities like London and Seoul, one serious enough that some countries were imposing travel bans. In a sober briefing, Trump’s incoming team learned that the disease was an emerging pandemic — a strain of novel influenza known as H9N2 — and that health systems were crashing in Asia, overwhelmed by the demand. “Health officials warn that…

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Experts agree that Trump’s coronavirus response was poor, but the U.S. was ill-prepared in the first place

Experts agree that Trump’s coronavirus response was poor, but the U.S. was ill-prepared in the first place

President Donald Trump with members of the president’s Coronavirus Task Force at the White House, Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2020. AP Photo/Evan Vucci By Simon F. Haeder, Pennsylvania State University As the coronavirus pandemic exerts a tighter grip on the nation, critics of the Trump administration have repeatedly highlighted the administration’s changes to the nation’s pandemic response team in 2018 as a major contributor to the current crisis. This combines with a hiring freeze at the Centers for Disease Control and…

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Social distancing is a social justice issue

Social distancing is a social justice issue

Phillip Picardi writes: The headlines have not been bringing good news. The infection and death rate of COVID-19 (known colloquially as coronavirus) is steadily rising, with the CDC estimating a worst-case scenario of between 160 and 214 million infected people in the United States alone, with the potential for more than a million deaths. To avoid this nightmare scenario, many companies have asked their employees to work from home, live television talk shows have pivoted to skeleton crews and empty…

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Trump finds his MAGA movement fracturing over coronavirus

Trump finds his MAGA movement fracturing over coronavirus

Politico reports: Just two weeks after President Donald Trump rallied conservatives to focus on the threat of socialism, his followers are splitting over the coronavirus pandemic. On one side are those like Bill Mitchell, who dismiss it as nothing worse than the flu, and the drive to eradicate it as “climate change 2.0” — as in, a media-lefty mass hysteria. On the other side are pro-Trump fixtures like Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller, who have been sounding alarms on the…

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The incompetence pandemic

The incompetence pandemic

Politico reports: Welcome to politics’ darkest hour. If the coronavirus outbreak has taught us anything beyond the necessity of careful hygiene, it’s that the first victim of a pandemic is leadership. At no time in the past 75 years has the world been in more need of a “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” moment; and at no time have global leaders so utterly failed to deliver. From Beijing to Brussels, from Rome to Washington, London…

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The UK government only just realised that its coronavirus strategy would ‘likely result in hundreds of thousands of deaths’

The UK government only just realised that its coronavirus strategy would ‘likely result in hundreds of thousands of deaths’

BuzzFeed reports: The UK only realised “in the last few days” that attempts to “mitigate” the impact of the coronavirus pandemic would not work, and that it needed to shift to a strategy to “suppress” the outbreak, according to a report by a team of experts who have been advising the government. The report, published by the Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team on Monday night, found that the strategy previously being pursued by the government — dubbed “mitigation” and involving…

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The United States now faces a crisis that disproves everything the country believes about itself

The United States now faces a crisis that disproves everything the country believes about itself

Anne Applebaum writes: At the moment, many Americans are still convinced that, even in this crisis, our society is more capable than others. Quite a lot was written about the terrifying and reckless behavior of the authorities in Wuhan, China, who initially threatened doctors who began posting information about the new virus, forcing them into silence. On the very day that one of those doctors, Li Wenliang, contracted the virus, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission issued a statement declaring,“So far…

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McConnell has a request for veteran federal judges: Please quit

McConnell has a request for veteran federal judges: Please quit

The New York Times reports: Running out of federal court vacancies to fill, Senate Republicans have been quietly making overtures to sitting Republican-nominated judges who are eligible to retire to urge them to step aside so they can be replaced while the party still holds the Senate and the White House. Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, who has used his position as majority leader to build a judicial confirmation juggernaut for President Trump over the past three years, has…

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Joe Biden needs Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Joe Biden needs Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

León Krauze writes: A word of advice to Joe Biden after Sunday night’s debate: Call AOC. In the two weeks that have seen Biden take back his position as the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, one voice has emerged as the progressive movement’s beacon of clarity. It’s not Bernie Sanders, who has chosen to remain in the race even though his chances going forward are objectively minuscule. The politician who has shown the most lucid understanding of the importance of…

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Trump-initiated airport chaos provides a case study in how to spread a pandemic

Trump-initiated airport chaos provides a case study in how to spread a pandemic

Cheryl Benard writes: Like thousands of Americans and Europeans scrambling to get to the United States before the travel ban went into effect and flights were canceled, I flew back to the United States from Vienna on Friday. Arriving at Dulles International Airport via London, I encountered a case study in how to spread a pandemic. I had thought I was lucky to get one of the last seats home. And I was confident, because Dulles had been identified by…

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Andrew Cuomo to President Trump: Mobilize the military to help fight coronavirus

Andrew Cuomo to President Trump: Mobilize the military to help fight coronavirus

In a letter addressed to President Trump, Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, writes: [Y]ou must anticipate that, without immediate action, the imminent failure of hospital systems is all but certain. According to one projection, as many as 214 million people in our country could be infected over the course of the epidemic. Of those, as many as 21 million people could require hospitalization. This would crush the nation’s medical system. New York State has just 53,470 hospital beds,…

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Trump administration wants to loosen federal rules meant to control infections in nursing homes

Trump administration wants to loosen federal rules meant to control infections in nursing homes

The New York Times reports: The Trump administration has been working to relax regulations governing America’s nursing homes, including rules meant to curb deadly infections among elderly residents. The main federal regulator overseeing nursing homes proposed the rule changes last summer, before the coronavirus pandemic highlighted the vulnerability of nursing homes to fast-spreading diseases. The push followed a spate of lobbying and campaign contributions by people in the nursing-home industry, according to public records and interviews. The coronavirus has killed…

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