Further Tuesday assorted links yes they are all really interesting

by  Tyler Cowen

1. Covid-19 Trials Tracker.

2. New Zealand triage software.

3. Covid-19 and pre-trial detention.

4. Why read apocalyptic novels now? (NYT)

5. Ross Douthat on what we are learning about conservatism (NYT).

6. How readily is China gearing up again?

Comments

Matt Young

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https://edhub.ama-assn.org/jn-learning/video-player/18357411

Recent work has demonstrated that exhalations, sneezes, and coughs comprise a multiphase turbulent gas (puff) cloud of exhaled air that entrains ambient air and traps and carries within it clusters of mucosalivary fluid droplets with a continuum of droplet sizes. The droplets of all sizes are created both within and outside of the respiratory tract. This video demonstrates the phenomena in human sneezes visualized by light scattering toward the camera from multiple optical sources and at different distances. It illustrates how mucosalivary liquid emissions, in the form of droplets of a continuous size range, are coupled with the hot, moist, and high momentum gas cloud, which traps and carries them forward up to 7 to 8 m (26 ft). This newer understanding of respiratory emission dynamics has implications for mask and respiratory design, social distancing recommendations, and other public health interventions during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Click the related article link for complete details. Video courtesy of Lydia Bourouiba. Used with permission.
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Research report comes with scary video.

Ray Lopez

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This wasn't one of the links...and it's nothing more than the clickbait that says 'everytime you flush your toilet a plumb of poo covers your toothbrush' (so cover your toothbrush and dip it in mouthwash).

I found the links TC cited rather boring.

Dick the Butcher

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I found 'old' SARS guidance. It had "up to three feet."

"The main way that SARS seems to spread is by close person-to-person contact. The virus that causes SARS is thought to be transmitted most readily by respiratory droplets (droplet spread) produced when an infected person coughs or sneezes. Droplet spread can happen when droplets from the cough or sneeze of an infected person are propelled a short distance (generally up to 3 feet) through the air and deposited on the mucous membranes of the mouth, nose, or eyes of persons who are nearby. The virus also can spread when a person touches a surface or object contaminated with infectious droplets and then touches his or her mouth, nose, or eye(s). In addition, it is possible that the SARS virus might spread more broadly through the air (airborne spread) or by other ways that are not now known."

The ancient, erroneously-short booger-propulsion-distance must be why we all died from SARS.

Anon7

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As one of the counterarguments noted, if the CCP-Coronavirus is capable of infecting people at 26 feet, then a much larger percentage of the population should have had it by now.

Dick the Butcher

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Seen elsewhere.

From "China Is Lying: 'As COVID 19 Is Ravaging The Globe, Innocent Viruses Fear Backlash.'"

I am at a loss for words.

Elite

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What we are learning about conservatism is that conservatives (and Donald Trump) would like Donald Trump to be president for one more term. They believe that a strong economy and/or stock market increases the odds of that. They also believe that efforts to stop the pandemic have a negative impact on the economy and stock market. Douthat can go on and on about ideology, but this is just another example of the total dominance of political expediency.

anonymous

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5. As I say, I think it's much simpler. Too many boomers and their unruly children have a reflexive "you're not the boss of me" response which blocks real solutions.

I mean why don't we stop school shootings? Is it really because a shooter's license is an end of American freedom, or is it because "you're not the boss of me?"

What we "want" displaces our responsibilities.

Anti-vaccination dilettanteism as another example. It's less a question of whether vaccines really work, or whether there are experts in the field, than you're not the boss of me!

Skeptical

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I mean why don't we stop school shootings?

You have a solution to this? Please share it with the class. Unless you mean “ban all firearms” but let’s not derail the Corona-Chan thread.

It's less a question of whether vaccines really work, or whether there are experts in the field...

This isn’t a good take on the anti-vax nuttery. It’s driven by upper class white women who are very much anti-liberty. The Venn diagram of “ban all firearms” and “vaccines cause X” is a huge overlap.

anonymous

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I'm not nearly bored enough to be bothered with you, troll.

