newyorker--2020-04-14--Chaplains and Spiritual Care in Hospitals During the Coronavirus Pandemic

Kaytlin Butler , a chaplain at Mount Sinai Hospital , often tells the sick that they do not have to be alone .
She says it to them even now , when hospitals have barred many patients from receiving visitors .
In the past few weeks , Butler has been saying it to them over the phone , reaching the suffering in rooms that no one can enter except masked medical staff .
She has been saying it to patients ’ families , also over the phone .
And , if a patient is sedated and no family can be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ door , trusting that the person in the bed will feel connected—to her , to everyone—by that ineffable thing that she calls God , but for which many people have many names .
Butler does not care if they call it God .
She cares that they feel loved .
Butler , twenty-six , is one of eight chaplains on Mount Sinai ’ s Spiritual Care team .
The team , which also has four residents , includes two rabbis , a Jewish woman who is not ordained , a Seventh-day Adventist , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and an evangelical Christian .
( The hospital is also served by two Catholic priests , who are sent by the New York archdiocese . )
The staff are divided by unit : pediatrics chaplain , cardiology chaplain .
Butler , who expects to be ordained as a Presbyterian minister later this year , is the hematology and oncology chaplain .
Right now , though , all of the chaplains are also COVID-19 chaplains .
Chaplains , who provide existential support in secular contexts—from prisons to colleges to airports—have been working , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ancient royals staffed their courts with priests .
Their job , as Butler sees it , is to accompany people who did not want or expect to be where they are , and to comfort their loved ones .
Her priority , when doing that job , is to listen .
Butler wants to hear any story that the people she is working with might want to tell , or any fear or hope or desire that they might be ready to express .
Her goal , as she listens , is to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
That is true if the diagnosis is cancer , or if the diagnosis is the novel coronavirus .
Butler has a cubicle on the second floor of Mount Sinai , upstairs from the chapel and across the hall from the synagogue .
Her window used to look out on Central Park .
Now the view is of the tented field hospital run by Samaritan ’ s Purse , an evangelical organization led by Franklin Graham .
Each day , medical staff refer patients to Butler for chaplain visits , or relatives call @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
On a recent Friday morning , Butler had received three requests .
One was to make a call to a COVID-19 patient ’ s daughter , since the patient , who was intubated , could not speak .
Butler got on the phone and prayed with the daughter , who wondered if there was any way that she could address her mother , who spoke a language besides English .
Butler stood outside the mother ’ s room with her cell phone on speaker .
The family was Catholic .
From a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and a rosary and put them in a plastic bag for a nurse to take to the patient ’ s bedside .
The other two calls were to COVID-19 patients .
Both of them were Pentecostal Christians .
Butler dialled one , a woman , from her office phone .
The woman told Butler that , though she was afraid , she also felt loved by both her family and God .
Butler affirmed the woman ’ s feelings , and then she made the other call .
This time , the patient @ @ @ @ @ @ @ God was punishing him .
The man wanted to tell Butler how he had angered God : he had done something of which he was ashamed , he said , and he was sure that this was God ’ s retribution .
Butler listened to him as he explained what he had done .
She asked him if he could forgive himself .
No , he replied .
He couldn ’ t .
“ God has a lot more grace for you than you have for yourself , ” she told him .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ I hear someone who really loves the people in his life , and is deeply faithful , and takes responsibility for his actions.
” They said a prayer for peace together , and when Butler hung up she felt uneasy .
She was sad for the man , and she felt powerless .
But what more could she do than call again and hope that he would still be there to pick up the phone ?
Recently , a nurse asked Butler where God was in all this .
Butler does not believe @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that question .
“ For myself , I don ’ t see the disaster as something that is made or wrought by God , ” she said .
“ I think God shows up in the places where people are trying to save lives and clean up this mess that others have mismanaged.
” Butler told the nurse that God was right here , crying with us .
That afternoon , Butler got a call from a group of doctors .
A COVID-19 patient , intubated and sedated , didn ’ t have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ her , but no one could identify any family members .
Would she go to his door and say a prayer for him ?
Upstairs , Butler could see the man through the door ’ s glass .
She put a hand on the door and closed her eyes .
Butler calls God “ She , ” and it ’ s in the love that people show others that Butler sees Her .
But when families request prayers for loved ones , she honors their traditions .
For Muslims , she says the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ family are Christian , she says an extemporaneous prayer , and sometimes an Our Father , which she finds particularly beautiful .
If they are not religious , she says a neutral blessing .
No one knew if the man in the room was religious or not .
Butler decided to sing an Irish blessing : “ May the road rise to meet you / May the wind be always at your back .
.
.
.
And , until we meet again / May God hold you in the palm of his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he could hear her , he would not object .
Butler lost her mother when she was eight years old , in a dune-buggy accident near Pelham , Georgia .
The town was small : four thousand people , maybe fewer .
When she was in middle school , her father , a Southern Baptist , got married again , to a woman who had grown up Mormon .
In a peculiar compromise , the two agreed to attend a Presbyterian church outside Atlanta , where Butler was moved by ministers who spoke @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , in Georgia , she majored in international affairs and religion , minored in Arabic , and studied abroad in Morocco .
Then she went to the progressive Union Theological Seminary , in New York , where she hoped to study both her faith and those of others .
Butler wanted to do all the things that her mother , who died at twenty-eight , did not get to do .
Next , Butler thought , she would go to law school .
Instead , she found that she was called to ministry @ @ @ @ @ @ @ chaplaincy residency at Mount Sinai , where her clinical supervisor was David Fleenor , an Episcopalian priest who directs the hospital ’ s clinical pastoral education program .
The residency was something of an accident—Butler had needed a job , and this one had presented itself .
She had never spent much time in a hospital , and she had one year to learn a new profession .
But , one day , when Butler was going through something hard , she was moved to see Fleenor crying along with her .
She @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the job : sitting with someone in their pain .
Recently , Fleenor has been acting as the director of Mount Sinai ’ s spiritual-care program ; the usual director , Fleenor ’ s wife , is out sick , with what the couple assumes is the virus .
( Fleenor had come back to work in late March , after being out sick himself . )
Usually , the team ’ s eight chaplains and four residents are not enough for the patient volume at the hospital , which has more than @ @ @ @ @ @ @ team was down by three—two were out sick , presumably with COVID-19 ; the other was on maternity leave—and the hospital was fashioning extra rooms out of tarp in its atriums , to accommodate more than six hundred COVID-19 patients .
The need had become tremendous , and Fleenor and Butler had developed a new deployment plan to triage care .
The plan divided the hospital ’ s patients into three tiers : COVID-19 patients in the I.C.U.
, other patients with the virus , and everyone else .
The tiers weren ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that categories might help the chaplains reach those who were most in need .
For example , it might not make sense to dial a virus patient in the I.C.U.
, if that person couldn ’ t pick up ; instead , the staff could call lonely people in tier two .
The care itself had its own complications .
For weeks , Mount Sinai ’ s COVID-19 chaplaincy has been conducted exclusively by phone .
Some staff , like Butler , still come into the hospital .
Other chaplains are working from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ calls , all of them have modified their usual language .
Chaplains help the dying and the recovering alike , but Fleenor knows that many people perceive them as angels of death , bearing last rites or bad news .
He asked his staff to describe themselves as members of the patient ’ s care team , there to provide spiritual support , rather than as chaplains .
This seemed to be working well .

