newyorker--2020-03-30--The Contrarian Coronavirus Theory That Informed the Trump Administration

President Trump , who at one point called the coronavirus pandemic an “ invisible enemy ” and said it made him a “ wartime President , ” has in recent days questioned its seriousness , tweeting , “ WE CAN NOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF.
” Trump said repeatedly that he wanted the country to reopen by Easter , April 12th , contradicting the advice of most health officials .
( On Sunday , he backed down and extended federal social-distancing guidelines for at least another month . )
According to the Washington Post , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ administration officials have been circulating an article by Richard A. Epstein of the Hoover Institution , titled ‘ Coronavirus Perspective , ’ which plays down the extent of the spread and the threat.
” Epstein , a professor at New York University School of Law , published the article on the Web site of the Hoover Institution , on March 16th .
In it , he questioned the World Health Organization ’ s decision to declare the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic , said that “ public officials have gone overboard , ” and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ die from COVID-19 in the U.S. Epstein later updated his estimate to five thousand , saying that the previous number had been an error .
So far , there have been more than two thousand coronavirus-related fatalities in America ; epidemiologists ’ projections of the total deaths range widely , depending on the success of social distancing and the availability of medical resources , but they tend to be much higher than Epstein ’ s .
( On Sunday , Anthony Fauci , the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious @ @ @ @ @ @ @ between a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand deaths in the U.S. ) In a follow-up article , published on March 23rd and titled “ Coronavirus Overreaction , ” Epstein wrote , “ Progressives think they can run everyone ’ s lives through central planning , but the state of the economy suggests otherwise .
Looking at the costs , the public commands have led to a crash in the stock market , and may only save a small fraction of the lives that are at risk.
” Epstein has long been one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the country , and is known for his libertarian-minded reading of the Constitution , which envisions a restrained federal government that respects private property .
He has also been known to engage with controversial subjects ; last fall , he published an article on the Hoover Institution Web site that argued , “ The professional skeptics are right : there is today no compelling evidence of an impending climate emergency.
” Last Wednesday , I spoke by phone with Epstein about his views of the coronavirus pandemic .
He was initially wary of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ own version of the call , which I agreed to .
During our conversation , which has been edited for length and clarity , Epstein made a number of comments about viruses that have been strongly disputed by medical professionals .
We have included factual corrections alongside those statements .
What did you want to achieve with your pieces ?
What did I want to achieve with my pieces ?
First of all , I am not a politician .
What I did is that I looked at the standard model that was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ [ in an Op-Ed by Nicholas Kristof and Stuart A. Thompson , published on March 13th ] , which was backed up by other models in other places , and it occurred to me that I just did not think that the underlying assumptions there were sound .
The single most important thing to me was not to get my own estimate of what the number is .
The most important thing was to look at that curve , which seemed to suggest that there would be ten million cases a day during @ @ @ @ @ @ @ middle of July , and to explain why , in relationship to all other things I know about evolutionary theory , that this just has to be wrong .
The better way to have phrased the paper would have been to say that the traditional models , which were used for the last flu season , for the 2009 H1N1 situation , are much better approximations of what is likely to happen than these rather scary kinds of projections .
You wrote last week , “ In the United States , if the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ same rate , the current 67 deaths should translate into about 500 deaths at the end.
” We are currently at eight hundred deaths—over eight hundred deaths .
[ This was true when we spoke ; the number is now over two thousand . ]
First of all , let me just say I wrote an amendment to that , the thing I regret most in that whole paper .
But I was not so much interested in explaining why my number was right .
I was interested in explaining why the other @ @ @ @ @ @ @ your number was surpassed in about a week , and now we ’ re already— I understand that , but the point about that is that , first of all , there was a simple stupid error , which is you would never want to put it in a model that total deaths in the United States relative to the world would be one per cent .
So if you just inflated it to five per cent or ten per cent , then all of a sudden you ’ ve got a number @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as high .
Secondly , suppose I should have been wiser in this and said , as I referred to the flu vaccine and later on to the H1N1 situation , if those are your benchmarks , then the number goes up to , say , between fifteen thousand and forty thousand deaths , as opposed to the one million-plus that are projected .
[ The Times model projected , without interventions by governments or citizens , a million deaths in the U.S. ; with such interventions , the model showed that number @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the one million-plus is on a model which is universal and worldwide , and you should expect to see something like that somewhere else .
And there ’ s no evidence whatsoever that any of the situations , even in Italy , is going to approach the kinds of numbers that you had there .
And so I am truly sorry about that [ five hundred ] number .
I regard it as the single worst public-relations gaffe I ’ ve made in my entire life .
But the question to ask @ @ @ @ @ @ @ chose the right number but whether I had the right model .
Something else you wrote , in an earlier piece , was , “ Why has there been such a dramatic mismatch in the responses to ordinary flu and the coronavirus ?
” Is that a question you ’ re still unsure about ?
Look , the basic problem is , I think , in effect , that the tendency on the part of many people to treat this particular thing as unique is a mistake .
There ’ s an underlying @ @ @ @ @ @ @ use , and the question is how you stuff it full of parameters .
That is , numbers you add into it to make what ’ s going on .
And , so , the situation that you get is you can not use any exponential system because essentially then everybody is going to be dead , because things just keep doubling , doubling , and doubling .

President Trump, who at one point called the coronavirus pandemic an “invisible enemy” and said it made him a “wartime President,” has in recent days questioned its seriousness, tweeting, “WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF.” Trump said repeatedly that he wanted the country to reopen by Easter, April 12th, contradicting the advice of most health officials. (On Sunday, he backed down and extended federal social-distancing guidelines for at least another month.) According to the Washington Post, “Conservatives close to Trump and numerous administration officials have been circulating an article by Richard A. Epstein of the Hoover Institution, titled ‘Coronavirus Perspective,’ which plays down the extent of the spread and the threat.”
Epstein, a professor at New York University School of Law, published the article on the Web site of the Hoover Institution, on March 16th. In it, he questioned the World Health Organization’s decision to declare the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic, said that “public officials have gone overboard,” and suggested that about five hundred people would die from COVID-19 in the U.S. Epstein later updated his estimate to five thousand, saying that the previous number had been an error. So far, there have been more than two thousand coronavirus-related fatalities in America; epidemiologists’ projections of the total deaths range widely, depending on the success of social distancing and the availability of medical resources, but they tend to be much higher than Epstein’s. (On Sunday, Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, estimated that there could be between a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand deaths in the U.S.) In a follow-up article, published on March 23rd and titled “Coronavirus Overreaction,” Epstein wrote, “Progressives think they can run everyone’s lives through central planning, but the state of the economy suggests otherwise. Looking at the costs, the public commands have led to a crash in the stock market, and may only save a small fraction of the lives that are at risk.”
Epstein has long been one of the most cited legal scholars in the country, and is known for his libertarian-minded reading of the Constitution, which envisions a restrained federal government that respects private property. He has also been known to engage with controversial subjects; last fall, he published an article on the Hoover Institution Web site that argued, “The professional skeptics are right: there is today no compelling evidence of an impending climate emergency.” Last Wednesday, I spoke by phone with Epstein about his views of the coronavirus pandemic. He was initially wary of talking, and asked to record his own version of the call, which I agreed to. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, Epstein made a number of comments about viruses that have been strongly disputed by medical professionals. We have included factual corrections alongside those statements.
What did you want to achieve with your pieces?
What did I want to achieve with my pieces? First of all, I am not a politician. What I did is that I looked at the standard model that was put out in the New York Times [in an Op-Ed by Nicholas Kristof and Stuart A. Thompson, published on March 13th], which was backed up by other models in other places, and it occurred to me that I just did not think that the underlying assumptions there were sound. The single most important thing to me was not to get my own estimate of what the number is. The most important thing was to look at that curve, which seemed to suggest that there would be ten million cases a day during a ten-day or so band in the middle of July, and to explain why, in relationship to all other things I know about evolutionary theory, that this just has to be wrong. The better way to have phrased the paper would have been to say that the traditional models, which were used for the last flu season, for the 2009 H1N1 situation, are much better approximations of what is likely to happen than these rather scary kinds of projections.
You wrote last week, “In the United States, if the total death toll increases at about the same rate, the current 67 deaths should translate into about 500 deaths at the end.” We are currently at eight hundred deaths—over eight hundred deaths. [This was true when we spoke; the number is now over two thousand.]
First of all, let me just say I wrote an amendment to that, the thing I regret most in that whole paper. But I was not so much interested in explaining why my number was right. I was interested in explaining why the other projections were wrong.
O.K., but your number was surpassed in about a week, and now we’re already—
I understand that, but the point about that is that, first of all, there was a simple stupid error, which is you would never want to put it in a model that total deaths in the United States relative to the world would be one per cent. So if you just inflated it to five per cent or ten per cent, then all of a sudden you’ve got a number which is either five or ten times as high.
Secondly, suppose I should have been wiser in this and said, as I referred to the flu vaccine and later on to the H1N1 situation, if those are your benchmarks, then the number goes up to, say, between fifteen thousand and forty thousand deaths, as opposed to the one million-plus that are projected. [The Times model projected, without interventions by governments or citizens, a million deaths in the U.S.; with such interventions, the model showed that number dramatically decreasing.] And, remember, the one million-plus is on a model which is universal and worldwide, and you should expect to see something like that somewhere else. And there’s no evidence whatsoever that any of the situations, even in Italy, is going to approach the kinds of numbers that you had there. And so I am truly sorry about that [five hundred] number. I regard it as the single worst public-relations gaffe I’ve made in my entire life. But the question to ask, Isaac, is not whether I chose the right number but whether I had the right model.
Something else you wrote, in an earlier piece, was, “Why has there been such a dramatic mismatch in the responses to ordinary flu and the coronavirus?” Is that a question you’re still unsure about?
Look, the basic problem is, I think, in effect, that the tendency on the part of many people to treat this particular thing as unique is a mistake. There’s an underlying, standard model that you want to use, and the question is how you stuff it full of parameters. That is, numbers you add into it to make what’s going on. And, so, the situation that you get is you cannot use any exponential system because essentially then everybody is going to be dead, because things just keep doubling, doubling, and doubling.
So you have to develop a model which is going to explain why there’s a fairly rapid increase at the outset, and then why the thing starts to turn flat, ultimately down, and then disappears. That’s the strategy that you have to do. And so the theory here is one that I actually worked with and I thought worked pretty well in the AIDS stuff, which I worked on back in the early nineteen-eighties. And the model goes something like this. You start off with this virus, and there’s a range, some of which are very serious and some of which are less, so it’s a theory of natural selection with a normal distribution set. And, if you’re moving into a new environment like the [Life Care Center] of Kirkland or like the cruise ship, what happens is you have people who are completely unaware of what is going on. And so you take a population like in Kirkland, which is fragile and old, you get somebody in who has a strong version of the virus, and the thing will just absolutely rip through the population and kill everybody in it within a very short period of time. [Daniel Kuritzkes, the chief of the infectious-diseases division at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, in Boston, said, after being read this passage, “There’s no evidence that there are strong and weak variations of the coronavirus circulating. There may be minor variations person to person or location to location in the actual genetic sequence, but there is no evidence that they have different virulence or that a less virulent version is overtaking a more virulent version.”]


