Attention to the Unseen

  Yesterday, Covid-19 became the leading cause of death in America. CNN reports on its disproportionate impact on African Americans: Black Americans have more existing medical issues, less access to health care, and are more likely to work in unstable jobs — all factors that have made the coronavirus pandemic disproportionately hurt blacks more. While everyone is susceptible to Covid-19, black Americans are at higher risk, Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams said during an appearance on CBS This Morning on…

Read More Read More

The Washington Post reports: It has been less than two weeks since New Zealand imposed a coronavirus lockdown so strict that swimming at the beach and hunting in bushland were banned. They’re not essential activities, plus we have been told not to do anything that could divert emergency services’ resources. People have been walking and biking strictly in their neighborhoods, lining up six feet apart outside grocery stores while waiting to go one-in-one-out, and joining swaths of the world in…

Read More Read More

Mark Perry writes: On June 22, 2001, a group of well-known U.S. officials and a handful of senior policymakers gathered at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland for a senior-level exercise that simulated a biological weapons attack—an outbreak of deadly smallpox—on the United States. Designed by the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies (now called the Center for Health Security) and the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the day-and-a-half-long “Dark Winter” simulation was conducted to gauge…

Read More Read More

The Washington Post reports: The Trump administration has stumbled in its initial push to implement the $2 trillion coronavirus aid package, with confusion and fear mounting among small businesses, workers and the newly unemployed since the bill was signed into law late last month. Small-business owners have reported delays in getting approved for loans without which they will close their doors, while others say they have been denied altogether by their lenders and do not understand why. The law’s provision…

Read More Read More

Bill Gates writes: There’s no question the United States missed the opportunity to get ahead of the novel coronavirus. But the window for making important decisions hasn’t closed. The choices we and our leaders make now will have an enormous impact on how soon case numbers start to go down, how long the economy remains shut down and how many Americans will have to bury a loved one because of covid-19. Through my work with the Gates Foundation, I’ve spoken…

Read More Read More

Stat reports: With Europe and the United States locked in deadly battle with the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, a number of countries that were hit early by the virus are doing a far better job of beating it back. China, which is now diagnosing more cases in returning travelers than in people infected at home, reported no new domestically acquired cases on Wednesday, for the first time in more than two months. South Korea, which had an explosive outbreak that…

Read More Read More

Dr. Robert M. Wachter writes: Like a wildfire spraying hot embers, the coronavirus pandemic is now flaring in communities around the country, with growth curves in New Orleans, Michigan and Illinois that resemble those of 10 days ago in New York City — which in turn mirror those of early 2020 in Italy and Wuhan, China. But California — and particularly San Francisco, where I live — appears to be following a different course, with relatively low rates of COVID-19…

Read More Read More

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…

Read More Read More

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…

Read More Read More

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…

Read More Read More

The Washington Post reports: The spreading coronavirus pandemic has brought massive and sudden disruption to the daily lives of most Americans amid rapidly rising fears that they could become ill with the covid-19 disease, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll. Almost overnight, the threat from the virus has changed habits and lifestyles. Roughly 9 in 10 say they are staying home “as much as possible” and are practicing social distancing to lessen the risk of getting the virus. Nearly…

Read More Read More