I say "shooter's license," he says "ban all firearms."

FreeCAD is much more interesting. If I could just get revolve object to behave ..

Shark Lasers

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A "shooter's license" is just like allowing abortions only in medical emergencies, or civil unions, or welfare for the "truly" needy. It's not a policy, it's a foot in the door for further advancement of leftist agendas.

anonymous

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This kind of paranoid fantasy is another part of why we can't have nice things.

To the paranoid libertarian everything, starting with our driver's licenses, is a first step to slavery.

Gary Johnson booed at the Libertarian Debate for Supporting Driver's Licenses

Shark Lasers

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Such a paranoid fantasy, and yet, where are we today regarding abortion? Gay rights? Etc. No more concessions for those who seek to destroy our society.

Komori

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Because it's not like firearm registration hasn't ever been used as a de facto ban before. Please see McDonald v. City of Chicago.

Gambit

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"The Venn diagram of “ban all firearms” and “vaccines cause X”.

https://edition.cnn.com/2015/09/18/politics/ben-carson-vaccine-criticism/index.html
https://www.insider.com/how-donald-trump-became-an-anti-vaccinationist-2019-9
Have Carson, Paul and Trump asked for guns being banned? I am pretty sure it is not upper class liberals who make Republicans support the anti-vaccination movement.

JWatts

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Oh please. Dr. Ben Carson is not an anti-vaxxer. He made a reasonable comment that the Left blew out of proportion.

"Carson dismissed the correlation between autism and vaccines at the debate, but affirmed the decision to have fewer of them so close together.

"It is true that we are probably giving way too many in too short a period of time," the retired neurosurgeon said at Wednesday's Republican presidential debate. "And a lot of pediatricians now recognize that and I think are cutting down on the numbers and the proximity in which those are done and I think that's appropriate.""

Skeptical

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Thread successfully derailed by anonymous. Anyways:

The rebel forces in America’s latest culture war — the so-called anti-vaxxers — are often described as middle- and upper-class women who breast-feed their children, shop at Whole Foods, endlessly scour the web for vaccine-related conversation, and believe that their thinking supersedes that of doctors. Typically their families earn more than $75,000 a year.

You can peruse through the NIS data if you want. It’s wealthy, liberal, college educated white women who live in large metropolitan areas.

Basically the Elizabeth Warren voter.

Ray Lopez

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I'm not an anti-vaxxer and will vaccine my kids but what I find is that to a degree the anti-vaxxers are rational free riders. Let me explain.
During the 1976 or so Swine Flu pandemic, US Pres Jimmy Carter mandated all Americans get a flu shot to stop the alleged pandemic. My 1% family (they were 1% even back then) did not, under the rational theory that if everybody else gets the shot, they won't need to (herd immunity). It worked, and it turns out Swine Flu was overrated. That said, there are diseases where even if you get a vaccine, if *NOBODY* else gets a vaccine, some viruses will actually 'overwhelm' your body defenses even if you have the vaccine (only happens at the margin, not that common, but still it happens). So the above 'free rider' anti-vaxxer strategy is only effective if everybody else does not practice it, and dutifully gets a vaccine. And of course the above ignores the fact that ignorant anti-vaxxers end up diseased and then expect the taxpayers to bail them out, but that's another issue entirely.

Immoderate

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Lol, grade 8 level explanation of immunization, by a boastful self proclaimed 1%-er pedo, now boasting about how his family free rides. Y’all must be fun to work with or work for.

Captain Slime

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Ford. Not Carter.

Pointless

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You’re missing the point.

Who cares if they are “rational free riders.” The issue is that they think they are right in that vaccines cause more harm than good, or the more generally attributed view of vaccine causes autism.

That irresponsible thinking is the problem. Not how the benefit from the rest of us on accident.