Kaytlin Butler, a chaplain at Mount Sinai Hospital, often tells the sick that they do not have to be alone. She says it to them even now, when hospitals have barred many patients from receiving visitors. In the past few weeks, Butler has been saying it to them over the phone, reaching the suffering in rooms that no one can enter except masked medical staff. She has been saying it to patients’ families, also over the phone. And, if a patient is sedated and no family can be found, she has prayed outside the door, trusting that the person in the bed will feel connected—to her, to everyone—by that ineffable thing that she calls God, but for which many people have many names. Butler does not care if they call it God. She cares that they feel loved.
Butler, twenty-six, is one of eight chaplains on Mount Sinai’s Spiritual Care team. The team, which also has four residents, includes two rabbis, a Jewish woman who is not ordained, a Seventh-day Adventist, a woman who is inspired by Buddhism, and an evangelical Christian. (The hospital is also served by two Catholic priests, who are sent by the New York archdiocese.) The staff are divided by unit: pediatrics chaplain, cardiology chaplain. Butler, who expects to be ordained as a Presbyterian minister later this year, is the hematology and oncology chaplain. Right now, though, all of the chaplains are also COVID-19 chaplains.
Chaplains, who provide existential support in secular contexts—from prisons to colleges to airports—have been working, in some way or another, since ancient royals staffed their courts with priests. Their job, as Butler sees it, is to accompany people who did not want or expect to be where they are, and to comfort their loved ones. Her priority, when doing that job, is to listen. Butler wants to hear any story that the people she is working with might want to tell, or any fear or hope or desire that they might be ready to express. Her goal, as she listens, is to help people make meaning of their circumstances. That is true if the diagnosis is cancer, or if the diagnosis is the novel coronavirus.
Butler has a cubicle on the second floor of Mount Sinai, upstairs from the chapel and across the hall from the synagogue. Her window used to look out on Central Park. Now the view is of the tented field hospital run by Samaritan’s Purse, an evangelical organization led by Franklin Graham. Each day, medical staff refer patients to Butler for chaplain visits, or relatives call the hospital to ask for chaplain services. On a recent Friday morning, Butler had received three requests. One was to make a call to a COVID-19 patient’s daughter, since the patient, who was intubated, could not speak. Butler got on the phone and prayed with the daughter, who wondered if there was any way that she could address her mother, who spoke a language besides English. Butler stood outside the mother’s room with her cell phone on speaker. The family was Catholic. From a cardboard box, Butler chose a scapular and a rosary and put them in a plastic bag for a nurse to take to the patient’s bedside.
The other two calls were to COVID-19 patients. Both of them were Pentecostal Christians. Butler dialled one, a woman, from her office phone. The woman told Butler that, though she was afraid, she also felt loved by both her family and God. Butler affirmed the woman’s feelings, and then she made the other call. This time, the patient told Butler that he was afraid that God was punishing him. The man wanted to tell Butler how he had angered God: he had done something of which he was ashamed, he said, and he was sure that this was God’s retribution. Butler listened to him as he explained what he had done. She asked him if he could forgive himself.
No, he replied. He couldn’t.
“God has a lot more grace for you than you have for yourself,” she told him. “When I listen to you, I hear someone who really loves the people in his life, and is deeply faithful, and takes responsibility for his actions.”
They said a prayer for peace together, and when Butler hung up she felt uneasy. She was sad for the man, and she felt powerless. But what more could she do than call again and hope that he would still be there to pick up the phone?
Recently, a nurse asked Butler where God was in all this. Butler does not believe that there is one right answer to that question. “For myself, I don’t see the disaster as something that is made or wrought by God,” she said. “I think God shows up in the places where people are trying to save lives and clean up this mess that others have mismanaged.” Butler told the nurse that God was right here, crying with us.
That afternoon, Butler got a call from a group of doctors. A COVID-19 patient, intubated and sedated, didn’t have long to live, the doctors told her, but no one could identify any family members. Would she go to his door and say a prayer for him? Upstairs, Butler could see the man through the door’s glass. She put a hand on the door and closed her eyes. Butler calls God “She,” and it’s in the love that people show others that Butler sees Her. But when families request prayers for loved ones, she honors their traditions. For Muslims, she says the Shahada. When the patient or the family are Christian, she says an extemporaneous prayer, and sometimes an Our Father, which she finds particularly beautiful. If they are not religious, she says a neutral blessing.
No one knew if the man in the room was religious or not. Butler decided to sing an Irish blessing: “May the road rise to meet you / May the wind be always at your back. . . . And, until we meet again / May God hold you in the palm of his hand.” Butler hoped that, if he could hear her, he would not object.
Butler lost her mother when she was eight years old, in a dune-buggy accident near Pelham, Georgia. The town was small: four thousand people, maybe fewer. When she was in middle school, her father, a Southern Baptist, got married again, to a woman who had grown up Mormon. In a peculiar compromise, the two agreed to attend a Presbyterian church outside Atlanta, where Butler was moved by ministers who spoke about equality and justice. In college, in Georgia, she majored in international affairs and religion, minored in Arabic, and studied abroad in Morocco. Then she went to the progressive Union Theological Seminary, in New York, where she hoped to study both her faith and those of others. Butler wanted to do all the things that her mother, who died at twenty-eight, did not get to do. Next, Butler thought, she would go to law school.
Instead, she found that she was called to ministry. After seminary, she began a chaplaincy residency at Mount Sinai, where her clinical supervisor was David Fleenor, an Episcopalian priest who directs the hospital’s clinical pastoral education program. The residency was something of an accident—Butler had needed a job, and this one had presented itself. She had never spent much time in a hospital, and she had one year to learn a new profession. But, one day, when Butler was going through something hard, she was moved to see Fleenor crying along with her. She understood, then, that this was the job: sitting with someone in their pain.
Chaplains provide religious materials, prayers, and support to dying and ill patients, their families, and even grieving members of the hospital staff. Photograph by Caroline Tompkins for The New Yorker
Recently, Fleenor has been acting as the director of Mount Sinai’s spiritual-care program; the usual director, Fleenor’s wife, is out sick, with what the couple assumes is the virus. (Fleenor had come back to work in late March, after being out sick himself.) Usually, the team’s eight chaplains and four residents are not enough for the patient volume at the hospital, which has more than eleven hundred beds. Now, the team was down by three—two were out sick, presumably with COVID-19; the other was on maternity leave—and the hospital was fashioning extra rooms out of tarp in its atriums, to accommodate more than six hundred COVID-19 patients. The need had become tremendous, and Fleenor and Butler had developed a new deployment plan to triage care. The plan divided the hospital’s patients into three tiers: COVID-19 patients in the I.C.U., other patients with the virus, and everyone else. The tiers weren’t hierarchical; the idea was merely that categories might help the chaplains reach those who were most in need. For example, it might not make sense to dial a virus patient in the I.C.U., if that person couldn’t pick up; instead, the staff could call lonely people in tier two.
The care itself had its own complications. For weeks, Mount Sinai’s COVID-19 chaplaincy has been conducted exclusively by phone. Some staff, like Butler, still come into the hospital. Other chaplains are working from home. But, when making phone calls, all of them have modified their usual language. Chaplains help the dying and the recovering alike, but Fleenor knows that many people perceive them as angels of death, bearing last rites or bad news. He asked his staff to describe themselves as members of the patient’s care team, there to provide spiritual support, rather than as chaplains. This seemed to be working well.
Like Butler, Fleenor grew up in a conservative tradition. By eighteen, he was a Pentecostal preacher, in southwestern Virginia. But, in seminary, in Tennessee, he did an internship in clinical pastoral education that changed his ideas about what was true. “It was the first real thing I had experienced in my life,” he said. “Preaching and praying, and being a charismatic preacher, there’s a lot of illusion in all that. There’s not much illusion in walking into the room of a dying person. You can’t bullshit that.”
Fleenor discourages chaplains from using platitudes when talking about awful things. When training them, he has a favorite icebreaker: How would you like to die? “Nobody says, ‘I’d like to die gasping for air, alone,’ ” he said. The fear of a lonely death is foundational to palliative care, and hospitals all over the country have No One Dies Alone volunteer programs. “Now we have a pandemic that requires you to die alone,” Fleenor said. “It is very distressing to hospital staff. It is very distressing to patients, God help them.” And yet, in many ways, Fleenor has found that chaplains are doing the same work that they always do. In ordinary times, Fleenor tells his trainees to “pay deep attention, and listen, and let people know that they have been heard by you, and, in some mystical way, have been heard by God.” He still tells the residents that. But now he also tells them to be present, and to do so by being absent.
Butler lives alone, in Harlem, and on a recent Thursday morning she took the bus to work. She wore burgundy Uniqlo pants, a navy shirt, and old, peeling Clarks heels. At the hospital, Butler knows that the stream of doctors, nurses, and tests can be confusing, and she often tells patients to ask for the chaplain with the big hair, if they forget her name. But sometimes her work only tangentially involves a patient. That afternoon, for example, Butler took a call: a man had died, suddenly, of COVID-19. His nurse was distraught, and the rest of his medical team wondered if Butler could comfort her. Butler found the nurse crying in a stairwell.
Butler believes that the work that health-care providers do is sacred. Since only providers can enter patients’ rooms, they are—at least during the pandemic—called upon not just to attend to patients’ physical needs but to help facilitate their goodbyes. Chaplains, meanwhile, are meant to focus on patients and their families, but they have deep, trusting relationships with their colleagues, and they want to help. When care teams lose longtime patients, Butler sometimes hosts meetings at which to talk about and grieve the loss.
Butler sat down near the nurse. The two women wore masks over their mouths. Butler told the nurse that her tears were a gift to her patient—they affirmed how much she cared for the man. “It’s so honoring of who he was,” Butler said.


newyorker--2020-04-14--Ben Lerner Reads “The Media”

Ben Lerner Reads “The Media”

Ben Lerner reads his story from the April 20 , 2020 , issue of the magazine .
Lerner is the @ @ @ @ @ Leaving the Atocha Station , ” “ 10:04 , ” and “ The Topeka School @ @ @ @ @ last year .
He was awarded a MacArthur fellowship in 2015 .

