There’s no question we’ll be living in a different world post-pandemic Technology will allow people to work, shop and study remotely, and many people will continue the habits they’ve acquired since March. Nimble companies and workers will race ahead; others may be left behind. Racial and economic inequalities may deepen unless they’re addressed forcefully. ............. private businesses and many state and local governments adapted with astonishing speed. ............ companies had shifted to remote work more than 40 times faster than they expected possible ........... Studies this year in China, Britain, Spain, Italy and Canada of covid-19 patients found PTSD symptoms, such as depression, anxiety and sleeplessness ........ A study of 8,079 junior and senior high school students in China found that 43.7 percent experienced depressive symptoms and 37.4 percent experienced anxiety during the epidemic period. ............. The shared hardship of the pandemic will change America, as surely as did the Great Depression and World War II. The pain is obvious now, but so is the resilience. We’ll be a different country in the future, but maybe a stronger one.
‘Tehran’ Is the Latest Israeli Thriller, Emphasis on Thrills The unabashedly entertaining Apple TV+ series, which follows a young female operative in Iran, is a departure from the gritty, manly espionage dramas Israel is known for, like “Fauda.” ........... “It shows that Iranians are not just a bunch of fanatics, or just passive victims of an oppressive regime. It shows Iranian society in its complexity.”
My Best Friend Is Gone, and Nothing Feels Right If grief is the price of love, I am unable to pay. ......... To die from this plague is a tragedy. To witness a loved one do so is a merciless, unrelenting kind of sadness — prolonged and filled with false hope. It is a faraway, forced mourning, her body a vector of contagion. It is a unique grief overridden by a forced education in a vocabulary I never wanted to learn: hydroxychloroquine, extubation, Remdesivir. ............... To die amid this pandemic is to die over Zoom, your loved ones reduced to Hollywood Squares and requests to mute. Sharing stories about yesteryear with a video lag while your best friend is sedated. And while your friend dies in her hospital bed, hundreds of miles away, the process also involves rolling your eyes at the baby boomers on the call who insist on holding their phones below their chins rather than at eye level. ........... To mourn your best friend in the 21st century is to do so publicly or risk others wondering why you haven’t already. ......... In college at the University of Florida, and then continuing for the next eight years, Alison and I would say to each other, “Thank you for ruining me.” It was our way of telling the other: You’re so perfect, your understanding of me so nuanced and deep, that no man could ever match you. ................. Do I keep her in my contact favorites now? Do I delete her? Do I unfriend her? To die in 2020 is a messy amalgamation of digital business.
Does an Intellectual History of the Trump Era Exist? It Does Now the troublesome questions raised by the elevation of a soulless carnival barker to the nation’s highest office. .......... We have become a society “that has forgotten its civics lessons or, remembering them still, has decided they don’t matter.” ............. The former F.B.I. director James Comey “doesn’t just quote Shakespeare but quotes himself quoting Shakespeare.” ............. The Mexican border wall “is like Trump: big and bombastic, more artifice than utility, a blunt solution to a complex and ill-defined problem. … You are on one side or the other, you are with him or against him.” ............. The enduring irony of the Trump presidency may be that it brought national attention to, and action against, the systemic racism and casual misogyny that have crippled our society. ............... “Popular culture compels us to ask: ‘What do I want?’ Institutions urge a different query, Levin explains: ‘Given my role here, how should I act?’ It is a relevant question — perhaps the most relevant — for this time and for this presidency.” ...... The Democrats have become traditionalists. The Republicans, a most illiberal group of libertarians, tear down the pillars of the temple. The former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s nihilism is the spiritual heir to Abbie Hoffman’s jolly anarchy in the 1960s. ......... a vision of American stability being eviscerated by the public’s need to be entertained. ....... Virtù is the quality that keeps a republic strong: It is rigor and responsibility and intellectual achievement, albeit with a distressing tinge of militarism. Ozio is indolence; it is the laziness that overtakes a republic when it is not at war or in crisis. In America, we experienced 70 years of unprecedented peace and prosperity, without a perceived existential threat, from 1946 to 2016, a bacchanal of ozio. In the process, far too many of us lost the habits of citizenship. Truth became malleable. Morality became relative. Achievement became pass-fail — and, more recently, just showing up. Rigor was for chumps. You didn’t have to do anything to become famous, except be an “influencer.” And to be an influencer, you didn’t need to train or study, although plastic surgery — branding — certainly helped. You didn’t have to serve or sacrifice; that was for chumps, too. This was the America that elected Donald Trump president.
Burnout signs have risen 33% in 2020; here are seven ways to reduce risks the full number of people feeling exhausted, ineffective, and disconnected from work may be considerably higher........ “If it’s really urgent,” he says, “people can call my cell phone. And if it’s not, I let them know that I won’t be looking at email until the morning." ......... unplugging from work is an essential long-term habit, especially if a work-at-home office is just a few steps from the dinner table or a child’s play area. ................ Limited information is far better than nothing ........... employees’ sense of connection at work has declined significantly in recent months. Some 37% of employees now feel less connected to their colleagues, and 31% feel less connected to their leaders. Companies with the least erosion in this sense of connectedness show markedly lower rates of burnout signals than those where feelings of isolation are more intense. ............. situations where one employee’s knowledgeable teen can coach someone else’s grade-schooler on math or science. .......... burnout often arises when employees feel they’re putting a great deal into their jobs -- and getting almost nothing back .......... Homes now must do triple-duty as residences, office space for the parents, and a make-shift virtual school for children.