Jack

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Rational freeloaders would not vaccinate, but gleefully advocate for others to do so. Creating a large unvaccinated population is inconsistent with rational freeloading.

mulp

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Given the increase in gun sales after Trump said he was a war time president fighting an invisible enemy (flashing me back to my childhood and I LIKE IKE buttons), conservatives clearly think the cure for virus infections is spraying them with cop killer bullets.

Wally

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When you criminalize guns, only criminals will have the ability to stop virus infections by spraying them with cop-killer bullets.

Anon7

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Yes, if only the CDC spent lots of money funding research on gun control and we deferred to the technocratic experts we would have ended school shootings (and a side benefit of expanding the CDC's mission would be that the CDC would have done a great job dealing with the virus).

anonymous

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It would have been a hell of a lot more positive energy than making sure they didn't try.

Skeptical

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Didn’t realize you were a Marianne Williamson voter. All hail the Orb Queen!

We demand a national strategic stockpile of healing crystals and positive energy!

Anon7

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Technocratic positive energy + TDS will restore balance to the Force!

Addie Rose Krugman

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5 Doubtthat is all over the place/ bordering on incoherent
sumbody should probably check his temperature

Tai

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I'm glad I'm not the only one. References to hermetic Christianity, gnostic mysticism, QAnon, MAGA populism, and the satanic depravity of liberalism made for quite the word salad.

Slappy McFee

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Per usual, Douthats column brought out the best satire on the internet in the comments section.

5. Garbage

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Who is this dude?

At first I thought it was me...but the more I read the more I thought it was written after not enough insulin and an ambian.

Jack

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I often like Douthat, but this column is weak.

It suffers first from the misconception that conservative equals Republican and liberal equals Democrat, despite knowing hey have different definitions even in the UK. He cites purity as a conservative value without considering that the identity politics left certainly values purity as much as the most severe evangelist, although they would define it differently.

The second problem is that he tries to explain conservatives without trying to understand or define the term. I think that is a lot of why he is "all over the place".

This is fun to read, if one considers catbird seats a good place to be

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New York governor Andrew Cuomo lamented how many states are bidding against each other to obtain ventilators right now.

“You have 50 states competing to buy the same item. It’s like being on Ebay,” the governor said. “How inefficient!”

Cuomo noted FEMA is now also bidding, further driving up the price for ventilators. “What sense does this make?” Cuomo said, raising his voice in frustration.

What a time to be selling medical supplies - you don't even need to put any effort into price gouging, you just let your customers do all the work for you.

Massimo

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I do not think so. The two countries where it is based the highest production potential are China and the US, the first for the industrial might and network effects, the second for the marvelous ingenuity in innovating. But In both cases the price signal is dampened. By the FDA and the hypocritical collectivist press coverage in the US, and by the objectives of the association of murderers called the Communist Party in China. We are in the hands of central planning, unfortunately.

Maybe the Germans, the Japanese or the Italians will help us, but at the margins. 80-90 years-old infected individuals will have 84% probability of surviving instead of 82%.

Ignore the FDA and the CDC, unleash American ingenuity.

Wally

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Yup... the ingenuity that put lead in gasoline, CFCs in air conditioners and shaving cream and DDT in the rivers.

Massimo

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The classical nirvana fallacy, comparing the old solution with the current solution and knowledge.

There was no gasoline before the gasoline with lead, nor understanding of the effect of lead on brain. Would you have preferred horse carriages?

There were no air-conditioners, before air-conditioners with CFCs, nor understanding of the impact on the ozone. Would you have preferred a quarter of the US virtually uninhabitable?

I have no idea of what there was before shaving cream. I guess soap. Is it not the same shit? Enlighten me, Wally!

Wally

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There was gasoline before lead was added.
There were ACs before CFCs.
Shaving cream lives on... simply with different propellants.

Massimo

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You are right, Wally. Thanks, you made me know about this most hapless of fellows, Thomas Midgley (Jr), who I have never heard of before:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr.

But would you at least accept that poor Thomas did not do it in bad faith, he actually did not know the side effects of lead and CFC?