Photograph by Elinor Carucci
Ben Lerner reads his story from the April 20, 2020, issue of the magazine. Lerner is the author of the novels “Leaving the Atocha Station,” “10:04,” and “The Topeka School,” which was published last year. He was awarded a MacArthur fellowship in 2015.


newyorker--2020-04-14--The Comforts of South Korea’s Coronavirus Response

Asked why I moved from the United States to South Korea , I often say that it was because I wanted to live in the First World .
Though it began as a half joke , this response has recently gained a new and discomfiting plausibility .
Visiting Americans always express envy at Seoul ’ s subway system , perhaps the finest in the world , and also at a host of other major pieces of infrastructure and minor everyday conveniences unimaginable back home .
Still , just a few weeks ago , when I was receiving concerned messages about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ family , and even editors , it was possible to believe American life was the safer , more stable option over all—a belief that the pandemic ’ s Stateside rampage has made untenable .
COVID-19 has been unavoidable in the Korean news media since the country ’ s first confirmed case , in late January .
“ Kim Eo-jun ’ s News Factory , ” a radio program I listen to every weekday morning , now leads with nothing else , though the improving domestic situation has widened the show ’ s purview @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
On some days , the show incorporates clips of speeches by American officials , from the Centers for Disease Control and other organizations , praising South Korea ’ s testing and containment strategies and asking why the United States can ’ t replicate them .
Kim , the program ’ s outspoken host , has more than once followed up with this comment : “ Don ’ t you think we ’ re a developed nation now ?
, ” spoken with a faintly startled satisfaction , as if he ’ d @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Of course , Kim doesn ’ t say “ developed nation ” : he uses the Korean word seonjinguk , a term for the advanced countries of the world , as opposed to all the hujinguk lagging behind .
Though South Korea has been seen for well over a decade as one of the most strenuously impressive of all seonjinguk—with its unceasing production of pop-music spectacles , its “ wiredness ” across all sectors of society , its recently demonstrated ability to clean up at the Academy Awards—South Koreans themselves have a tendency @ @ @ @ @ @ @ essence , still a hujinguk .
A Korean friend , a prominent economist , once described this to me as a national inferiority complex ; it flares up in times of disaster , such as the 2014 sinking of the M.V .
Sewol , the kind of accident seen as embarrassingly characteristic of an underdeveloped society .
Overviews of modern South Korea seldom fail to take note of this phenomenon , though they trace it to a variety of different causes .
Some ascribe it to the legacy of Japanese colonial rule , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ through the Second World War .
In “ The New Koreans : The Story of a Nation , ” Michael Breen writes of the “ constant bombardment ” of negative Japanese propaganda that “ led some Koreans to conclude that their reputed backwardness was the result of a natural inferiority , ” at the same time that their Japanese rulers were forcibly leading them into “ the real world , the civilized world of trains and telephones and electricity that had hitherto passed them by.
” Even things genuinely Korean have been framed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The Birth of Korean Cool : How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture , ” Euny Hong posits a “ cabbage inferiority complex ” brought on by the national staple of kimchi , a fermented mixture often made with cabbage and garlic that once rendered Koreans in America “ pariahs with filthy smelly habits that made our friends not want to come over to play.
” Korea , as the former Korea correspondent for The Economist Daniel Tudor has put it , “ is a country that wants to be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ irony is that , now , “ Korea has in many ways overtaken the U.S. Its citizens live longer , and are healthier , better educated , less likely to be unemployed , and less likely to live in poverty.
” And yet , during certain troubled stretches of South Korea ’ s short history , those who could leave often left , and those who could resettle in the U.S. did so .
In her acclaimed short-story collection “ Drifting House , ” the Seoul-resident Korean-American Krys Lee writes of one Mr. @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Park Chung-hee to pursue the American Dream .
Thereafter , he “ watched Korean news clips of the developing country ’ s daily disasters—student demonstrators attacked by pepper-spray bombs in 1986 , the Sampoong Department Store collapse that killed generations of families in 1995—and convinced himself that he had been right to leave , even after the country flourished and began giving academic scholarships to the brightest from Guatemala to Mongolia , and setting trends in film and technology.
” Today , the generations who experienced the Korean War and its aftermath @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s beneficence .
When first I came to Korea , even more “ globalized ” younger people couldn ’ t figure out why I would choose it over the U.S. , the ultimate seonjinguk .
In response , I ’ d list what Seoul has that even the biggest American cities lack , beginning with a relative lack of violent crime and the presence of usable public restrooms ; now I can simply compare the two countries ’ responses to the coronavirus .
“ Long accustomed to thinking of itself as the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ technologically advanced society in the world , ” as Anne Applebaum wrote in The Atlantic , the United States “ is about to be proved an unclothed emperor.
” Life in Seoul , which reported its first coronavirus death on April 8th , has not gone unchanged .
Several times a day , each and every cell phone buzzes with national emergency-alert-system announcements of new confirmed cases , the total of which passed ten thousand in early April .
This number , which sounds high but reflects an apparent stabilization of the virus @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the rapid establishment of testing facilities across the country , their ease of access symbolized by the drive-through centers that have drawn media attention around the world .
Seoul hasn ’ t been subject to the kind of general lockdown that has turned other global capitals into ghost towns .
Individuals who are either infected or suspected to have had contact with the infected are , however , in isolation from the general public , supplied by the government with shipments of hand sanitizer , masks , fresh produce , and other @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of a two-week quarantine for all arrivals from abroad , foreigners and Koreans alike .
As relatively commendable as it now looks , the South Korean government ’ s early response to the outbreak provoked public anger at home : anger at President Moon Jae-in ’ s premature assurance that the danger would soon end ; anger at the ever-changing , self-contradicting information about the availability of masks ; anger at the government ’ s unwillingness to heed the Korean Medical Association ’ s recommendation that it restrict entry from China .
Nevertheless @ @ @ @ @ @ @ posts of the United States ’ s ongoing lockdowns , rising infection rates , plummeting stock values , and vanishing toilet paper , I feel like Mr. Rhee , shaking his head at his unravelling homeland .
I then look up and see the relatively normal life of Seoul ( around a hundred and fifty miles northwest of Daegu , the city from which the virus has spread across South Korea , and which Kim Eo-jun last month seemed to blame for the country ’ s outbreak , drawing criticism ) continuing all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ institutions have temporarily closed , as have , more recently , crowded businesses , such as gyms .
Still , the cafés are busy , the streets and parks are peopled with members—albeit masked ones—of every generation , the stores have plenty of toilet paper , and never has it been easier to get a seat on the subway .
Suddenly I feel , despite the virus—or , indeed , because of it—like I ’ m living a Korean Dream .
• How to practice social distancing , from responding to a sick @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ordering food .
• How the coronavirus behaves inside of a patient .
• Can survivors help cure the disease and rescue the economy ?
• What it means to contain and mitigate the coronavirus outbreak .
• The success of Hong Kong and Singapore in stemming the spread holds lessons for how to contain it in the United States .
• The coronavirus is likely to spread for more than a year before a vaccine is widely available .
• With each new virus , we 've scrambled for a new treatment @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the next global crisis ?
• How pandemics have propelled public-health innovations , prefigured revolutions , and redrawn maps .
• What to read , watch , cook , and listen to under coronavirus quarantine .

