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Category: Society

Scientists warn we may need to live with social distancing for a year or more

Scientists warn we may need to live with social distancing for a year or more

Vox reports: Life in America — and in many countries around the world — is changing drastically. We’re physically distanced from our favorite people, we’re avoiding our favorite public places, and many are financially strained or out of work. The response to the Covid-19 pandemic is infiltrating every aspect of life, and we’re already longing for it to end. But this fight may not end for months or a year or even more. We’re in this because public health experts…

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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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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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Gathering in groups right now is selfish and puts the lives of others at risk

Gathering in groups right now is selfish and puts the lives of others at risk

Charlie Warzel writes: The coronavirus and the disease it causes, Covid-19, are spreading across the United States faster than we can track or test. This week the confirmed caseload jumped from 309 to at least 2,170 cases in 49 states, as well as the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. A testing shortage has experts fearing the true number is likely thousands of cases higher. Public life in America has methodically ground to a halt. This week companies instituted mandatory…

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Italy’s coronavirus nightmare offers a chilling preview of what’s coming

Italy’s coronavirus nightmare offers a chilling preview of what’s coming

Bloomberg reports: In Rome, the first signs of change came from overhead. Shortly before cocktail hour on Monday, the thrum-thrum-thrum of a helicopter could be heard above the winding lanes of the 2,000-year-old historic center. The police were keeping an eye on the Trastevere neighborhood, where smoke billowed from the windows of a jail as inmates rioted, protesting cramped conditions that put them at risk of coronavirus infection. About the same time, the stock market was opening in New York,…

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Coronavirus lockdown: In Italy, we live in silence and die in silence

Coronavirus lockdown: In Italy, we live in silence and die in silence

Monica Maggioni writes: Before the virus came, I was living in my usual, hectic way, going back and forth from Milan to Rome for work. As such, I turned a blind eye to the worrying news coming from China. Even the onset of contagion in the Codogno area near Milan was, to me, just another news story. So when the virus came close, I was surprised to discover that hard choices had to be made — and fast. The first:…

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What does the coronavirus mean for the U.S. health care system? Some simple math offers alarming answers

What does the coronavirus mean for the U.S. health care system? Some simple math offers alarming answers

Liz Specht writes: Much of the current discourse on — and dismissal of — the Covid-19 outbreak focuses on comparisons of the total case load and total deaths with those caused by seasonal influenza. But these comparisons can be deceiving, especially in the early stages of an exponential curve as a novel virus tears through an immunologically naïve population. Perhaps more important is the disproportionate number of severe Covid-19 cases, many requiring hospitalization or weekslong ICU stays. What does an…

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It’s now or never for the U.S. to prevent coronavirus spreading out of control

It’s now or never for the U.S. to prevent coronavirus spreading out of control

Tom Bossert, Donald Trump’s former homeland security adviser, writes: School closures, isolation of the sick, home quarantines of those who have come into contact with the sick, social distancing, telework and large-gathering cancellations must be implemented before the spread of the disease in any community reaches 1 percent. After that, science tells us, these interventions become far less effective. Simply put, as evidence of human-to-human transmission becomes clear in a community, officials must pull the trigger on aggressive interventions. Time…

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Social distancing is the only way to stop the coronavirus

Social distancing is the only way to stop the coronavirus

Yascha Mounk writes: We don’t yet know the full ramifications of the novel coronavirus. But three crucial facts have become clear in the first months of this extraordinary global event. And what they add up to is not an invocation to stay calm, as so many politicians around the globe are incessantly suggesting; it is, on the contrary, the case for changing our behavior in radical ways—right now. The first fact is that, at least in the initial stages, documented…

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China’s excessive coronavirus public monitoring could be here to stay

China’s excessive coronavirus public monitoring could be here to stay

The Guardian reports: Over the last two months, Chinese citizens have had to adjust to a new level of government intrusion. Getting into one’s apartment compound or workplace requires scanning a QR code, writing down one’s name and ID number, temperature and recent travel history. Telecom operators track people’s movements while social media platforms like WeChat and Weibo have hotlines for people to report others who may be sick. Some cities are offering people rewards for informing on sick neighbours….

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The pattern that epidemics always follow

The pattern that epidemics always follow

Karl Taro Greenfeld writes: You are reading this because of your ancestors’ immune system. The odds of your predecessors surviving the myriad microbes that have stalked humanity every step of its march toward becoming Earth’s dominant species were incalculably long. More Homo sapiens have probably died from infectious disease than all other causes combined. Only in the past 150 years, owing to nutritional and medical advances, have we emerged from living in constant worry that a cough or fever or…

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What can the coronavirus teach us?

What can the coronavirus teach us?

Bill McKibben writes: There’s nothing good about the novel coronavirus—it’s killing many people, and shutting millions more inside, with fear as their main companion. However, if we’re fated to go through this passage, we may as well learn something from it, and it does strike me that there are a few insights that are applicable to the climate crisis that shadows all of our lives. Some of these lessons are obvious: giant cruise ships are climate killers and, it turns…

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The rich turn to concierge doctors, yachts, and chartered planes in the hope of avoiding the coronavirus

The rich turn to concierge doctors, yachts, and chartered planes in the hope of avoiding the coronavirus

The New York Times reports: The new coronavirus knows no national borders or social boundaries. That doesn’t mean that social boundaries don’t exist. “En route to Paris,” Gwyneth Paltrow wrote on Instagram last week, beneath a shot of herself on an airplane heading to Paris Fashion Week and wearing a black face mask. “I’ve already been in this movie,” she added, referring to her role in the 2011 disease thriller “Contagion.” “Stay safe.” Ms. Paltrow did not pose with just…

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Coronavirus: How behaviour can help control the spread of COVID-19

Coronavirus: How behaviour can help control the spread of COVID-19

Commuters jam a Toronto subway platform. Widespread adoption of habits that help prevent infection may boost behavioural herd immunity. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graeme Roy By Peter Hall, University of Waterloo Amid the carnage of the First World War, a flu epidemic took hold in the front-line trenches and subsequently spread around the world, infecting one-quarter of the world’s total population and ultimately killing more people than the war itself. Before it was over, somewhere between 50 million and 100 million people…

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Italy, Europe’s coronavirus laboratory

Italy, Europe’s coronavirus laboratory

Beppe Severgnini writes: For a society like Italy, keeping company with others is better than sedatives, and if you have to do without, you suffer withdrawal symptoms. So there may be furious fallout. People have stopped shaking hands, let alone greeting each other with a kiss. If you sneeze or cough in public, people jerk away and show genuine alarm. Conversation is monopolized by coronavirus, and in the absence of clear rules, companies and organizations behave randomly. Why are people…

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Ancient ‘megasites’ may reshape the history of the first cities

Ancient ‘megasites’ may reshape the history of the first cities

Bruce Bower writes: Nebelivka, a Ukrainian village of about 700 people, sits amid rolling hills and grassy fields. Here at the edge of Eastern Europe, empty space stretches to the horizon. It wasn’t always so. Beneath the surface of Nebelivka’s surrounding landscape and at nearby archaeological sites, roughly 6,000-year-old remnants of what were possibly some of the world’s first cities are emerging from obscurity. These low-density, spread-out archaeological sites are known as megasites, a term that underscores both their immense…

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