Crikey

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Thomas Midgley suffered from lead poisoning after poisoning himself with lead.

Dick the Butcher

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Who'd have thought? An economics prof's blog readers would be uncomfortable with demand and supply. GM, Ford, etc. need to recover overtime, retooling, set-up costs, etc.

He wasn't a Boy Scout. Their motto is "Be Prepared."

Over multiple terms, Capo Cuomo had billions of dollars for his pet projects.

Now, his brother, Fredo, is Wuhan Virus positive. How could that happen?

This is how a Louisiana gun shop fights hoarding. Of course, they're sold out of AR-47's; but not ammunition. They sell two boxes of bullets at regular price and over two boxes at +$50 per. Goodwill is an intangible business asset.

Earlier, I saw Costco signage saying they would not refund for returned toilet paper.

Shark Lasers

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I'm sure supply and demand is still in effect for issues such as guest workers or immigration. That's the nice thing about economics, you can suspend beliefs as necessary to keep your worldview intact. ¡SCIENCE!

Dick the Butcher

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They superimposed opinions, politics, religion. It's no longer a science.

JWatts

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"This is fun to read,"

Prior you are one sick troll.

István

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It read like someone opposed to price gouging, but maybe this was misunderstanding the end : you don't even need to put any effort into price gouging, you just let your customers do all the work for you.

Frank Grimes

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The interaction of supply and demand does not cease in a pandemic. Footage at 11.

Massimo

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On #2

What about renting the beds with ventilator to the highest bidder? Maybe it will not decrease demand, but it will certainly increase supply. Is not this the official position on price gouging of every decent economist?

BTW, it is not a trolling question, I am absolutely for free market, and not only for an utilitarian reason, but also ethically.

Dismalist

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Absolutely important question.

The triagers are maximizing lives, or life years, or QUALYs, saved. An alternative is indeed to allocate the beds to those guys who have the fanciest credit cards hanging from their necks.

If we chose after we knew how rich or poor, or how sick or healthy we were, the answer would be obvious for each individual. If we didn't know how rich or poor, or sick or healthy we would be, I'm guessing we'd go for triage, for maximizing the number of lives saved would then be in our personal interest.

Rick Zhang

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The difficulty is managing expectations in the voting public. Regardless of your own leanings, you must admit that it has become a widespread expectation in the "west" that government should socialize the costs of at least basic health care.

As you saw during the ACA debates, accusations of "death panels" are an effective attack on your political opponents, and will be used to devastating effect against any attempt at triage or price discrimination.

You need to give providers ethical and legal cover for refusing to provide futile care at end of life, but unfortunately politics has poisoned the well for doing that on a standardized nationwide basis.

Massimo

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I agree, Rick. It would be politically toxic.

But economists do not run for office. They have an interest in advocating what they think is the best solution, however unpleasant it is. This is because they care about not being considered clowns by other economists and people of common sense in general (well, not all of them do care, judging by Krugman’s NYT column). From an utilitarian viewpoint it is obvious why money should be the deciding factor.

From an ethical standpoint, my personal view is because who has created more wealth for society is the richer and therefore supposedly the higher bidder.

A.R. Krugman

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mebbe congress can't manage their own expectations
mebbe the problem isn't death panels so much as the fact that nobody in congress who favors a single payer plan can explain how they are gonna ration care or even admit that medical care will be rationed.
they are they same congressional fritattas who are demanding a
corona virus test "for anyone who wants one" and want a personal guarantee from the president that everyone will have a ventilator

Wally

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Who lives? Who dies?
New Zealand now has an app for that.

George Oh-well

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#2, I think we're definitely seeing the chickens of massive government intervention in healthcare come home to roost all across the world. From under-supplied and over bureaucratized healthcare systems, to egregious regulation on the development, trial, and production of equipment, the government's need to control the industry is what will doom us in the end. But, never fear, the government's here to help.

FYI

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#5: well yes, partisanship is powerful and you can basically see this in both parties equally. However, it is interesting to note that the "cancel it" impulse continues to be basically fostered by the left. They were not challenging the definition of "China virus" because it was inaccurate, but because it was "hurtful". At the same time, they accept quarantine as long as it is "not hurting the poor". Countries like Sweden and Netherlands are shunning quarantine but you basically don't hear about it in the news. So there is some core principles being validated by this crisis. Yes, conservatives struggle between their "traditionalist" impulse and their "libertarian" impulses. That does not mean these impulses are not real. The same way, Liberals struggle between their "liberal" impulses and their "central control" impulses, and that is pretty clear too. I like Haidt's work but he focus too much on how these impulses map to animal instincts. I think the most useful mapping is between these impulses and our overall tendencies to act them out in real life contexts.

Brian Donohue

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5. Helluva sentence: "They are confronted with a world crisis tailor-made for an anti-globalization, anti-deep-state worldview — a crisis in which China lit the fuse, the World Health Organization ran interference for Beijing, the American public health bureaucracy botched its one essential job, pious anti-racism inhibited an early public-health response, and outsourcing and offshoring left our economy exposed."

JWatts

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+1, yes Douthat nailed that sentence.

Capitalists need no lessons from Communists when it comes to keeping the truth away from the wrong eyes

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Ming Lin, an emergency room physician in Washington state, said he was told Friday he was out of a job because he’d given an interview to a newspaper about a Facebook post detailing what he believed to be inadequate protective equipment and testing. In Chicago, a nurse was fired after emailing colleagues that she wanted to wear a more protective mask while on duty. In New York, the NYU Langone Health system has warned employees they could be terminated if they talk to the media without authorization.

‘Hospitals are muzzling nurses and other health-care workers in an attempt to preserve their image,’ said Ruth Schubert, a spokeswoman for the Washington State Nurses Association. ‘It is outrageous.’

JWatts

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So prior, what exactly did GMU fire you for?

Skeptical

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He rescinded his prior approval about the local clockwork and leaked it to the German press ?

Brian Donohue

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6. Worrisome. China is clearly not out of the woods yet. Case numbers have to be bogus, because new cases in China are tiny, but officials are reacting to *something* by walking back some of the tentative openings.

While the West struggles through the second half of the first wave, Asia's efforts at balancing containment and re-opening become the focal point.

JWatts

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Without any way to validate the numbers, the best assumption is probably just to assume they don't bear much resemblance to reality.

ad

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According to the FT, China had its lockdown after a few dozen deaths, and had a few thousand in total. Italy, Spain, France and the UK had their lockdowns after a few hundred deaths, and are on track to have twenty thousand in total (each). China's numbers seem consistent with Europe's.

JWatts

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"According to the FT, China had its lockdown after a few dozen deaths, and had a few thousand in total. "

Yes, that's what the Chinese have officially reported. A draconian lock down after a few dozen deaths, in a province of 58 million people.

Catinthehat

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They had not been reporting asymptomatic carriers in the “ cases” figure but they still quarantined them. They’re pretty much reopening everything for business and travel out and into Wuhan will be permitted on April 7.
I don’t think they have an epidemic there anymore , but there are still new cases ) mostly imported ) they have to watch out for.

Catinthehat

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In response to Brian above.

Wally

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"I don’t think they have an epidemic there anymore , but there are still new cases ) mostly imported ) they have to watch out for."

Ummm... let's just think that one through. So, no more virus in pangolins; every third or fourth gen symptomless case is known, cases coming back in can magically not reinfect; nobody is hiding or covering up a known case...

Hazel Meade

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5. So yeah, tribal affiliation trumps *everything*, basically. We can thank our lucky stars that Trump is a delusional narcissist, or he would have identified the CV outbreak as a golden opportunity to advance a conservative nationalist agenda and united the nationalists and the tribalists in the Republican Party. Turns out he cares more about his reelection chances than advancing any particular agenda though. He wasn't worried about what the virus was going to do to the country - he was worried about the stock market was going to do to his poll numbers.

