New York State of Mind
March 31, 2020
“Despair and then suicide result when people’s material and social circumstances fall below their expectations. The connection appears to be just as powerful for other forms of self-harm, such as drug and alcohol abuse.”
“In earlier eras, reform involved child-labor laws, worker-safety protections, overtime requirements, social security, a minimum wage. Today, the battles are over an employer-based system for financing health care, corporate governance that puts shareholders’ interests ahead of workers’, tax plans that benefit capital holders over wage earners. The dispiriting politics of stasis and scapegoating can prevail for a very long time, even as the damage comes into clearer view. We are better at addressing fast-moving crises than slow-building ones. It wouldn’t be surprising, then, if we simply absorbed current conditions as the new normal.”
– Atul Gawande, Why Americans Are Dying from Despair: The unfairness of our economy, two economists argue, can be measured not only in dollars but in deaths. (The New Yorker, $) Daily Pnut’s Tim: I have learned more from The New York Times and The New Yorker than West Point and Stanford. Additional read: Racial wealth gap weakens U.S. virus defenses (Reuters)
Additional song: Jay-Z feat. Alicia Keys – Empire State of Mind Official Music Video.
Mario Tama via Getty Images
A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand Six Feet Apart
President Trump has done an amazing job heightening political divisions over all sorts of issues. He’s even created a partisan divide on the coronavirus crisis, pitting state governors against each other and setting off bidding wars for medical equipment. A professor of public health at Johns Hopkins sums it up: “This is something that’s really unprecedented …. We have fragmentation, name-calling and wildly different responses [to the Covid-19 threat.]”
The virus doesn’t select for party affiliation, but contrasting emergency responses at state and local levels have split dramatically along partisan lines. Data collected by the Kaiser Foundation demonstrated that states with Democratic governors have been quicker to declare emergencies, close schools, shutter non-essential businesses and impose limits on bars and restaurants. Fifteen of 21 states that have issued stay-at-home orders have Democratic governors.
Most states with Republican governors, however, have likely downplayed the threat. On March 16 West Virginia Governor Jim Justice urged residents to go out to grocery stores and restaurants. Over spring break in the cities of Miami Beach and Fort Lauderdale, beaches on Florida’s Atlantic coast were deserted — Democratic mayors had shut them down to fight the spread of coronavirus. But across the state, the Republican mayor of Clearwater declined to close the Gulf coast beaches — a spectacle resulted with thousands of carefree sunbathers lining the sand and mingling in the water.
A poll released on Friday showed that viewers of Trump-allied Fox News, which spent weeks downplaying and dismissing the virus, were much less likely to take the pandemic seriously. A USC professor described the partisan divide best: “It’s more like the rational states versus the Trump Republican states.”
- Why do rightwing populist leaders oppose experts?: The likes of Trump, Bolsonaro and Johnson have denigrated professionalism but Reagan, Thatcher and other neoliberals led the way (Guardian)
- Trump: “Every Country” Spreads Lies About the Coronavirus, What’s the Big Deal?: You want to know the real threat to America? Windmills. (Vanity Fair)
- World leaders who denied the coronavirus’s danger made us all less safe: Leaders who saw the coronavirus threat saved lives. Those who didn’t endangered them. (Vox)
- Facebook deletes Brazil President’s coronavirus misinfo post (Techcrunch)
- For Autocrats, and Others, Coronavirus Is a Chance to Grab Even More Power: Leaders around the world have passed emergency decrees and legislation expanding their reach during the pandemic. Will they ever relinquish them? (NYT)
- U.S. spies find coronavirus spread in China, North Korea, Russia hard to chart (Reuters)
- The Contrarian Coronavirus Theory That Informed the Trump Administration (The New Yorker)
- Bogus coronavirus claims lead Google Play to finally give Infowars the boot (Ars Technica)
The (Really Not So) Great Escape
- A riot provoked by militants at Ghouiran prison in northeast Syria over the weekend resulted in what is believed to be the escape of several members of the Islamic State. Prisoners made holes in the walls between cells, tore off internal doors and overwhelmed guards from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), Washington’s Kurdish-led ground partner in the fight against ISIS. Unconfirmed reports said several people had died in the violence.
- The situation remains tense, with prisoners still in control of some sections of the complex despite reinforcements in the form of an SDF counter-terrorism unit. Ghourian prison held 3,000-5,000 people, many of whom were foreign nationals suspected of traveling to Syria to join the now-defunct “caliphate.”
- The exact number of escapees remains unclear, with numbers ranging from 12 to none. An SDF spokesman said the situation in the detention center was “completely under control”, but the fighting appeared to be ongoing. (Guardian)
I Am Woman, Hear This Lion Roar
- In Egypt only 25 percent of women are in the labor force. The country ranks 134 out of 153 in the Global Gender Gap, an index published by the World Economic Forum. But in one unusual field — lion taming — the women dominate.
- There are six female lion tamers in Egypt, mostly from the same extended family, whose old-fashioned shows draw legions of fans each year. Using stage names like “The Queen of Lions” the women, dressed in spangled outfits, coax big cats through rings of fire or allow them to stroll over their bodies.
- Luba el-Helw is a 38-year-old working mother of three. Her grandmother was the Arab world’s first female lion tamer, and her father was a star of Egypt’s state-run National Circus during its heyday in the 1980s.
