newyorker--2020-11-17--Global Warming by the Numbers, Because This Week the Reality Is Too Much

Sometimes the human trauma of the climate crisis is too painful to recite , and this is one of those times : the busiest hurricane season ever recorded is continuing on into the late fall , with consequences so horrifying one can hardly stand to look .
Right now , Hurricane Iota is mashing Central America ; it will likely be a few days before we know the precise results .
So let ’ s talk about what has already happened in Honduras , when Hurricane Eta dropped torrential rains on the city of San Pedro Sula , triggering floods @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( the toll is still rising ) , destroyed twenty-three bridges and “ partially ruined ” forty-three more , and wrecked a hundred and forty-three highways .
Three million people—a third of the country ’ s population—were “ seriously affected.
” As of the weekend , authorities said that they had no contact with sixty-nine towns , home to a hundred thousand people .
And Hurricane Iota has just crashed into the same terrain , dropping yet more torrents on the saturated country , which was already dealing not just with COVID-19 but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s the bottomest of bottom lines : Eta alone , in a few days , cost Honduras the equivalent of around twenty per cent of its gross domestic product .
( Hurricane Katrina , among the worst recorded in American history , cost the U.S. about one per cent of its G.D.P . )
Needless to say , the President of the United States did not bother even to tweet about the disaster ; the U.S. Agency for International Development offered a hundred and twenty thousand dollars .
Again , let ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( very nearly cynical ) calculation of dollars and cents that hide both broken bodies and the basic immorality of the crisis .
( Honduras , it almost need not be said , has done next to nothing to cause global warming . )
Dollars and cents may be our best chance to attack the underlying cause of climate change in the years ahead—the Biden Administration , absent a Democratic-controlled Senate , will struggle to pass straightforward climate legislation , but it should be able to put new pressure on Wall Street that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and bankroll the desperately needed conversion to clean energy .
Less than a week after the election , the Federal Reserve started catching up to where European regulators have been for years , Politico reports , encouraging “ financial firms to provide more information about how their investments could be affected by frequent and severe weather and could improve the pricing of climate risks , ‘ thereby reducing the probability of sudden changes in asset prices.
’ ” The next day , the Fed requested to join other central bankers in the international @ @ @ @ @ @ @ That pressure will likely intensify , as new regulators take over in January .
“ Leading Democrats , ” according to Politico , “ want to go even further by forcing lenders to abide by disclosure rules and stress tests to make sure they aren ’ t the source of a new crisis .
The fear is that destructive climate events—as well as a costly transition to a lower-carbon economy—will wreak havoc on the banks ’ portfolios and destabilize the financial system.
” The extent of that pressure will likely depend on how @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The Sunrise Movement , for instance , supports Elizabeth Warren for Treasury Secretary , a move that may be less likely since the Massachusetts House of Representatives last week rejected an amendment insuring that , if she joined the Cabinet , the person appointed to fill out her Senate term would be a Democrat .
The movement ’ s second choice , Sarah Bloom Raskin , has impeccable credentials as an Obama-era Deputy Secretary of the Treasury , and has long been outspoken about climate change .
The Federal Reserve Board member @ @ @ @ @ @ @ another top candidate for Treasury Secretary , has been talking about the issue for at least a year .
It ’ s clear , however , that merely asking banks and other financial institutions to think more seriously about global warming will not suffice .
The Financial Times reports that , in the United Kingdom , which has encouraged climate-risk disclosures for several years , “ investors have shown more muted interest in the data that is generated , according to people who have gone through the process .
An HSBC survey of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cent viewed the disclosures as a relevant source of information.
” On Monday , a group of academics told the British government that self-regulation would not get the job done : here , too , new rule-making will be required , which is why , according to Politico , “ banks are accelerating efforts to get ahead of the issue and make clear to Biden ’ s team that they want a place at the table when decisions are made.
” It will be a fierce fight to force rapid change , but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the status quo : in anticipation , the U.S. National Economic Council director , Larry Kudlow , has said that oil companies have complained that banks might be discriminating against them .
That we have to fight this fight on Wall Street is a sad reality ; we also have to fight it on the ground , offering relief and refuge to people who through no fault of their own are suffering an impossible fate .
Lay aside the numbers now .
In the Guardian , Jeff Ernst , one of the few @ @ @ @ @ @ @ America after Eta , described “ Dantesque scenes of human and animal remains half-buried in mud.
” He quotes a local man , Marvin Argueta , whose house on the bank of the Chamelecón River was swept away in the floods .
Argueta said , “ When we first came back to see our home we cried because everything was buried in mud.
” He recently lost his job in construction and is now living underneath a nearby bridge with about a hundred other families , because , he said , “ we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ go.
” God only knows what it ’ s like under that bridge today , as the next in this endless train of storms pounds down .
Emily Sanders writes the weekly EXXONKNEWS update distributed by the Center for Climate Integrity , which works to “ make Big Oil and Gas pay their fair share of the damages their products helped cause.
” The larger # ExxonKnew campaign began after reporters for InsideClimate News , the Los Angeles Times , and other outlets used archival research and whistle-blower testimony to show that the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , knew all about climate change as far back as the nineteen-eighties , but , instead of telling the world , they helped orchestrate a massive campaign of denial .
Sanders , twenty-six , has been , among other things , an assistant fourth-grade teacher in Long Island City , where the Ravenswood Generating Station—an archaic gas-fired power plant—loomed over the playground .
Her newsletter is a year old as of last week .
This interview has been edited for length .
The ExxonKnew campaign of which your newsletter is a part began @ @ @ @ @ @ @ showing that the oil giant had foreknowledge of the climate crisis , but it ’ s turned into something much larger .
Explain the mission of your work .
As you say , the story wasn ’ t over when we learned that the fossil-fuel industry knew and lied about how their products would destroy the climate .
Big Oil got us here , and eroding their social license and holding them accountable in court are crucial to any meaningful climate solution .
We still have a long way to go—people worry more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s misdeeds .
That said , there ’ s been so much momentum : twenty-four communities are suing oil majors for deceiving the public and , in many cases , to make them pay their fair share for the costs of adapting to this crisis .
Last year , Congress held its first-ever hearing on Big Oil ’ s disinformation campaigns .
Both Biden and Harris went on the record in prime time in support of suing oil companies— “ just like we did with the tobacco companies , ” as Biden has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ want readers to know that Big Oil ’ s climate denial , and their efforts to pass off the resulting damages , hasn ’ t come to an end .
These companies are polluting more than ever while claiming that they ’ re part of the solution—and the situation on the ground is untenable .
So I chronicle the ways communities are fighting back .
You spend every day deep in the trenches , reading about everything Big Oil is up to .
Was this election a major loss for them ?
What @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump was a boon to fossil-fuel executives , because he let them run the show .
His Department of Justice sided with the industry in climate-liability lawsuits .
There ’ s a reason he boasted that he could “ hypothetically ” call up the head of Exxon for campaign donations in exchange for political favors .
So , yes , I ’ d think that , especially considering the sinkhole of debt these companies are in , and how their star has faded over the past year at least , this election was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ invested in the climate-accountability movement are feeling cautiously optimistic .
President-elect Biden has pledged to direct his D.O.J .
to “ strategically support ” litigation by communities and states against climate polluters , and holding fossil-fuel companies accountable is part of the Biden-Harris climate-justice-policy platform .
There ’ s a lot of work to be done , and we ’ ll have to hold him to his word , but this is hopefully a huge step in the right direction .
BP seems like it ’ s the first company to make something @ @ @ @ @ @ @ changing its business model—how seriously do you take this , and what should we be watching for to see if it ’ s real ?
It ’ s because of their deception and the years of potential climate action it derailed that we are at this tipping point .
So I would think twice ( thrice , even ) about taking any kind of commitments seriously from a company that has historically lied .
That ’ s why they ’ re a named defendant in so many of these climate lawsuits .
BP @ @ @ @ @ @ @ carbon footprint , ” an idea that may have done more to deflect responsibility away from the oil industry and disarm the public than any other single industry P.R .
move .
We need to watch what they do , not what they say .
Even if they put twenty-five per cent of their portfolio into renewables , they ’ ll still be seventy-five per cent fossil fuels , which just isn ’ t good enough .
That being said , if they would be willing to take responsibility for their actions and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ adapt and build communities that can survive the crisis they caused , that ’ s a start .
But we haven ’ t seen that yet .
An official “ State of the Climate ” report from Australia showed just how out of control the heating has become down under .
One remarkable stat : “ In the 58 years from 1960 to 2018 , there were only 24 days where the average maximum temperature across the whole continent hit 39C or higher .
In 2019 alone , there were 33 days.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ COVID-19 cases is complicated by hideous pollution levels—this month , the city was reporting that dangerous airborne particulates were fourteen times the safe level .
Ashish Narang , a civil servant , told the Guardian that he has not ventured outside in a week : “ We were already confined indoors because of the pandemic but we could at least go for a walk with a mask but now we can ’ t do that either .
How can our lungs stand a chance against the virus if they are already blackened and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ environmental reporter Justin Gillis , and Michael O ’ Boyle , the director of electricity policy at the Energy Innovation think tank , do a fine job of explaining why utilities should stop building natural-gas power plants immediately .
( Renewables are far cleaner and make far more economic sense . )
They write in an Op-Ed for the Times , “ We also think the companies lack a sense of urgency about the climate crisis , a problem compounded by their poverty of imagination .
Technologies are available now that would allow @ @ @ @ @ @ @ transition , yet they are stuck in an antiquated mind-set : the best way to make electricity is to burn something .
That era will end .
The sooner the companies come to grips with that , the sooner they can build the clean , affordable power grid the American people need.
” Governor Gretchen Whitmer , of Michigan , gave Great Lakes activists a massive win last week when she announced that the state will revoke an easement that allows Enbridge Inc. ’ s Line 5 pipeline to travel beneath the Straits @ @ @ @ @ @ @ crosses what researchers have called “ the worst possible place for an oil spill ” in the Great Lakes , should close in May , after more than fifty years of use .