N

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"Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity manifested a conservatism of tribal denial, owning the libs by minimizing the coronavirus threat."

It was all worth it to pwn da libz.

chuck martel

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Since you can read minds what do you think I want to have for dinner tonight?

Jack

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I don't think it is really fair to misdiagnose someone, then when they don't do what you expect claim that they would have if they weren't a "delusional narcissist".

But I am a Hazel Meade fan, so please don't get mad at me

chuck martel

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3. For low-level offenses, public interest is better served through “cite and release” than it is through booking and temporarily imprisoning an offender.

That ain't what law enforcement is all about. An arrest for anything is an opportunity to match the miscreant's fingerprints against a national database, examine his lifetime relationship with the law, including looking into his driving record. That's why cops stop people with cracked windshields, they want a good look, and more, at their driver's license. Hauling them into to the station is a chance for a gold star on the bulletin board, maybe a day hanging around the courthouse as a witness and even a shot at slipping away with part of an asset forfeiture. The cops like the situation just the way it is.

chuck martel

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4. There’s no reason to add an additional harm to whatever evils have already taken place. More suffering does not make the world a better place. There's something of a relationship between 3 & 4.

Matt Young

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https://hotair.com/headlines/archives/2020/03/not-winning-fight-chart-shows/

More than half of all confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States have been diagnosed in the past five days. Depending on what data source you use, yesterday was either the worst day for new cases or one of the worst. And more than 3,000 Americans with the virus have died, meaning the death toll has now exceeded that of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

As you can see in the chart above, the other three countries with the world’s largest number of confirmed cases — Italy, China and Spain — were all making significant progress at a similar point in their outbreaks. But the response in the United States has been slow and uneven.

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Not the United States, but NYC for obvious reasons, they are the mass transit city of eight million packed in.

We cannot apply the doctrine of infinite divisibility, governments are not of the same shape everywhere.

FYI

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Do you understand how meaningless "meaning the death toll has now exceeded that of the 9/11 terrorist attacks" is? We lose 36k to Flu *every year*. For how long has that been happening? No one even knows! That is the more appropriate comparison.

Donald Pretari

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#5...When Powell was nominated to head the Fed, I wrote that he seemed clueless about what had happened in 08. Boy, was I wrong. He's done an excellent job based, i believe, on a correct understanding about what happened in 08. In fact, as someone who supports the Fed's actions and the Stimulus Bill, I believe a number of people I would have thought would not have learned from 08, have learned from 08. ideology, ever dangerous, has been kept at a minimum so far.

In this crisis, I'd like to see people who decide to offer advice that turns out to be wrong, admit to the fact that they're a horse's ass for piping up. I 'd like to hear them admit that they're not nearly as smart as they thought they were. It's the least they can do.

Matt Young

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----
Call them up, or check the catalog for corona resistant anti-bodies. Get a hundred friends signed up and get some of Tyler's money.

Joël

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(somewhat related to Douthat).

Okay, let's make a cynical calculation. Assume the worst case scenario of tonight's report, which is 200,000 deaths if we manage to flatten the curve
extremely well. If we don't even try to flatten the curve, what would be the number of deaths? It cannot be much more than twice the preceding numbers, because most people who die in the scenario where every ones get the medical care they need has been under ventilator before dying, but only 50% of those people put under ventilators survive. Hence count 400,000 if we do nothing deaths, let's make it 600,000 to be conservative, so an excess number of deaths of 400,000 over
the current policy.

People who dies from coronavirus tend to be quite old and have in general serious comorbidities such as diabetes. There life expectancy if they survive the virus is likely not high, probably less than 10 years on average.

So multiply 400,000 excess deaths by 10 years by $129,000 (standard current estimate of the "economic value" of one year of life), and you get about $600 billion. That's certainly less than the cost of current policy of shouting down almost the entire economy (at least $2billion say)

Find your own conclusion.

