Attention to the Unseen

Jia Tolentino writes: We are not accustomed to destruction looking, at first, like emptiness. The coronavirus pandemic is disorienting in part because it defies our normal cause-and-effect shortcuts to understanding the world. The source of danger is invisible; the most effective solution involves willing paralysis; we won’t know the consequences of today’s actions until two weeks have passed. Everything circles a bewildering paradox: other people are both a threat and a lifeline. Physical connection could kill us, but civic connection…

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Politico reports: President Donald Trump wants to draft every American to go to war. Encouraging the public to transition out of isolation and into the world, the president is increasingly deploying battlefield rhetoric in asking everyday Americans to confront a raging coronavirus pandemic that has already infected 1.3 million people in the U.S. and killed nearly 80,000 — and this week clawed into the inner circle of his White House. “The people of our country should think of themselves as…

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Máximo Torero write: The coronavirus pandemic has laid many things bare, none more so than how interconnected our world is. The impact of globalization is most obvious in the stuttering supply chains that threaten food security worldwide. Maintaining or reweaving these webs is going to take technology, innovation and political determination. As chief economist at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), I fear that few countries have recognized that their measures to contain the virus and…

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The Washington Post reports: Hispanics are nearly twice as likely as whites to have lost their jobs amid the coronavirus shutdowns, according to a Washington Post-Ipsos poll, underlining that the pandemic is wreaking a disproportionate toll on some racial and ethnic groups. The poll finds that 20 percent of Hispanic adults and 16 percent of blacks report being laid off or furloughed since the outbreak began in the United States, compared with 11 percent of whites and 12 percent of…

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The Associated Press reports: Black people have been dying at alarming rates across the country: the latest Associated Press analysis of available data shows that African Americans represent about 14% of the population in the areas covered but nearly one-third of those who have died. By nearly every measure, coronavirus patients are faring worse in rural Georgia than almost anywhere else in America, according to researchers at Emory University in Atlanta. Although New York City had thousands more deaths, the…

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Politico reports: Counties across the country with a disproportionate number of African-American residents accounted for 52 percent of diagnoses and 58 percent of coronavirus deaths nationally, according to a new study released Tuesday. The study, conducted by epidemiologists and clinician-researchers at four universities in conjunction with the nonprofit AIDS research organization amFar and PATH’s Center for Vaccine Innovation and Access, attempts to fill in the blanks as states report piecemeal data on race and ethnicity. The Centers for Disease Control…

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The New York Times reports on Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and New York’s 14th Congressional District: The wreckage in her community has made a darkly eloquent case, she said, for her agenda of universal health care and less income inequity. “This crisis is not really creating new problems,” she said. “It’s pouring gasoline on our existing ones.” But more personally, it has exposed the little-seen vulnerabilities and isolation of the most prominent new voice in Congress. A case in point: Ms….

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John Koetsier writes: Bye-bye shelter-in-place. Hello re-opening. Apple’s Mobility Trends report shows that traffic in the US and other countries like Germany has pretty much doubled in the past three weeks. It had been down up to 72%. And location data provider Foursquare says that gas and fast food visits are back to pre-COVID-19 levels in the American Midwest. Rural areas are following the same pattern. “Gas station traffic has returned to pre-COVID-19 levels in the Midwest, and in rural…

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The Washington Post reports: As Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) moves to reopen more businesses, a new study underscores the disproportionate toll the virus has taken on the state’s African American population. Surveying eight Georgia hospitals, researchers found that in a sample of 305 covid-19 patients, 247 were black — more than 80 percent and more than they expected. “It is important to continue ongoing efforts to understand the reasons for these racial disparities, including the role of socioeconomic and…

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Yascha Mounk writes: The past few months have been bleak. Every day has brought word of new casualties from the coronavirus. The world economy entered free fall. And even for those who do not have a sick relative or a mortgage that can’t be paid, the isolation imposed by social distancing has begun to take a heavy psychological toll. In these circumstances, I—and, I imagine, many others—couldn’t resist latching onto any piece of news that promised quick deliverance from the…

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The Washington Post reports: Sheryl Means already has lost so much to the invisible virus burning through her hometown. Her mother and her aunt died within days of each other. Her sister has been on a ventilator for weeks in a hospital miles away, and there are no visitors allowed in the covid-19 isolation unit. She has this tightness in her chest, and she’s scared she might be next. But Means can’t get a test. Even now, six weeks into…

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