newyorker--2020-03-29--Sunday Reading: The Heroic Work of Doctors and Health Workers

These past weeks have been incredibly difficult for everyone as we ’ ve watched the novel coronavirus trace a deadly path across the globe .
What inspiration there is to be had comes from the heroic efforts of the medical personnel and other health workers in every nation , men and women who have worked tirelessly to help those who are suffering .
This week , we ’ re bringing you a selection of pieces about medical professionals around the world .
In “ The Shadow Doctors , ” Ben Taub writes about the courageous medical personnel who formed an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ war victims in Syria .
In “ Ophelia Dahl ’ s National Health Service , ” Ariel Levy examines the work of Partners in Health , an organization that provides essential medical care in regions lacking sufficient public-health infrastructure .
In “ A Tender Hand in the Presence of Death , ” Larissa MacFarquhar follows a hospice nurse as she cares for terminal patients in Brooklyn .
In a piece from 1984 , John McPhee chronicles the valiant work of a group of young doctors practicing family medicine in Maine .
Finally , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ?
, ” Atul Gawande examines whether Americans are ready to embrace the concept of health care as a universal right .
At a time of great uncertainty , these stories offer a reminder of the extraordinary work that physicians and other medical workers do .
The daily work of a hospice nurse , who treats the physical , psychological , and spiritual needs of people at the most vulnerable point of their lives .
The underground race to spread medical knowledge as the Syrian regime erases it .
Partners in Health wants @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and bring health care to some of the poorest people on earth .
In the age of medical technicians with machines and clipboards , the local , family doctor returns .
It ’ s a question that divides Americans , including those from my home town .
But it ’ s possible to find common ground .

Photograph by David Ryder / Reuters
These past weeks have been incredibly difficult for everyone as we’ve watched the novel coronavirus trace a deadly path across the globe. What inspiration there is to be had comes from the heroic efforts of the medical personnel and other health workers in every nation, men and women who have worked tirelessly to help those who are suffering. This week, we’re bringing you a selection of pieces about medical professionals around the world. In “The Shadow Doctors,” Ben Taub writes about the courageous medical personnel who formed an elaborate network of underground hospitals to treat war victims in Syria. In “Ophelia Dahl’s National Health Service,” Ariel Levy examines the work of Partners in Health, an organization that provides essential medical care in regions lacking sufficient public-health infrastructure. In “A Tender Hand in the Presence of Death,” Larissa MacFarquhar follows a hospice nurse as she cares for terminal patients in Brooklyn. In a piece from 1984, John McPhee chronicles the valiant work of a group of young doctors practicing family medicine in Maine. Finally, in “Is Health Care a Right?,” Atul Gawande examines whether Americans are ready to embrace the concept of health care as a universal right. At a time of great uncertainty, these stories offer a reminder of the extraordinary work that physicians and other medical workers do.
—David Remnick
Photograph by Eugene Richards for The New Yorker
The daily work of a hospice nurse, who treats the physical, psychological, and spiritual needs of people at the most vulnerable point of their lives.
Illustration by Brian Stauffer
The underground race to spread medical knowledge as the Syrian regime erases it.
Partners in Health wants to rebuild entire countries’ medical systems, and bring health care to some of the poorest people on earth.
In the age of medical technicians with machines and clipboards, the local, family doctor returns.
It’s a question that divides Americans, including those from my home town. But it’s possible to find common ground.


newyorker--2020-03-29--The Fate of the News in the Age of the Coronavirus

In 2009 , as the economy struggled to rebound from the Great Recession , executives at the New York Times found themselves in a vigorous internal debate .
They were trying to decide whether their content should go behind a paywall , making it available only to paying subscribers .
There were compelling arguments on both sides .
It wasn ’ t at all clear that people would be willing to pay for news ; by implementing a paywall , the Times risked cannibalizing its enormous digital audience .
But advertising revenue was plummeting , both online and in print @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sources of income .
To study the matter , Arthur Sulzberger , Jr. , the publisher at the time , convened internal committees and hired outside consultants .
The Times ’ s leadership , meanwhile , took drastic steps to stabilize the company financially , borrowing two hundred and fifty million dollars from the Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim , trimming the size of the newsroom , and reducing a dividend paid to members of the Sulzberger family .
In a final meeting of newsroom and business-department leaders , both sides presented their cases @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who favored charging for digital access .
On March 28 , 2011 , the Times introduced a “ metered paywall.
” People could read up to twenty articles a month for free ; beyond that , they were required to purchase a subscription plan .
In an article published in the Times just before the launch , Sulzberger and Janet Robinson , then the company ’ s chief executive officer , explained that they were thinking about the newspaper ’ s long-term future .
“ This is not a bet on this year @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Jeremy W. Peters .
“ The question that remains to be answered , ” Peters wrote , in turn , “ is whether that bet pays off in 2015 , 2020 or ever.
” Nine years later , the gamble has clearly paid off .
The Times now has more than five million subscribers , and its newsroom has swelled to more than seventeen hundred journalists—the largest it ’ s ever been .
Numerous other legacy publications have since unveiled their own metered paywalls , including the Washington Post , in 2013 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and The Atlantic , last year .
Local newspapers across the country , struggling with a collapse of classified advertising , declining print circulation , and diminished ad revenue , followed suit , but with much less success .
In recent years , the Times has grown steadily more restrictive with its paywall , granting fewer free articles to readers , as it seeks to convince even more of its readers to subscribe .
( The New Yorker has adopted a similar strategy . )
The shift to paywalls has been a boon @ @ @ @ @ @ @ trends on search engines and social media , subscription-based publications can focus on producing journalism worth paying for , which has meant investments in original reporting of all kinds .
A small club of élite publications has now found a sustainable way to support its journalism , through readers instead of advertisers .
The Times and the Post , in particular , have thrived in the Trump era .
So have subscription-driven startups , such as The Information , which covers the tech industry and charges three hundred and ninety-nine dollars a year @ @ @ @ @ @ @ outlets still dependent on ad revenue—including former darlings of the digital-media revolution , such as BuzzFeed , Vice , HuffPost , Mic , Mashable , and the titles under Vox Media—have labored to find viable business models .
Many of these companies attracted hundreds of millions of dollars in venture funding , and built sizable newsrooms .
Even so , they ’ ve struggled to succeed as businesses , in part because Google and Facebook take in the bulk of the revenue derived from digital advertising .
Some sites have been forced to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and scaled back their journalistic ambitions .
There are free digital news sites that continue to attract outsized audiences : CNN and Fox News , for instance , each draw well over a hundred million visitors a month .
But the news on these sites tends to be commodified .
Velocity is the priority , not complexity and depth .
A robust , independent press is widely understood to be an essential part of a functioning democracy .
It helps keep citizens informed ; it also serves as a bulwark against the rumors @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rife on digital platforms .
It ’ s a problem , therefore , when the majority of the highest-quality journalism is behind a paywall .
In recent weeks , recognizing the value of timely , fact-based news during a pandemic , the Times , The Atlantic , the Wall Street Journal , the Washington Post , and other publications—including The New Yorker—have lowered their paywalls for portions of their coronavirus coverage .
But it ’ s unclear how long publishers will stay committed to keeping their paywalls down , as the state of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ promises to engulf every aspect of society , leading to widespread economic dislocations and social disruptions that will test our political processes and institutions in ways far beyond the immediate public-health threat .
With the misinformation emanating from the Trump White House , the need for reliable , widely-accessible information and facts is more urgent than ever .
Yet the economic shutdown created by the spread of COVID-19 promises to decimate advertising revenue , which could doom more digital news outlets and local newspapers .
It ’ s easy to underestimate the information @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , “ information ” has never felt more easily available .
A few keyboard strokes on an Internet search engine instantly connects us to unlimited digital content .
On Facebook , Instagram , and other social-media platforms , people who might not be intentionally looking for news encounter it , anyway .
And yet the apparent ubiquity of news and information is misleading .
Between 2004 and 2018 , nearly one in five American newspapers closed ; in that time , print newsrooms have shed nearly half of their employees .
Digital-native publishers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ number of journalists who still remain at legacy outlets , and employment in broadcast-TV newsrooms trails that of newspapers .
On some level , news is a product manufactured by journalists .
Fewer journalists means less news .
The tributaries that feed the river of information have been drying up .
There are a few mountain springs of quality journalism ; most sit behind a paywall .
A report released last year by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism maps the divide that is emerging among news readers .
The proportion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pay for online news remains small : just sixteen per cent .
Those readers tend to be wealthier , and are more likely to have college degrees ; they are also significantly more likely to find news trustworthy .
Disparities in the level of trust that people have in their news diets , the data suggests , are likely driven by the quality of the news they are consuming .
In the book “ Breaking News , ” published in 2018 , Alan Rusbridger , the former editor-in-chief of the Guardian , describes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to impose a paywall .
Rusbridger writes that he and others who opposed charging for digital access worried “ about the best information being restricted to those who could pay for it , while the rest fed on scraps.
” He recalls a dinner that he attended in 2016 , at the Savoy Hotel , in London , hosted by the Times , at which Dean Baquet , the Times ’ s executive editor , shared his concern about “ the new reality in which 98 per cent of Americans were now excluded @ @ @ @ @ @ @ might well have to make do with substandard information.
” Rusbridger summarizes the dilemma : “ In a world of almost limitless information , the best would be available only to the more affluent .
The rest of America would make do with an ocean of free stuff ; some true , some fake.
” ( The Guardian , which is one of the world ’ s most popular English-language news destinations , is owned by the Scott Trust , which was set up to insure its independence in perpetuity ; it remains @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Ben Smith and Lydia Polgreen , the editors-in-chief of BuzzFeed News and HuffPost , respectively , announced that they were stepping down—Smith to write a media column for the Times , Polgreen to become the head of content for the podcasting company Gimlet Media .
Their decisions , announced within days of each other , seemed like an inflection point for the industry .
During her tenure at HuffPost , which is free to read , Polgreen shifted its three-hundred-person newsroom away from aggregation and user-generated content and toward more original reporting .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ad-supported , Smith led a two-hundred-person newsroom and built a large investigative team , reporters from which were twice honored as finalists for the Pulitzer Prize .
Despite attracting tens of millions of readers , both outlets had come under significant financial pressure .
In 2019 , BuzzFeed laid off fifteen per cent of its staff ; the same year , HuffPost ’ s owner , Verizon Media , carried out a seven-per-cent reduction across all of its properties .
( It also owns AOL , Yahoo !
, and TechCrunch . )