Sometimes the human trauma of the climate crisis is too painful to recite, and this is one of those times: the busiest hurricane season ever recorded is continuing on into the late fall, with consequences so horrifying one can hardly stand to look. Right now, Hurricane Iota is mashing Central America; it will likely be a few days before we know the precise results. So let’s talk about what has already happened in Honduras, when Hurricane Eta dropped torrential rains on the city of San Pedro Sula, triggering floods that have caused more than sixty deaths (the toll is still rising), destroyed twenty-three bridges and “partially ruined” forty-three more, and wrecked a hundred and forty-three highways. Three million people—a third of the country’s population—were “seriously affected.” As of the weekend, authorities said that they had no contact with sixty-nine towns, home to a hundred thousand people. And Hurricane Iota has just crashed into the same terrain, dropping yet more torrents on the saturated country, which was already dealing not just with COVID-19 but with a bad dengue outbreak. Here’s the bottomest of bottom lines: Eta alone, in a few days, cost Honduras the equivalent of around twenty per cent of its gross domestic product. (Hurricane Katrina, among the worst recorded in American history, cost the U.S. about one per cent of its G.D.P.) Needless to say, the President of the United States did not bother even to tweet about the disaster; the U.S. Agency for International Development offered a hundred and twenty thousand dollars.
Again, let’s keep to numbers, the clinical (very nearly cynical) calculation of dollars and cents that hide both broken bodies and the basic immorality of the crisis. (Honduras, it almost need not be said, has done next to nothing to cause global warming.) Dollars and cents may be our best chance to attack the underlying cause of climate change in the years ahead—the Biden Administration, absent a Democratic-controlled Senate, will struggle to pass straightforward climate legislation, but it should be able to put new pressure on Wall Street that could begin to starve the fossil-fuel industry and bankroll the desperately needed conversion to clean energy. Less than a week after the election, the Federal Reserve started catching up to where European regulators have been for years, Politico reports, encouraging “financial firms to provide more information about how their investments could be affected by frequent and severe weather and could improve the pricing of climate risks, ‘thereby reducing the probability of sudden changes in asset prices.’ ” The next day, the Fed requested to join other central bankers in the international Network for Greening the Financial System. That pressure will likely intensify, as new regulators take over in January. “Leading Democrats,” according to Politico, “want to go even further by forcing lenders to abide by disclosure rules and stress tests to make sure they aren’t the source of a new crisis. The fear is that destructive climate events—as well as a costly transition to a lower-carbon economy—will wreak havoc on the banks’ portfolios and destabilize the financial system.”
The extent of that pressure will likely depend on how interested key personnel turn out to be. The Sunrise Movement, for instance, supports Elizabeth Warren for Treasury Secretary, a move that may be less likely since the Massachusetts House of Representatives last week rejected an amendment insuring that, if she joined the Cabinet, the person appointed to fill out her Senate term would be a Democrat. The movement’s second choice, Sarah Bloom Raskin, has impeccable credentials as an Obama-era Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, and has long been outspoken about climate change. The Federal Reserve Board member Lael Brainard, cited by pundits as another top candidate for Treasury Secretary, has been talking about the issue for at least a year.
It’s clear, however, that merely asking banks and other financial institutions to think more seriously about global warming will not suffice. The Financial Times reports that, in the United Kingdom, which has encouraged climate-risk disclosures for several years, “investors have shown more muted interest in the data that is generated, according to people who have gone through the process. An HSBC survey of 2,000 investors found that just 10 per cent viewed the disclosures as a relevant source of information.” On Monday, a group of academics told the British government that self-regulation would not get the job done: here, too, new rule-making will be required, which is why, according to Politico, “banks are accelerating efforts to get ahead of the issue and make clear to Biden’s team that they want a place at the table when decisions are made.” It will be a fierce fight to force rapid change, but it’s undeniably a shift from the status quo: in anticipation, the U.S. National Economic Council director, Larry Kudlow, has said that oil companies have complained that banks might be discriminating against them.
That we have to fight this fight on Wall Street is a sad reality; we also have to fight it on the ground, offering relief and refuge to people who through no fault of their own are suffering an impossible fate. Lay aside the numbers now. In the Guardian, Jeff Ernst, one of the few reporters getting out the story from Central America after Eta, described “Dantesque scenes of human and animal remains half-buried in mud.” He quotes a local man, Marvin Argueta, whose house on the bank of the Chamelecón River was swept away in the floods. Argueta said, “When we first came back to see our home we cried because everything was buried in mud.” He recently lost his job in construction and is now living underneath a nearby bridge with about a hundred other families, because, he said, “we didn’t have anywhere else to go.” God only knows what it’s like under that bridge today, as the next in this endless train of storms pounds down.
Passing the Mic
Emily Sanders writes the weekly EXXONKNEWS update distributed by the Center for Climate Integrity, which works to “make Big Oil and Gas pay their fair share of the damages their products helped cause.” The larger #ExxonKnew campaign began after reporters for InsideClimate News, the Los Angeles Times, and other outlets used archival research and whistle-blower testimony to show that the big oil companies, led by Exxon, knew all about climate change as far back as the nineteen-eighties, but, instead of telling the world, they helped orchestrate a massive campaign of denial. Sanders, twenty-six, has been, among other things, an assistant fourth-grade teacher in Long Island City, where the Ravenswood Generating Station—an archaic gas-fired power plant—loomed over the playground. Her newsletter is a year old as of last week. This interview has been edited for length.
The ExxonKnew campaign of which your newsletter is a part began as a reaction to great investigative reporting showing that the oil giant had foreknowledge of the climate crisis, but it’s turned into something much larger. Explain the mission of your work.
As you say, the story wasn’t over when we learned that the fossil-fuel industry knew and lied about how their products would destroy the climate. Big Oil got us here, and eroding their social license and holding them accountable in court are crucial to any meaningful climate solution. We still have a long way to go—people worry more about their carbon footprint than Exxon’s misdeeds. That said, there’s been so much momentum: twenty-four communities are suing oil majors for deceiving the public and, in many cases, to make them pay their fair share for the costs of adapting to this crisis. Last year, Congress held its first-ever hearing on Big Oil’s disinformation campaigns. Both Biden and Harris went on the record in prime time in support of suing oil companies—“just like we did with the tobacco companies,” as Biden has said.
As for EXXONKNEWS, I want readers to know that Big Oil’s climate denial, and their efforts to pass off the resulting damages, hasn’t come to an end. These companies are polluting more than ever while claiming that they’re part of the solution—and the situation on the ground is untenable. So I chronicle the ways communities are fighting back.
You spend every day deep in the trenches, reading about everything Big Oil is up to. Was this election a major loss for them? What’s the mood in Houston?
Trump was a boon to fossil-fuel executives, because he let them run the show. His Department of Justice sided with the industry in climate-liability lawsuits. There’s a reason he boasted that he could “hypothetically” call up the head of Exxon for campaign donations in exchange for political favors. So, yes, I’d think that, especially considering the sinkhole of debt these companies are in, and how their star has faded over the past year at least, this election was a major loss.
Those of us invested in the climate-accountability movement are feeling cautiously optimistic. President-elect Biden has pledged to direct his D.O.J. to “strategically support” litigation by communities and states against climate polluters, and holding fossil-fuel companies accountable is part of the Biden-Harris climate-justice-policy platform. There’s a lot of work to be done, and we’ll have to hold him to his word, but this is hopefully a huge step in the right direction.
BP seems like it’s the first company to make something that sounds like a semi-serious noise about changing its business model—how seriously do you take this, and what should we be watching for to see if it’s real?
It’s because of their deception and the years of potential climate action it derailed that we are at this tipping point. So I would think twice (thrice, even) about taking any kind of commitments seriously from a company that has historically lied. That’s why they’re a named defendant in so many of these climate lawsuits.
BP was the architect of the personal “carbon footprint,” an idea that may have done more to deflect responsibility away from the oil industry and disarm the public than any other single industry P.R. move. We need to watch what they do, not what they say. Even if they put twenty-five per cent of their portfolio into renewables, they’ll still be seventy-five per cent fossil fuels, which just isn’t good enough.


newyorker--2020-11-17--Trump Furious After White House H.R. Schedules His Exit Interview

WASHINGTON ( The Borowitz Report ) —Donald J. Trump was reportedly furious after the White House ’ s Human Resources @ @ @ @ @ had scheduled his exit interview , the head of H.R .
has revealed .
Carol @ @ @ @ @ chief who was the target of Trump ’ s wrath , said that the exit @ @ @ @ @ tool ” to help make the White House a better working environment .
“ Everyone @ @ @ @ @ has to participate in an exit interview , ” she said .
“ That was @ @ @ @ @ people who left during the past four years.
” The H.R .
executive said that @ @ @ @ @ could help Trump explore any workplace issues that led to his departure .
“ The @ @ @ @ @ his job held it for eight years and he only lasted four , ” she @ @ @ @ @ be helpful to get his perspective on why things didn ’ t work out for @ @ @ @

