How things could go very wrong in America The chances of Donald Trump being re-elected are falling. That is a source of danger ...... It Can’t Happen Here was the title of a 1930s novel about America. Fascism never came to America — nor is it likely to. But martial law, or something close to the militarisation of America’s cities, is plausible. In the past few days, residents of Washington DC have become familiar with the low-flying helicopters, sand-coloured Humvees, nightly curfews and uniformed men that go with military control. ................ Were these scenes unfolding in Hong Kong every think-tank in America’s capital would be scheduling emergency webinars. As it is, people are too dazed by the novelty to gauge the risk. ............ The Pentagon has no interest in breaking a 233-year habit to not interfere in US politics. ........ As has been said before, Mr Trump is a weak man posing as a strong one. ............. Mr Trump wants Americans to believe that the White House is threatened by domestic terrorists, arsonists, thugs, looters and killers — words he has used frequently in the past few days. US stability is under threat, he claims. The president’s life, and those of decent law-abiding Americans, are threatened by the extremists on the streets. That is the gist of Mr Trump’s message. But it requires a visual backdrop. Hence the hyped-up situation in Washington. ................ Mr Trump’s poll numbers are dropping. He is faced with the triple cocktail of a badly-managed pandemic, the worst economic contraction since the Great Depression and an inability to quell the legitimate anger behind America’s demonstrations. ............. Most of those protests are peaceful. ......... most of the looting appears to have been carried out by criminals under cover of the chaos. ....... I have lived in enough democracies, including America, to know a doom-laden government when I see one. ....... Mr Trump was fortunate to have avoided a real crisis in his first three years. Now he has three on his hands. His instincts are mostly optical. He is threatening to use powers that he does not have, such as sending the army into the streets. But he is refusing to use powers he does have, such as marshalling a national response to coronavirus.............. These are the actions and inactions of someone with little interest in governing. But Mr Trump does have a burning desire to be re-elected. In his mind defeat would lead to the dismantlement of the Trump Organization and his prosecution and possible imprisonment.
What Will It Take to Reopen the World to Travel? Above all, it’s trust. Countries are rebuilding relationships under enormous economic pressure, while keeping a wary eye on a virus that’s not going away soon. ........... In Cyprus, tourists can get in only if they carry health certificates proving they tested negative for Covid-19. .......... International travel has always been a proxy for trust among nations and people, but the pandemic has poisoned the air. Now, relationships are being rebuilt under enormous economic pressure, with a wary eye on a pathogen that is not going away anytime soon. ........ The challenge for every country involves both epidemiology and psychology. Trips for business and pleasure must have enough restrictions to make travelers feel safe, but not so many that no one wants to bother. ............ “This is a global shock to the aviation and tourism industry, the likes of which we’ve never seen.” ......... A reduction in flights will mean more connections and longer journeys, testing travelers’ patience. .......... With every phase of reopening, officials said, more movement means more risk and more work, for governments but also travelers. ......... At many of the world’s busiest airports, which are just starting to see upticks in traffic after declines of 90 percent or more, all employees now wear masks and gloves. In Dubai’s giant mall of an airport, all arriving passengers are now scanned for fevers with thermal imaging technology, which is also being rolled out at transport hubs in Europe and the United States. ............ some being “fast-tracked” with proof of a negative test and an abbreviated quarantine. ............. analysts expect international travel to recover with the speed of a casual stroll. .......... the white-collar crowd — in finance, in consulting — that once traveled without much thought has discovered that it can get the job done without being away from home for 100 or more days a year. ......... “Until there’s certainty, you’ll have people saying, ‘I’ll do the Zoom call, or instead of six trips a year, maybe I’ll do two.’” ......... some regular travelers have learned that they can be perfectly happy not traveling at all. .......... during World War II, when travel was severely constricted, great discoveries occurred as the world’s sharpest minds stayed home and mulled the universe. ........... “Many of us have been saying for years that we have too many committees, far too many meetings and not nearly enough quiet thinking time”
Don't write off China yet, warns GV Prasad of Dr Reddy's While Prasad argues that there is much that stands out about the US as a "leader of the free world, an amazing nation in terms of innovation capabilities and a great democracy", there are concerns today ............... I do believe that China is going to be one of the strongest countries of the world, if not the strongest," said Prasad. Drawing a comparison between China and the US, "the two dominant economies of the world," he asked: "where would you lay your bet today?" ............ China shows "a certain level within the government is a pure meritocracy with best talent going to government. There is a level of competence in the government you will not see anywhere in the world. If you want to start a business, the level of enablement is superb, the way they protect their industry is unparalleled" ............ They have overtaken US last year on the number of patents they have filed. They are leaders in artificial intelligence, renewable energy and biotech. They have identified eight sunrise industries where they will overinvest in .