In 2009, as the economy struggled to rebound from the Great Recession, executives at the New York Times found themselves in a vigorous internal debate. They were trying to decide whether their content should go behind a paywall, making it available only to paying subscribers. There were compelling arguments on both sides. It wasn’t at all clear that people would be willing to pay for news; by implementing a paywall, the Times risked cannibalizing its enormous digital audience. But advertising revenue was plummeting, both online and in print, and the newspaper desperately needed new sources of income. To study the matter, Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., the publisher at the time, convened internal committees and hired outside consultants. The Times’s leadership, meanwhile, took drastic steps to stabilize the company financially, borrowing two hundred and fifty million dollars from the Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, trimming the size of the newsroom, and reducing a dividend paid to members of the Sulzberger family. In a final meeting of newsroom and business-department leaders, both sides presented their cases. Sulzberger cast his lot with those who favored charging for digital access.
On March 28, 2011, the Times introduced a “metered paywall.” People could read up to twenty articles a month for free; beyond that, they were required to purchase a subscription plan. In an article published in the Times just before the launch, Sulzberger and Janet Robinson, then the company’s chief executive officer, explained that they were thinking about the newspaper’s long-term future. “This is not a bet on this year,” Sulzberger told the writer, Jeremy W. Peters. “The question that remains to be answered,” Peters wrote, in turn, “is whether that bet pays off in 2015, 2020 or ever.”
Nine years later, the gamble has clearly paid off. The Times now has more than five million subscribers, and its newsroom has swelled to more than seventeen hundred journalists—the largest it’s ever been. Numerous other legacy publications have since unveiled their own metered paywalls, including the Washington Post, in 2013, The New Yorker, in 2014, and The Atlantic, last year. Local newspapers across the country, struggling with a collapse of classified advertising, declining print circulation, and diminished ad revenue, followed suit, but with much less success. In recent years, the Times has grown steadily more restrictive with its paywall, granting fewer free articles to readers, as it seeks to convince even more of its readers to subscribe. (The New Yorker has adopted a similar strategy.)
The shift to paywalls has been a boon for quality journalism. Instead of chasing trends on search engines and social media, subscription-based publications can focus on producing journalism worth paying for, which has meant investments in original reporting of all kinds. A small club of élite publications has now found a sustainable way to support its journalism, through readers instead of advertisers. The Times and the Post, in particular, have thrived in the Trump era. So have subscription-driven startups, such as The Information, which covers the tech industry and charges three hundred and ninety-nine dollars a year. Meanwhile, many of the free-to-read outlets still dependent on ad revenue—including former darlings of the digital-media revolution, such as BuzzFeed, Vice, HuffPost, Mic, Mashable, and the titles under Vox Media—have labored to find viable business models.
Many of these companies attracted hundreds of millions of dollars in venture funding, and built sizable newsrooms. Even so, they’ve struggled to succeed as businesses, in part because Google and Facebook take in the bulk of the revenue derived from digital advertising. Some sites have been forced to shutter; others have slashed their staffs and scaled back their journalistic ambitions. There are free digital news sites that continue to attract outsized audiences: CNN and Fox News, for instance, each draw well over a hundred million visitors a month. But the news on these sites tends to be commodified. Velocity is the priority, not complexity and depth.
A robust, independent press is widely understood to be an essential part of a functioning democracy. It helps keep citizens informed; it also serves as a bulwark against the rumors, half-truths, and propaganda that are rife on digital platforms. It’s a problem, therefore, when the majority of the highest-quality journalism is behind a paywall. In recent weeks, recognizing the value of timely, fact-based news during a pandemic, the Times, The Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and other publications—including The New Yorker—have lowered their paywalls for portions of their coronavirus coverage. But it’s unclear how long publishers will stay committed to keeping their paywalls down, as the state of emergency stretches on. The coronavirus crisis promises to engulf every aspect of society, leading to widespread economic dislocations and social disruptions that will test our political processes and institutions in ways far beyond the immediate public-health threat. With the misinformation emanating from the Trump White House, the need for reliable, widely-accessible information and facts is more urgent than ever. Yet the economic shutdown created by the spread of COVID-19 promises to decimate advertising revenue, which could doom more digital news outlets and local newspapers.
It’s easy to underestimate the information imbalance in American society. After all, “information” has never felt more easily available. A few keyboard strokes on an Internet search engine instantly connects us to unlimited digital content. On Facebook, Instagram, and other social-media platforms, people who might not be intentionally looking for news encounter it, anyway. And yet the apparent ubiquity of news and information is misleading. Between 2004 and 2018, nearly one in five American newspapers closed; in that time, print newsrooms have shed nearly half of their employees. Digital-native publishers employ just a fraction of the diminished number of journalists who still remain at legacy outlets, and employment in broadcast-TV newsrooms trails that of newspapers. On some level, news is a product manufactured by journalists. Fewer journalists means less news. The tributaries that feed the river of information have been drying up. There are a few mountain springs of quality journalism; most sit behind a paywall.
A report released last year by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism maps the divide that is emerging among news readers. The proportion of people in the United States who pay for online news remains small: just sixteen per cent. Those readers tend to be wealthier, and are more likely to have college degrees; they are also significantly more likely to find news trustworthy. Disparities in the level of trust that people have in their news diets, the data suggests, are likely driven by the quality of the news they are consuming.
In the book “Breaking News,” published in 2018, Alan Rusbridger, the former editor-in-chief of the Guardian, describes contentious arguments at the newspaper over whether to impose a paywall. Rusbridger writes that he and others who opposed charging for digital access worried “about the best information being restricted to those who could pay for it, while the rest fed on scraps.” He recalls a dinner that he attended in 2016, at the Savoy Hotel, in London, hosted by the Times, at which Dean Baquet, the Times’s executive editor, shared his concern about “the new reality in which 98 per cent of Americans were now excluded from the NYT’s journalism and might well have to make do with substandard information.” Rusbridger summarizes the dilemma: “In a world of almost limitless information, the best would be available only to the more affluent. The rest of America would make do with an ocean of free stuff; some true, some fake.” (The Guardian, which is one of the world’s most popular English-language news destinations, is owned by the Scott Trust, which was set up to insure its independence in perpetuity; it remains free of charge.)
Recently, Ben Smith and Lydia Polgreen, the editors-in-chief of BuzzFeed News and HuffPost, respectively, announced that they were stepping down—Smith to write a media column for the Times, Polgreen to become the head of content for the podcasting company Gimlet Media. Their decisions, announced within days of each other, seemed like an inflection point for the industry. During her tenure at HuffPost, which is free to read, Polgreen shifted its three-hundred-person newsroom away from aggregation and user-generated content and toward more original reporting. At BuzzFeed News, which is also ad-supported, Smith led a two-hundred-person newsroom and built a large investigative team, reporters from which were twice honored as finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. Despite attracting tens of millions of readers, both outlets had come under significant financial pressure. In 2019, BuzzFeed laid off fifteen per cent of its staff; the same year, HuffPost’s owner, Verizon Media, carried out a seven-per-cent reduction across all of its properties. (It also owns AOL, Yahoo!, and TechCrunch.)
Polgreen told me that her distress at the quality of news available to much of the public had contributed to her decision, three years ago, to quit a masthead position at the Times and take over HuffPost from its founder, Arianna Huffington. “One of the biggest reasons that I left the Times and came to HuffPost was, in the aftermath of Trump’s victory, thinking that the kind of inequality that we see expressed in so many parts of society was also being expressed in media,” she said. “These legacy news organizations—their core audience are the wealthiest, best-informed, most educated, most spoiled-for-choice news consumers.” Polgreen said she wanted to work on digital news for “people who were never going to become subscribers of the New York Times.”
Last year, Polgreen published an op-ed in the Guardian warning of the threat posed by “the collapse of the information ecosystem.” In her piece, she urges advertisers to consider the ways in which they contribute to its destruction; they might, she suggests, buy ads “on platforms that slow rather than increase the pace of information ecosystem collapse.” A company, therefore, might decide that a portion of its marketing budget should be reserved specifically for high-quality news sites, as opposed to digital-advertising networks managed by Google or Facebook. “The withdrawal of advertising dollars would be the single most powerful way to change the practices of companies that contribute most powerfully to the information ecosystem crisis,” she writes.
An altogether different solution for sustaining journalism is the nonprofit model. ProPublica, an investigative newsroom founded in 2007, now employs more than a hundred people. The Texas Tribune, a successful local news operation, and the Marshall Project, which focusses on criminal-justice issues, are also nonprofits. The collective audience for nonprofit journalism, however, is still relatively limited. Last year, the Salt Lake Tribune received approval from the Internal Revenue Service to become the first legacy newspaper in the United States to shift to nonprofit status. The Tribune’s owner and publisher, Paul Huntsman—a son of the late billionaire Jon Huntsman, Sr.—initiated the move. The ownership of local newspapers has become increasingly concentrated; hedge funds and private-equity firms have begun scooping up papers as distressed assets. The consolidation makes it less likely that the Tribune’s decision will be replicated on a large scale.
In his new book, “Democracy Without Journalism?,” Victor Pickard, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication, argues that the commercial model that sustained newspapers for a hundred and fifty years is beyond repair. “Without a viable news media system, democracy is reduced to an unattainable ideal,” he writes. Pickard makes the case for a more robust public media system—an American version of the BBC—that could “provide a baseline for reliable information and act as a safety net when the market fails to support adequate levels of news production.” (NPR and PBS get only a small portion of their budgets from government grants.) It is a persuasive argument, albeit one that would require a sizable financial commitment from the federal government—Pickard proposes thirty billion dollars. The outlay “may seem large, but relative to the scale and type of problem—a first-order need on par with public health, a standing military, and other non-negotiable expenses, it is actually a modest proposal,” he writes.
For now, those concerned about widespread access to quality journalism can only hope that the digital-media industry somehow finds its way. The economic cataclysm caused by the coronavirus pandemic promises to make this even more difficult. In recent years, some digital publishers have shown signs of sustainability. Vox Media, which includes the explanatory journalism site Vox and also Eater, Recode, and Curbed, is reportedly profitable. (In September, the company purchased New York magazine.) Politico, which saw its revenue surge after Donald Trump’s election, has now been in business for more than a decade. Axios, founded in 2016 by a group that decamped from Politico, has also found success.
Both HuffPost and BuzzFeed News have worked to generate income beyond advertising. They have launched membership programs, through which readers can support their journalism. (A similar membership effort at the Guardian, which began several years ago, helped the newspaper report its first operating profit in two decades.) HuffPost has experimented with live events. Last year, BuzzFeed News hired Samantha Henig, formerly of the Times, as its executive editor, charging her with building out new revenue streams for the organization.
Both outlets benefit from being ensconced in broadly diversified media corporations: HuffPost’s owner, Verizon Media, is a subsidiary of the telecommunications giant; though its news division continues to lose money, BuzzFeed over-all was reportedly profitable in the second half of 2019, thanks to returns from e-commerce, video, licensing fees, and various forms of advertising. But the broad economic shutdown from the spread of the coronavirus will cause many of these revenue streams, and others, to dry up. On Wednesday, in an internal memo to BuzzFeed staff, Jonah Peretti, the company’s co-founder and chief executive officer, announced salary reductions for most employees ranging from five per cent to twenty-five per cent. Peretti also said that he would forgo his salary for the duration of the crisis. “We are in a better position than many others, but we are also in a new world that will put serious stress on all industries,” he wrote. “Though we were well on track to be profitable this year, the impact of the coronavirus on the global economy will almost certainly cause the company to lose money, even as we take aggressive action to control costs.”
Over the coming weeks and months, as the COVID-19 pandemic continues on its destructive path, it will alter the fabric of the country. Already, the disease has exposed the fragility of the American health-care system, highlighting its weak points, showing us where it is easily overwhelmed. It will do the same for other systems, including the media ecosystem. The question at this point is how much of it can survive, and how it might be rebuilt.
A Guide to the Coronavirus