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Donald J. Trump was reportedly furious after the White House’s Human Resources Department notified him that it had scheduled his exit interview, the head of H.R. has revealed.
Carol Foyler, the H.R. chief who was the target of Trump’s wrath, said that the exit interview is a “valuable tool” to help make the White House a better working environment.
“Everyone who leaves the White House has to participate in an exit interview,” she said. “That was true of the nine thousand people who left during the past four years.”
The H.R. executive said that she hoped that the interview could help Trump explore any workplace issues that led to his departure.
“The previous three people who had his job held it for eight years and he only lasted four,” she said. “It would be helpful to get his perspective on why things didn’t work out for him here.”
Read More Satire from the Borowitz Report


newyorker--2020-11-18--Sounds of the Eighties

Sounds of the Eighties

I ’ m Mark Goodman and I ’ m Martha Quinn .
( I ’ m both . )
You remember watching me on MTV—hanging out at the mall and struggling to solve that Rubik ’ s Cube .
And I ’ m here to tell you that “ Sounds of the Eighties ” also features : “ Sounds of the Eighties ” is no ordinary mixtape .
It contains every chart-topping song of the nineteen-eighties , and every other noise made on Planet Earth during the ten years between January 1 , 1980 , and December 31 , 1989 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Farts .
You name it !
All in a handy four-hundred-billion-CD set .
It was the decade when the Berlin Wall tumbled down .
And you can actually hear Communism ’ s fall , along with everything the Stasi recorded—not to mention everything they missed .
To order “ Sounds of the Eighties , ” just send us a check or money order for $ 19.95 .
You ’ ll get the first seventeen thousand CDs within thirty days .
Then we ’ ll send you seventeen thousand additional CDs each month , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ until you reach the full four hundred billion .
There ’ s no obligation .
You can cancel anytime .
But you won ’ t—not when you hear your speakers play : You ’ ll love singing along to at least two of those .
( It ’ s tough to remember all the verses of “ Hold Me Now.
” ) “ Sounds of the Eighties ” is convenient .
You can play it in your car , burn it to your computer , or listen to one disk on headphones as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The commemorative liner notes answer questions like “ Which animal made that shriek ?
” and “ Which mug did Mom break right before cursing over and over again , releasing tension built up over what had been a really difficult month ?
” For the first time , all the auditory emissions of the eighties are together in one place .
Even cicadas .
Don ’ t waste any more of your time browsing the Web , rifling through the stacks at the used-cassette store , or building a time machine @ @ @ @ @ @ @ only costs around one-millionth of one cent per minute .
Order today , and get jammin ’ to : Your nostalgia kept you warm for years , as life became more and more complicated .
But now , in the harsh light of all the things you never previously heard , even that comfort can not survive .
You never really knew anyone .
But forget the cruel gossip , skip ahead , and unwind with tracks including : “ Sounds of the Eighties ” is not sold in stores—it won ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ inform you that “ Every Heartbeat , ” by Amy Grant , isn ’ t on “ Sounds of the Eighties.
” We know that the song , which reached No .
2 on the Billboard Hot 100 , has an aesthetic that you might think belongs in the nineteen-eighties—but it was released in 1991 .
Still , the collection does include every heartbeat of Amy Grant , and of every other living thing , from throughout the decade .
Also , “ Every Heartbeat ” is available on “ Sounds of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ songs that were popular in the nineteen-nineties .

Do you miss the sounds of the nineteen-eighties? Would you do anything to get them back? Now you can have them delivered straight to your home. They’re all here in the incredible compilation album “Sounds of the Eighties,” which includes hits like:
“Puttin’ on the Ritz”
Taco
“I’m So Excited”
The Pointer Sisters
“New York City Traffic”
December 3, 1981
And more!
I’m Mark Goodman and I’m Martha Quinn. (I’m both.) You remember watching me on MTV—hanging out at the mall and struggling to solve that Rubik’s Cube. And I’m here to tell you that “Sounds of the Eighties” also features:
“Down Under”
Men at Work
“Goody Two Shoes”
Adam Ant
“Your Parents Arguing About Your Disciplinary Problems at School, and Your Dad Peeling Out of the Driveway, Followed by You Weeping Violently Because You Fear He’ll Never Come Back”
April 7, 1983
“Sounds of the Eighties” is no ordinary mixtape. It contains every chart-topping song of the nineteen-eighties, and every other noise made on Planet Earth during the ten years between January 1, 1980, and December 31, 1989. Vacuum cleaners. Whispered secrets. Farts. You name it! All in a handy four-hundred-billion-CD set.
It was the decade when the Berlin Wall tumbled down. And you can actually hear Communism’s fall, along with everything the Stasi recorded—not to mention everything they missed.
To order “Sounds of the Eighties,” just send us a check or money order for $19.95. You’ll get the first seventeen thousand CDs within thirty days. Then we’ll send you seventeen thousand additional CDs each month, for only $19.95 per installment, until you reach the full four hundred billion.
There’s no obligation. You can cancel anytime. But you won’t—not when you hear your speakers play:
“Hold Me Now”
Thompson Twins
“Straight Up”
Paula Abdul
“Every Single Conversation Michael Dukakis Had for Ten Years”
1980–89
You’ll love singing along to at least two of those. (It’s tough to remember all the verses of “Hold Me Now.”) “Sounds of the Eighties” is convenient. You can play it in your car, burn it to your computer, or listen to one disk on headphones as you organize some of the other disks. The commemorative liner notes answer questions like “Which animal made that shriek?” and “Which mug did Mom break right before cursing over and over again, releasing tension built up over what had been a really difficult month?”
Plus:
“Too Shy”
Kajagoogoo
“Pilot of Short-Lived Sitcom ‘Singer and Sons,’ Starring Fred Stoller”
NBC
“Livin’ on a Prayer”
Bon Jovi
For the first time, all the auditory emissions of the eighties are together in one place. Even cicadas. Don’t waste any more of your time browsing the Web, rifling through the stacks at the used-cassette store, or building a time machine. This is far easier, and only costs around one-millionth of one cent per minute. Order today, and get jammin’ to:
“Everything Your So-Called Friends Ever Said About You”
Your So-Called Friends, 1980–89
“Tell Her About It”
Billy Joel
“Everything Your So-Called Friends Ever Said About You While ‘Tell Her About It’ Played in the Background During a Party at Michael’s House to Which Your So-Called Friends Didn’t Invite You”
Your So-Called Friends and Billy Joel, February 15, 1985
Your nostalgia kept you warm for years, as life became more and more complicated. But now, in the harsh light of all the things you never previously heard, even that comfort cannot survive. You never really knew anyone. But forget the cruel gossip, skip ahead, and unwind with tracks including:
“Don’t You Want Me”
The Human League
“Don’t You Want Me” (Radio Edit)
The Human League
“Someone Either Peeing or Pouring Out a Bottle of Soda That’s Gone Flat”
August 12, 1989
“Sounds of the Eighties” is not sold in stores—it won’t fit in stores.
We regret to inform you that “Every Heartbeat,” by Amy Grant, isn’t on “Sounds of the Eighties.” We know that the song, which reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, has an aesthetic that you might think belongs in the nineteen-eighties—but it was released in 1991. Still, the collection does include every heartbeat of Amy Grant, and of every other living thing, from throughout the decade.
Also, “Every Heartbeat” is available on “Sounds of the Nineties,” a four-disk compilation of songs that were popular in the nineteen-nineties.


newyorker--2020-11-18--Arthur Sze Reads Robert Hass

Arthur Sze Reads Robert Hass

Arthur Sze joins Kevin Young to read “ The Problem of Describing Trees , ” by Robert Hass , and @ @ @ @ @ ” Sze has received the Lannan Literary Award , the Jackson Poetry Prize , and @ @ @ @ @ National Book Award in Poetry .

Download a transcript.
Photograph by Greg Allen / Invision / AP / Shutterstock
Arthur Sze joins Kevin Young to read “The Problem of Describing Trees,” by Robert Hass, and his own poem “Vectors.” Sze has received the Lannan Literary Award, the Jackson Poetry Prize, and, in 2019, the National Book Award in Poetry.


newyorker--2020-11-18--Should America Still Police the World?

Should America Still Police the World?