What Will College Be Like in the Fall? The Cal State system recently announced that its 23 campuses will do most instruction online in the fall. On the other hand, other universities, like Purdue in Indiana and New York University, have said they are inviting students back to campus. Schools like the University of South Carolina have decided to bring students back from August until Thanksgiving and then end the semester online, to avoid a second trip back to campus before the winter holidays. ............. With any virus, a big fear is a spread you get when an interwoven community mixes with a larger population — like a college campus in a city. ......... We’re in a global pandemic, and the idea that college life is going to be normal if we do reopen is just a fantasy. ............ students are often silent carriers, because many people in their age group who have the disease are completely asymptomatic. ............ When we reopen, it’s no longer a time of unlimited freedoms. It will be a time of mutual accountability and collective responsibility for the well-being of one another. ............. We can say, “You’re going to die if you don’t do this, or other people are going to die,” but young folks often think that’s not going to happen to them, or it’s not going to happen tomorrow. Making the campus safe has to be about people coming together and coming through for each other. ......... I can’t imagine this working if it’s top down. The community has to collaborate. ........ I was there at the time when the AIDS epidemic began. We had all sorts of policies and practical approaches to dealing with it. We had great massive socially conscious movements to try to do things to help people behave more safely. But the epidemic kept spreading. What worked was developing a highly effective antiretroviral therapy. Nothing else honestly worked. .................. The virus waits for opportunities to exploit human behavior to allow people to infect other people. We expect that there will be those who will not follow the guidelines and that the virus will swoop in. We have to know how we’ll react when things fail and try to limit and curtail the brush fires that will break out. ............ The idea is for a person who is infected to have a single room with a private bathroom. ............. There could be a 14-day quarantine for those who broke the rules ............ four kinds of behavior — sanitary hygiene (washing your hands frequently); reporting your symptoms, including the most minor symptoms; social distancing; and wearing masks. ........... Suppose we start the school year on Sept. 1 with one student out of 1,000 unknowingly infected with the disease. You can think of this as the fraction of the population that falsely tests negative on arrival to campus. Further suppose that the number of people to whom an infected person will on average transmit the disease (the R0, or “reproductive ratio”) starts at 2.26, which is within the range of numbers calculated in the first month of the outbreak in Wuhan, China. If the population is 100 percent susceptible to the disease — in other words, students arrive with no immunity — and there is no social distancing, 85 percent of the students will have experienced infection by Dec. 18. .................. But if social distancing is practiced 50 percent of the time that individuals have potential for close contact, only 0.9 percent of the population will be infected in the same time period. And if there were 60 percent social distancing, the R0 would be less than 1, and only a very tiny fraction of the population would become infected — 0.2 percent in four months. ............... I think you have to say to people who misbehave chronically, you’re being sent home. ........... The members in our local are 85 percent black and brown and often live in multigenerational households, and many of them have comorbidities for the virus. They feel two contradictory things. One is: People are very afraid to go to work. They are very afraid of the public-transit system. They’re very afraid that the institutions may not take the level of responsibility that’s necessary to keep them safe. And I think they’re frankly very afraid of the unknown................. The last thing we need is for people to lose health care in a health care crisis.............. Dining-hall workers, and to some degree custodians who have to clean bathrooms, face significant risks. Anyone over 60 to 65 years old, anyone with comorbidities, accommodation needs to be made for people in these categories, for both staff and faculty, and especially for those who interface with students. ............. The most important thing to protect our staff and our vulnerable populations is