Mine is that utilitarian conservatives (personal note: I am neither utilitarian, nor conservative) are perfectly consistent if they criticize the current policy as too harsh. And Douthat completely missed this category in his analysis.

Wally

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"tend to be" and "are" are not the same thing.

Joël

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Sure, but take into account any table of mortality rate by age, and the age pyramid of the US, to confirm what you already know that the overwhelming majority of deaths is of people aged over 70, with a large share above 80. Then remember that life expectancy for "average" 70 years-old is about 15 years in the US and 8 years for "average" 80 years-old. Now remember tat dying from Covid-19 is strongly related to extra-morbidity such as diabetes, obesity, chronic lung disease, *even controlling for old age* (it is also related to hypertension, but because hypertension is already heavily correlated to old age, it is not clear that
this is correlated with death from Covid-19 after controlling for age, according to experts). Note also that dying Covid-19 is also very likely correlated to another comorbidity which in general is not known by those who have it, namely a somewhat fragile or weakened immune system. Conclude that the average life expectancy of people who die from coronavirus if they didn't catch it is very likely less than 10 years. Or make it 15 if you want to be conservative, that doesn't change much my computation.

Hopaulius

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Since COVID19 is apparently listed as cause of death for most of those who die having had a positive test either pre-or postmortem, I would love to see the statistics for everyone who dies with a positive test for the common cold.

Thiago Ribeiro

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that is an easy statistic
it is pretty close to zero

Matt Young

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1. Covid-19 Trials Tracker.
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Nice tracking board. I am ready to bet, when are they open for betting?

Anon7

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3. "The vast majority of people being held in local jails are there for a narrow range of common offenses: violent crime, property crime, public-order crime, and parole and probation violations. The numbers related to parole and probation violations are especially surprising, comprising 45 percent of all local jail admissions."

So the majority of people in jail are accused of being violent thugs, thieves, or parole/probation violators, and the brilliant policy prescription of the left/libertarians is "cite and release" (just like illegal immigrants), which essentially means let them go. What message does that send to people, particularly ex-cons, that they will be put on "double secret probation"?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0cF2piwjYQ

Ricardo

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Easy. Keep the violent thugs locked up and, for most of the others, make them do community service (how about delivering groceries for elderly?), defer their sentences until after the pandemic has peaked, and release pre-trial detainees to the extent possible.

If a community is in serious lockdown, it isn't clear how much trouble a petty criminal can cause while under house arrest like everyone else anyway. There are no bars to go to so no bar fights, cops are much more likely to stop you and ask what you are doing out if not obviously going grocery shopping, there is no one on the street they can steal money from, etc.

peri

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Rats. Paywalled Callard. Too tired to work around, maybe tomorrow. (Today probably represented my best chance of getting the Covid in the first wave.) Did the steady diet of dystopian novels, predispose the younger generation to be unusually quiescent in the face of a shutdown to save the far advanced in age, and the obese? In a, *it's finally happening* way? I know the collective effort is beautiful because someone told me so, and I do really love the Twilight Zone vibe in my boomtown, am totally! on board with the loss of population as many people have left to return to their own countries, am sad for those affected that Macy's laid everyone off but it wasn't a very good store and maybe now the local mall can be redeveloped a little ahead of time, with both Sears' and now probably Macy's permanently shuttered, as well as most of the other stores probably not coming back; but it's also a little eerie to me the way we're all bouncing our basketballs in unison. This is not political, not a protest - just a feeling one may or may not be given to, and I understand it afflicts very few.

Batcheek

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Alan Weisman's "The Work without Us" should be mandatory reading for any apocalyptic novelist. It's a nonfiction book about what would happen to the earth if all of mankind were suddenly raptured into a black hole, leaving behind the human-built Earth without humans?

Addie Rose krugman

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that covid 19 trial tracker sure gotta lotta chinese trials being tracked
Under the circumstances we gotta be very skeptical of chinese trial results

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