Music: Foehn Trio — ‘Old Ocean’ ft. Erik Truffaz
A pandemic plan was in place, but Trump abandoned it — and science
Jason Karlawish writes: President Obama was bothered. It was the summer of 2009 and he was in a meeting at the White House to talk about preparations for an expected autumn outbreak of swine flu. Elbows on the table, he thumbed through the pages of a report on preparations for it. “So,” he asked no one in particular, “if you guys are so smart, how come you’re still making this in eggs?” he asked, referring to the nearly century-old process…
The choice between staying home indefinitely and returning to business as usual now is a false one
Julia Marcus writes: In the earliest years of the HIV epidemic, confusion and fear reigned. AIDS was still known as the “gay plague.” To the extent that gay men received any health advice at all, it was to avoid sex. In 1983, the activists Richard Berkowitz and Michael Callen, with guidance from the virologist Joseph Sonnabend, published a foundational document for their community, called “How to Have Sex in an Epidemic.” Recognizing the need for pleasure in people’s lives, the…
Health-care workers can they teach us about the safest way to lift a lockdown
Atul Gawande writes: In places around the world, lockdowns are lifting to various degrees—often prematurely. Experts have identified a few indicators that must be met to begin opening nonessential businesses safely: rates of new cases should be low and falling for at least two weeks; hospitals should be able to treat all coronavirus patients in need; and there should be a capacity to test everyone with symptoms. But then what? What are the rules for reëntry? Is there any place…
Biden campaign and Democratic Party develop plans for sweeping economic transformation
The New York Times reports: More than 36 million Americans are suddenly unemployed. Congress has allocated $2.2 trillion in aid, with more likely to be on the way as a fight looms over government debt. Millions more people are losing their health insurance and struggling to take care of their children and aging relatives. And nearly 90,000 are dead in a continuing public health catastrophe. This was not the scenario Joseph R. Biden Jr. anticipated confronting when he competed for…
New Zealand edges back to normal
The Washington Post reports: Half of New Zealand’s cabinet gathered this past Monday morning in the round meeting room on the top floor of the Beehive, the tiered 1970s landmark here that houses the government’s executive branch. The other half called in on Zoom. Running the meeting was Jacinda Ardern, the liberal prime minister who has won international renown for her empathetic leadership during the global coronavirus pandemic. Next to her was Winston Peters, the wily politician almost twice her…
Bats aren’t our enemies
Timothy Treuer, Ricardo Rocha, and Cara Brook write: Bats get a bad rap. From horror films to tabloid pages to Halloween, media and cultural depictions of our planet’s only volant, or flying, mammals have long generated and reinforced unfounded fear. Their evident role as original source of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that produced the COVID-19 epidemic has exacerbated their unfortunate public image and even led to calls and active measures to cull or harass bat populations. Such hostile attitudes make it…
Inside rocks on the ocean floor, life thrives without the Sun
Jordana Cepelewicz writes: Microbial life, almost unbelievably resilient, abides in boiling hot springs and bone-dry deserts, in pools of acid and polar ice, kilometers up into the sky and kilometers below the ocean floor. And while scientists are eager to uncover microbes in even less familiar territories beyond our solar system, it’s the last Earth-bound frontier on that list — the deep subsurface — where they’re now making exciting progress in their efforts to probe life’s extreme adaptability. Lightless, barren…
Music: Pierre de Bethmann Quintet — ‘Ilium’
A $74 billion investment in testing, tracing and isolation could quickly rescue the economy
Alex Tabarrok and Puja Ahluwalia Ohlhaver write: With the unemployment rate at its highest level since the Great Depression — 14.7 percent and climbing — many Americans are clamoring to reopen the economy, even if it means that thousands of daily covid-19 deaths become part of the backdrop to life. It’s time to move on as “warriors,” President Trump has said, because “we can’t keep our country closed down for years.” We, too, favor markets and share the president’s eagerness…
How sunlight, the immune system, and Covid-19 interact
Markham Heid writes: Last month, during a now-infamous press conference, Donald Trump speculated about the ways in which sunlight and chemical disinfectants could help protect people from the threat of Covid-19. Trump seemed to suggest that injecting disinfectants could have some utility — a comment that drew immediate scrutiny and scorn. Much less attention was paid to the president’s statement that sunlight might safeguard people from the virus. “Supposing we hit the body with a tremendous — whether it’s ultraviolet…
Covid-19: A seven-week roller coaster of ill health, extreme emotions, and utter exhaustion
Paul Garner writes: In mid March I developed covid-19. For almost seven weeks I have been through a roller coaster of ill health, extreme emotions, and utter exhaustion. Although not hospitalised, it has been frightening and long. The illness ebbs and flows, but never goes away. Health professionals, employers, partners, and people with the disease need to know that this illness can last for weeks, and the long tail is not some “post-viral fatigue syndrome”—it is the disease. People who…
WHO Special Envoy on Covid-19 makes an impassioned plea for global leadership
Dr David Nabarro: We just have a complete fracture in global leadership right now. To the point where a UN Security Council resolution on Covid was not approved because the World Health Organisation was mentioned in the resolution. The people of the world actually should be going completely crazy with anger. There should be a petition of 500 million people to the world leaders saying, “What on earth are you doing? What on earth are you playing at?” We…
As Americans fear for their lives and livelihoods, Trump stokes divisions and pursues personal vendettas
The New York Times reports: Even by President Trump’s standards, it was a rampage: He attacked a government whistle-blower who was telling Congress that the coronavirus pandemic had been mismanaged. He criticized the governor of Pennsylvania, who has resisted reopening businesses. He railed against former President Barack Obama, linking him to a conspiracy theory and demanding he answer questions before the Senate about the federal investigation of Michael T. Flynn. And Mr. Trump lashed out at Joseph R. Biden Jr.,…
Secretary of State Pompeo under investigation; Trump fires State Department Inspector General
Politico reports: President Donald Trump has removed State Department Inspector General Steve Linick and replaced him with an ally of Vice President Mike Pence — the latest in a series of moves against independent government watchdogs in recent months. Trump informed Congress of his intent to oust Linick, a Justice Department veteran appointed to the role in 2013 by then President Barack Obama, in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Friday night. The president said he “no…
American conspiracy theories are entering a dangerous new phase
Adrienne LaFrance writes: The origins of QAnon are recent, but even so, separating myth from reality can be hard. One place to begin is with Edgar Maddison Welch, a deeply religious father of two, who until Sunday, December 4, 2016, had lived an unremarkable life in the small town of Salisbury, North Carolina. That morning, Welch grabbed his cellphone, a box of shotgun shells, and three loaded guns—a 9-mm AR-15 rifle, a six-shot .38‑caliber Colt revolver, and a shotgun—and hopped…