Music: Smolik & Gaba Kulka — ‘S.O.S. Songs’
The unique incompetence of Donald Trump in a crisis
Daniel W. Drezner writes: I needed to do two kinds of research when writing “Theories of International Politics and Zombies.” The first was mastering the zombie genre. The second was reading the social science literature on the politics of disasters and pandemics, because those kind of events most closely mirrored what a zombie apocalypse would look like. The conclusion I drew from that research, which I noted during the 2014 Ebola outbreak as well, was that conflicting trends would dominate…
Trump, germophobe-in-chief, is privately terrified about getting the virus
Gabriel Sherman writes: Trump’s press conference on Friday at the CDC was a Trumpian classic, heavy on braggadocio and almost entirely lacking a sense of the seriousness of the crisis. “I like this stuff. I really get it,” Trump told reporters, his face partly hidden under a red “Keep America Great” hat. “People are surprised that I understand it. Every one of these doctors say, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe…
Seattle’s Patient Zero spread coronavirus despite Ebola-style lockdown
Bloomberg reports: The man who would become Patient Zero for the new coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. appeared to do everything right. He arrived Jan. 19 at an urgent-care clinic in a suburb north of Seattle with a slightly elevated temperature and a cough he’d developed soon after returning four days earlier from a visit with family in Wuhan, China. The 35-year-old had seen a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention alert about the virus and decided to get…
Coronavirus sufferers symptom-free for five days on average, study finds
The Guardian reports: People infected with coronavirus are symptom-free for an average of five days, according to a study that reinforces the need for strict quarantine measures. The analysis found that 5.1 days was the median length of time before people started showing signs of illness, although there was a wide range of incubation periods, with a tiny minority of people taking up to two weeks. Justin Lessler, of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and senior author…
Facebook and Twitter fail to thwart a surge of coronavirus misinformation
The New York Times reports: As the coronavirus has spread across the world, so too has misinformation about it, despite an aggressive effort by social media companies to prevent its dissemination. Facebook, Google and Twitter said they were removing misinformation about the coronavirus as fast as they could find it, and were working with the World Health Organization and other government organizations to ensure that people got accurate information. But a search by The New York Times found dozens of…
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….
There is no homunculus in our brain who guides us
M.R. O’Connor writes: In the early 1980s, the psychologist Harry Heft put a 16 mm camera in the back of a sports car and made a movie. It consisted of a continuous shot of a residential neighborhood in Granville, Ohio, where Heft was a professor at Denison University. It didn’t have a plot or actors, but it did have a simple narrative: The car started moving at 5 miles per hour and made nine turns from one street to another…
Music: Hefner — ‘Fiendish’
At nursing home 13 residents died, 70 employees got sick, as others waited for virus test; Trump’s mismanagement helped fuel coronavirus crisis
The New York Times reports: A week after a deadly coronavirus outbreak was reported inside a nursing home in the Seattle suburbs, officials from the long term care center said on Saturday that 70 staff members were out sick with symptoms resembling coronavirus and six residents were also ill. A federal strike team of nurses and doctors arrived Saturday to support the staff at the long-term nursing home, Life Care Center of Kirkland, Wash., where officials have announced the deaths…
U.S. airport screeners, health workers plagued by fear and anger as coronavirus spreads
Reuters reports: As coronavirus cases exploded across the world, federal medical workers tasked with screening incoming passengers at U.S. airports grew alarmed: Many were working without the most effective masks to protect them from getting sick themselves. Screeners with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention asked their supervisors this week to change official protocols and require stronger masks, according to an internal document reviewed by Reuters. On Friday evening, they learned their worst fears were realized: Two screeners,…
Trump’s immigration policies may put people at risk of coronavirus
The Guardian reports: Since 2017, Donald Trump has pushed a hardline immigration agenda that has sown confusion, fear and distrust among immigrant communities. Now, as the world deals with a public health emergency in the shape of the coronavirus outbreak, experts worry his immigration policies may put everyone at risk. There is a widespread fear that the president’s policies have sown such fear of deportation and wariness of any contact with US authorities among immigrants – who also have greater…
‘As diagnostic testing ramps up, it will become clear that this is everywhere’
Nature reports: Rohit Shankar left the virology laboratory at 2 a.m. on Wednesday, and was back at the lab bench by 7 a.m. the same day. “It’s okay,” he says, “I had a doughnut and a coffee.” Shankar, a medical scientist, and his colleagues at the University of Washington in Seattle are poised to exponentially drive up the number of confirmed cases of the coronavirus disease COVID-19 around the city, in western Washington state. That’s because this week, they began…
Virus testing blitz appears to keep Korea death rate low; plan to quarantine 16 million sparks chaos in Italy
Bloomberg reports: Highly contagious and manifesting in some with little or no symptoms, the coronavirus has the world struggling to keep up. But when it comes to containing the epidemic, one country may be cracking the code — by doubling down on testing. South Korea is experiencing the largest virus epidemic outside of China, where the pneumonia-causing pathogen first took root late last year. But unlike China, which locked down a province of more than 60 million people to try…
Rainbow Coalition comes full circle as Jesse Jackson endorses Bernie Sanders
Ryan Grim writes: Michigan holds a special place in the memory of Jesse Jackson and the supporters of his insurgent 1988 presidential campaign. It was Jackson’s Nevada, the moment that the party establishment realized this campaign it had long written off might just seize the nomination. At a rally in Michigan on Sunday, Jackson will endorse Sanders ahead of a do-or-die primary for the Vermont senator. The Michigan contest in 1988 fell on March 27. After more than three dozen…
The world is experiencing a new form of autocracy
Tim Horley, Anne Meng, and Mila Versteeg write: In March 2018, Donald Trump, addressing a crowd of donors at his Florida estate, told what sounded like a joke. He was talking about the recent amendment of China’s constitution to remove presidential term limits, allowing Xi Jinping to serve in that office indefinitely. About Xi, Trump said: “He’s now president for life, president for life. And he’s great. And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe…