Music: Avishai Cohen — ‘Motherless Child’
New Zealand isn’t just flattening the curve. It’s squashing it
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…
Politicians and public figures return to medical careers to help coronavirus effort
The Guardian reports: An Irish prime minister, a French film director and a Hungarian MEP are among the public figures who are resurrecting their medical careers to fight the coronavirus pandemic. They are part of a small, growing group of people in politics, the arts and sports who are becoming doctors again to help health care systems under unprecedented strain. Leo Varadkar, Ireland’s taoiseach, has offered to work one day a week as a doctor as his country braces for…
How Andrew Cuomo became the most prominent Democrat of the Covid-19 crisis
The Guardian reports: It’s rare for a single US state governor to get so much attention it even rivals the president during a historical national crisis – but that’s exactly what New York’s Andrew Cuomo is experiencing. Cuomo, the technocratic three-term governor who’s had to deal with the state hit hardest by the coronavirus pandemic, has emerged as the most prominent Democrat in charge of fighting the virus, filling a role many felt former vice-president Joe Biden should be occupying….
As Trump played down the risks, his own trade adviser warned in January about the danger of a pandemic
The New York Times reports: A top White House adviser starkly warned Trump administration officials in late January that the coronavirus crisis could cost the United States trillions of dollars and put millions of Americans at risk of illness or death. The warning, written in a memo by Peter Navarro, President Trump’s trade adviser, is the highest-level alert known to have circulated inside the West Wing as the administration was taking its first substantive steps to confront a crisis that…
Why Republicans pushed for ‘the most undemocratic’ election in Wisconsin’s history
The New York Times reports: Tuesday’s mess of an election in Wisconsin is the culmination of a decade of efforts by state Republicans to make voting harder, redraw legislative boundaries and dilute the power of voters in the state’s urban centers. The Republican-dominated state legislature, which has held a majority since 2011, due in part to gerrymandered maps, refused to entertain the Democratic governor’s request to mail absentee ballots to all voters or move the primary. Then the State Supreme…
As a champion of hydroxychloroquine treatment for Covid-19, Trump promotes hope even if it’s baseless
The New York Times reports: Day after day, the salesman turned president has encouraged coronavirus patients to try hydroxychloroquine with all of the enthusiasm of a real estate developer. The passing reference he makes to the possible dangers is usually overwhelmed by the full-throated endorsement. “What do you have to lose?” he asked five times on Sunday. Bolstered by his trade adviser, a television doctor, Larry Ellison of Oracle and Rudolph W. Giuliani, a former New York mayor, Mr. Trump…
The danger with Trump serving as risk-manager-in-chief
Vox reports: The Trump administration’s failures in dealing with a global pandemic threat raise a frightening, but important, question: How else is this administration putting the United States at risk right now? And what is this administration neglecting in 2020 that will put Americans at risk five, 10, 20 years from now? In 2017, Michael Lewis, author of books like The Big Short, Moneyball, and The Blind Side, began asking these very same questions — and arrived at some startling…
Music: Stuart McCallum @ jazz re:freshed
Andrew Cuomo for president? Joe Biden can and should make it happen
Craig Snyder writes: Donald Trump’s current term as president ends at noon on January 20, 2021. As strange as it may seem at this time of exclusive focus on our public health and economic emergencies, a vital national election is still coming. I have been a Republican candidate for Congress, a GOP staffer in the Senate and a business partner of Roger Stone when he conceived of and managed Donald Trump‘s first campaign for President (seeking the nomination of the…
Coronavirus case counts are going to go up – but that doesn’t mean social distancing is a bust
Empty parking lots show social distancing’s costs. It could take time to see its benefits. Pete Starman/The Image Bank via Getty Images By Abram Wagner, University of Michigan The last few weeks have brought previously unimaginable changes to the lives of people throughout the United States. Americans everywhere are waking up to a new reality in which they can’t go to work or school outside the home and they have to stay six feet away from others. More than 80%…
Why wear face masks in public? Here’s what the research shows
People have resorted to using scarves and bandanas as face masks to protect against spreading coronavirus. While cloth masks aren’t as effective as surgical masks, research suggests they can limit the spread of droplets. Jens Schleuter/Getty Images By Hector Chapa, Texas A&M University With the coronavirus pandemic quickly spreading, U.S. health officials have changed their advice on face masks and now recommend people wear cloth masks in public areas where social distancing can be difficult, such as grocery stores. But…
Coronavirus threatens survival of rural hospitals across the U.S. on the frontlines of crisis
The Guardian reports: On Wednesday, Three Rivers, a small hospital in rural Washington, had exactly nine days left before it would run out of money to pay its staff and be forced to close. That same day, its CEO learned the hospital likely had its first coronavirus patient. The coronavirus pandemic has put a strain even on the wealthier parts of America’s vast, fragmented healthcare system: there are not enough beds, not enough ventilators, not enough protective equipment. But in…
America’s pandemic war games don’t end well. Is this where we’re heading?
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…
Sanders’ ‘narrow path’ to victory gets even narrower
Politico reports: Bernie Sanders insists he has a “narrow path” to the nomination. But he and his aides refuse to say what it is. A majority of the states and territories yet to vote rejected him in 2016. The national polls don’t offer much hope either — since Joe Biden defeated him in Arizona, Florida and Illinois on March 17, Sanders has trailed him by double-digits in every single national survey. Days before the Wisconsin primary — the last major…
Why are we losing the wayfinding skills of our ancestors?
Michael Bond writes: On Dartmoor, in southwest England, search and rescue volunteers are regularly called out to look for people who have lost their way in the boundless wilderness. A significant proportion are Alzheimer’s patients who have wandered away from one of the many care homes on the fringes of the moor. The volunteers have noticed that Alzheimer’s patients move in a particular way across the open spaces: usually in a straight line. So resolutely do they stick to their…