Asked why I moved from the United States to South Korea, I often say that it was because I wanted to live in the First World. Though it began as a half joke, this response has recently gained a new and discomfiting plausibility. Visiting Americans always express envy at Seoul’s subway system, perhaps the finest in the world, and also at a host of other major pieces of infrastructure and minor everyday conveniences unimaginable back home. Still, just a few weeks ago, when I was receiving concerned messages about the coronavirus outbreak here from friends, family, and even editors, it was possible to believe American life was the safer, more stable option over all—a belief that the pandemic’s Stateside rampage has made untenable.
COVID-19 has been unavoidable in the Korean news media since the country’s first confirmed case, in late January. “Kim Eo-jun’s News Factory,” a radio program I listen to every weekday morning, now leads with nothing else, though the improving domestic situation has widened the show’s purview to include other countries’ coronavirus struggles. On some days, the show incorporates clips of speeches by American officials, from the Centers for Disease Control and other organizations, praising South Korea’s testing and containment strategies and asking why the United States can’t replicate them. Kim, the program’s outspoken host, has more than once followed up with this comment: “Don’t you think we’re a developed nation now?,” spoken with a faintly startled satisfaction, as if he’d only just realized that fact himself.
Of course, Kim doesn’t say “developed nation”: he uses the Korean word seonjinguk, a term for the advanced countries of the world, as opposed to all the hujinguk lagging behind. Though South Korea has been seen for well over a decade as one of the most strenuously impressive of all seonjinguk—with its unceasing production of pop-music spectacles, its “wiredness” across all sectors of society, its recently demonstrated ability to clean up at the Academy Awards—South Koreans themselves have a tendency to see their country as, in essence, still a hujinguk. A Korean friend, a prominent economist, once described this to me as a national inferiority complex; it flares up in times of disaster, such as the 2014 sinking of the M.V. Sewol, the kind of accident seen as embarrassingly characteristic of an underdeveloped society.
Overviews of modern South Korea seldom fail to take note of this phenomenon, though they trace it to a variety of different causes. Some ascribe it to the legacy of Japanese colonial rule, which lasted from the early twentieth century through the Second World War. In “The New Koreans: The Story of a Nation,” Michael Breen writes of the “constant bombardment” of negative Japanese propaganda that “led some Koreans to conclude that their reputed backwardness was the result of a natural inferiority,” at the same time that their Japanese rulers were forcibly leading them into “the real world, the civilized world of trains and telephones and electricity that had hitherto passed them by.” Even things genuinely Korean have been framed as sources of shame: in “The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture,” Euny Hong posits a “cabbage inferiority complex” brought on by the national staple of kimchi, a fermented mixture often made with cabbage and garlic that once rendered Koreans in America “pariahs with filthy smelly habits that made our friends not want to come over to play.” Korea, as the former Korea correspondent for The Economist Daniel Tudor has put it, “is a country that wants to be recognized, particularly by Americans.” The irony is that, now, “Korea has in many ways overtaken the U.S. Its citizens live longer, and are healthier, better educated, less likely to be unemployed, and less likely to live in poverty.”
And yet, during certain troubled stretches of South Korea’s short history, those who could leave often left, and those who could resettle in the U.S. did so. In her acclaimed short-story collection “Drifting House,” the Seoul-resident Korean-American Krys Lee writes of one Mr. Rhee, who fled the developmentalist dictatorship of Park Chung-hee to pursue the American Dream. Thereafter, he “watched Korean news clips of the developing country’s daily disasters—student demonstrators attacked by pepper-spray bombs in 1986, the Sampoong Department Store collapse that killed generations of families in 1995—and convinced himself that he had been right to leave, even after the country flourished and began giving academic scholarships to the brightest from Guatemala to Mongolia, and setting trends in film and technology.”
Today, the generations who experienced the Korean War and its aftermath tend to take as a given America’s beneficence. When first I came to Korea, even more “globalized” younger people couldn’t figure out why I would choose it over the U.S., the ultimate seonjinguk. In response, I’d list what Seoul has that even the biggest American cities lack, beginning with a relative lack of violent crime and the presence of usable public restrooms; now I can simply compare the two countries’ responses to the coronavirus. “Long accustomed to thinking of itself as the best, most efficient, and most technologically advanced society in the world,” as Anne Applebaum wrote in The Atlantic, the United States “is about to be proved an unclothed emperor.”
Life in Seoul, which reported its first coronavirus death on April 8th, has not gone unchanged. Several times a day, each and every cell phone buzzes with national emergency-alert-system announcements of new confirmed cases, the total of which passed ten thousand in early April. This number, which sounds high but reflects an apparent stabilization of the virus’s spread, owes in part to the rapid establishment of testing facilities across the country, their ease of access symbolized by the drive-through centers that have drawn media attention around the world. Seoul hasn’t been subject to the kind of general lockdown that has turned other global capitals into ghost towns. Individuals who are either infected or suspected to have had contact with the infected are, however, in isolation from the general public, supplied by the government with shipments of hand sanitizer, masks, fresh produce, and other necessities. April 1st saw the introduction of a two-week quarantine for all arrivals from abroad, foreigners and Koreans alike.
As relatively commendable as it now looks, the South Korean government’s early response to the outbreak provoked public anger at home: anger at President Moon Jae-in’s premature assurance that the danger would soon end; anger at the ever-changing, self-contradicting information about the availability of masks; anger at the government’s unwillingness to heed the Korean Medical Association’s recommendation that it restrict entry from China. Nevertheless, scrolling through news reports and social-media posts of the United States’s ongoing lockdowns, rising infection rates, plummeting stock values, and vanishing toilet paper, I feel like Mr. Rhee, shaking his head at his unravelling homeland.
I then look up and see the relatively normal life of Seoul (around a hundred and fifty miles northwest of Daegu, the city from which the virus has spread across South Korea, and which Kim Eo-jun last month seemed to blame for the country’s outbreak, drawing criticism) continuing all around me. Schools and other public institutions have temporarily closed, as have, more recently, crowded businesses, such as gyms. Still, the cafés are busy, the streets and parks are peopled with members—albeit masked ones—of every generation, the stores have plenty of toilet paper, and never has it been easier to get a seat on the subway. Suddenly I feel, despite the virus—or, indeed, because of it—like I’m living a Korean Dream.
A Guide to the Coronavirus


newyorker--2020-04-14--The Coronavirus and the Interwoven Threads of Inequality and Health

According to preliminary data about the coronavirus pandemic , African-Americans are bearing a strikingly disproportionate share of the suffering in the United States .
In Illinois , where fourteen per cent of the population is African-American , black Americans represent more than forty per cent of the state ’ s confirmed coronavirus deaths .
Coronavirus fatalities have a similar breakdown in Michigan , and several Southern states show even greater disparities .
The possible reasons for these inequities are myriad : African-Americans are less likely than white Americans to have the option of working from home and to receive high-quality @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have preëxisting medical conditions that lead to worse outcomes from the novel coronavirus .
New research links coronavirus deaths to air quality , which is often worse in poor communities and communities of color .
Nancy Krieger is a professor of social epidemiology at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health .
Her work focusses on health disparities between demographic groups and the social structures that help determine those disparities .
We recently spoke by phone about how American health inequities are playing out during the pandemic .
During our conversation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and clarity , we discussed why the field of social epidemiology is crucial to understanding inequality , the causes of racial disparity in health outcomes , and what can be done to ameliorate the suffering of the most vulnerable Americans during this crisis .
Is the spread of the coronavirus , and especially its disproportionate impact on the African-American community , teaching us new things about racial disparities in health care and health outcomes or confirming things we have long known ?
More the latter .
What the virus is doing is pulling @ @ @ @ @ @ @ things are actually connected , and how deeply people are actually connected .
But it ’ s also revealing the very different conditions in which we live because of social structures that are inequitable , both within the United States and between countries .
By pulling the thread , it ’ s revealing patterns that have been long known in public health .
So , when you think about something like this coronavirus , you have to think about who ’ s exposed in the first place and where they are exposed—at work @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the conditions ?
You have to think about , if they ’ re exposed , do they get infected ?
You have to think about , if they get infected , do they get ill ?
And you have to think about , if they ’ re ill , do they actually die ?
And you take each of those steps , which are all different steps in this process , and turn to what are the preliminary—and , I emphasize , preliminary—data on the excessive death rates .
My state , Massachusetts @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have any racial or ethnic data .
The amount of missing data is horrific .
Fifty-three per cent of confirmed cases and deaths have no race or ethnicity recorded .
So this is really stunning .
Thank goodness for what the journalists are doing compared with what the actual health agencies are doing .
And I could trace that back to issues like funding cuts in public health that have been pronounced over the past two decades , if not more .
But what you can do is use this to look at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ let ’ s start with who ’ s being exposed .
Well , if you are living in crowding households—and household crowding is intimately related to lack of living wage and unaffordable housing—what do you have when people are living in crowded spaces ?
An increased risk of exposure and transmission .
If you work in certain kinds of service jobs , which require you to be in close proximity to all kinds of people without sufficient barriers , you ’ re going to be more likely to be exposed .
Who is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their work and who is not ?
Who is being given protective gear ?
Just think about the amount of work that has been done to organize among , for example , people in grocery stores to make sure that they ’ re provided with protective gear .
They ’ re considered essential workers now , many of them .
Are they essential enough to give protective gear ?
And then think about the steps that people are being asked to take to protect themselves , including not only physical distancing , while @ @ @ @ @ @ @ your hands .
So it ’ s important to note that there have been calls , for example , for not letting utilities cut people ’ s water off .
In Detroit , that ’ s been particularly pronounced , because if people don ’ t have running water how can they wash their hands ?
I was just looking at the C.D.C .
guidelines on masks , which say that the way to clean masks is with a washer .
That is the only thing they listed , and a lot of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and certainly not in their homes or apartment units .
I don ’ t know if you saw the postcard that was sent out to all residents , all people that are domiciled and have a mailing address in the United States , from the Trump Administration about COVID-19 .
Have you seen that ?
Oh , well , you should ’ ve got it in your mail .
It ’ s called “ The President ’ s Coronavirus Guidelines for America.
” And it says things like , if you feel @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to work .
Who can afford to do that ?
What is this showing about sick leave , and family leave ?
It says that , if your children are sick , keep them at home and contact your medical provider .
Who can watch them at home ?
Do you have a medical provider ?
Do you have health insurance ?
It says that , if someone in your household has tested positive , keep the entire household at home .
Again , what are the social conditions that allow people to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ policies and what are the glaring gaps that do not allow people to do that equitably in our society ?
And washing your hands—again , who has access to running water ?
So the thing is you can go through each step of what happens with this virus—and we haven ’ t even got to whether you get ill—and , at each step in this process , you can say , “ How is this showing what the threads are that connect us , and who ’ s not equitably treated ?
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ talking about this thread , because I had been thinking that maybe it would be helpful to disaggregate some of these things , even if they have some of the same root causes .
So , on the one hand , you have things like people of color being more likely to live in conditions that make preventing exposure difficult .
And then you have specific ways in which people of color may not be treated equally once they get sick , or once they ’ re in a hospital .
Yes .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ what is called the eco-social theory of disease distribution , which asks the question “ How do we embody our societal and ecological context ?
” And the thing about that is that our bodies could give a fig about how people want to parse things out and call this transportation-related , that related to housing , that related to the conditions in the schools , et cetera .
Our thinking needs to be integrated , as we are living organisms who are biological and social , constantly interacting with the environs in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ biophysical and also social .
And it ’ s never an either/or .
It ’ s always a both/and .