testing. We have to have adequate numbers of tests so we can test all our students and all our student-facing staff, including faculty, prior to opening schools for residential purposes. That is absolutely a precondition................... schools could use pooled testing. That means combining several samples and then doing one test on them. If the test is positive, then you’d test each individual sample separately. .............. There are about 11 million undergraduates enrolled in four-year colleges, and that doesn’t include staff who are essential to campus operations. .......... Testing is really the entry-level benchmark to reopen any industry. ........... The culture around being sick at work is you go to work anyway, particularly in the food-service industry. ............ The idea is to keep the same team of workers together so that if someone does get sick, and people have to go home and quarantine, you’ll just have to replace that team. It’s less flexibility for the workers, but it’s good for them in terms of reducing infectious spread. ........... All the institutions that I know of are operating on a grab-and-go system. ........... I also see senior colleagues who are real gems for the institution committed to figuring out Zoom. I have faith that we can figure out a hybrid of some in-person and some video classes. Whatever needs to work, we’ll make work, because the stakes are so high........... the development of critical thinking, problem solving and leadership skills — skills that are so important in this search for equity and mobility — happen within and outside the classroom. Being together, being seen and heard, really matters. Also, for some of our students, they need the housing, they need food, they need safety, they need to be in community. ....... nationally many higher-ed institutions are among the largest employers in our regions. It’s important for us to reopen, to keep people employed, to keep the economic engine running. And I would also say, for some institutions, there is an existential threat that’s out there if they’re not allowed to reopen. .......... We learned this spring that online education is not a perfect alternative to the residential experience. ........... the colleges most threatened economically by this downturn are the smaller or midsize private institutions ......... for many small liberal-arts colleges, and even midsize schools that are private that have some graduate programs, I think they’re definitely in much bigger trouble because they rely primarily on tuition for revenue. Unlike the elite private schools, they don’t have large endowments; they’re basically tuition dependent ............ From talking to small liberal-arts colleges in Connecticut, I know many of them feel that they are existentially threatened by a possibility of having to be online for an entire year. ........ We’ve done an assessment of all of the classroom spaces to see what it would take to observe a six-foot radius around all students. ........... Some West Coast schools are thinking about holding a lot of classes outdoors in the fall. ........ you will see a lot of schools end the on-campus portion of the semester at Thanksgiving. ......... we could extend the school year and make the summer a full session. ........ there is a lot of talk of students taking gap years if school is all online. ............... We were very pleased and actually a bit surprised at how eager students are to come. ........ after a while the mask could morph into a new norm — don’t touch me, don’t get near me. .......... If there were a manageable number of cases, I don’t think we would see the same wholesale movement nationally to send students home and move all classes online again. In the spring, no one wanted to be the first campus to get a case and to have an outbreak, so there was an element of reputational risk that drove some institutions to say, Oh, no, we’ve got to move them off campus immediately.............. Now we know that one of the keys to successfully weathering and containing an outbreak is to be able to test, trace and isolate immediately. Planning for that must be a condition of reopening .......... in the hotel industry. We had the Biogen conference at the Marriott Long Wharf, which turned out to be a superspreader event. The entire hotel industry in the city of Boston has been painted with that stain. .......... It isn’t going to be the same kind of fun, and you aren’t going to have the same kind of parties. But you are going to have great educational opportunities, and there will still be a lot of benefits to take away from it. I think we’re in a world of imperfect choices. And I think everyone has to be a grown-up and recognize that’s where we are.
