Tuesday, April 28, 2020

Coronavirus News (61)



"Immunity passports" in the context of COVID-19
Coronavirus at meatpacking plants worse than first thought, USA TODAY investigation finds Coronavirus closed Smithfield and JBS meatpacking plants. Many more are at risk. Operators may have to choose between worker health or meat in stores.
Blue Angels and Thunderbirds will fly over New York and other cities to salute first responders
How New Zealand 'eliminated' Covid-19 after weeks of lockdown Monday was the final day of almost five weeks of strict level four lockdown measures, which New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern described as "the strictest constraints placed on New Zealanders in modern history." ........ On Tuesday, the country eased into a less restrictive lockdown, with 400,000 more New Zealanders heading back to work and 75% of the country's economy operating, according to Ardern. The new level three restrictions also mean that New Zealanders will be able to hold small funerals and buy takeaways....... "We are not out of the woods," she said at a press conference Tuesday. "(Level three) is a recovery room of sorts to assess if the incredible work that New Zealanders have done ... has worked." ........

an approach that could be applied anywhere -- moving swiftly, testing widely, and relying heavily on good science.



Brazil emerges as next potential coronavirus hotspot
Small business loans above $2 million will get full audit to make sure they’re valid, Mnuchin says
YouTube to stream Tribeca, Cannes, Sundance films for free starting May 29 The 10-day We Are One festival will feature movies from 20 of the world's most famous film festivals.
Making sense of the viral multiverse
Cautious return to normality needed With civil servants due to get back to work and some restrictions eased, there are hopes school classes will resume when time is right after virus shutdown
Full transcript: ‘Leonardo da Vinci’ biographer Walter Isaacson on Recode Decode “If you can stand at that intersection between the arts and sciences or between beauty and engineering, that’s where you’ll be the most creative.”
Amid Coronavirus Crisis, Israel Upgrades Empty Roads and Rails Roadwork is booming in Israel as construction crews take advantage of empty roads and railways in the time of coronavirus to upgrade the developed world’s most congested highways.





Pulitzer winner Chris Hedges: These "are the good times — compared to what's coming next" Author of "America: The Farewell Tour": We're heading for a steep decline; Biden and the Democrats have no answers ........ Empires fall a little bit at a time and then all at once. Over the last two decades, America has proven itself to be well along on that journey. The coronavirus pandemic has simply pushed our nation further along that downward spiral. .....Ultimately, the pandemic has further exposed and exacerbated — for those still somehow in denial about the decades-long reality of America as a decaying empire — deep political, social, economic, cultural and other societal problems. .......... The country's infrastructure is rotting. Trump presides over a plutocratic, corrupt, cruel, authoritarian, pathological kakistocracy. The commons is being reduced to rubble while the ultra-rich extract ever more wealth and other resources from the American people. Excessive military spending has left the United States incapable of attending to the basic needs of its people. A culture of distraction and spectacle has rendered many Americans incapable of being responsible engaged citizens. Our public educational system does not teach critical thinking skills. Radical right-wing Christians, white terrorist organizations and other neofascist paramilitaries and extremists are engaging in a campaign of thuggery, intimidation and violence against multiracial American democracy.......... A society can change so quickly because the underlying structures are rotten. There is the patina or the veneer of a functioning system, but the foundations of it are so decayed that they can't take the stress. That was true in the Weimar Republic in Germany, before the Nazis took full control. That was true in Yugoslavia before the civil war and ethnic violence. It is true here in the United States too. This country cannot withstand the stress of the coronavirus pandemic. Beyond the obviousness of what the Republicans are doing, the Democratic Party's response to this crisis exemplifies the problems America is facing as a whole. .......... Twelve hundred dollars to individuals suffering during this crisis is not sufficient. The Democrats were only really trying to block the equivalent of a $500 billion slush fund that is going into Mnuchin's hands, a man who acts like a criminal. That $1,200 is going to get vacuumed right up by the credit card companies and the banks who hold the mortgages...........

This is like a repeat of 2008, where Congress is dumping staggering sums of money into the hands of Wall Street thieves.

......... I remember speaking to Fritz Stern, the great scholar of fascism, who himself fled Nazi Germany as a teenager. He said that in Germany there was a yearning for fascism before the word "fascism" was invented. We already see that yearning in America. The coronavirus crisis will make that yearning even more pronounced......... The pandemic was predictable. And yet, of course, especially under the Trump administration, we dismantled the mechanisms through which the United States could prepare. The needed infrastructure, such as hospital beds and ventilators and other needed equipment, was not there because,

like with all decaying empires, the resources go to the defense industry and the military.

........ The fact that Fox News is even considered a news organization is staggering — although I don't think CNN is much better............. I am unsure if we have any mechanisms left in the United States by which we can effectively push back against the elites, the oligarchs and other anti-democratic forces. We don't have any ability to pit power against power. ......... the country is a naked plutocracy. The elites do not even try to hide it anymore. ........ The oligarchs do not care about job losses because, as Marx said, unemployment creates greater pools of desperate surplus labor. The oligarchs do not care about the climate. It's all about the primacy of profit and corporate power — and those values and systems are extinguishing our democracy. ........ Mass mobilization and civil disobedience is what is needed to defeat the oligarchs and take those first steps necessary to win back an American democracy. ........ A vote for Joe Biden is a vote for more of the same. The ruling elites would prefer Joe Biden, just like they preferred Hillary Clinton. Donald Trump is vulgar and an embarrassment. But the ruling elites also made it abundantly clear about their interests: Many of these people were quoted by name saying that if Bernie Sanders was the nominee — or even Elizabeth Warren — they would vote for Donald Trump. ........... James Baldwin explained why black people don't have midlife crises. Why? Because they do not buy into the myths of America. Black people know that the system in America is rigged. Black people know this when they are children. By comparison, white people buy into these illusions of meritocracy and individualism and American exceptionalism and similar beliefs. That is why the highest rates of suicide right now are among middle-aged white men, because they are finally starting to realize that the system does not care about them.

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