According to preliminary data about the coronavirus pandemic, African-Americans are bearing a strikingly disproportionate share of the suffering in the United States. In Illinois, where fourteen per cent of the population is African-American, black Americans represent more than forty per cent of the state’s confirmed coronavirus deaths. Coronavirus fatalities have a similar breakdown in Michigan, and several Southern states show even greater disparities. The possible reasons for these inequities are myriad: African-Americans are less likely than white Americans to have the option of working from home and to receive high-quality medical care, and more likely to have preëxisting medical conditions that lead to worse outcomes from the novel coronavirus. New research links coronavirus deaths to air quality, which is often worse in poor communities and communities of color.
Nancy Krieger is a professor of social epidemiology at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. Her work focusses on health disparities between demographic groups and the social structures that help determine those disparities. We recently spoke by phone about how American health inequities are playing out during the pandemic. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed why the field of social epidemiology is crucial to understanding inequality, the causes of racial disparity in health outcomes, and what can be done to ameliorate the suffering of the most vulnerable Americans during this crisis.
Is the spread of the coronavirus, and especially its disproportionate impact on the African-American community, teaching us new things about racial disparities in health care and health outcomes or confirming things we have long known?
More the latter. What the virus is doing is pulling a thread that is showing how many things are actually connected, and how deeply people are actually connected. But it’s also revealing the very different conditions in which we live because of social structures that are inequitable, both within the United States and between countries. By pulling the thread, it’s revealing patterns that have been long known in public health.
So, when you think about something like this coronavirus, you have to think about who’s exposed in the first place and where they are exposed—at work, at home, and what are the conditions? You have to think about, if they’re exposed, do they get infected? You have to think about, if they get infected, do they get ill? And you have to think about, if they’re ill, do they actually die?
And you take each of those steps, which are all different steps in this process, and turn to what are the preliminary—and, I emphasize, preliminary—data on the excessive death rates. My state, Massachusetts, just released the first reports that have any racial or ethnic data. The amount of missing data is horrific. Fifty-three per cent of confirmed cases and deaths have no race or ethnicity recorded. So this is really stunning. Thank goodness for what the journalists are doing compared with what the actual health agencies are doing. And I could trace that back to issues like funding cuts in public health that have been pronounced over the past two decades, if not more.
But what you can do is use this to look at what the coronavirus is exposing. So let’s start with who’s being exposed. Well, if you are living in crowding households—and household crowding is intimately related to lack of living wage and unaffordable housing—what do you have when people are living in crowded spaces? An increased risk of exposure and transmission. If you work in certain kinds of service jobs, which require you to be in close proximity to all kinds of people without sufficient barriers, you’re going to be more likely to be exposed. Who is able to stay at home to do their work and who is not? Who is being given protective gear?
Just think about the amount of work that has been done to organize among, for example, people in grocery stores to make sure that they’re provided with protective gear. They’re considered essential workers now, many of them. Are they essential enough to give protective gear? And then think about the steps that people are being asked to take to protect themselves, including not only physical distancing, while keeping social connections, but also washing your hands. So it’s important to note that there have been calls, for example, for not letting utilities cut people’s water off. In Detroit, that’s been particularly pronounced, because if people don’t have running water how can they wash their hands?
I was just looking at the C.D.C. guidelines on masks, which say that the way to clean masks is with a washer. That is the only thing they listed, and a lot of people don’t even have washers, and certainly not in their homes or apartment units.
I don’t know if you saw the postcard that was sent out to all residents, all people that are domiciled and have a mailing address in the United States, from the Trump Administration about COVID-19. Have you seen that?
I haven’t.
Oh, well, you should’ve got it in your mail. It’s called “The President’s Coronavirus Guidelines for America.” And it says things like, if you feel sick, stay at home—do not go to work. Who can afford to do that? What is this showing about sick leave, and family leave? It says that, if your children are sick, keep them at home and contact your medical provider. Who can watch them at home? Do you have a medical provider? Do you have health insurance? It says that, if someone in your household has tested positive, keep the entire household at home. Again, what are the social conditions that allow people to do that? What are the social policies and what are the glaring gaps that do not allow people to do that equitably in our society? And washing your hands—again, who has access to running water?
So the thing is you can go through each step of what happens with this virus—and we haven’t even got to whether you get ill—and, at each step in this process, you can say, “How is this showing what the threads are that connect us, and who’s not equitably treated?”
It’s interesting that you keep talking about this thread, because I had been thinking that maybe it would be helpful to disaggregate some of these things, even if they have some of the same root causes. So, on the one hand, you have things like people of color being more likely to live in conditions that make preventing exposure difficult. And then you have specific ways in which people of color may not be treated equally once they get sick, or once they’re in a hospital.
Yes. The way that I frame things is what is called the eco-social theory of disease distribution, which asks the question “How do we embody our societal and ecological context?” And the thing about that is that our bodies could give a fig about how people want to parse things out and call this transportation-related, that related to housing, that related to the conditions in the schools, et cetera. Our thinking needs to be integrated, as we are living organisms who are biological and social, constantly interacting with the environs in which we live, which are both biophysical and also social. And it’s never an either/or. It’s always a both/and.
Can you talk about specifically some of the ways in which coronavirus data may be showing people of color being hurt disproportionately?
First, I want to step back and emphasize that the data are really inadequate right now. They are suggestive, but part of the problem is the drastic cuts to public health, and that ties to a framework that somehow one doesn’t need governance and public-health regulations in order to have healthy societies. And I think that this COVID-19 is manifestly showing why that is not the case. In public health, there may have been a lot of attention paid in certain ways to “preparedness,” but it’s also really important that this shows what the gaps are in public-health funding. Public-health workforces are depleted, and that’s part of why we have these extraordinary gaps in data. But it also doesn’t totally make sense, because some of the data that are missing are things that are routinely on death certificates, like race, ethnicity, sex, gender, age, and also education level. But the data are clearly showing racial and ethnic inequities.


newyorker--2020-04-14--“The Battered Bastards of Baseball,” a Lively and Cautionary Documentary About Sports and Movies

The parallels between baseball and movies run deep .
The two share the minting of celebrities , the creation of styles , and the elevation of casually popular entertainment into modern mythology—and big business .
Of the many tales of characters moving between the two fields of dreams , one stands out as a real-life version of a modern-day folk tale : “ The Battered Bastards of Baseball , ” a lively and zesty documentary that screened at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2014 ( and is now streaming on Netflix ) .
It ’ s the story of an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 1973 had just come off a thirteen-year stint on the weekly Western series “ Bonanza ” ( mainly as the deputy sheriff Clem Foster ) and was casting about for something to do .
Then he learned that the minor-league baseball team in Portland , Oregon , was being pulled out of town by its owners and moved to Spokane , Washington , thereby leaving the city ’ s fans baseball-less .
So—in the very manner of a Western hero who comes to town , finds trouble , and sets things aright—Russell went @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the Mavericks .
The three main minor leagues ( ranked , from lowest to highest , class A , AA , and AAA ) had long become affiliated with Major League Baseball and its individual teams ; raw recruits started at Single-A , and the next step up from Triple-A is the majors .
The team that had left was a AAA team ; its players circulated all season long to and from the majors , so the level of play was high , but the roster was constantly shifting—a fan ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to be thwarted as they moved up to the big leagues .
Russell made a gutsy move : he established the Mavericks as an independent team , one that had no major-league affiliation—and he managed to slot it into an A-level league , which is to say , it would be competing against players who had been drafted and signed by an M.L.B .
team .
( His team was , at the time , the one and only independent one in the minors . )
How could the Mavericks compete ?
How @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( who died in 2003 ) was no mere actor ; he had grown up near the Yankees ’ spring-training facility and had personal connections to many players , including Lou Gehrig and Lefty Gomez .
Russell played , very briefly , in the minors , and was a baseball obsessive who—as shown in “ Battered Bastards , ” which was directed by Chapman and Maclain Way , who are his grandsons—was what is called , with a Paul Bunyan-esque magnitude , a student of the game .
In fact—here ’ s where @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nineteen-sixties , a series of training films that found their way into the hands of several major-league managers , who made use of them with their teams .
This is where another cinematic rabbit is pulled from the hat : to demonstrate different aspects of the game and his teachings , Russell sometimes cast , in the role of a player , his son—Kurt Russell , who was both a talented player and a working child actor at the time .
Kurt Russell is one of the movie ’ s key onscreen interview @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the early seventies , and it was his incipient career that brought his father to the Pacific Northwest baseball scene .
Bing Russell may have been an outsider , but , in some essential way , that proved an advantage .
Just as independent filmmakers discover stars who can hold the screen alongside any celebrity , so Bing , with his exacting insights into baseball skill , held open tryouts .
There , he found athletes whose talents had been overlooked and rejected by the pros—and then forged them into a winning @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been scouted by , and were being prepared for , the major leagues .
Yet he also recognized that baseball is as much a matter of entertainment as it is of competition , and his players—many of whom were characters—were encouraged to flaunt their personalities .
Bing Russell , with a sure sense of showmanship , devised and staged some extraordinary baseball shtick that made the Mavericks ’ games as much spectacles , and rowdily participatory ones , as they were competitions .
The result was both athletic and commercial success—the team broke @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Russell was named the league ’ s executive of the year by Sporting News and received the award in the presence of the major-league representatives he ’ d defeated ; in the film , the sports writer Nick Bertram compares Russell ’ s achievement to “ winning an Oscar by doing an independent film.
” ( Russell himself related the team ’ s effect on the city to the story of “ The Music Man.
” ) Another rabbit , another historical cameo : the former Yankees star pitcher Jim Bouton , whose @ @ @ @ @ @ @ publication , in 1970 , of the book “ Ball Four , ” a diary of a year in the game that revealed the human foibles and failings—including sexual depredations—of many of the game ’ s celebrated players .
He was unofficially blackballed from the game and made his comeback , in his mid-thirties , with the Mavericks , thus bringing the team an instant shot of big-league ability ( diminished but not gone ) , of celebrity , and of notoriety .
( It ’ s a remark of Bouton ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ . )
Meanwhile , the team became national news—it was the subject of two programs by the sportscaster Joe Garagiola , and Bouton went on “ The Tonight Show ” and chatted about the team with Johnny Carson .
As noted in the film , the Mavericks were also discussed in The New Yorker , in 1975 , in Hendrik Hertzberg ’ s Profile of the minor-league executive Robert Freitas , who attends a Mavericks game .
( Hertzberg offers a hearty thumbnail sketch of Russell in action : at the end of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dramatic fashion , he “ stuck his head out of the box so the fans could hear him .
‘ See the action !
’ he shouted hoarsely .
‘ Ten-cent suds Friday !
’ ” ) The Way brothers detail some of Russell ’ s achievements on the field and off it ( including the hiring of Lanny Moss and Jon Yoshiwara , who are widely believed to be the first female general manager and the first Asian-American general manager , respectively , in U.S. professional baseball ) .
The filmmakers also @ @ @ @ @ @ @ outsiders challenged the game ’ s insiders .
“ Battered Bastards ” tells the story of how the Mavericks came to grief—despite Russell ’ s visionary abilities as a businessperson , a baseball maven , an impresario , and a personality—for showing up Major League Baseball in a public den that it was nonetheless legally permitted to claim as its own .
Hertzberg discerningly noted the nostalgia behind the team ’ s success : “ The Mavericks ’ popularity is of a piece with that of brand-new pubs whose décor includes gas lamps @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Russell ’ s very effort to recover the playful air of the game that was lost in a more corporate era—the very quality that makes him a sort of folk hero—also brought about the circumstances of his team ’ s downfall .
As “ Battered Bastards ” makes clear , the essence of the baseball business depends on its exemption from antitrust legislation—this , by dint of a 1922 Supreme Court decision that was based mainly on the premise of the sport as an instant fund of unifying national heroes .
Though it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ place in legend lifted it outside the confines of business law ; thus , Major League Baseball is , to this day , allowed to engage in practices that would otherwise be considered monopolistic or anticompetitive .
It would be a spoiler to explain just how the Mavericks fell victim to such practices .
( Here , too , the cinematic connection is all too clear , and all too relevant to the current environment . )
The way nostalgia for classic Hollywood—which , like major-league baseball , depends on the historical continuity @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and lure of tradition—masks its discontinuities and contradictions , which inhere in the business and the practice of the game .
The legal aspect of the movie business has come to the fore again , with the Trump Administration ’ s recent move to terminate the consent decrees that issued from the 1948 Supreme Court decision United States v. Paramount .
Voiding the decrees would , among other things , lift restrictions on studios ’ booking practices , which would give studios vast leverage over movie theatres and , thus , likely keep @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .

The parallels between baseball and movies run deep. The two share the minting of celebrities, the creation of styles, and the elevation of casually popular entertainment into modern mythology—and big business. Of the many tales of characters moving between the two fields of dreams, one stands out as a real-life version of a modern-day folk tale: “The Battered Bastards of Baseball,” a lively and zesty documentary that screened at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2014 (and is now streaming on Netflix).
It’s the story of an actor named Bing Russell, who in 1973 had just come off a thirteen-year stint on the weekly Western series “Bonanza” (mainly as the deputy sheriff Clem Foster) and was casting about for something to do. Then he learned that the minor-league baseball team in Portland, Oregon, was being pulled out of town by its owners and moved to Spokane, Washington, thereby leaving the city’s fans baseball-less. So—in the very manner of a Western hero who comes to town, finds trouble, and sets things aright—Russell went to Portland and founded a new team, the Mavericks.
The three main minor leagues (ranked, from lowest to highest, class A, AA, and AAA) had long become affiliated with Major League Baseball and its individual teams; raw recruits started at Single-A, and the next step up from Triple-A is the majors. The team that had left was a AAA team; its players circulated all season long to and from the majors, so the level of play was high, but the roster was constantly shifting—a fan’s devotion to individual players was likely to be thwarted as they moved up to the big leagues. Russell made a gutsy move: he established the Mavericks as an independent team, one that had no major-league affiliation—and he managed to slot it into an A-level league, which is to say, it would be competing against players who had been drafted and signed by an M.L.B. team. (His team was, at the time, the one and only independent one in the minors.) How could the Mavericks compete? How could they avoid utter humiliation?
Russell (who died in 2003) was no mere actor; he had grown up near the Yankees’ spring-training facility and had personal connections to many players, including Lou Gehrig and Lefty Gomez. Russell played, very briefly, in the minors, and was a baseball obsessive who—as shown in “Battered Bastards,” which was directed by Chapman and Maclain Way, who are his grandsons—was what is called, with a Paul Bunyan-esque magnitude, a student of the game. In fact—here’s where cinema comes in—he produced, in the nineteen-sixties, a series of training films that found their way into the hands of several major-league managers, who made use of them with their teams. This is where another cinematic rabbit is pulled from the hat: to demonstrate different aspects of the game and his teachings, Russell sometimes cast, in the role of a player, his son—Kurt Russell, who was both a talented player and a working child actor at the time. Kurt Russell is one of the movie’s key onscreen interview subjects; he was a minor-league player in the early seventies, and it was his incipient career that brought his father to the Pacific Northwest baseball scene.
Bing Russell may have been an outsider, but, in some essential way, that proved an advantage. Just as independent filmmakers discover stars who can hold the screen alongside any celebrity, so Bing, with his exacting insights into baseball skill, held open tryouts. There, he found athletes whose talents had been overlooked and rejected by the pros—and then forged them into a winning team, defeating players who’d been scouted by, and were being prepared for, the major leagues. Yet he also recognized that baseball is as much a matter of entertainment as it is of competition, and his players—many of whom were characters—were encouraged to flaunt their personalities. Bing Russell, with a sure sense of showmanship, devised and staged some extraordinary baseball shtick that made the Mavericks’ games as much spectacles, and rowdily participatory ones, as they were competitions. The result was both athletic and commercial success—the team broke league attendance records. In 1974, Russell was named the league’s executive of the year by Sporting News and received the award in the presence of the major-league representatives he’d defeated; in the film, the sports writer Nick Bertram compares Russell’s achievement to “winning an Oscar by doing an independent film.” (Russell himself related the team’s effect on the city to the story of “The Music Man.”)
Another rabbit, another historical cameo: the former Yankees star pitcher Jim Bouton, whose on-the-field achievements had been eclipsed by the publication, in 1970, of the book “Ball Four,” a diary of a year in the game that revealed the human foibles and failings—including sexual depredations—of many of the game’s celebrated players. He was unofficially blackballed from the game and made his comeback, in his mid-thirties, with the Mavericks, thus bringing the team an instant shot of big-league ability (diminished but not gone), of celebrity, and of notoriety. (It’s a remark of Bouton’s that provides the movie with its title.) Meanwhile, the team became national news—it was the subject of two programs by the sportscaster Joe Garagiola, and Bouton went on “The Tonight Show” and chatted about the team with Johnny Carson. As noted in the film, the Mavericks were also discussed in The New Yorker, in 1975, in Hendrik Hertzberg’s Profile of the minor-league executive Robert Freitas, who attends a Mavericks game. (Hertzberg offers a hearty thumbnail sketch of Russell in action: at the end of a game that the Mavericks won in dramatic fashion, he “stuck his head out of the box so the fans could hear him. ‘See the action!’ he shouted hoarsely. ‘Ten-cent suds Friday!’ ”)
The Way brothers detail some of Russell’s achievements on the field and off it (including the hiring of Lanny Moss and Jon Yoshiwara, who are widely believed to be the first female general manager and the first Asian-American general manager, respectively, in U.S. professional baseball). The filmmakers also show what happened when this band of outsiders challenged the game’s insiders. “Battered Bastards” tells the story of how the Mavericks came to grief—despite Russell’s visionary abilities as a businessperson, a baseball maven, an impresario, and a personality—for showing up Major League Baseball in a public den that it was nonetheless legally permitted to claim as its own.
Hertzberg discerningly noted the nostalgia behind the team’s success: “The Mavericks’ popularity is of a piece with that of brand-new pubs whose décor includes gas lamps and faded daguerreotypes on oaken walls.” Russell’s very effort to recover the playful air of the game that was lost in a more corporate era—the very quality that makes him a sort of folk hero—also brought about the circumstances of his team’s downfall. As “Battered Bastards” makes clear, the essence of the baseball business depends on its exemption from antitrust legislation—this, by dint of a 1922 Supreme Court decision that was based mainly on the premise of the sport as an instant fund of unifying national heroes. Though it was and remains a business, its place in legend lifted it outside the confines of business law; thus, Major League Baseball is, to this day, allowed to engage in practices that would otherwise be considered monopolistic or anticompetitive. It would be a spoiler to explain just how the Mavericks fell victim to such practices. (Here, too, the cinematic connection is all too clear, and all too relevant to the current environment.) The way nostalgia for classic Hollywood—which, like major-league baseball, depends on the historical continuity of its legendary elements, the lore and lure of tradition—masks its discontinuities and contradictions, which inhere in the business and the practice of the game. The legal aspect of the movie business has come to the fore again, with the Trump Administration’s recent move to terminate the consent decrees that issued from the 1948 Supreme Court decision United States v. Paramount. Voiding the decrees would, among other things, lift restrictions on studios’ booking practices, which would give studios vast leverage over movie theatres and, thus, likely keep many independent films out of wide release.


newyorker--2020-04-13--The Coronavirus Offers a Radical New Vision for India’s Cities

On the morning of April 3rd , residents of Jalandhar , an industrial town in the Indian state of Punjab , woke to a startling sight : a panorama of snowcapped mountains across the eastern sky .
The peaks and slopes of the Dhauladhars—a range in the lesser Himalayas—were not new , but the visibility was .
Last summer , Jalandhar had the worst air quality in Punjab , although it still doesn ’ t rank among the most polluted cities in India .
On March 24th , as a national lockdown was imposed to stop the spread of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s road traffic came to a halt , along with its manufacture of auto parts , hand tools , and sports equipment .
Ten days later , suspended particulates had dispersed from the air , and the Himalayas were unveiled .
Residents gathered on their rooftops , posting photos of far , icy elevations towering behind water tanks and clotheslines .
“ Never seen Dhauladhar range from my home rooftop in Jalandhar , ” the international cricketer Harbhajan Singh , who was born there forty years ago , tweeted .
“ Never could @ @ @ @ @ @ @ view from my own rooftop , fifteen hundred miles to the south , in Bangalore , has not revealed any equivalent surprises .
Instead , there is the birdsong .
The constancy of car horns in India is legend , a stock line for travel writers .
I could never have imagined it possible , in an Indian city , to wake up not to the sounds of traffic but to the sovereignty of bulbuls and mynahs over the morning air .
I wonder when an Indian city last felt like this .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ this .
It ’ s a guilty pleasure , for sure .
In a country where most households live squeezed into a single room , I ’ m working through the lockdown in an apartment with a balcony covered in potted plants .
As people are forced indoors , I can sit under an open sky , beneath passing clouds , studying a birdbath .
This is how the world looks from inside the silver lining .
Outside , the silence on the street may be therapeutic , but it can also feel @ @ @ @ @ @ @ held breath of a country bracing for disaster—not only for the brunt of a pandemic but for empty savings accounts , purses , and pantries .
Millions of Indians eat only if they are paid wages each day , which means that when the lockdown was announced , a second epidemic , of hunger , began to unfold .
As for the virus , the curve is not yet flattening .
The circulation of a billion Indians has not settled into the neat grid of social distance .
On my phone , I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ looking up , I see something else—a glimpse , behind the jungle crow facing off with two brahminy kites , of an alternative to how we live .
In northern India , the change has been as basic as breathing .
Of the thirty cities with the worst air pollution in the world , twenty-one are in northern India .
New Delhi and its exurbs make up the worst of those .
In such places , air pollution may reach us before our first breath—particulates have been found in the placenta of pregnant @ @ @ @ @ @ @ last one , increasing the risk of cancer , heart attacks , and respiratory disease .
The World Health Organization has linked exposure to PM2.5—particles with a diameter of 2.5 micrometres or less—to a hundred thousand deaths in India each year , and that ’ s just among children below the age of five .
The coronavirus will only compound these morbidities .
Studies of viral pandemics such as the 1918 flu , or the 2003 SARS outbreak , found that residents of areas with more polluted air were far more likely to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ similar findings about COVID-19 , using data of death rates across the United States .
In Delhi , bad air is chronic , but the worst of the smog is seasonal , drifting over the city when the farmers of the Indo-Gangetic plain burn crop stubble after the harvest , in October .
To live in Delhi is to agonize , each winter , over your choice to stay and breathe the air , or to be the reason your family has to breathe it .
Historically , the city ’ s curse @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the temperature less often than they do the air-quality index , or A.Q.I.
, and its most incriminating measure , PM2.5—the particulates that pass most easily through the lungs .
Living in the city , last winter , my waking routine was to look at my phone and see the route to work dotted with flags coded in red , purple , and black , each with a numerical rating that indicated if it was “ unhealthy ” or “ hazardous ” to breathe that day .
Often , the ratings would simply @ @ @ @ @ @ @ whatever its effect on the virus , has given Indian cities the kiss of life .
In a week , Delhi ’ s PM2.5 count dropped by seventy-one per cent .
The sky is bluer now , the Yamuna River less black , and my friends say that the stars are out at night .
Elsewhere , the number of cities in which India ’ s Central Pollution Control Board recorded “ good ” or “ satisfactory ” air rose from fifty-four to ninety-one .
The lockdown is also improving our understanding of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ From a research viewpoint , this is a fantastic experiment , ” Sarath Guttikunda , a founder and director of UrbanEmissions.info , told me over the phone .
Guttikunda ’ s team studies air pollution across India : its baselines , its sources , its chemical interactions .
“ What we ’ re seeing now is unprecedented : drops in commercial activity , industrial activity , and transport , all at the same time—not just in a city but , significantly , across a region , ” he said .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to assess , for example , how responsible a given city is for its air quality .
“ We do a lot of modelling for every city of how much pollution is local , and how much is coming from the boundary , ” he said .
“ The big cities always point outwards , saying , ‘ All my pollution is coming from outside.
’ ” Guttikunda ’ s models had suggested otherwise , and from the first day of the lockdown evidence of cities ’ own contributions became clear .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ blindly say , ‘ Look , you are responsible for seventy per cent of your pollution .
Please do something about it , ’ ” Guttikunda said .
“ We have that proof.
” Blue skies may seem like scant compensation for a frozen economy and a health crisis .
But it ’ s worth remembering that last November , Delhi ’ s schools , colleges , construction sites , and many of its offices were ordered to shut down because of the smog .
We were already working from home , going @ @ @ @ @ @ @ coronavirus was even dreamt of in Wuhan .
Pollution is the world ’ s least exciting pandemic .
In India , the crisis has become the norm , not least because it discriminates .
The assault is most painful if you ’ re in poverty : if you work on the roadside , commute on a bicycle , or sleep on the street .
Emissions may disperse into a common “ air shed , ” but the rich adapt within their own sealed-off , private atmospheres—purifying the air in their bedrooms , their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ malls that have replaced the outdoor promenade .
Working- and middle-class Indians receive none of this relief .
This discrimination explains some of our passivity .
What explains the rest ?
One problem is that air pollution is especially resistant to single-shot solutions .
Its causes literally shift with the wind , varying by time and location , which makes it easier for interest groups to deflect responsibility onto one another .
To truly revitalize our air , we need to change how we cook , build , farm , travel , consume @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it all , how we breathe .

On the morning of April 3rd, residents of Jalandhar, an industrial town in the Indian state of Punjab, woke to a startling sight: a panorama of snowcapped mountains across the eastern sky. The peaks and slopes of the Dhauladhars—a range in the lesser Himalayas—were not new, but the visibility was. Last summer, Jalandhar had the worst air quality in Punjab, although it still doesn’t rank among the most polluted cities in India. On March 24th, as a national lockdown was imposed to stop the spread of the coronavirus, nearly all of Jalandhar’s road traffic came to a halt, along with its manufacture of auto parts, hand tools, and sports equipment.
Ten days later, suspended particulates had dispersed from the air, and the Himalayas were unveiled. Residents gathered on their rooftops, posting photos of far, icy elevations towering behind water tanks and clotheslines. “Never seen Dhauladhar range from my home rooftop in Jalandhar,” the international cricketer Harbhajan Singh, who was born there forty years ago, tweeted. “Never could imagine that’s possible.”
The view from my own rooftop, fifteen hundred miles to the south, in Bangalore, has not revealed any equivalent surprises. Instead, there is the birdsong. The constancy of car horns in India is legend, a stock line for travel writers. I could never have imagined it possible, in an Indian city, to wake up not to the sounds of traffic but to the sovereignty of bulbuls and mynahs over the morning air. I wonder when an Indian city last felt like this. I wonder when I last felt like this.
It’s a guilty pleasure, for sure. In a country where most households live squeezed into a single room, I’m working through the lockdown in an apartment with a balcony covered in potted plants. As people are forced indoors, I can sit under an open sky, beneath passing clouds, studying a birdbath. This is how the world looks from inside the silver lining. Outside, the silence on the street may be therapeutic, but it can also feel grim, suspenseful. It suggests the held breath of a country bracing for disaster—not only for the brunt of a pandemic but for empty savings accounts, purses, and pantries. Millions of Indians eat only if they are paid wages each day, which means that when the lockdown was announced, a second epidemic, of hunger, began to unfold.
As for the virus, the curve is not yet flattening. The circulation of a billion Indians has not settled into the neat grid of social distance. On my phone, I see looming disaster. And yet, looking up, I see something else—a glimpse, behind the jungle crow facing off with two brahminy kites, of an alternative to how we live. In northern India, the change has been as basic as breathing. Of the thirty cities with the worst air pollution in the world, twenty-one are in northern India. New Delhi and its exurbs make up the worst of those. In such places, air pollution may reach us before our first breath—particulates have been found in the placenta of pregnant mothers—and continues to harm us until our last one, increasing the risk of cancer, heart attacks, and respiratory disease. The World Health Organization has linked exposure to PM2.5—particles with a diameter of 2.5 micrometres or less—to a hundred thousand deaths in India each year, and that’s just among children below the age of five.
The coronavirus will only compound these morbidities. Studies of viral pandemics such as the 1918 flu, or the 2003 SARS outbreak, found that residents of areas with more polluted air were far more likely to die. A team at Harvard made similar findings about COVID-19, using data of death rates across the United States. In Delhi, bad air is chronic, but the worst of the smog is seasonal, drifting over the city when the farmers of the Indo-Gangetic plain burn crop stubble after the harvest, in October. To live in Delhi is to agonize, each winter, over your choice to stay and breathe the air, or to be the reason your family has to breathe it. Historically, the city’s curse was harsh weather. Now residents check the temperature less often than they do the air-quality index, or A.Q.I., and its most incriminating measure, PM2.5—the particulates that pass most easily through the lungs. Living in the city, last winter, my waking routine was to look at my phone and see the route to work dotted with flags coded in red, purple, and black, each with a numerical rating that indicated if it was “unhealthy” or “hazardous” to breathe that day. Often, the ratings would simply be maxed out.
The lockdown, whatever its effect on the virus, has given Indian cities the kiss of life. In a week, Delhi’s PM2.5 count dropped by seventy-one per cent. The sky is bluer now, the Yamuna River less black, and my friends say that the stars are out at night. Elsewhere, the number of cities in which India’s Central Pollution Control Board recorded “good” or “satisfactory” air rose from fifty-four to ninety-one.
The lockdown is also improving our understanding of the complex phenomena that contribute to pollution. “From a research viewpoint, this is a fantastic experiment,” Sarath Guttikunda, a founder and director of UrbanEmissions.info, told me over the phone. Guttikunda’s team studies air pollution across India: its baselines, its sources, its chemical interactions. “What we’re seeing now is unprecedented: drops in commercial activity, industrial activity, and transport, all at the same time—not just in a city but, significantly, across a region,” he said. The past few weeks have allowed his team to assess, for example, how responsible a given city is for its air quality. “We do a lot of modelling for every city of how much pollution is local, and how much is coming from the boundary,” he said. “The big cities always point outwards, saying, ‘All my pollution is coming from outside.’ ” Guttikunda’s models had suggested otherwise, and from the first day of the lockdown evidence of cities’ own contributions became clear. “Now we don’t have to blindly say, ‘Look, you are responsible for seventy per cent of your pollution. Please do something about it,’ ” Guttikunda said. “We have that proof.”
Blue skies may seem like scant compensation for a frozen economy and a health crisis. But it’s worth remembering that last November, Delhi’s schools, colleges, construction sites, and many of its offices were ordered to shut down because of the smog. We were already working from home, going out in N95 masks, before the coronavirus was even dreamt of in Wuhan.
Pollution is the world’s least exciting pandemic. In India, the crisis has become the norm, not least because it discriminates. The assault is most painful if you’re in poverty: if you work on the roadside, commute on a bicycle, or sleep on the street. Emissions may disperse into a common “air shed,” but the rich adapt within their own sealed-off, private atmospheres—purifying the air in their bedrooms, their cars, and in the luxury shopping malls that have replaced the outdoor promenade. Working- and middle-class Indians receive none of this relief.
This discrimination explains some of our passivity. What explains the rest? One problem is that air pollution is especially resistant to single-shot solutions. Its causes literally shift with the wind, varying by time and location, which makes it easier for interest groups to deflect responsibility onto one another. To truly revitalize our air, we need to change how we cook, build, farm, travel, consume, and produce—bearing in mind, through it all, how we breathe.
Such comprehensive action can seem impossible. Guttikunda’s hopeful analogy is to the 2008 Summer Olympic Games, a turning point for Beijing, which had the worst air of any major city before ceding that place to Delhi. “What they did during the Beijing Olympics is what is happening now, though it’s been forced,” Guttikunda said. “For at least a month before, and then for the entire period of the Games, they really, really reduced pollution levels in Beijing. They cut down fifty per cent of transport, literally shut down all the industries within a hundred kilometres of Beijing, placed serious restrictions on the amount of coal being used in the tri-city region. For two months, people got to see the change possible in the city.”
Those two months were an experiment, not just in the technical means to achieve cleaner air but in the public’s desire for it. “As soon as the Games were over, the restrictions were lifted and the PM2.5 levels shot back up,” Guttikunda said. “But now there was a public outcry saying, ‘Look, we could have those blue skies for longer. We don’t mind the restrictions.’ ” That set China on a path to better regulation, more industrial efficiency, new transport systems, and a sea change in its urban air quality.
In India, a full generation or two has known the city only in crisis. When the lockdown ends, I’ll fly back to Delhi, hoping to beat the traffic, the construction work, the factory emissions, and the piles of burning litter. I know that all these activities will resume. But maybe we’ll confront them differently this time. The cures of collective action were not well known in India, least of all among the rich. The pandemic, though, has been met with an outsized restraint, and with the sacrifice of income, opportunity, and ego. The reward has been a sane and breathable atmosphere. Like a view of snowcapped peaks above a clothesline, we never imagined it was possible. Now we don’t have to imagine.
A Guide to the Coronavirus


newyorker--2020-04-13--The Injustice of COVID-19

The Injustice of COVID-19

On the surface , COVID-19 may seem to be a great leveller .
Princes and Prime Ministers , musicians and Hollywood A-listers , N.B.A .
players , and other prominent people have made headlines for contracting the virus .
But , looking more closely at the numbers of illnesses and fatalities , we see that the virus—far from an equalizer—exacerbates the inequality of the American health-care system .
Minorities , and particularly African-Americans , account for a greatly disproportionate number of deaths in places around the country .
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor , a contributor to The New Yorker and an assistant @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , describes to David Remnick the circumstances that give rise to this stratification .
Even the basic preventative measures urged on Americans by the C.D.C .
are less accessible in black communities .
To shelter in place , she points out , “ you need to have safe , sound , and comfortable housing .
.
.
and only nineteen per cent of black people have the ability to work at home , because of the types of jobs that they are employed in .
.
.
.
African-Americans in New York City @ @ @ @ @ @ @ get to work.
” Even access to clean water , she points out—essential to frequent hand washing—is not universally available .

Photograph by Eduardo Munoz Alvarez / VIEWpress / Getty
On the surface, COVID-19 may seem to be a great leveller. Princes and Prime Ministers, musicians and Hollywood A-listers, N.B.A. players, and other prominent people have made headlines for contracting the virus. But, looking more closely at the numbers of illnesses and fatalities, we see that the virus—far from an equalizer—exacerbates the inequality of the American health-care system. Minorities, and particularly African-Americans, account for a greatly disproportionate number of deaths in places around the country. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, a contributor to The New Yorker and an assistant professor of African-American studies at Princeton University, describes to David Remnick the circumstances that give rise to this stratification. Even the basic preventative measures urged on Americans by the C.D.C. are less accessible in black communities. To shelter in place, she points out, “you need to have safe, sound, and comfortable housing . . . and only nineteen per cent of black people have the ability to work at home, because of the types of jobs that they are employed in. . . . African-Americans in New York City still must get on the subway to get to work.” Even access to clean water, she points out—essential to frequent hand washing—is not universally available.