But F.D.R .
was not interested .
Indeed , he was offended .
“ I got mad clear through , ” he wrote .
Who were the British to dump their burdens onto his lap ?
Saving civilization was their job .
The United States ’ army at the time was only slightly larger than Bulgaria ’ s , with little ability to hold back illiberal forces in Central Europe .
“ What the British need , ” F.D.R .
concluded , was to buck up with “ a good stiff grog.
” That was perhaps the last time a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hegemony .
As Stephen Wertheim explains in his new history , “ Tomorrow , the World , ” the Second World War is what changed Roosevelt ’ s mind , and the minds of nearly all those around him .
The fall of France , in 1940 , convinced U.S. leaders of the need to enter the fray .
In 1941 , the publisher Henry Luce went further and proposed an “ American Century , ” a postwar global order led by the values , institutions , and ultimately the military force of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ idea was controversial at first , yet by the end of the war it seemed inevitable .
By then , the hastily expanded U.S. military had gained footholds all over the planet , and Washington was reluctant to give them up .
As Roosevelt ’ s successor , Harry Truman , put it to Congress , in late 1945 , “ We must relentlessly preserve our superiority on land and sea and in the air.
” And relentless that preservation has been .
Today , the Pentagon controls around seven hundred and fifty @ @ @ @ @ @ @ territories—a pointillist empire that spans the globe .
Last spring , Mike Pence told West Point ’ s graduating class that it was a “ virtual certainty ” they would see combat .
( He then offered an expansive list of possible locales , from the Americas to the Korean Peninsula . )
Even in the absence of troops on the ground , U.S. drones hover overhead , surveilling people and occasionally firing missiles at them .
By the calculations of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism , the United States has killed more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ air strikes than by police shootings .
The argument for this widespread application of violence is a familiar one .
Were it not for the U.S. military , we are told , the world would be lawless and dangerous .
“ If we have to use force , it is because we are America ; we are the indispensable nation , ” Madeleine Albright , Bill Clinton ’ s Secretary of State , explained , in a famous formulation .
“ We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ eye rolls , but never more than now .
Among the political pieties that Donald Trump shredded , in his four years as President , is the notion that the United States stands for anything but stark self-interest .
He scorned international agreements , romanced dictators , and made laughable the notion that the United States might be an impartial umpire in world affairs .
Though he seemed less focussed on global leadership than his predecessors , this was not out of deference to international norms .
When asked to define the Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it plainly : “ We ’ re America , bitches.
” Just as George Floyd ’ s killing sharpened a crisis of legitimacy for police departments , Trump ’ s reign sharpened one for Washington ’ s foreign policy .
For billions abroad , it ’ s made certain questions hard to ignore .
Why does this one country have the power it does ?
When that power is abused , can the United States be held to account ?
By whom ?
There ’ s never been a time , in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people around the world approved of U.S. leadership , but that number is now less than a third , according to Gallup ’ s polling .
In other words , the United States is markedly less popular globally than Trump is domestically .
Surely Joe Biden , who has promised to end the crass posturing and cultivate allies , will restore some international favor .
But will his election change anything on a deeper level ?
Two recent books shed some light .
One , by the former Defense Secretary Robert Gates , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ beacon to oppressed peoples everywhere ” that , under Trump , temporarily strayed from its mission .
The other , by the conservative Australian-British political scientist Patrick Porter , regards such talk as a gauzy fiction .
For Porter , Trump is “ less an aberration than a culmination.
” Gates ’ s latest book , “ Exercise of Power , ” offers a stark view of the world .
The country is “ challenged on every front , ” Gates believes .
The places the United States must police are , in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” ( Iran ) , a “ curse ” ( Iraq ) , a “ primitive country ” ( Afghanistan ) , and a “ sinkhole of conflict and terrorism ” ( the Middle East ) .
Its adversaries form a rogue ’ s gallery of “ bad guys , ” “ thugs , ” “ serial cheaters and liars , ” and “ ever-duplicitous Pakistanis.
” The United States , by contrast , Gates sees as “ the most steadfast example and proponent of human rights and individual liberty , and defender @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to put ill-intentioned actors in their place has been , by his reckoning , an enormous boon .
Direct confrontations between the so-called “ great powers ” are routinely the deadliest wars , yet we are living in the longest stretch free of them since the Roman Empire .
Wars of conquest are nearly a thing of the past , and , though the world possesses more than ten thousand nuclear weapons , not one has been detonated in anger in three-quarters of a century .
Gates believes that U.S. primacy has been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ affairs .
Which is why its erosion—straying allies , defiant enemies—concerns him so much .
Gates blames the crisis on “ recent political leaders ” who have wielded power ineptly .
They have leaned too heavily on the military and neglected such other “ instruments of power ” as persuasion , trade , aid , sanctions , public relations , and covert action .
What Gates seeks , in essence , is reform : fewer choke holds , more community policing .
A more supple exertion of influence , he argues , will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ supremacy and “ ensure that authoritarianism , twice defeated in the twentieth century , does not prevail in the twenty-first.
” Gates ’ s sense that the United States has relied too much on its armed forces is widely shared .
Biden has also complained of it , and a recent Gallup poll found people nearly twice as likely to say that Washington is spending too much on its military as too little .
They ’ re right .
U.S.A.I.D.
, the governmental agency for distributing aid , has some three thousand five @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of a large newspaper or small university .
The Defense Department , the agency for distributing force , is , by contrast , the world ’ s largest employer .
It counts 2.1 million in uniform , plus more than seven hundred thousand civilian workers—it ’ s more than eight hundred times U.S.A.I.D.
’ s size .
Gates describes the foreign-facing side of the government as “ a nineteenth-century tricycle , with a giant front wheel ( Defense ) and tiny back wheels ( everything else ) .
” Turning away from militarism @ @ @ @ @ @ @ At one point , Gates discusses North Korea , which continues to develop its nuclear arsenal .
In 2017 , Trump , in his first address to the United Nations , threatened to “ totally destroy ” the country .
But Gates believes that North Korea will never voluntarily relinquish its nuclear weapons and that any attempt to force the issue could trigger a major war .
“ Perhaps , then , we should change the goal , lower our sights , and seek an agreement that limits the North ’ s nuclear @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It would be no chest-thumping victory , but Gates appears to have little interest in those .
It ’ s refreshing to see Gates cast a skeptical eye on received truths .
Yet there is one political axiom he refuses to question : U.S. primacy .
Peace and safety , in Gates ’ s final estimation , are not goods secured coöperatively by well-meaning countries .
They depend , rather , “ almost entirely on long-term American strength , engagement , and leadership.
” But why should this be ?
A justification is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s insistence that the United States is uniquely “ on the side of liberty and human dignity.
” And even that assertion fits oddly with his hard-bitten realism .
U.S. Presidents should avoid intervening with force , Gates writes , unless there is “ a threat to American vital interests.
” If intervention is ultimately a question of interests , though , why should other countries have any faith that Washington is protecting the collective good ?
It ’ s like trusting a police chief who brags about sending out officers only @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on the line .
Consider the matter of the International Criminal Court in The Hague—which was created , in 1998 , in the wake of the Rwandan genocide .
The court promised to be a pillar of a rules-based system , bringing war criminals to justice no matter their nationality .
Yet when it became clear that the rules would apply to the United States , Washington balked .
“ American armed forces have a unique peacekeeping role , posted to hot spots around the world , ” David Scheffer , the country @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , explained .
What if U.S. service members were arrested for war crimes or crimes against humanity ?
“ We simply can not be expected to expose our people to those sorts of risks , ” Scheffer insisted .
“ It is an absolute bottom line with us.
” Scheffer wasn ’ t bluffing .
In the year that the court opened its doors , Congress passed a law banning military aid ( with exceptions ) to any country willing to comply with the court .
The law also authorized military force to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the court , earning it the nickname The Hague Invasion Act .
In the name of preserving order , Porter writes , “ the superpower sought immunity from the ICC , reserving the right literally to attack its institutions.
” He notes that even such champions of internationalism as Joe Biden , Hillary Clinton , and John Kerry voted for the law .
Such is the way of hegemony , argues Porter .
Rule-makers aren ’ t generally rule-takers .
Porter , a realist in the classical tradition , is untroubled by this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ false promise ” that hegemony can be benevolent—a delusion , he believes , that warps the world view of U.S. leaders .
From their perspective , the international order created in 1945 has been a blessing .
They have thus struggled to understand why foreigners might not be content or might perceive U.S. policing as a threat .
Puffed up on their own hype , policymakers in Washington have been repeatedly “ shocked ” when their “ obviously benign actions result in resistance , ” Porter writes .
Seeing themselves as pure , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the world as wicked : a sinkhole teeming with thugs , bad guys , and ever-duplicitous Pakistanis .
“ You know why they hate us ?
” George W. Bush asked after Al Qaeda ’ s attacks on September 11 , 2001 .
“ They hate us because we love freedom.
” Such a world view leads easily to the conclusion that Something Must Be Done .
Bush started Middle Eastern wars in the name of freedom—wars that , in different forms , Obama and Trump continued .
The titles of the military @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of liberal ambitions : Operation Iraqi Freedom , Operation Enduring Freedom , Operation Freedom ’ s Sentinel , Operation New Dawn .
We ’ re now at Operation Inherent Resolve , the ongoing mission to extirpate the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria .
It ’ s the first one whose name makes no reference to freedom or transformation , yet it would be optimistic to interpret this as a backing down .
Recent years have shown Washington ’ s military commitments to be wedged tightly in place .
This past September , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ we are out of Syria ” other than to guard its oil fields , the Pentagon announced that it was increasing troop levels by twenty per cent .

In 1939, shortly before the German invasion of Poland, a British emissary, Lord Lothian, visited the White House with an unusual request. The United Kingdom was unable to protect the world from the Nazis, Lothian told President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. “Anglo-Saxon civilization” would thus need a new guardian. The scepter was falling from British hands, Lothian explained, and the United States must “snatch it up.” Though informally made, it was an extraordinary entreaty. London was willing to step aside and let Washington lead the world.
But F.D.R. was not interested. Indeed, he was offended. “I got mad clear through,” he wrote. Who were the British to dump their burdens onto his lap? Saving civilization was their job. The United States’ army at the time was only slightly larger than Bulgaria’s, with little ability to hold back illiberal forces in Central Europe. “What the British need,” F.D.R. concluded, was to buck up with “a good stiff grog.”
That was perhaps the last time a President would be so blithe about U.S. hegemony. As Stephen Wertheim explains in his new history, “Tomorrow, the World,” the Second World War is what changed Roosevelt’s mind, and the minds of nearly all those around him. The fall of France, in 1940, convinced U.S. leaders of the need to enter the fray. In 1941, the publisher Henry Luce went further and proposed an “American Century,” a postwar global order led by the values, institutions, and ultimately the military force of the United States. Luce’s idea was controversial at first, yet by the end of the war it seemed inevitable. By then, the hastily expanded U.S. military had gained footholds all over the planet, and Washington was reluctant to give them up. As Roosevelt’s successor, Harry Truman, put it to Congress, in late 1945, “We must relentlessly preserve our superiority on land and sea and in the air.”
And relentless that preservation has been. Today, the Pentagon controls around seven hundred and fifty bases in some eighty foreign countries and territories—a pointillist empire that spans the globe. Last spring, Mike Pence told West Point’s graduating class that it was a “virtual certainty” they would see combat. (He then offered an expansive list of possible locales, from the Americas to the Korean Peninsula.) Even in the absence of troops on the ground, U.S. drones hover overhead, surveilling people and occasionally firing missiles at them. By the calculations of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, the United States has killed more people in the past five years by air strikes than by police shootings.
The argument for this widespread application of violence is a familiar one. Were it not for the U.S. military, we are told, the world would be lawless and dangerous. “If we have to use force, it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation,” Madeleine Albright, Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State, explained, in a famous formulation. “We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future.”
Such self-aggrandizement has often provoked eye rolls, but never more than now. Among the political pieties that Donald Trump shredded, in his four years as President, is the notion that the United States stands for anything but stark self-interest. He scorned international agreements, romanced dictators, and made laughable the notion that the United States might be an impartial umpire in world affairs. Though he seemed less focussed on global leadership than his predecessors, this was not out of deference to international norms. When asked to define the Trump Doctrine, one senior Administration official put it plainly: “We’re America, bitches.”
Just as George Floyd’s killing sharpened a crisis of legitimacy for police departments, Trump’s reign sharpened one for Washington’s foreign policy. For billions abroad, it’s made certain questions hard to ignore. Why does this one country have the power it does? When that power is abused, can the United States be held to account? By whom? There’s never been a time, in the past decade, when a majority of people around the world approved of U.S. leadership, but that number is now less than a third, according to Gallup’s polling. In other words, the United States is markedly less popular globally than Trump is domestically.
Surely Joe Biden, who has promised to end the crass posturing and cultivate allies, will restore some international favor. But will his election change anything on a deeper level? Two recent books shed some light. One, by the former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, sees the United States as a “beacon to oppressed peoples everywhere” that, under Trump, temporarily strayed from its mission. The other, by the conservative Australian-British political scientist Patrick Porter, regards such talk as a gauzy fiction. For Porter, Trump is “less an aberration than a culmination.”
Robert Gates’s first memoir was titled “From the Shadows,” and that is an apt description of where Gates has comfortably resided. He is not a flashy man—a colleague once likened him to “the guy at P. C. Richards who sold microwave ovens”—but he has been for decades a quietly persistent presence in foreign policymaking. Gates has served as the Defense Secretary, C.I.A. chief, and deputy national-security adviser, among other roles. Unusually, he has occupied high positions under both Democratic and Republican Presidents. After George W. Bush placed him in charge of the Defense Department, Barack Obama kept him there as a trusted source of counsel. He has called Biden “a man of genuine integrity” and Trump “unfit to be Commander-in-Chief.”
Gates’s latest book, “Exercise of Power,” offers a stark view of the world. The country is “challenged on every front,” Gates believes. The places the United States must police are, in his various descriptions, a “bane” (Iran), a “curse” (Iraq), a “primitive country” (Afghanistan), and a “sinkhole of conflict and terrorism” (the Middle East). Its adversaries form a rogue’s gallery of “bad guys,” “thugs,” “serial cheaters and liars,” and “ever-duplicitous Pakistanis.”
The United States, by contrast, Gates sees as “the most steadfast example and proponent of human rights and individual liberty, and defender of the repressed everywhere.” Its willingness to put ill-intentioned actors in their place has been, by his reckoning, an enormous boon. Direct confrontations between the so-called “great powers” are routinely the deadliest wars, yet we are living in the longest stretch free of them since the Roman Empire. Wars of conquest are nearly a thing of the past, and, though the world possesses more than ten thousand nuclear weapons, not one has been detonated in anger in three-quarters of a century.
Gates believes that U.S. primacy has been essential to this relatively calm state of affairs. Which is why its erosion—straying allies, defiant enemies—concerns him so much. Gates blames the crisis on “recent political leaders” who have wielded power ineptly. They have leaned too heavily on the military and neglected such other “instruments of power” as persuasion, trade, aid, sanctions, public relations, and covert action. What Gates seeks, in essence, is reform: fewer choke holds, more community policing. A more supple exertion of influence, he argues, will shore up the United States’ flagging supremacy and “ensure that authoritarianism, twice defeated in the twentieth century, does not prevail in the twenty-first.”
Gates’s sense that the United States has relied too much on its armed forces is widely shared. Biden has also complained of it, and a recent Gallup poll found people nearly twice as likely to say that Washington is spending too much on its military as too little. They’re right. U.S.A.I.D., the governmental agency for distributing aid, has some three thousand five hundred employees, making it the size of a large newspaper or small university. The Defense Department, the agency for distributing force, is, by contrast, the world’s largest employer. It counts 2.1 million in uniform, plus more than seven hundred thousand civilian workers—it’s more than eight hundred times U.S.A.I.D.’s size. Gates describes the foreign-facing side of the government as “a nineteenth-century tricycle, with a giant front wheel (Defense) and tiny back wheels (everything else).”
Turning away from militarism means accepting limits on U.S. influence. At one point, Gates discusses North Korea, which continues to develop its nuclear arsenal. In 2017, Trump, in his first address to the United Nations, threatened to “totally destroy” the country. But Gates believes that North Korea will never voluntarily relinquish its nuclear weapons and that any attempt to force the issue could trigger a major war. “Perhaps, then, we should change the goal, lower our sights, and seek an agreement that limits the North’s nuclear weapons arsenal,” he writes. It would be no chest-thumping victory, but Gates appears to have little interest in those.
It’s refreshing to see Gates cast a skeptical eye on received truths. Yet there is one political axiom he refuses to question: U.S. primacy. Peace and safety, in Gates’s final estimation, are not goods secured coöperatively by well-meaning countries. They depend, rather, “almost entirely on long-term American strength, engagement, and leadership.”
But why should this be? A justification is hard to make out, beyond Gates’s insistence that the United States is uniquely “on the side of liberty and human dignity.”And even that assertion fits oddly with his hard-bitten realism. U.S. Presidents should avoid intervening with force, Gates writes, unless there is “a threat to American vital interests.” If intervention is ultimately a question of interests, though, why should other countries have any faith that Washington is protecting the collective good? It’s like trusting a police chief who brags about sending out officers only when the department’s budget is on the line.
Such questions lie at the heart of Patrick Porter’s bracing book, “The False Promise of Liberal Order.” In Porter’s view, the issue is not that policymakers like Gates are hypocritical; it’s that the very idea of a “liberal order” is contradictory. Liberalism, in the context of international relations, means freedom, equality, and consent, whereas world orders are hierarchies that rest “on the threat of force.” The United States, Porter writes, is the “gentlest hegemon thus far.” But it’s still a hegemon, and hegemony entails domination.
Consider the matter of the International Criminal Court in The Hague—which was created, in 1998, in the wake of the Rwandan genocide. The court promised to be a pillar of a rules-based system, bringing war criminals to justice no matter their nationality. Yet when it became clear that the rules would apply to the United States, Washington balked. “American armed forces have a unique peacekeeping role, posted to hot spots around the world,” David Scheffer, the country’s first ambassador-at-large for war-crimes issues, explained. What if U.S. service members were arrested for war crimes or crimes against humanity? “We simply cannot be expected to expose our people to those sorts of risks,” Scheffer insisted. “It is an absolute bottom line with us.”


newyorker--2020-11-18--How We Can Contain the Second Wave of the Coronavirus

I recently discussed the state of the pandemic with Céline Gounder , an infectious-disease specialist and epidemiologist at Bellevue Hospital and N.Y.U.
’ s Grossman School of Medicine .
She is the host of the “ Epidemic ” podcast and a member of the Biden-Harris transition team ’ s COVID-19 advisory board .
During our conversation , which has been edited for length and clarity , we discussed how public-health professionals should approach their messaging this winter , the continuing importance of “ flattening the curve , ” and the challenges of planning the next Administration ’ s coronavirus response @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bad again ?
Is it people not wearing masks ?
Is it activities that we shouldn ’ t be doing ?
Was it inevitable ?
How do you understand it ?
I think the No .
1 reason is that the weather is getting cooler and people are spending more time indoors .
There ’ s no question that that is a big factor .
We typically do see colds and the flu increase during this time of year , and the coronavirus is very similar in that it ’ s another respiratory @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we have been predicting .
We have been saying it ’ ll slow down a little bit , relatively speaking , over the summer , but it will not go away , and then it will surge again in the fall and winter , and that ’ s precisely the pattern that we ’ re seeing now .
The other thing is that it ’ s become very clear that social gatherings , whether they are in restaurants or at home , are major drivers of this in terms of the transmission .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ people letting their guard down and government policies not being strict enough in terms of the restaurant angle .
The challenge with restaurants is that you can not eat and drink with a mask on , and if you are indoor-dining you also have the loss of ventilation , and you ’ re in close proximity with other people .
So restaurants and bars , at least indoors , are really some of the worst places from the perspective of transmission .
In terms of the bigger picture , I ’ ve heard @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Well , I trust so-and-so about spending time with them or maybe celebrating the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday with them.
” And I think it ’ s really important to understand that the coronavirus hitches a ride on our trust and our love for our family and friends .
It ’ s actually the people we trust most whom we ’ re most likely to infect and who are most likely to infect us , because we ’ re not going to take those same precautions with the people we love and trust @ @ @ @ @ @ @ What ’ s the message ?
Despite there being vaccines that are now about to emerge from the pipeline and that will soon have emergency-use authorizations—likely in the next month or so , between the Pfizer vaccine and the Moderna vaccine—it ’ s still going to be a long road ahead before those are widely available to the general public .
So we ’ re really going to have to focus on the basics of public-health control here—that ’ s mask wearing , social distancing , outdoors versus indoors , testing and contact @ @ @ @ @ @ @ masks , masks are cheap , highly effective , and they do not shut down the economy .
They ’ re really as close to a vaccine as anything that we have available to us right now .
And , unfortunately , they have been politicized .
The way I think about masks is that masks are like toilet paper .
This should not be a political statement .
This is really a basic hygienic measure .
When we saw a surge in the spring , it was pretty clear that there were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ such as a lack of testing .
Are there some large-scale structural failures going on right now that are exacerbating this ?
Or is it more matters of messaging , and things like that ?
Well , messaging has really been a problem in terms of what the current Administration has been saying and communicating to the public throughout the pandemic .
You mentioned testing , and this current Administration has really discouraged testing , because it really did not want to see and did not want the public to know what was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ scale of the problem .
The challenge is that it is impossible to contain an invisible enemy , and the problem with the coronavirus is that many of the infections are asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic , so people have no or few symptoms .
So what we are seeing in hospitals , in terms of people getting really sick and dying , is really the very tiny tip of the iceberg .
Even though many , many people are getting sick and dying , there are far , far more who are getting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ only way to see what are essentially invisible infections is to massively scale up testing .
So the message should have been : get tested .
That has been a major failure .
We also talked about masks , and that has also been a major failure of communication .
Is a lack of testing still a problem in your mind ?
Yeah .
We still need to scale up our testing .
In New York , for example , as the positivity rate has gone up , and people have become aware @ @ @ @ @ @ @ New York City , people have been seeking out testing at higher rates .
And what we have found is that some of the testing centers have had very , very long lines , which then discourages people from going and also results in longer turnaround times .
So we really do need to be scaling up testing dramatically across the country , and doing so in a way that we have short turnaround times , ideally within twenty-four hours , because this information needs to be actionable .
You need to know @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you can go into isolation , so that you ’ re not transmitting to others .
If you have to wait a couple days , a lot of people will keep on doing what they would normally do and will not change their behavior until they have a positive test result .
And , by that time , you ’ ve already done the bulk of your transmitting to others .
So it ’ s really defeating the purpose not to have widely available , conveniently available testing with short turnaround times .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ learned about school closures and school openings , and how should we view what we ’ ve learned in the context of things getting much worse across the country ?
I think , big picture , we have moved from what I would call coronavirus control 1.0 to coronavirus control 2.0 .
In the spring , we were not a hundred-per-cent sure how much of this was spread through droplets versus airborne transmission versus direct contacts .
So now we have a much better understanding of that .
This is clearly a respiratory @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , in terms of schools , we ’ ve also learned that younger children really do not seem to be major transmitters to adults .
We ’ re not entirely sure why that is , although we have some theories .
But what that means is that , while the risk is not zero , the risk of keeping kids—especially younger kids—in school was probably overestimated in the beginning .
We can now really make it safe for younger students , twelve and under , to be back in school , especially if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , mask wearing , ventilation .
Having kids in school is what I would call one of the more essential services , and it ’ s relatively low risk .
So , recently , Governor Gretchen Whitmer announced new restrictions in Michigan , and you ’ ll note that—based on what we ’ ve learned , where schools have the ability to provide those safety measures—they ’ re keeping schools for younger kids open .
They ’ re closing high schools and colleges to in-person learning , because that ’ s riskier .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ they ’ re closing group classes in gyms but , where the appropriate safety measures are in place , leaving open the option of individual exercise at a gym .
They are leaving open outdoor dining and takeout but closing indoor dining .
So we can be a lot more targeted and measured than we were in the beginning , when we were much more blunt .
That was going to be my next question , which is what we learned about shutdowns and what we can do differently this time , because @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to be less willing to take necessary measures .
Yeah .
I think the key is that you need to be as targeted as possible , and you need to explain the science behind it .
In New York City , we saw a surge of coronavirus in the last couple months in certain neighborhoods—in Brooklyn , for example .
And we took a very geographically targeted approach , on the basis of Zip Codes , to really scale up testing , ramp up contact tracing , and close certain places that seemed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were able to take that much more geographically targeted approach because we had the surveillance data .

This month, the United States reached a record number of coronavirus cases, with an average of a hundred and fifty thousand new cases per day and the highest number of patients hospitalized since the pandemic began. Unlike in the initial surge, in the spring, which saw enormous outbreaks in urban centers such as New York, the virus is now tearing through the entire country. The onset of winter weather and the mass migration of people travelling to celebrate the holidays are likely to lead to both more cases and new shutdowns. Death rates remain lower than they were in the spring, but the country is likely to reach a death toll of two hundred and fifty thousand within days, which approaches the number of Americans killed in combat during the Second World War.
I recently discussed the state of the pandemic with Céline Gounder, an infectious-disease specialist and epidemiologist at Bellevue Hospital and N.Y.U.’s Grossman School of Medicine. She is the host of the “Epidemic” podcast and a member of the Biden-Harris transition team’s COVID-19 advisory board. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed how public-health professionals should approach their messaging this winter, the continuing importance of “flattening the curve,” and the challenges of planning the next Administration’s coronavirus response.
Why exactly have things got so bad again? Is it people not wearing masks? Is it activities that we shouldn’t be doing? Was it inevitable? How do you understand it?
I think the No. 1 reason is that the weather is getting cooler and people are spending more time indoors. There’s no question that that is a big factor. We typically do see colds and the flu increase during this time of year, and the coronavirus is very similar in that it’s another respiratory viral illness. So this is something we have been predicting. We have been saying it’ll slow down a little bit, relatively speaking, over the summer, but it will not go away, and then it will surge again in the fall and winter, and that’s precisely the pattern that we’re seeing now. The other thing is that it’s become very clear that social gatherings, whether they are in restaurants or at home, are major drivers of this in terms of the transmission.
So this would be some combination of people letting their guard down and government policies not being strict enough in terms of the restaurant angle.
The challenge with restaurants is that you cannot eat and drink with a mask on, and if you are indoor-dining you also have the loss of ventilation, and you’re in close proximity with other people. So restaurants and bars, at least indoors, are really some of the worst places from the perspective of transmission. In terms of the bigger picture, I’ve heard a lot of people say things like “Well, I trust so-and-so about spending time with them or maybe celebrating the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday with them.” And I think it’s really important to understand that the coronavirus hitches a ride on our trust and our love for our family and friends. It’s actually the people we trust most whom we’re most likely to infect and who are most likely to infect us, because we’re not going to take those same precautions with the people we love and trust.
How do you combat that? What’s the message?
Despite there being vaccines that are now about to emerge from the pipeline and that will soon have emergency-use authorizations—likely in the next month or so, between the Pfizer vaccine and the Moderna vaccine—it’s still going to be a long road ahead before those are widely available to the general public. So we’re really going to have to focus on the basics of public-health control here—that’s mask wearing, social distancing, outdoors versus indoors, testing and contact tracing. And, with respect to masks, masks are cheap, highly effective, and they do not shut down the economy. They’re really as close to a vaccine as anything that we have available to us right now. And, unfortunately, they have been politicized. The way I think about masks is that masks are like toilet paper. This should not be a political statement. This is really a basic hygienic measure.
When we saw a surge in the spring, it was pretty clear that there were some failures from the federal government, such as a lack of testing. Are there some large-scale structural failures going on right now that are exacerbating this? Or is it more matters of messaging, and things like that?
Well, messaging has really been a problem in terms of what the current Administration has been saying and communicating to the public throughout the pandemic. You mentioned testing, and this current Administration has really discouraged testing, because it really did not want to see and did not want the public to know what was truly happening with coronavirus transmission and the scale of the problem. The challenge is that it is impossible to contain an invisible enemy, and the problem with the coronavirus is that many of the infections are asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic, so people have no or few symptoms. So what we are seeing in hospitals, in terms of people getting really sick and dying, is really the very tiny tip of the iceberg. Even though many, many people are getting sick and dying, there are far, far more who are getting infected and transmitting the virus. The only way to see what are essentially invisible infections is to massively scale up testing. So the message should have been: get tested. That has been a major failure. We also talked about masks, and that has also been a major failure of communication.
Is a lack of testing still a problem in your mind?
Yeah. We still need to scale up our testing. In New York, for example, as the positivity rate has gone up, and people have become aware that there is increasing coronavirus transmission in New York City, people have been seeking out testing at higher rates. And what we have found is that some of the testing centers have had very, very long lines, which then discourages people from going and also results in longer turnaround times. So we really do need to be scaling up testing dramatically across the country, and doing so in a way that we have short turnaround times, ideally within twenty-four hours, because this information needs to be actionable. You need to know that you’re infected so that you can go into isolation, so that you’re not transmitting to others. If you have to wait a couple days, a lot of people will keep on doing what they would normally do and will not change their behavior until they have a positive test result. And, by that time, you’ve already done the bulk of your transmitting to others. So it’s really defeating the purpose not to have widely available, conveniently available testing with short turnaround times.
What do you think we’ve learned about school closures and school openings, and how should we view what we’ve learned in the context of things getting much worse across the country?
I think, big picture, we have moved from what I would call coronavirus control 1.0 to coronavirus control 2.0. In the spring, we were not a hundred-per-cent sure how much of this was spread through droplets versus airborne transmission versus direct contacts. So now we have a much better understanding of that. This is clearly a respiratory virus, first and foremost. And, in terms of schools, we’ve also learned that younger children really do not seem to be major transmitters to adults. We’re not entirely sure why that is, although we have some theories. But what that means is that, while the risk is not zero, the risk of keeping kids—especially younger kids—in school was probably overestimated in the beginning. We can now really make it safe for younger students, twelve and under, to be back in school, especially if we institute safety measures like social distancing, mask wearing, ventilation.


newyorker--2020-11-18--What Kind of Economy Will Joe Biden Inherit?

Biden was referring to the pandemic , but his remarks also apply to the economy , the fate of which is inextricably tied to the virus .
In the short term , the economic prognosis is grim .
As states introduce new restrictions on businesses—California , on Monday , announced that it was “ pulling the emergency brake ” on its reopening—there may well be another round of furloughs and layoffs .
And this is happening at a time when many of the pandemic-support programs that Congress introduced in March are coming to an end .
The federal extension of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ example , and the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program , which allowed gig workers to receive jobless benefits for the first time , will both expire at the end of next month .
The deadline for new applications to the Paycheck Protection Program , which pays small businesses to keep workers on their payrolls , has already passed .
Biden pointed out that these coronavirus-relief programs are “ keeping Americans afloat.
” Extending them and providing more financial assistance to states and municipalities that have seen their tax revenues plummet in 2020 is not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it would prevent further damage to the economy in the form of business failures , job losses , and insolvencies .
Looking further ahead , Biden also outlined elements of the “ Build Back Better ” plan that he put forward during the campaign .
He did not , however , dwell on the longer-term macroeconomic environment that his Administration will face , which , following the positive news from Pfizer and Moderna about the results of their vaccine trials , has become a hot topic of debate among economists .
As always @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
During an interview with the Brookings Institution ’ s Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy on Monday , Richard Clarida , a former Columbia University economist who is the vice-chair of the Federal Reserve Board , laid out an optimistic scenario , in which the lifting of restrictions on travel and other activities generates an outpouring of demand .
“ There is an enormous quantity of pent-up saving , ” Clarida said , pointing to estimates that American households have built up more than a trillion dollars in extra savings .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ my professional career when disposable income actually went up in a deep recession .
And a lot of that has been saved , a lot of that has been forcibly saved , because people haven ’ t necessarily been able to go out and spend all of that.
” In their latest public projections , Clarida and his colleagues on the Fed ’ s policymaking committee predicted that G.D.P .
would expand by four per cent in 2021 and that the unemployment rate , which is currently at 6.9 per cent , would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fourth quarter of next year .
That would represent a decent recovery .
But , in his interview , Clarida pointed to the possibility of even stronger economic outcomes , including some “ very , very attractive ” ones .
“ And obviously , ” he added , “ the odds of that have gone up relative to where we were before the vaccine news.
” Clarida ’ s comments jibed with the arguments of other optimists , on Wall Street and elsewhere .
In a recent note about the prospects for 2021 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said that mass immunization and the removal of coronavirus restrictions “ should fuel a mid-year consumption boom as restored opportunities to spend allow households to substantially lower their saving rates and spend accumulated excess savings.
” One of the most upbeat economists is Tim Duy , a University of Oregon professor and Bloomberg contributor .
In his most recent column , Duy cited the vaccine and pent-up savings as positive factors , and he also mentioned several other things that could boost growth going forward , including favorable demographics .
Biden , Duy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dream scenario for economic growth on the other side of the battle with the Covid-19 pandemic.
” The sanguine analysis could turn out to be accurate , but other policymakers and economists emphasize a number of reasons for tempering our optimism .
For one thing , it ’ s still unclear when a vaccine will be widely available .
“ Even in the best case , widespread vaccination is months into the future , ” Jerome Powell , Clarida ’ s boss at the Fed , said in an online Q .
& @ @ @ @ @ @ @ although the optimists are surely right when they say that a vaccine will boost spending and growth , the magnitude and durability of this effect is hard to predict .
Even as optimism rises , businesses from airlines to hotels to theme parks are warning that it could take years for activity in their industries to return to pre-pandemic levels .
Some policymakers are issuing similar warnings .
“ The ascent out of this calamity is likely to be long , uneven , and highly uncertain , ” Gita Gopinath , the chief @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wrote in a blog post last month .
The task ahead is a large one .
Despite the recent rebound in growth and employment , the over-all number of jobs in the U.S. economy is still about ten million below where it stood in February .
The recent drop in the unemployment rate , which now stands at 6.9 per cent , has been accentuated , in part , by a drop in the workforce-participation rate , as many workers , particularly women , have stopped working to take care of their families @ @ @ @ @ @ @ contingent on the huge and unprecedented fiscal stimulus—equivalent to more than ten per cent of G.D.P.—which is now running out .
If a Republican-controlled Senate refuses to authorize more stimulus spending in the lame-duck session , and when the new Congress meets in January , then hopes for a post-pandemic boom could fade pretty rapidly .
Economists close to Biden are well aware of this danger .
“ We have to have fiscal policy , structural policy , other than just relying on central banks to achieve healthy growth , ” Janet Yellen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , who is reportedly being considered for the post of Treasury Secretary in the new Administration , said at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum , on Monday .
At one point in October , the Trump White House indicated that it would support a new coronavirus-spending bill worth $ 1.9 trillion—roughly the same magnitude as the CARES Act , which was valued at $ 2.2 trillion .
McConnell and his Republican colleagues dismissed this effort out of hand and proposed a “ skinny ” coronavirus-relief bill worth five hundred billion dollars .
Last @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , broader spending bill is still off the table .
Since then , there has been no progress .
“ Congress appeared nowhere close to passing another coronavirus relief bill .
.
.
as infections surge across the country and new public health restrictions threaten businesses and jobs , ” CNBC reported , on Tuesday .
It is still possible that the two sides will reach a meaningful agreement before the extended unemployment benefits and other coronavirus-relief programs expire .
But the current deadlock certainly doesn ’ t bode well for that , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s hopes of passing an even more expansive stimulus package in January or February , which would provide ongoing support to the economy , as well as making it greener and more equitable .
During the campaign , Biden proposed an ambitious ten-year spending plan , which , according to an analysis by the Penn-Wharton Budget Model , would cost $ 5.4 trillion and would be partly financed by some $ 3.4 trillion in new taxes , mainly on high earners .
Given the results of the elections on November 3rd , there @ @ @ @ @ @ @ current Senate passing a spending proposal of that magnitude .
Will the new Administration be able to enact any substantial stimulus ?
After the Great Recession , the economic recovery was held back by Republicans in Congress , who forced the Obama Administration to agree to a premature tightening of fiscal policy , which crimped hiring and G.D.P .
growth .
Although the news about potential vaccines is highly encouraging , there is still a danger that history could repeat itself in the months and years ahead .
For the immediate prospects of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the longer-term outlook of the economy , much depends on the January 5th run-off elections in Georgia , which will determine control of the Senate .
Now , more than ever , economics can not be separated from politics .

For the first time since the election, Joe Biden spoke about his economic agenda on Monday. The event, which took place in Wilmington, Delaware, was perhaps overshadowed by the alarming rise in COVID-19 cases across the country, and by Donald Trump’s continued refusal to accept the election result. But Biden managed to make news by warning that more Americans may die if Trump doesn’t provide more coöperation to his transition team working on the coronavirus crisis. “We are going into a very dark winter,” the President-elect said. “Things are going to get much tougher before they get easier”
Biden was referring to the pandemic, but his remarks also apply to the economy, the fate of which is inextricably tied to the virus. In the short term, the economic prognosis is grim. As states introduce new restrictions on businesses—California, on Monday, announced that it was “pulling the emergency brake” on its reopening—there may well be another round of furloughs and layoffs. And this is happening at a time when many of the pandemic-support programs that Congress introduced in March are coming to an end. The federal extension of unemployment benefits to thirty-nine weeks, for example, and the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, which allowed gig workers to receive jobless benefits for the first time, will both expire at the end of next month. The deadline for new applications to the Paycheck Protection Program, which pays small businesses to keep workers on their payrolls, has already passed.
Biden pointed out that these coronavirus-relief programs are “keeping Americans afloat.” Extending them and providing more financial assistance to states and municipalities that have seen their tax revenues plummet in 2020 is not only the just thing to do: it would prevent further damage to the economy in the form of business failures, job losses, and insolvencies. Looking further ahead, Biden also outlined elements of the “Build Back Better” plan that he put forward during the campaign. He did not, however, dwell on the longer-term macroeconomic environment that his Administration will face, which, following the positive news from Pfizer and Moderna about the results of their vaccine trials, has become a hot topic of debate among economists.
As always, there are a range of views. During an interview with the Brookings Institution’s Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy on Monday, Richard Clarida, a former Columbia University economist who is the vice-chair of the Federal Reserve Board, laid out an optimistic scenario, in which the lifting of restrictions on travel and other activities generates an outpouring of demand. “There is an enormous quantity of pent-up saving,” Clarida said, pointing to estimates that American households have built up more than a trillion dollars in extra savings. “That is the only time in my professional career when disposable income actually went up in a deep recession. And a lot of that has been saved, a lot of that has been forcibly saved, because people haven’t necessarily been able to go out and spend all of that.” In their latest public projections, Clarida and his colleagues on the Fed’s policymaking committee predicted that G.D.P. would expand by four per cent in 2021 and that the unemployment rate, which is currently at 6.9 per cent, would fall to 5.5 per cent by the fourth quarter of next year. That would represent a decent recovery. But, in his interview, Clarida pointed to the possibility of even stronger economic outcomes, including some “very, very attractive” ones. “And obviously,” he added, “the odds of that have gone up relative to where we were before the vaccine news.”
Clarida’s comments jibed with the arguments of other optimists, on Wall Street and elsewhere. In a recent note about the prospects for 2021, the economics team at Goldman Sachs said that mass immunization and the removal of coronavirus restrictions “should fuel a mid-year consumption boom as restored opportunities to spend allow households to substantially lower their saving rates and spend accumulated excess savings.” One of the most upbeat economists is Tim Duy, a University of Oregon professor and Bloomberg contributor. In his most recent column, Duy cited the vaccine and pent-up savings as positive factors, and he also mentioned several other things that could boost growth going forward, including favorable demographics. Biden, Duy wrote, is “stepping into a dream scenario for economic growth on the other side of the battle with the Covid-19 pandemic.”
The sanguine analysis could turn out to be accurate, but other policymakers and economists emphasize a number of reasons for tempering our optimism. For one thing, it’s still unclear when a vaccine will be widely available. “Even in the best case, widespread vaccination is months into the future,” Jerome Powell, Clarida’s boss at the Fed, said in an online Q. & A. session on Tuesday. Secondly, although the optimists are surely right when they say that a vaccine will boost spending and growth, the magnitude and durability of this effect is hard to predict. Even as optimism rises, businesses from airlines to hotels to theme parks are warning that it could take years for activity in their industries to return to pre-pandemic levels. Some policymakers are issuing similar warnings. “The ascent out of this calamity is likely to be long, uneven, and highly uncertain,” Gita Gopinath, the chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, wrote in a blog post last month.
The task ahead is a large one. Despite the recent rebound in growth and employment, the over-all number of jobs in the U.S. economy is still about ten million below where it stood in February. The recent drop in the unemployment rate, which now stands at 6.9 per cent, has been accentuated, in part, by a drop in the workforce-participation rate, as many workers, particularly women, have stopped working to take care of their families. Moreover, the economic rebound was contingent on the huge and unprecedented fiscal stimulus—equivalent to more than ten per cent of G.D.P.—which is now running out. If a Republican-controlled Senate refuses to authorize more stimulus spending in the lame-duck session, and when the new Congress meets in January, then hopes for a post-pandemic boom could fade pretty rapidly.
Economists close to Biden are well aware of this danger. “We have to have fiscal policy, structural policy, other than just relying on central banks to achieve healthy growth,” Janet Yellen, the former chair of the Fed, who is reportedly being considered for the post of Treasury Secretary in the new Administration, said at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum, on Monday. At one point in October, the Trump White House indicated that it would support a new coronavirus-spending bill worth $1.9 trillion—roughly the same magnitude as the CARES Act, which was valued at $2.2 trillion. McConnell and his Republican colleagues dismissed this effort out of hand and proposed a “skinny” coronavirus-relief bill worth five hundred billion dollars. Last week, McConnell indicated that a bigger, broader spending bill is still off the table. Since then, there has been no progress. “Congress appeared nowhere close to passing another coronavirus relief bill . . . as infections surge across the country and new public health restrictions threaten businesses and jobs,” CNBC reported, on Tuesday.


newyorker--2020-11-18--Daily Cartoon: Wednesday, November 18th

Daily Cartoon: Wednesday, November 18th

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newyorker--2020-11-18--National-Security Experts Support Total Withdrawal of Trump from U.S.

WASHINGTON ( The Borowitz Report ) —A broad spectrum of national-security experts support the immediate and total withdrawal of Donald @ @ @ @ @ States .
In an open letter signed by over three hundred members of the military @ @ @ @ @ experts wrote that Trump ’ s withdrawal is “ long past due.
” “ After @ @ @ @ @ conflict is over , ” they wrote .
“ It is time to reduce the @ @ @ @ @ zero.
” “ It is no longer in the interest of the United States for @ @ @ @ @ , ” they added .
The experts recommended that further steps be taken to reduce @ @ @ @ @ U.S. soil , and called for the immediate withdrawal of Ivanka , Jared , Eric @ @ @ @ @ .

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—A broad spectrum of national-security experts support the immediate and total withdrawal of Donald J. Trump from the United States.
In an open letter signed by over three hundred members of the military and intelligence communities, the experts wrote that Trump’s withdrawal is “long past due.”
“After nearly four years, this conflict is over,” they wrote. “It is time to reduce the troop level from one to zero.”
“It is no longer in the interest of the United States for Trump to be stationed here,” they added.
The experts recommended that further steps be taken to reduce Trump’s footprint on U.S. soil, and called for the immediate withdrawal of Ivanka, Jared, Eric, and Don, Jr.


newyorker--2020-11-19--A Letter from Panera Bread’s C.E.O.: Our Dining Rooms Are Open (So That You Can Break Up with Your S

A Letter from Panera Bread’s C.E.O.: Our Dining Rooms Are Open (So That You Can Break Up with Your Significant Other)

The past year has been a truly tumultuous one for us all , what with the global pandemic , an election like no other , and so much economic uncertainty .
I hope that you and your loved ones remain well in this unprecedented moment .
Even in the worst of times , Panera Bread has been here to provide you with fresh , hearty meals .
Also , a convenient location to break up with someone .
As new challenges arise , we respond together .
We stand with you , and we continue to be inspired by you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ look to us and other fast-casual dining establishments for your self-esteem , your emotional strength , and your moral compass .
And we take that responsibility seriously .
That is why we pride ourselves on serving bland , lukewarm food to distract you from the crushing existential dread that accompanies ending a relationship with someone you don ’ t particularly like but have kept around for seven months too long , so that you wouldn ’ t be utterly alone .
At Panera Bread , we know a little something about codependent relationships—our @ @ @ @ @ @ @ any of our phone calls in weeks .
Now that our locations are finally open , we can get back to business .
Our real business , I mean .
The business of providing a physical space in which to end your relationship .
Much like Barnes & Noble ’ s rebrand as a public bathroom , Panera Bread is now , first and foremost , a neutral , well-lit place to have a depressing conversation .
Plus , you get an apple .
It ’ s been a long year—most of it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lopsided pies , sewing Baby Yoda oven mitts , and telling all your friends that you ’ re “ really getting into wine ” as a cover for your burgeoning alcoholism .
Breaking up with your boyfriend or girlfriend is way too fraught when the only place you can do it is your studio apartment or the Port Authority Bus Terminal .
That ’ s why Panera Bread is opening dining rooms in select states , with limited capacity and social-distancing measures in place—to help you move on , to heal .
Unlike @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , diners pay before they eat , so you can haul ass when the crying starts .
Customers love picking aimlessly at our hearty broccoli-cheddar mac and cheese as they ready themselves to finally rip that Band-Aid off .
We bake all of our bread in-house , but you don ’ t care about that , do you ?
You just want a clean , safe place to tell your significant other that it ’ s finally over , that the only reason you didn ’ t do this sooner was because of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ll be transferring the utility bill to your name .
Panera Bread boasts more than two thousand locations in the United States and Canada , and each dining area is optimized for your needs .
For those of you who woke up knowing that today is the day , we serve breakfast until 10:30 A.M. Additionally , exits are clearly labelled , and a large red button is installed in each booth .
If things get messy , just discreetly press that button and a server will come to your table and make @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sports , and “ those jokers in Washington.
” We believe that good food brings out the best in all of us , but in the absence of good food Panera Bread lets you dump somebody in public .
Maybe you ’ re the one getting dumped .
We have ample parking spaces for you to weep in , for as long as you need , without feeling like you ’ re “ making a scene ” or “ bumming people out.
” We even offer curbside pickup if all that weeping dehydrates @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Breaking up on the go ?
Use our convenient smartphone app to have our extremely mediocre food delivered to your door .
Wouldn ’ t you prefer to curl up with a warm bowl of thick turkey chili instead of that person you ’ ve felt nothing for since early April ?
Rather than filling your life with someone who might as well be a stranger lying beside you , fill your belly with our chipotle bacon melt .
And don ’ t forget about our new flatbread pizzas , which you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ silently stress-eat while you watch your former lover packing up the novelty shot glasses from that vacation you took to Puerto Vallarta , which was probably the last time you felt truly connected .
We also have dessert .
Our food is , if nothing else , food—the kind of thing you can put in your mouth as your body is flooded with feelings of both despair and relief upon realizing that you are finally free .
We may not know when this quarantine will end , but if you already know that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ open .
We also own Au Bon Pain , if you really want to drag things out .

To Our Community,
The past year has been a truly tumultuous one for us all, what with the global pandemic, an election like no other, and so much economic uncertainty. I hope that you and your loved ones remain well in this unprecedented moment. Even in the worst of times, Panera Bread has been here to provide you with fresh, hearty meals. Also, a convenient location to break up with someone.
As new challenges arise, we respond together. We stand with you, and we continue to be inspired by you every day. We understand that you look to us and other fast-casual dining establishments for your self-esteem, your emotional strength, and your moral compass. And we take that responsibility seriously. That is why we pride ourselves on serving bland, lukewarm food to distract you from the crushing existential dread that accompanies ending a relationship with someone you don’t particularly like but have kept around for seven months too long, so that you wouldn’t be utterly alone. At Panera Bread, we know a little something about codependent relationships—our beef supplier hasn’t responded to any of our phone calls in weeks.
Now that our locations are finally open, we can get back to business. Our real business, I mean. The business of providing a physical space in which to end your relationship. Much like Barnes & Noble’s rebrand as a public bathroom, Panera Bread is now, first and foremost, a neutral, well-lit place to have a depressing conversation. Plus, you get an apple.
It’s been a long year—most of it spent stuck inside doing puzzles, baking lopsided pies, sewing Baby Yoda oven mitts, and telling all your friends that you’re “really getting into wine” as a cover for your burgeoning alcoholism. Breaking up with your boyfriend or girlfriend is way too fraught when the only place you can do it is your studio apartment or the Port Authority Bus Terminal. That’s why Panera Bread is opening dining rooms in select states, with limited capacity and social-distancing measures in place—to help you move on, to heal.
Unlike at other restaurants, at Panera Bread, diners pay before they eat, so you can haul ass when the crying starts. Customers love picking aimlessly at our hearty broccoli-cheddar mac and cheese as they ready themselves to finally rip that Band-Aid off. We bake all of our bread in-house, but you don’t care about that, do you? You just want a clean, safe place to tell your significant other that it’s finally over, that the only reason you didn’t do this sooner was because of the pandemic, and that you’ll be transferring the utility bill to your name.
Panera Bread boasts more than two thousand locations in the United States and Canada, and each dining area is optimized for your needs. For those of you who woke up knowing that today is the day, we serve breakfast until 10:30 A.M. Additionally, exits are clearly labelled, and a large red button is installed in each booth. If things get messy, just discreetly press that button and a server will come to your table and make smalltalk on subjects including the weather, sports, and “those jokers in Washington.” We believe that good food brings out the best in all of us, but in the absence of good food Panera Bread lets you dump somebody in public.
Maybe you’re the one getting dumped. We have ample parking spaces for you to weep in, for as long as you need, without feeling like you’re “making a scene” or “bumming people out.” We even offer curbside pickup if all that weeping dehydrates you and you want a contactless soda.
Breaking up on the go? Use our convenient smartphone app to have our extremely mediocre food delivered to your door. Wouldn’t you prefer to curl up with a warm bowl of thick turkey chili instead of that person you’ve felt nothing for since early April? Rather than filling your life with someone who might as well be a stranger lying beside you, fill your belly with our chipotle bacon melt.
And don’t forget about our new flatbread pizzas, which you’ll want to take home to silently stress-eat while you watch your former lover packing up the novelty shot glasses from that vacation you took to Puerto Vallarta, which was probably the last time you felt truly connected. We also have dessert.
Our food is, if nothing else, food—the kind of thing you can put in your mouth as your body is flooded with feelings of both despair and relief upon realizing that you are finally free.
We may not know when this quarantine will end, but if you already know that your relationship is over our doors are open. We also own Au Bon Pain, if you really want to drag things out.
Stay well,
Panera Bread