newyorker--2020-03-29--The Meaning of Donald Trump’s Coronavirus Quackery

On March 18th , researchers in France circulated a study about the promising experimental use of hydroxychloroquine , an anti-malaria drug , in combination with azithromycin , an antibiotic , as a treatment for the disease caused by the coronavirus .
The study was neither randomized nor peer-reviewed , and other scientists soon criticized its methodology .
But Tucker Carlson , on Fox News , highlighted the work .
The next day , President Trump promoted hydroxychloroquine ’ s “ very , very encouraging early results.
” He added , mentioning another unproven therapy , “ I think it could @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , it could be a game changer.
” At a White House press briefing on March 20th , a reporter asked Anthony Fauci , the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases , whether hydroxychloroquine could be effective in treating covid-19 .
“ The answer is no , ” Fauci said , before yielding the microphone to Trump , who countered , “ May work , may not .
I feel good about it .
That ’ s all it is , just a feeling , you know , smart @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus , the director-general of the World Health Organization , said , “ Using untested drugs without the right evidence could raise false hope and even do more harm than good.
” Trump ’ s quackery was at once eccentric and terrifying—a reminder , if one was needed , of his scorn for rigorous science , even amid the worst pandemic to strike the country in a century .
Yet his conduct typified his leadership as the crisis has intensified : his dependency on Fox News for ideas and message amplification @ @ @ @ @ @ @ genius , and his understandable concern that his reëlection may be in danger if he does not soon discover a way to vanquish COVID-19 and reverse its devastation of the economy .
New York City now faces a “ troubling and astronomical ” increase in cases , according to Governor Andrew Cuomo , and the emergency is overwhelming hospitals , straining drug and equipment supplies , and threatening to cause a shortage of ventilators .
The grim course of events in the city is a “ canary in the coal mine ” for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said , and leaders elsewhere must take decisive action lest they , too , become inundated .
Trump , though , spent much of last week promoting a contrarian gambit that has been percolating in the right-wing media .
He said that , to revitalize the economy , he would like to lift travel restrictions and reopen workplaces across the country within weeks , perhaps by Easter , which is on April 12th , because , as he put it repeatedly , “ we can ’ t let the cure be worse than @ @ @ @ @ @ @ against such a reversal of social-distancing rules .
“ The virus will surge , many will fall ill , and there will be more deaths , ” William Schaffner , a specialist in preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University , told the Times .
When a reporter asked the President whether any of the “ doctors on your team ” had advised him that a hasty reopening was “ the right path to pursue , ” he replied , “ If it were up to the doctors , they may say , ‘ Let @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
.
let ’ s keep it shut for a couple of years.
’ ” Public-health specialists have said no such thing ; they have spoken of a conditions-based approach ( “ You don ’ t make the timeline , the virus makes the timeline , ” Fauci has said ) , while advising that , to save the most lives , local leaders must wait to lift restrictions in their areas until the data show that the virus has stopped spreading .
Trump said that any loosening of rules he might seek @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as possible sites—would be “ based on hard facts and data , ” but he also said that he chose Easter as a target date because he “ just thought it was a beautiful time.
” It is true , as Trump also argued , that enormous job losses and an all but certain recession caused by the pandemic will harm many vulnerable Americans , and claim lives , as ill people without health insurance , for example , forgo care or struggle to get it at stressed clinics and hospitals .
Yet @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , over-all mortality rates fall during recessions ; the reasons for this aren ’ t fully clear , but social scientists think they may include the public-health benefits of a decrease in pollution , as a result of the slowing economy .
In any event , the case the President made for hurrying an economic revival against the advice of scientists was morally odious ; it suggested that large numbers of otherwise avoidable deaths might have to be accepted as the price of job creation .
Public-health officials spoke frankly to the press @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s Easter folly .
( “ President Trump will have blood on his hands , ” Keith Martin , the director of the Consortium of Universities for Global Health , told the Times . )
Trump responded on Twitter by lashing out at the “ LameStream Media ” for reporting such forecasts , calling the press “ the dominant force in trying to get me to keep our Country closed as long as possible in the hope that it will be detrimental to my election success.
” Last Wednesday , after Mitt @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to convict the President , on a charge of abuse of power , during the Senate impeachment trial , announced that he had tested negative for COVID-19 , Trump tweeted mockingly , “ I ’ m so happy I can barely speak.
” At the White House briefings , surrounded by the sorts of civil servants and experts he habitually disdains , Trump has adapted awkwardly to the role of solemn unifier .
When he leaves the podium to tweet nonsense at his perceived enemies , he at least provides his opponents among @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and anxious citizenry with a galvanizing dose of his immutable obnoxiousness—a splash of the old new normal .
The journal Science asked Fauci why he doesn ’ t step in when the President makes false statements in the briefings .
“ I can ’ t jump in front of the microphone and push him down , ” he said .
America ’ s public-health system is fragmented and market-driven , conditions that only compound the challenge of quashing COVID-19 .
In the Trump era , however , decentralization has a benefit : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and in the months ahead governors and mayors will continue to shape the odds of life or death for great numbers of Americans .
Last week , Trump reviewed the possibilities for quarantine in New York City , his ravaged home town .
He rambled about the stock exchange ( “ It ’ s incredible what they can do ” ) , before going on to pledge , “ If we open up , and when we open up .
.
.
we ’ re giving the governors a lot of leeway @ @ @ @ @ @ @ done .
We can only hope so .
♦ • How to practice social distancing , from responding to a sick housemate to the pros and cons of ordering food .
• How people cope and create new customs amid a pandemic .
• What it means to contain and mitigate the coronavirus outbreak .
• How much of the world is likely to be quarantined ?
• Donald Trump in the time of coronavirus .
• The coronavirus is likely to spread for more than a year before a vaccine could be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ irrational panic shoppers .
• The strange terror of watching the coronavirus take Rome .

On March 18th, researchers in France circulated a study about the promising experimental use of hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria drug, in combination with azithromycin, an antibiotic, as a treatment for the disease caused by the coronavirus. The study was neither randomized nor peer-reviewed, and other scientists soon criticized its methodology. But Tucker Carlson, on Fox News, highlighted the work. The next day, President Trump promoted hydroxychloroquine’s “very, very encouraging early results.” He added, mentioning another unproven therapy, “I think it could be, based on what I see, it could be a game changer.”
At a White House press briefing on March 20th, a reporter asked Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, whether hydroxychloroquine could be effective in treating covid-19. “The answer is no,” Fauci said, before yielding the microphone to Trump, who countered, “May work, may not. I feel good about it. That’s all it is, just a feeling, you know, smart guy.” A few days later, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization, said, “Using untested drugs without the right evidence could raise false hope and even do more harm than good.”
Trump’s quackery was at once eccentric and terrifying—a reminder, if one was needed, of his scorn for rigorous science, even amid the worst pandemic to strike the country in a century. Yet his conduct typified his leadership as the crisis has intensified: his dependency on Fox News for ideas and message amplification, his unshakable belief in his own genius, and his understandable concern that his reëlection may be in danger if he does not soon discover a way to vanquish COVID-19 and reverse its devastation of the economy.
New York City now faces a “troubling and astronomical” increase in cases, according to Governor Andrew Cuomo, and the emergency is overwhelming hospitals, straining drug and equipment supplies, and threatening to cause a shortage of ventilators. The grim course of events in the city is a “canary in the coal mine” for the rest of the country, Cuomo said, and leaders elsewhere must take decisive action lest they, too, become inundated. Trump, though, spent much of last week promoting a contrarian gambit that has been percolating in the right-wing media. He said that, to revitalize the economy, he would like to lift travel restrictions and reopen workplaces across the country within weeks, perhaps by Easter, which is on April 12th, because, as he put it repeatedly, “we can’t let the cure be worse than the problem.”
Public-health experts immediately warned against such a reversal of social-distancing rules. “The virus will surge, many will fall ill, and there will be more deaths,” William Schaffner, a specialist in preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University, told the Times. When a reporter asked the President whether any of the “doctors on your team” had advised him that a hasty reopening was “the right path to pursue,” he replied, “If it were up to the doctors, they may say, ‘Let’s keep it shut down . . . let’s keep it shut for a couple of years.’ ” Public-health specialists have said no such thing; they have spoken of a conditions-based approach (“You don’t make the timeline, the virus makes the timeline,” Fauci has said), while advising that, to save the most lives, local leaders must wait to lift restrictions in their areas until the data show that the virus has stopped spreading. Trump said that any loosening of rules he might seek around the country—he mentioned Nebraska and Idaho as possible sites—would be “based on hard facts and data,” but he also said that he chose Easter as a target date because he “just thought it was a beautiful time.”
It is true, as Trump also argued, that enormous job losses and an all but certain recession caused by the pandemic will harm many vulnerable Americans, and claim lives, as ill people without health insurance, for example, forgo care or struggle to get it at stressed clinics and hospitals. Yet, at least in the short term, over-all mortality rates fall during recessions; the reasons for this aren’t fully clear, but social scientists think they may include the public-health benefits of a decrease in pollution, as a result of the slowing economy. In any event, the case the President made for hurrying an economic revival against the advice of scientists was morally odious; it suggested that large numbers of otherwise avoidable deaths might have to be accepted as the price of job creation.
Public-health officials spoke frankly to the press about the catastrophic prospects of the President’s Easter folly. (“President Trump will have blood on his hands,” Keith Martin, the director of the Consortium of Universities for Global Health, told the Times.) Trump responded on Twitter by lashing out at the “LameStream Media” for reporting such forecasts, calling the press “the dominant force in trying to get me to keep our Country closed as long as possible in the hope that it will be detrimental to my election success.” Last Wednesday, after Mitt Romney, the only Republican who voted to convict the President, on a charge of abuse of power, during the Senate impeachment trial, announced that he had tested negative for COVID-19, Trump tweeted mockingly, “I’m so happy I can barely speak.” At the White House briefings, surrounded by the sorts of civil servants and experts he habitually disdains, Trump has adapted awkwardly to the role of solemn unifier. When he leaves the podium to tweet nonsense at his perceived enemies, he at least provides his opponents among the country’s homebound, screen-addled, and anxious citizenry with a galvanizing dose of his immutable obnoxiousness—a splash of the old new normal.
The journal Science asked Fauci why he doesn’t step in when the President makes false statements in the briefings. “I can’t jump in front of the microphone and push him down,” he said. America’s public-health system is fragmented and market-driven, conditions that only compound the challenge of quashing COVID-19. In the Trump era, however, decentralization has a benefit: the President is not solely in charge, and in the months ahead governors and mayors will continue to shape the odds of life or death for great numbers of Americans. Last week, Trump reviewed the possibilities for quarantine in New York City, his ravaged home town. He rambled about the stock exchange (“It’s incredible what they can do”), before going on to pledge, “If we open up, and when we open up . . . we’re giving the governors a lot of leeway” to decide how this should be done. We can only hope so. ♦
A Guide to the Coronavirus


newyorker--2020-03-29--It’s in Dreams That Americans Are Making Sense of Trump

Martha Crawford had her first Trump dream in 2015 .
In it , a friend who was going out of town on business asked her to check on his apartment while he was away .
The address he gave led to an apartment on the top floor of a six-story building where , on the sofa , illuminated by the glare of an enormous television , she said , “ Donald Trump , in a large adult diaper , sat sleeping with his chin on his chest.
” She watched Trump sleeping for a while , then filled a large @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it across the table .
When Trump awoke , he began gobbling , loudly , with his mouth open .
Crawford was alternately “ filled with disgust and then flooded with pity.
” She ended up buying him a flip phone , “ for emergencies only.
” This was to be the first in her collection of Trump dreams .
Trump ’ s Presidency was always surreal , even before his radical incompetence confronted a pandemic .
Crawford has been a clinical social worker and a psychotherapist in New York for twenty-five years @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ were reporting dreams with Donald Trump in a way that ’ s not common for other Presidencies , ” she said .
“ He was a looming figure in people ’ s psyches.
” She realized that it was in dreams that Americans were making sense of Trump .
“ In the year after the election , ” Crawford said , “ I was on chemotherapy for cancer and I couldn ’ t do much .
I couldn ’ t go protest in the streets .
I couldn ’ t go volunteer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ way.
” She took inspiration from Charlotte Beradt ’ s “ The Third Reich of Dreams , ” a portfolio of dream descriptions from German men and women that were collected between when Hitler became chancellor , in 1933 , and the outbreak of the Second World War .
In the aftermath of Trump ’ s election , Crawford started a blog on which people could post dreams anonymously .
Then she started gathering dreams from social media .
Soon she had three thousand .
There was a dream that Trump had taken @ @ @ @ @ @ @ There was a dream that he had changed the motto on the currency to “ Everyone Can Dream.
” There were dreams of his undoing , dreams of his Presidency being erased .
There were a series of dreams about Trump ’ s hair ; a chestnut mare at a rodeo ripping a wig off Trump ’ s head and ending his Presidency in glamorous humiliation .
One person dreamed of Trump masturbating ; another of Trump wearing an anti-masturbation T-shirt .
Often the Trump dreams involved some kind of compassion : “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a playground , because no one wanted to play with him .
Offered him a cup of tea.
” There were many dreams about food : dreams of Trump at McDonalds , or dreams where he makes olives illegal because he thinks they are “ weird.
” Crawford began sorting the three thousand dreams into categories .
There were lots of dreams in which people ’ s mothers start dating Trump—nearly twenty out of the total that were collected .
Another whole category of dreams featured Trump as an alien , an invader @ @ @ @ @ @ @ series of dreams of cognitive decline , dreams of demented tantrums , dreams of Trump begging to be moved into a memory-care unit .
Another large category contained dreams of Trump infiltrating private places : “ He walked into my house without knocking and took a giant shit in my toilet and didn ’ t even flush.
” He infiltrated institutions as well .
“ A whole section is people going back to school and Donald Trump is their teacher , ” Crawford said .
She collected fifty variations on the theme .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the place of the men who sexually abused them .
“ People who ’ ve experienced sexual abuse by teachers or by parents or by authorities are activated by that reality , ” Crawford said .
There were prophetic dreams— “ Donald Trump is descending from Heaven on a golden staircase and will save the world , ” as Crawford put it .
Others are paranoid , prophecies of Trump as a Christlike or Antichrist-like figure .
There were seventy-five separate dreams of nuclear war , which spiked around the time of Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
His power could be religious .
“ I had a dream that my old pastor said from the pulpit , ‘ If you didn ’ t vote for Trump , you don ’ t understand the Gospel , ’ except the pastor was Trump.
” There seemed to be no limit to the spaces Trump could infiltrate .
One poor man had a nightmare of Trump and Vice-President Mike Pence interrupting a Philadelphia Eagles game to dispute the rules .
And there were dreams of situations much like the one America finds @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dream we were in an exclusive box at an event with the Trump family , ” one dreamer wrote .
“ An emergency siren went off , and we were all running to safety .
Naturally the Trump family took a different elevator that would lead them to safety , and the rest of us to panic.
” Trump ’ s contamination of American consciousness began long ago .
The source of these dreams of infiltration are clear enough—Trump is unprecedented in his ability to dominate the public ’ s attention .
More @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of “ unconscious collaboration.
” Crawford ’ s own dream belongs in that category .
“ The first phenomenon I became aware of was people having positive dreams about Donald Trump , ” Crawford said .
“ Either empathic dreams or feeling sorry for him or pitying him or assisting him in some way or being a caretaker of his or being attracted to him—and then waking up and reporting these dreams as being distressing to them.
” A man struggles to put up a Christmas tree and Trump comes in and says @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Americans have been having dreams that Trump helps them , that he supports them , that they help him , that they support him—but , on waking , some of the dreamers take these positive dreams as refreshing encouragement while others consider them nightmares .
For Crawford , these dreams serve a social function , one that ’ s also reflected in “ The Third Reich of Dreams ” : the unconscious mind attempting to pull the dreamer back into alignment with an absurd and despicable world .
These dreams of unconscious @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the depth of Trump ’ s social power .
He is a voice telling certain Americans that their darkest desires are normal , acceptable .
“ If you think about dreams as the receptacle of everything we repress , of everything we have a moral problem about , anything that you don ’ t believe you should think or feel sinks down into the unconscious .
Things that we are in conflict about emerge in dream life , ” Crawford said .
Carl Jung called this the “ shadow.
” It is a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
What he tells Americans is that they ’ re O.K.—it ’ s O.K .
to want what they want , to act the way they have always wanted to act .
In “ The Third Reich of Dreams , ” the infiltration of consciousness often manifests itself as a fear of exposure .
Some Germans dreamed of the walls of their houses disappearing , or the furniture turning them in to the authorities .
One of the most horrifying dreams was from a man who told Beradt that he could only dream @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : “ You see , it was forbidden to dream.
” In Crawford ’ s collection of dreams , there is no such impetus to invisibility , rather the opposite .
“ Everybody is screaming , ” she said .
The Trump dreams are not dreams of totalitarianism but of side-taking .
“ We ’ re still fighting a civil war .
That ’ s what these dreams show , ” Crawford said .
“ We ’ re splitting ourselves personally in half , and we ’ re splitting ourselves collectively in half.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the psyche .

Martha Crawford had her first Trump dream in 2015. In it, a friend who was going out of town on business asked her to check on his apartment while he was away. The address he gave led to an apartment on the top floor of a six-story building where, on the sofa, illuminated by the glare of an enormous television, she said, “Donald Trump, in a large adult diaper, sat sleeping with his chin on his chest.” She watched Trump sleeping for a while, then filled a large metal dog bowl with kibble and slipped it across the table. When Trump awoke, he began gobbling, loudly, with his mouth open. Crawford was alternately “filled with disgust and then flooded with pity.” She ended up buying him a flip phone, “for emergencies only.” This was to be the first in her collection of Trump dreams.
Trump’s Presidency was always surreal, even before his radical incompetence confronted a pandemic. Crawford has been a clinical social worker and a psychotherapist in New York for twenty-five years. Starting in 2016, her clients “were reporting dreams with Donald Trump in a way that’s not common for other Presidencies,” she said. “He was a looming figure in people’s psyches.” She realized that it was in dreams that Americans were making sense of Trump. “In the year after the election,” Crawford said, “I was on chemotherapy for cancer and I couldn’t do much. I couldn’t go protest in the streets. I couldn’t go volunteer. I needed to contribute in some way.” She took inspiration from Charlotte Beradt’s “The Third Reich of Dreams,” a portfolio of dream descriptions from German men and women that were collected between when Hitler became chancellor, in 1933, and the outbreak of the Second World War. In the aftermath of Trump’s election, Crawford started a blog on which people could post dreams anonymously. Then she started gathering dreams from social media. Soon she had three thousand.
There was a dream that Trump had taken credit for ending the Boer War. There was a dream that he had changed the motto on the currency to “Everyone Can Dream.” There were dreams of his undoing, dreams of his Presidency being erased. There were a series of dreams about Trump’s hair; a chestnut mare at a rodeo ripping a wig off Trump’s head and ending his Presidency in glamorous humiliation. One person dreamed of Trump masturbating; another of Trump wearing an anti-masturbation T-shirt. Often the Trump dreams involved some kind of compassion: “Dreamt Donald Trump sat all alone in a playground, because no one wanted to play with him. Offered him a cup of tea.” There were many dreams about food: dreams of Trump at McDonalds, or dreams where he makes olives illegal because he thinks they are “weird.”
Crawford began sorting the three thousand dreams into categories. There were lots of dreams in which people’s mothers start dating Trump—nearly twenty out of the total that were collected. Another whole category of dreams featured Trump as an alien, an invader from outer space. There was a series of dreams of cognitive decline, dreams of demented tantrums, dreams of Trump begging to be moved into a memory-care unit. Another large category contained dreams of Trump infiltrating private places: “He walked into my house without knocking and took a giant shit in my toilet and didn’t even flush.” He infiltrated institutions as well. “A whole section is people going back to school and Donald Trump is their teacher,” Crawford said. She collected fifty variations on the theme. Another group of dreamers saw Trump in the place of the men who sexually abused them. “People who’ve experienced sexual abuse by teachers or by parents or by authorities are activated by that reality,” Crawford said.
There were prophetic dreams—“Donald Trump is descending from Heaven on a golden staircase and will save the world,” as Crawford put it. Others are paranoid, prophecies of Trump as a Christlike or Antichrist-like figure. There were seventy-five separate dreams of nuclear war, which spiked around the time of Trump’s diplomatic mission to North Korea. His power could be religious. “I had a dream that my old pastor said from the pulpit, ‘If you didn’t vote for Trump, you don’t understand the Gospel,’ except the pastor was Trump.” There seemed to be no limit to the spaces Trump could infiltrate. One poor man had a nightmare of Trump and Vice-President Mike Pence interrupting a Philadelphia Eagles game to dispute the rules. And there were dreams of situations much like the one America finds itself in now: “Had a dream we were in an exclusive box at an event with the Trump family,” one dreamer wrote. “An emergency siren went off, and we were all running to safety. Naturally the Trump family took a different elevator that would lead them to safety, and the rest of us to panic.” Trump’s contamination of American consciousness began long ago.
The source of these dreams of infiltration are clear enough—Trump is unprecedented in his ability to dominate the public’s attention. More puzzling are what Crawford calls the dreams of “unconscious collaboration.” Crawford’s own dream belongs in that category. “The first phenomenon I became aware of was people having positive dreams about Donald Trump,” Crawford said. “Either empathic dreams or feeling sorry for him or pitying him or assisting him in some way or being a caretaker of his or being attracted to him—and then waking up and reporting these dreams as being distressing to them.” A man struggles to put up a Christmas tree and Trump comes in and says, “Biggest Christmas tree ever!” Americans have been having dreams that Trump helps them, that he supports them, that they help him, that they support him—but, on waking, some of the dreamers take these positive dreams as refreshing encouragement while others consider them nightmares. For Crawford, these dreams serve a social function, one that’s also reflected in “The Third Reich of Dreams”: the unconscious mind attempting to pull the dreamer back into alignment with an absurd and despicable world.
These dreams of unconscious collaboration, of surreptitious compassion, reveal the depth of Trump’s social power. He is a voice telling certain Americans that their darkest desires are normal, acceptable. “If you think about dreams as the receptacle of everything we repress, of everything we have a moral problem about, anything that you don’t believe you should think or feel sinks down into the unconscious. Things that we are in conflict about emerge in dream life,” Crawford said. Carl Jung called this the “shadow.” It is a fundamental source of Trump’s appeal. What he tells Americans is that they’re O.K.—it’s O.K. to want what they want, to act the way they have always wanted to act.
In “The Third Reich of Dreams,” the infiltration of consciousness often manifests itself as a fear of exposure. Some Germans dreamed of the walls of their houses disappearing, or the furniture turning them in to the authorities. One of the most horrifying dreams was from a man who told Beradt that he could only dream of rectangles, triangles, and octagons: “You see, it was forbidden to dream.” In Crawford’s collection of dreams, there is no such impetus to invisibility, rather the opposite. “Everybody is screaming,” she said. The Trump dreams are not dreams of totalitarianism but of side-taking. “We’re still fighting a civil war. That’s what these dreams show,” Crawford said. “We’re splitting ourselves personally in half, and we’re splitting ourselves collectively in half.” American polarization is on the level of the psyche.
Dreams can be the register of what we take in but haven’t processed. “These dreams—these diaries of the night—were conceived independently of their authors’ conscious will,” Beradt wrote. “Dream imagery might thus help to describe the structure of a reality that was on the verge of becoming a nightmare.” Crawford has found a similar type of anticipation in the Trump dreams. She was cataloguing a whole subset of dreams about family separation before the border crisis exploded.
I spoke with clinical psychiatrists who have been working at the border and have been documenting the nightmares of children and parents who have been separated. “When I dream, I am falling asleep and I see my father and mother and dogs in my dream, ‘Look, look, a coyote,’ ” one eight-year-old boy told them. “The coyote is between us and my family. Someone frightened the coyote away, and then I was with my family. I was very frightened because I saw my aunt, and I was very afraid, and they killed my father. I saw everything when they killed my father. It was so terrible.” That same boy described another dream. “ICE was in my dream the whole time watching us and they had an animal that ate all the other animals,” he said. “There were two sticks with birds on the sticks, a dove and a cat they didn’t want to eat. I survived. In my dreams and in real life ICE had dogs but they did not attack me.” From now on, when we speak of the American dream, we must speak of these dreams.
Border Patrol dreams, too. Many of the border guards are dropped into a quagmire—overworked, unsupported, occasionally unpaid. One agent, who worked in a processing center where migrants are held in detention—a place that smells like several hundred people who haven’t showered for weeks—found the work never-ending and the directives on how to handle the cases changing constantly. He was working the shift between ten o’clock at night and eight in the morning. “Coming home, I would shower immediately and collapse on my bed and almost go straight into dreaming.” he said. “I would dream of being right back at the processing station.” The line between dreaming and waking blurred. He developed night terrors. A former Customs and Border Protection agent told me about a dream in which he was in the home where he grew up with his mother, walking behind Trump down the stairs to the driveway, looking at the President’s weird hair from behind, and contemplating assassinating him. He couldn’t remember whether he had a weapon in the dream, and he woke up before anything decisive happened. “It definitely resonated long after waking,” he said.
American politics no longer follows the logic of institutions or the law. It follows the logic of dreams. Rational approaches produce absurdities. “I don’t believe these dreams are about Donald Trump. I believe these dreams are about us,” Crawford said. “They’re about some aspect of our own psyche that we haven’t dealt with.” Think tanks and political columnists continue to discuss political horse-race details as if politics were a reasonable affair. They analyze debates as if they registered with the public; they go to small Midwestern towns and talk to the locals as if that might unfurl some secret mechanism of the American spirit; they read polls as if polls didn’t fail in the last election. But the political reality no longer corresponds to the language of its description. Trump is the eruption of the repressed; the years of his Presidency have been a crumbling revelation. Political truths, self-evident for generations, have dissolved on contact with him. Things we thought we knew turned out to be collective fictions, dreams that we didn’t know were dreams, because everybody was dreaming them.


newyorker--2020-03-29--The Gospel in a Time of Social Distancing

Many years ago , there was a debate at my rural church about whether the pastor needed a cellular telephone for his ministry .
They were expensive , so , of course , the argument was partly about whether paying for one was a responsible use of parish funds .
I can ’ t remember all the details , but the “ car phone ” was finally purchased , and for many years longer than was technologically reasonable , our pastor had it plugged into his vehicle so that he could be reached whenever he was on the road .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ opponents of this purchase , turned out to be basically flat : it was another decade before the church got a Web site .
But after that came an e-mail list for prayer needs , which lets us know when someone is in the hospital or someone else has lost a family member , and , more recently , the monthly newsletter started circulating online to save on postage costs .
This is the little Lutheran church where I was baptized and confirmed , where I preached my first sermon , and where @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the cemetery .
My mother taught Sunday school here , and my father ran the church council ( and led the opposition to the cell phone ) ; my two sisters and I all read bits of the Nativity story during Christmas Eve pageants and parts of the lectionary during Sunday services , carried the cross into worship as crucifers and lit candles as acolytes , helped make lunches for the elderly and the indigent in the kitchen , and attended 4-H Club meetings in the fellowship hall .
We celebrated graduations @ @ @ @ @ @ @ weddings and funerals there as well , and prayed for those serving abroad or suffering at home .
This is all to say that our country church was never just a building but a space where we shared joys and sorrows , where our family grew to many more than five , and where , every week , we felt our congregation joined with others across time and around the world .
Worship has always been a time when I felt myself turned outward to others .
There are many definitions of sin @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on them , but I ’ ve always liked the one that Martin Luther borrowed from St. Augustine : incurvatus in se .
If to sin is to be turned in on one ’ s self—a thoroughly modern and anthropologically astute idea—then worship is one obvious antidote .
I ’ ve certainly experienced it that way .
Church is where I go to be reminded that the world is full of other people , and that their needs and desires are every bit as urgent and real as mine , and not just @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of those around the world .
It ’ s no wonder , then , that so many Christian denominations over all the centuries have emphasized what happens when followers of Christ gather together in person , and why they worry when we don ’ t .
Worship is more than a mere social gathering , when we move beyond the individual , atomistic experience of the holy that we might have alone in our morning meditation or evening prayers .
It is the ritual enactment of what Christ taught us in the Gospel @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or three are gathered together in my name , there am I in the midst of them.
” And so , as often as I can , at home or while travelling , I try to find my way into Compline or Evensong , Sabbath services or morning prayers .
I have felt over and over again how restorative those gatherings can be , drawing me out of my solipsism , turning my heart toward those in need , not just in tithes of money but of presence and witness , too .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ that for some time , which is as it should be .
The Pope has even cancelled Easter—not the resurrection , of course , only the public Mass commemorating it .
It was , as far as I know , the largest of all the church services called off so far because of the coronavirus epidemic , since tens of thousands of people typically fill St. Peter ’ s Square for papal audiences like the one that would have taken place on Easter Sunday .
Instead , both the square and the church @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to social distancing , which is keeping us all six feet apart and at home as much as we can .
Such is the gospel in the age of COVID-19 .
My own local church has cancelled its services , too .
Word of the cancellation came via e-mail from the council president ( no longer my father , but now my godmother and onetime babysitter ) with the lessons and prayers for the next two weeks attached , along with the pastor ’ s sermons .
A few days later , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would be conducting Bible studies and worship services on Zoom ; it ’ s no descending dove or tongue of fire , but the Holy Spirit can still surprise us .
Like college lectures and book launches , apparently religious worship across many faiths has largely migrated to this online platform , although the National Cathedral , in Washington , D.C. , seems to prefer Facebook Live , and Riverside Church , in New York , opted for YouTube .
As with any change in praxis , this one has occasioned some weeping @ @ @ @ @ @ @ leaders and the laity all wondering anew about what it means for an incarnate faith to go digital .
Of course , many churches were online before the coronavirus outbreak , with so-called Internet campuses and live streams and prayer Web forums , and there were already apps for everything from confession to meditation .
Even before those clickable rituals , televangelists like T. D. Jakes , Billy Graham , and Bishop Fulton Sheen were offering salvation on television , and long before that Aimee Semple McPherson was broadcasting her sermons from Angelus @ @ @ @ @ @ @ radio .
In the beginning might have been the Word , but ever since then the message of Jesus Christ has been adapted to whatever medium was available , from the scroll to the codex and eventually the podcast .
I admire those pastors , and religious leaders of all denominations , who , for the sake of their congregants , have been cautious , and clear about why we must find new ways to worship .
I worry some about how much more easily ignored the Zoom alarm is or how effortlessly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ video by another , the sound of an incoming e-mail , or even just how strangely wired my brain has become to the sight of the laptop and its associations with writing and work , but I have been reassured by the example of how Christians across the centuries and across the globe who could not worship together , either because of illness or distress or suppression by the state , have found ways to be the Church without being physically together .
When I was younger , my grandmother , one of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the novelist and poet Reynolds Price used to call an “ outlaw Christian , ” would get cassette tapes in the mail of an evangelical preacher whose ministry she found moving and whose messages appealed to her .
She was often a few months behind their services , but she ’ d play them in the car , and to my mainline ears it was like the Great Awakening had plugged in the guitar .
She was a fine example of someone who rarely set foot in a worship service but whose faith @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and who lived the Gospel of Christ more fully than I ever will , with constant love for others and patience with herself and generosity that exceeded the widow ’ s mite .
She has often been on my mind when I think about how it will be fine to worship from home for a while .
Already before the church cancellations , many Christians were fasting for Lent and taking on new devotions in preparation for Easter , so what is this if not another opportunity to remember the time when @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , in the desert , away from his own spiritual home ?

