This was the first day I woke up with anxiety tied directly to the coronavirus outbreak. At 5:00 AM, I was wide awake. I turned on Animal Crossing and played until 7:00 AM or so, and stopped in time to make Sav bacon and eggs for her birthday. She turned 32 during the quarantine, and we’ll see if I turn 38 during the quarantine. Even if the quarantine itself ends, the economic fallout of the quarantine period will last a lot longer, and together with the outbreak will define this part of the 21st century for the US. And that’s what woke me up: an article I saw posted, a headline reading out the context of the Fed-projected unemployment rate: 30%, whereas the maximum unemployment rate during the Great Depression was 24.9%. I woke up running scenarios about what we would do during a 10-year economic collapse, and by turns feeling angry toward all the people that voted for conservatives, voted for the policies that brought this country to this new devastation.
Yesterday, our pandemic president offhandedly said something about how people should go back to work to save the economy, in spite of the risk of infection and death from one’s respiratory system melting slowly. The country is being led by sociopaths, for sociopaths. This is an example, to me, of the corrupting influence of late-stage capitalism. How can it be countered?
Here are some headlines from the news today:
Governor Cuomo: “My mother is not expendable. Your mother is not expendable. We will not put a dollar figure on human life. We can have a public health strategy that is consistent with an economic one. No one should be talking about social Darwinism for the sake of the stock market.” - Twitter
Italian priest who gave respirator to a younger patient dies of disease - A 72-year-old priest who gave his respirator to a younger Covid-19 patient he did not know has died from coronavirus. - The Independent
White House: We’re Going to Have to Let Some People Die So the Stock Market Can Live - Vanity Fair
Asterix creator Albert Uderzo dies at 92 - The Guardian
Plague Inc. Getting New Mode That Lets You Save the World From a Pandemic, Not Destroy It - PCMag
Tokyo Olympics to be postponed to 2021 due to coronavirus pandemic - The Guardian
UPS partners with Wingcopter to develop new multipurpose drone delivery fleet - Tech Crunch
Harvard researchers found a way to correct for signal loss with a prototype quantum node that can catch, store, and entangle bits of quantum information. The research is the missing link towards a practical quantum internet and a major step forward in the development of long-distance quantum networks - Nature
Cuomo fires back at Trump on coronavirus: ‘No American will say speed up economy at the cost of human life’ - CNBC
Heating sinuses with hairdryer, taking lots of vitamin C will not prevent coronavirus: Debunking COVID-19 myths - Cleveland.com
China permanently bans consumption of Wild Animals - Veg News
Ireland: Private hospitals will be made public for the duration of pandemic - The State will take control of all private hospital facilities - Health Minister: “Patients with this virus will be treated for free, and they’ll be treated as part of a single, national hospital service.” - The Journal.ie
‘Big Brother Canada’ officially ending Season 8, ceasing production due to coronavirus - Global News.ca
Texas’ lieutenant governor suggests grandparents are willing to die for US economy - USA Today
Hillary Clinton mocks Trump: ‘Do not take medical advice from a man who looked directly at a solar eclipse’ - NBC News
More than 1,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases in Quebec - CBC.ca
Bill Gates says the US missed its chance to avoid coronavirus shutdown and businesses should stay closed - CNBC
