Music: Pat Metheny — ‘Sixty-Six’
Trump’s strategy for combating coronavirus was destined to fail
Time magazine reports: The Trump Administration’s strategy to combat COVID-19, the novel coronavirus, began with a relatively simple focus: keep it out of the United States. In service of that goal, the White House issued drastic travel restrictions, imposed mandatory quarantines, and repeatedly told the public that these steps were working. “We have contained this. I won’t say airtight but pretty close to airtight,” White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said in a television interview on Feb. 25, echoing Trump’s…
Strong evidence that America is botching coronavirus testing
The Atlantic reports: It’s one of the most urgent questions in the United States right now: How many people have actually been tested for the coronavirus? This number would give a sense of how widespread the disease is, and how forceful a response to it the United States is mustering. But for days, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has refused to publish such a count, despite public anxiety and criticism from Congress. On Monday, Stephen Hahn, the commissioner…
Put Elizabeth Warren in charge of writing the Democratic platform
John Nichols writes: Elizabeth Warren won the ideas primary, and on Thursday she claimed that victory. “A year ago, people weren’t talking about a two-cent wealth tax, universal childcare, canceling student loan debt for 43 million Americans while reducing the racial wealth gap, breaking up big tech, or expanding Social Security. And now they are,” she told her supporters. “And because we did the work of building broad support for all of those ideas across this country, these changes could…
Elizabeth Warren says ‘organized nastiness’ and doxing cannot be justified by political disagreements
Senator Elizabeth Warren talks with Rachel Maddow about the ugliness and doxing she saw online from Bernie Sanders supporters and the problem of online abuse broadly in American political discourse, and the need for political leaders to find new creative solutions to put an end to it for the sake of a healthy democracy.
Bernie’s revolution stalled, but his movement can still win
Eric Levitz writes: In states across the nation on Tuesday, pluralities of Democratic primary voters expressed a favorable opinion of “socialism.” In revealing that a candidate could secure a hammerlock on 20 percent of the Democratic electorate, and ownership of a historically powerful online fundraising apparatus, by embracing radical social-democratic reform, Sanders changed the ideological incentives facing his co-partisans and the terms of the Democratic debate. In the 2020 field, the “moderate” candidates supported a public option strong enough to…
Federal judge calls Barr’s handling of Mueller report ‘distorted’ and ‘misleading’
The New York Times reports: A federal judge on Thursday sharply criticized Attorney General William P. Barr’s handling of the report by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, saying that Mr. Barr put forward a “distorted” and “misleading” account of its findings and lacked credibility on the topic. Mr. Barr could not be trusted, Judge Reggie B. Walton said, citing “inconsistencies” between the attorney general’s statements about the report when it was secret and its actual contents that turned…
Lunch with Freeman Dyson
Siobhan Roberts writes: Lunchtime in the cafeteria at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. — sometimes called the Institute for Advanced Dining — is a heady scene, and Freeman Dyson, who died last week at 96, was a regular fixture, arriving with reading material tucked under his arm. One day about 10 years ago, Dr. Dyson put down his tray of food at the physics table and joined the conversation. Nima Arkani-Hamed, a professor in the institute’s School…
Music: Pat Metheny — ‘Pathmaker’
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…
As coronavirus spreads to 18 states, Trump minimizes the health threat
The Hill reports: Patients in 18 states have tested positive or are presumptively positive for the spreading coronavirus as public health officials race to get ahead of the growing worldwide epidemic. Officials in Nevada, New Jersey, Tennessee and Texas said they had identified new cases in the last 24 hours, adding to an outbreak that has infected at least 162 people nationwide. There are worrying signs that the number of cases is poised to grow. [Continue reading…] Politico reports: President…
Elizabeth Warren could never escape the baggage of being a ‘female candidate’
Amanda Terkel writes: Elizabeth Warren wasn’t trying to be the first female president. She wanted to be president. She wanted to cut banks down to size and relieve student debt. Root out the corrupt influence of money in politics and go after monopolies. Warren didn’t focus on how she’d be breaking a glass ceiling. She didn’t shy away from her gender, but when she talked about feminism, it was most often centered on female organizers and the movements they’ve led…
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…
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…
Why hand-washing really is as important as doctors say
U.S. Surgeon General Vice Admiral Jerome M. Adams, center, demonstrates hand-washing to U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, left, and Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, right, in Rocky Hill, Conn., March 2, 2020. AP Photo/Jessica Hill By Michelle Sconce Massaquoi, University of Oregon As the threat from the coronavirus grows, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other public health officials are stressing the importance of hand-washing. Prevention becomes essential to stopping the spread of the virus because there is no vaccine…
The consciousness of rats has ethical implications for humans
Kristin Andrews and Susana Monsó write: In the late 1990s, Jaak Panksepp, the father of affective neuroscience, discovered that rats laugh. This fact had remained hidden because rats laugh in ultrasonic chirps that we can’t hear. It was only when Brian Knutson, a member of Panksepp’s lab, started to monitor their vocalisations during social play that he realised there was something that appeared unexpectedly similar to human laughter. Panksepp and his team began to systematically study this phenomenon by tickling…