As Virus Surges in Europe, Resistance to New Restrictions Also Grows Public health officials say “pandemic fatigue” presents a real challenge to countries trying to enforce new measures meant to slow the virus while avoiding national lockdowns. ............ France has placed cities on “maximum alert” and ordered many to close all bars, gyms and sports centers on Saturday. Italy and Poland have made masks compulsory in public. The Czech Republic has declared a state of emergency, and German officials fear new outbreaks could soon grow beyond the control of their vaunted testing and tracing. ............... As the crisis deepens, the once-solid consensus in many countries to join in sacrifices to combat the virus is showing signs of fracturing. New rules are challenged in courts. National and local leaders are sparring. .............. The intense feuding in Spain reflects a broader political resistance confronting national leaders worldwide. ............ Business groups are issuing dire warnings that whole industries could collapse if restrictions go too far. ............ cases continue to explode ......... Officials are now warning that hospitals could face a greater flood of patients than at the height of the pandemic in April. .......... The World Health Organization on Thursday announced a record one-day increase in global coronavirus cases. Europe, as a region, is now reporting more cases than India, Brazil or the United States. ............ about half the population is experiencing pandemic fatigue ...... These people were searching for less information about the virus, less concerned about the risks and less willing to follow recommended behaviors. ............ Violators in Italy now face a 1,000-euro fine. ......... a clear majority of people are willing to comply with regulations if they are well explained and easy to follow. ........ People may also be more willing to submit to new restrictions if they see hospitals fill and death tolls rise ........ the larger concern is roughly half the population — the “fence-sitters.” .......... “If we have a new lockdown it might be worse, because people wouldn’t respect it.” ........... managing the economy and epidemic was like “squaring the circle,” even more so now that “our maneuvering room is not at all what it was last March.” ........... a lockdown would lead to “mass unemployment, bankruptcies and never-ending strains on families and children.”
‘Rural Surge’ Propels India Toward More Covid-19 Infections Than U.S. The contagion is hitting towns and villages where resources are scant and people are skeptical of lockdown efforts. If unchecked, Indian infections could exceed those in the United States. ............ Infections are rippling into every corner of this country of 1.3 billion people. The Indian news media is calling it “The Rural Surge.” ........ In many villages, no one is wearing masks. There is no social distancing. People are refusing to get tested and they are hiding their sick. ........... Hospitals are straining; in the coronavirus ward of one hospital here in the state of Tripura, insects were left to crawl over corpses .......... Out in the rural areas, many people behave as if there is no coronavirus. .......... Many people in Indian villages believe their government is overstating the severity of the pandemic and showing no sensitivity to the economic hardship that they are suffering. ........... India’s relatively low death rate, about an eighth or ninth of those of the United States, Spain, Brazil and Britain. Scientists say this is mainly because India’s population is younger and leaner, though they caution that most deaths in India, from any cause, are not investigated. And India’s deaths are steadily ticking up, by about 1,000 a day, now totaling about 105,000. ........... This month, the central government is allowing movie theaters to open. ............ “Families in India are living in fear, grief, sadness, depression, anxiety and food insecurity, delaying their care from other health conditions” ........ “It is a tragic time.” ........ attributed the spread of the virus to “habituation, desensitization, fatalism, fatigue, denial.” ......... In Tripura’s small towns and villages, many people are scared to get tested because of the social stigma. .......... families that have followed the rules and taken loved ones to hospitals say the experience was horrifying.
The rural surge In its villages, where cases are on a sharp upswing, India's battle against the pandemic is on a wing and a prayer, given the desperately inadequate public health infrastructure in the hinterland. ........ “We have no PPE kits, we have made our own masks, and when we visit homes, we have to make do with soap and water, which isn’t always available. Assuming we even isolate positive cases, how do we look after them? Who is going to walk into the isolation room without protection? We don’t have any Covid medication here other than Vitamin C and paracetamol.” ............. To make things worse, in one part of the country, there’s growing resentment and resistance towards testing. To blame is a toxic mix of factors: rumour-mongering, irresponsible politicians, social stigma attached to corona-positive families, poor institutional quarantine and Covid care facilities, expensive private sector care and poor communication. .............. panchayats in other Punjab villages too have passed resolutions, and village gurudwaras have made announcements to not allow healthcare teams to conduct testing, especially of those who are asymptomatic. .............. The only silver lining is that most infections are still asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says he is tired of Work From Home Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella finds Work From Home extremely tiring, which makes him drowsy and sleepy. He is now sick of it. ............. he explained it by blaming video calls that are often part of Work From Home routine. “Thirty minutes into your first video meeting in the morning, because of the concentration one needs to have on video, you're fatigued," he said.
World Mental Health Day | How Covid is also a mental health pandemic. Snapshot of the global crisis In the last six months of the coronavirus pandemic, there has been a surge in mental health issues world over. On World Mental Health Day, IndiaToday.in sheds light on this emerging crisis. ............ Experts say a raging mental health crisis is upon us and not enough attention has been given to this aspect of the pandemic. .............. the coronavirus pandemic has disrupted critical mental health services in 93 per cent of the countries surveyed. ........... Meanwhile, a study in the US found that every third Covid-19 patient brought to the hospital developed some kind of mental ailment. ......... In India too, officials at AIIMS, Patna, had reportedly said that nearly 30 per cent of Covid-19 patients at the hospital were "mentally disturbed". .................. "Bereavement, isolation, loss of income and fear are triggering mental health conditions or exacerbating existing ones. Many people may be facing increased levels of alcohol and drug use, insomnia, and anxiety. Meanwhile, Covid-19 itself can lead to neurological and mental complications, such as delirium, agitation, and stroke."
Ram Vilas Paswan: A man with no enemies | India Today Insight
As Bihar comes to terms with the death of Dalit leader Ram Vilas Paswan, a look at his illustrious political career and his personal charm .......... With three family members in the Lok Sabha and himself in the Rajya Sabha, the Paswans made up the largest political family in parliament.