- The dangers of her career are real. Her grandfather was mauled to death at the end of a show in 1972. But el-Helw dismisses the dangers, as well as accusations that old-fashioned circuses are cruel to the animals. Several European countries have put in place restrictions on using animals in popular entertainment. (NYT)
- Bahariya and Farafra: Egypt’s bizarre, desert landscape (Guardian)
COVID-19
- Johnson & Johnson to begin clinical trials on coronavirus vaccine by Sept (CNBC)
- The FDA approves a coronavirus test that can give results in 5 minutes (Vox)
- Technology To Clean And Reuse PPE Is Being Deployed To Hotspot Hospitals (NPR)
- Las Vegas parking lot turned into ‘homeless shelter’ with social distancing markers: City says parking lot marked to distance residents from each other was best option after virus forced another shelter to close (Guardian)
- Instacart, Amazon workers strike as labor unrest grows during coronavirus crisis (Reuters)
- Coronavirus: U.S. Still Seeing Thousands Of Flights, Despite A Drop In Air Travel (NPR)
- The Great American Migration of 2020: On the move to escape the coronavirus (WaPo, $)
- Homes Actually Need to Be Practical Now: One of the ironies of social distancing is that it can put privacy in short supply. (The Atlantic)
- Fears over hidden Covid-19 outbreak in Lebanon, Iraq and Syria: Number of cases may far exceed official figures amid claims of quarantining by non-state actors (Guardian)
- China Created a Fail-Safe System to Track Contagions. It Failed. (NYT)
- The Great Empty: There is a certain beauty in the expanses of public space, now vacant amid the pandemic, these photos from around the world show. There is also a reminder: True beauty comes when the builders roam the built. (NYT)
- The U.S. Tried to Build a New Fleet of Ventilators. The Mission Failed.: As the coronavirus spreads, the collapse of the project helps explain America’s acute shortage. (NYT)
- Democrats are ready to start work on a fourth coronavirus bill. Republicans want to wait.: House Democrats want infrastructure to be part of a fourth coronavirus bill, but they need Republican support first. (Vox)
- The U.S. Was Already Deep In Debt. This Year’s Deficit Will Be ‘Mind-Boggling’ (NPR)
Additional World News
- Hungary passes law that will let Orbán rule by decree (Guardian)
- Brazilian left demands Bolsonaro resign over coronavirus response (Guardian)
- Tokyo 2020 Olympics Have A New Start Date: July Of 2021 (NPR)
- Oil price collapses to lowest level for 18 years (BBC)
- The uncertain future for China’s electric car makers (BBC)
Suspicious Trading Is Ringing A Few Opening Bells
- The Justice Department has opened an inquiry into possible insider trading by lawmakers who received confidential closed-door briefings on the coronavirus and sold millions in stock weeks before the market plummeted.
- Senator Richard Burr (R-NC) sits on two committees that received detailed briefings on the growing epidemic, including one on January 24.
- On February 13 Burr sold 13 shares of companies worth as much as $1.7 million, saving him and his wife at least $250,000 in losses based on the value of what those stocks were worth at close of trading on March 19. Burr claims he based his decision to sell on public information.
- Other senators who engaged in active trading before the spreading virus caused markets to fall were Republicans Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue of Georgia, and James Inhofe of Oklahoma. The husband of California Democrat Dianne Feinstein also sold stock before the market slid.
- In 2012 Burr was one of only three senators who voted against legislation banning insider trading by members of Congress. (WSJ)
Hey Google, I’m Waiting for You to Call Me Up and Tell Me I’m Not Alone
- Scientists say loneliness is a global problem that can be as bad for one’s health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day or being severely overweight.
- Voice technologies using AI are being used to help combat loneliness in countries including Sweden and the UK. 92-year-old John Winward was one of a group of residents at an elderly care home in Bournemouth, England who recently took part in a six month academic experiment designed to test if a smart speaker could help tackle loneliness.
- He was immediately hooked. “I thought at first it was a sign of insanity, speaking to a little thing like that and him talking back!” he said. “I was so surprised… it was such fun!” Winward remains an active user of his Google Home device.
- He asks the speaker for news and weather updates, music and audio book tips and crossword puzzle clues; sometimes he asks it to tell him a joke. “It keeps me sane, really, because it’s a very lonely life when you lose your partner after 64 years, and you spend a lot of time in your room alone.”
- A psychologist who worked on the smart speaker experiment says all of the participants at the nursing home “took to it really well.” She believes that in this current environment in which billions of pensioners around the world are in social isolation due to the risk of spreading coronavirus, smart speakers could prove to be an increasingly useful tool. (BBC)
Additional Reads
- The Frontier Couple Who Chose Death Over Life Apart (Outside)
- Will the news industry survive COVID-19
- Bail Out Journalists. Let Newspaper Chains Die.: The coronavirus is likely to hasten the end of advertising-driven media, our columnist writes. And government should not rescue it. (NYT, $)
- The Fate of the News in the Age of the Coronavirus: Can a fragile media ecosystem survive the pandemic? (The New Yorker, $)
- Can the news industry survive Coronavirus?: The economic fallout of the pandemic is crippling the advertising business, as Gannett furloughs staff, BuzzFeed cuts pay, and the Tampa Bay Times reduces printing. Coronavirus has led to a surge in readership—and an existential threat. (Vanity Fair)
- Looking for a distraction? Here are 25 of our favourite long reads (Guardian)
- Scientists develop AI that can turn brain activity into text (Guardian)
- What the Japanese can teach us about super-ageing gracefully (BBC)
- That time Hemingway was quarantined with his sick kid, his wife, and his mistress (Vox)
- Disney’s Iger will forgo salary as new CEO takes 50% pay cut due to coronavirus constraints (CNBC)