Music: Tom Misch — ‘Never Too Much / What’s the Use?’
The U.S. was beset by denial and dysfunction as the coronavirus raged
The Washington Post reports: By the time Donald Trump proclaimed himself a wartime president — and the coronavirus the enemy — the United States was already on course to see more of its people die than in the wars of Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq combined. The country has adopted an array of wartime measures never employed collectively in U.S. history — banning incoming travelers from two continents, bringing commerce to a near-halt, enlisting industry to make emergency medical gear,…
‘Trump is killing his own supporters’ – even White House insiders know it
Lloyd Green writes: On Sunday, initially at least, there was no White House briefing on the president’s public schedule. But the bad news kept coming. Coronavirus deaths continued to climb and reports of the heartland being unprepared for what may be on its horizon continued to ricochet around the media. In the words of one administration insider, to the Guardian: “The Trump organism is simply collapsing. He’s killing his own supporters.” Members of the national guard, emergency workers, rank-and-file Americans:…
Official counts understate the actual coronavirus death toll
The New York Times reports: A coroner in Indiana wanted to know if the coronavirus had killed a man in early March, but said that her health department denied a test. Paramedics in New York City say that many patients who died at home were never tested for the coronavirus, even if they showed telltale signs of infection. In Virginia, a funeral director prepared the remains of three people after health workers cautioned her that they each had tested positive…
George W. Bush in 2005: ‘If we wait for a pandemic to appear, it will be too late to prepare’
ABC News reports: In the summer of 2005, President George W. Bush was on vacation at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, when he began flipping through an advance reading copy of a new book about the 1918 flu pandemic. He couldn’t put it down. When he returned to Washington, he called his top homeland security adviser into the Oval Office and gave her the galley of historian John M. Barry’s “The Great Influenza,” which told the chilling tale of…
Americans hit by economic shocks as confusion, stumbles undermine Trump’s stimulus effort
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…
U.S. ‘wasted’ months before preparing for virus pandemic
The Associated Press reports: As the first alarms sounded in early January that an outbreak of a novel coronavirus in China might ignite a global pandemic, the Trump administration squandered nearly two months that could have been used to bolster the federal stockpile of critically needed medical supplies and equipment. A review of federal purchasing contracts by The Associated Press shows federal agencies largely waited until mid-March to begin placing bulk orders of N95 respirator masks, mechanical ventilators and other…
There is a collective spirit woven through this crisis
John Harris writes: Last week, Boris Johnson stood on a set of stairs inside 10 Downing Street and spoke into a smartphone camera. Towards the end of a two-and-half minute monologue about Covid-19 and the national response to it, he said something striking: “One thing I think [the] coronavirus crisis has already proved is that there really is such a thing as society.” The words, if anyone missed the reference, were an allusion to an infamous few sentences from Margaret…
Music: FKJ & Tom Misch — ‘Losing My Way’
The countries that are succeeding at flattening the curve
Foreign Policy reports: The United States is now an epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic, with epidemiological models publicized on Tuesday suggesting the disease could infect millions of Americans in the coming months, killing between 100,000 and 240,000. Hospitals in the state of New York, where there are more than 75,000 confirmed cases, are already overwhelmed and experiencing shortages of critical medical equipment such as ventilators and protective gear. The grim projections indicate that the virus has not reached its peak…
Why Germany’s coronavirus death rate is low
The New York Times reports: They call them corona taxis: Medics outfitted in protective gear, driving around the empty streets of Heidelberg to check on patients who are at home, five or six days into being sick with the coronavirus. They take a blood test, looking for signs that a patient is about to go into a steep decline. They might suggest hospitalization, even to a patient who has only mild symptoms; the chances of surviving that decline are vastly…
Virus hot spots in Southern states poised for disproportionate suffering
Politico reports: St. John the Baptist Parish, just southeast of Baton Rouge, La., has a population of just over 43,000 — and the highest per capita coronavirus mortality rate in the nation. Frantic local officials instituted an overnight curfew just this week and are begging residents to stay home. But in largely rural Southern states like Louisiana — where social distancing has been spotty, widespread testing is unavailable and hospitals are poorer and farther apart — the response may be…
This Brooklyn landlord just canceled rent for hundreds of tenants
The New York Times reports: A few days after losing his job in March, Paul Gentile was throwing away trash outside his Brooklyn apartment building when he noticed a new sign hanging near the front door. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, which has brought life to a near standstill in New York City and caused an untold number of people to lose their jobs, tenants in the building did not need to pay April rent, it read. “STAY SAFE, HELP…
You shouldn’t have to risk your life to vote
In an editorial, the New York Times says: On Tuesday, hundreds of thousands of voters in Wisconsin will be forced to choose between exercising their constitutional right to vote and safeguarding their own lives, not to mention the lives of their loved ones, their neighbors and poll workers across the state. That’s the predicament in which Republican state lawmakers have placed Wisconsinites — who have been under a stay-at-home order since March 25 — by refusing to agree to postpone…
Trump fires intelligence community watchdog who defied him on whistleblower complaint
Politico reports: President Donald Trump has fired the intelligence community’s chief watchdog, Michael Atkinson, who was the first to sound the alarm to Congress last September about an “urgent” complaint he received from an intelligence official involving Trump’s communications with Ukraine’s president. Atkinson’s decision set in motion the congressional probe that culminated in Trump’s impeachment and ultimate acquittal in a bruising political and legal drama that consumed Washington for months. Trump formally notified the Senate and House Intelligence Committees of…
Why mammalian brains are geared toward kindness
Patricia Churchland writes: Three myths about morality remain alluring: only humans act on moral emotions, moral precepts are divine in origin, and learning to behave morally goes against our thoroughly selfish nature. Converging data from many sciences, including ethology, anthropology, genetics, and neuroscience, have challenged all three of these myths. First, self-sacrifice, given the pressing needs of close kin or conspecifics to whom they are attached, has been documented in many mammalian species—wolves, marmosets, dolphins, and even rodents. Birds display…