Trump Returns to ‘The Infest Wing’ “When she heard he was coming home, Melania immediately checked herself into Walter Reed,” Jimmy Fallon joked on Monday. ........... “And now at least 30 people in Trump’s circle have tested positive for Covid-19. You realize that means there’s been more infections at the White House over the last day than in New Zealand, Vietnam, Taiwan, Thailand and Australia combined. The White House Rose Garden is like the wet market of America right now.” — TREVOR NOAH ......... “Everyone from Trump’s campaign manager to Trump’s press secretary to Trump’s friends have been infected with coronavirus now. It’s almost like the writers of 2020 didn’t know how to wrap the story up so they were just like, ‘Uh, then they all get coronavirus, the end.’” — TREVOR NOAH ............ “Now look, I know some people are saying this was karma catching up to Trump, but guys, a massive outbreak at the White House is not karma, it’s consequences, all right? It’s not karma to get hit by lightning when you’re standing on the roof of a skyscraper holding a metal rod while there’s lightning. The universe didn’t do that [expletive] to you — you did that [expletive] to yourself.” — TREVOR NOAH ............. “Now, while the doctors were presenting a rosy picture, they also revealed that Trump has been put on two drugs: remdesivir and dexamethasone. I’m not a doctor, but I’m pretty sure it’s not a good sign when you get prescribed the high score in a Scrabble game.” — STEPHEN COLBERT
Fareed Zakaria Looks at Life After the Pandemic Not only has science learned a few things. So have governments, which went for penny-pinching and deflation after the Crash of 1929, but now pour out trillions. ............. Zakaria rightly celebrates “our resilient world.” States actually “gain strength through chaos and crises.” ........... The United States has proved neither competent nor cohesive. It is an archipelago of some 2,600 federal, state and local authorities charged with health policy. .............. America, Zakaria says, must learn “not big or small, but good government.” ......... Zakaria lays out the road from the pandemic to the transcendence of America the Dysfunctional. The to-do list is long. Upward mobility is down, inequality is up. The universities of the United States lead the global pack, but a B.A. at one of those top schools comes with a price tag upward of a quarter-million dollars. The country boasts the best medical establishment, but health care for the masses might just as well dwell on the moon. ............ Like Sweden long ago, Denmark is the new Promised Land, even when compared with the rest of Europe. Striking a wondrous balance between efficiency, market economics and equality, those great Danes embody an inspiring model; alas, it is hard to transfer. A small and homogeneous country on the edge of world politics, Denmark is the very opposite of the United States. Maybe its people should occupy America for a couple of generations to reform 330 million über-diverse citizens. ............ The world’s troubles ... are rooted in ultramodernity: globalization, automation, alienation, mass migration, the lure and decay of the world’s sprawling metropolises. These are the stuff of misery — and the fare of cultural critics since the dawn of the industrial age. ........ Nor does he spare his own liberal class, the “meritocracy” of the best educated and better off, which he fingers ever so gently as deepening the divide between urban and rural, elites and “deplorables.” ................ “This ugly pandemic has … opened up a path to a new world.” ......... “many rich societies” do not honor “a social contract that benefits everyone.” So, the neoliberalism of decades past must yield to “radical reforms.” Governments “will have to accept a more active role in the economy. They must see public services as investments. … Redistribution will again be on the agenda; the privileges of the … wealthy in question.” Now is the time for “basic income and wealth taxes.” ....... Covid-19 is merely accelerating the mental turn engendered by the 2008 financial crisis. We are all social democrats now. ....... Government in the West is back with industrial policy and trillions in cash. It is not a radical, but a consensual project. ....... After half a lifetime of retraction from the economy, big government is back — and looks as if it will stay. ......... May we all be as smart as the Danes. They have marvelously combined welfarism and individual responsibility. But they have not invented the PC, MRT, iPhone or Tesla, not to speak of Post-its and the microwave popcorn bag.
Vilified Early Over Lax Virus Strategy, Sweden Seems to Have Scourge Controlled After having weathered high death rates when it resisted a lockdown in the spring, Sweden now has one of Europe’s lowest rates of daily new cases. Whether that is an aberration remains to be seen. ......... “Our work lives should not be reduced to just the screen in front of us,” he said. “Ultimately, we are social animals.” ........... Almost alone in the Western world, the Swedes refused to impose a coronavirus lockdown last spring, as the country’s leading health officials argued that limited restrictions were sufficient and would better protect against economic collapse. .................... The per capita rate is far lower than nearby Denmark or the Netherlands (if higher than the negligible rates in Norway and Finland). ........... Its borders stayed open, as did bars, restaurants and schools. Hairdressers, yoga studios, gyms and even some cinemas remained open, as did public transportation and parks. ........... “The Swedes went into self-lockdown,” he said. “They trusted in their people to self-apply social distancing measures without punishing them.” .......... distancing provided overall better protection than masks ....... Sweden did not set out to achieve “herd immunity” ........... “We changed behavior. I don’t see anybody shaking hands, for example”
Virus lays bare the frailty of the social contract Radical reforms are required to forge a society that will work for all ............ to demand collective sacrifice you must offer a social contract that benefits everyone. ....... Despite inspirational calls for national mobilisation, we are not really all in this together. .......... Overnight millions of jobs and livelihoods have been lost in hospitality, leisure and related sectors, while better paid knowledge workers often face only the nuisance of working from home. .......... vast monetary loosening by central banks will help the asset-rich. Behind it all, underfunded public services are creaking under the burden of applying crisis policies. ......... every society must demonstrate how it will offer restitution to those who bear the heaviest burden of national efforts. ............. Radical reforms — reversing the prevailing policy direction of the last four decades — will need to be put on the table. Governments will have to accept a more active role in the economy. They must see public services as investments rather than liabilities, and look for ways to make labour markets less insecure. Redistribution will again be on the agenda; the privileges of the elderly and wealthy in question. Policies until recently considered eccentric, such as basic income and wealth taxes, will have to be in the mix .......... rightly compared to the sort of wartime economy western countries have not experienced for seven decades ....... Beyond the public health war, true leaders will mobilise now to win the peace.
Coronavirus Is Very Different From the Spanish Flu of 1918. Here’s How. The fear is similar, but the medical reality is not. ........... The 1918 flu pandemic, thought to be the deadliest in human history, killed at least 50 million people worldwide (the equivalent of 200 million today), with half a million of those in the United States. ............. a majority of those killed by the disease were in the prime of life — often in their 20s, 30s and 40s .......... “Nurses often walked into scenes resembling those of the plague years of the fourteenth century,” wrote the historian Alfred W. Crosby in “America’s Forgotten Pandemic.” “One nurse found a husband dead in the same room where his wife lay with newly born twins. It had been twenty-four hours since the death and the births, and the wife had had no food but an apple which happened to lie within reach.” ............... With a case fatality rate of at least 2.5 percent, the 1918 flu was far more deadly than ordinary flu, and it was so infectious that it spread widely, which meant the number of deaths soared. ............ In Albuquerque, where schools and theaters were closed, a local newspaper wrote, “the ghost of fear walked everywhere.”
Pompeo asks ‘Quad’ allies to stand against China’s ‘corruption, coercion’ Speaking with his Japanese, Indian and Australian counterparts in Tokyo, Mike Pompeo said cooperation against Beijing now more critical than ever The US, Australia and India are all at loggerheads with Beijing, while Japan walks a tightrope trying to preserve ties