Many years ago, there was a debate at my rural church about whether the pastor needed a cellular telephone for his ministry. They were expensive, so, of course, the argument was partly about whether paying for one was a responsible use of parish funds. I can’t remember all the details, but the “car phone” was finally purchased, and for many years longer than was technologically reasonable, our pastor had it plugged into his vehicle so that he could be reached whenever he was on the road. The slippery slope, much invoked by opponents of this purchase, turned out to be basically flat: it was another decade before the church got a Web site. But after that came an e-mail list for prayer needs, which lets us know when someone is in the hospital or someone else has lost a family member, and, more recently, the monthly newsletter started circulating online to save on postage costs.
This is the little Lutheran church where I was baptized and confirmed, where I preached my first sermon, and where, someday, I will be buried in the cemetery. My mother taught Sunday school here, and my father ran the church council (and led the opposition to the cell phone); my two sisters and I all read bits of the Nativity story during Christmas Eve pageants and parts of the lectionary during Sunday services, carried the cross into worship as crucifers and lit candles as acolytes, helped make lunches for the elderly and the indigent in the kitchen, and attended 4-H Club meetings in the fellowship hall. We celebrated graduations and homecomings in the sanctuary, attended weddings and funerals there as well, and prayed for those serving abroad or suffering at home. This is all to say that our country church was never just a building but a space where we shared joys and sorrows, where our family grew to many more than five, and where, every week, we felt our congregation joined with others across time and around the world.
Worship has always been a time when I felt myself turned outward to others. There are many definitions of sin and as many preachers willing to expound on them, but I’ve always liked the one that Martin Luther borrowed from St. Augustine: incurvatus in se. If to sin is to be turned in on one’s self—a thoroughly modern and anthropologically astute idea—then worship is one obvious antidote. I’ve certainly experienced it that way. Church is where I go to be reminded that the world is full of other people, and that their needs and desires are every bit as urgent and real as mine, and not just of those gathered in the sanctuary but of those around the world.
It’s no wonder, then, that so many Christian denominations over all the centuries have emphasized what happens when followers of Christ gather together in person, and why they worry when we don’t. Worship is more than a mere social gathering, when we move beyond the individual, atomistic experience of the holy that we might have alone in our morning meditation or evening prayers. It is the ritual enactment of what Christ taught us in the Gospel of Matthew: “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” And so, as often as I can, at home or while travelling, I try to find my way into Compline or Evensong, Sabbath services or morning prayers. I have felt over and over again how restorative those gatherings can be, drawing me out of my solipsism, turning my heart toward those in need, not just in tithes of money but of presence and witness, too.
But there will be no gathering like that for some time, which is as it should be. The Pope has even cancelled Easter—not the resurrection, of course, only the public Mass commemorating it. It was, as far as I know, the largest of all the church services called off so far because of the coronavirus epidemic, since tens of thousands of people typically fill St. Peter’s Square for papal audiences like the one that would have taken place on Easter Sunday. Instead, both the square and the church will be all but empty, thanks to social distancing, which is keeping us all six feet apart and at home as much as we can. Such is the gospel in the age of COVID-19.
My own local church has cancelled its services, too. Word of the cancellation came via e-mail from the council president (no longer my father, but now my godmother and onetime babysitter) with the lessons and prayers for the next two weeks attached, along with the pastor’s sermons. A few days later, the pastor himself wrote to say that he would be conducting Bible studies and worship services on Zoom; it’s no descending dove or tongue of fire, but the Holy Spirit can still surprise us. Like college lectures and book launches, apparently religious worship across many faiths has largely migrated to this online platform, although the National Cathedral, in Washington, D.C., seems to prefer Facebook Live, and Riverside Church, in New York, opted for YouTube. As with any change in praxis, this one has occasioned some weeping and gnashing of teeth, with religious leaders and the laity all wondering anew about what it means for an incarnate faith to go digital.
Of course, many churches were online before the coronavirus outbreak, with so-called Internet campuses and live streams and prayer Web forums, and there were already apps for everything from confession to meditation. Even before those clickable rituals, televangelists like T. D. Jakes, Billy Graham, and Bishop Fulton Sheen were offering salvation on television, and long before that Aimee Semple McPherson was broadcasting her sermons from Angelus Temple to millions of people over the radio. In the beginning might have been the Word, but ever since then the message of Jesus Christ has been adapted to whatever medium was available, from the scroll to the codex and eventually the podcast.
I admire those pastors, and religious leaders of all denominations, who, for the sake of their congregants, have been cautious, and clear about why we must find new ways to worship. I worry some about how much more easily ignored the Zoom alarm is or how effortlessly I can be distracted from one YouTube video by another, the sound of an incoming e-mail, or even just how strangely wired my brain has become to the sight of the laptop and its associations with writing and work, but I have been reassured by the example of how Christians across the centuries and across the globe who could not worship together, either because of illness or distress or suppression by the state, have found ways to be the Church without being physically together.
When I was younger, my grandmother, one of those gloriously churchless Christians, or what the novelist and poet Reynolds Price used to call an “outlaw Christian,” would get cassette tapes in the mail of an evangelical preacher whose ministry she found moving and whose messages appealed to her. She was often a few months behind their services, but she’d play them in the car, and to my mainline ears it was like the Great Awakening had plugged in the guitar. She was a fine example of someone who rarely set foot in a worship service but whose faith was stronger than mine ever would be, and who lived the Gospel of Christ more fully than I ever will, with constant love for others and patience with herself and generosity that exceeded the widow’s mite. She has often been on my mind when I think about how it will be fine to worship from home for a while. Already before the church cancellations, many Christians were fasting for Lent and taking on new devotions in preparation for Easter, so what is this if not another opportunity to remember the time when Christ was facing temptation and Satan himself, in the desert, away from his own spiritual home?
But apparently not everyone feels this way. Some pastors have continued to hold worship services, and other Christians have been arguing somewhat diabolically that public safety is a kind of false idol, and the President himself has insisted that the churches be open in time for Easter. Though I understand that in times of trial and fear Christians want to be together, and I cannot imagine the heartbreak of families who cannot gather to mourn those they have already lost to the virus or any other cause, I do not understand how easily some leaders of the faith disregard what Jesus said about his desire for us to “have life and have it in abundance,” or how they misrepresent our faith’s history during plague times. It is certainly true that from the Plague of Cyprian, during the third century, to the bubonic plague, during the decades it ravaged Europe, Christianity grew as a religion in part because so many saw followers of Jesus ministering to the sick, and endangering their own lives to be with the dying. The difference, of course, is that those Christians were providing medical care and companionship, not insisting on their right to carry on with life as usual.


newyorker--2020-03-28--Fauci Gently Tells Trump Why He Can’t Hold Parade to Celebrate Great Job He Is Doing on the Coronavi

Fauci Gently Tells Trump Why He Can’t Hold Parade to Celebrate Great Job He Is Doing on the Coronavirus

WASHINGTON ( The Borowitz Report ) —Dr .
Anthony Fauci spent several hours on Saturday gently explaining to Donald J. Trump why it would be “ a bad idea ” to hold a giant parade to celebrate the great job the President is doing to combat COVID-19 , Dr. Fauci has confirmed .
Trump first raised the idea of a massive parade early Saturday morning , arguing that it would address the “ biggest problem ” created by the pandemic thus far : the lack of appreciation for his own efforts regarding it .
“ A parade would put Jay @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their place , ” Trump bitterly insisted .
As Trump began drawing up plans for a parade , a panicked Dr. Fauci interceded and tried to explain that such a celebration would be “ much nicer ” if held after the pandemic is over .
“ Would I still be able to have tanks ?
” a crestfallen Trump asked .
“ Yes , you could have tanks , ” Fauci replied .
“ You can have all the balloons you want , ” the virologist said .
“ I promise you.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he believed that , after laboriously explaining the situation to Trump , “ I think I got through to him , ” adding , “ I ’ ve got ta lie down now .
”

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Dr. Anthony Fauci spent several hours on Saturday gently explaining to Donald J. Trump why it would be “a bad idea” to hold a giant parade to celebrate the great job the President is doing to combat COVID-19, Dr. Fauci has confirmed.
Trump first raised the idea of a massive parade early Saturday morning, arguing that it would address the “biggest problem” created by the pandemic thus far: the lack of appreciation for his own efforts regarding it.
“A parade would put Jay Inslee and that woman in Michigan in their place,” Trump bitterly insisted.
As Trump began drawing up plans for a parade, a panicked Dr. Fauci interceded and tried to explain that such a celebration would be “much nicer” if held after the pandemic is over.
“Would I still be able to have tanks?” a crestfallen Trump asked.
“Yes, you could have tanks,” Fauci replied.
“What about balloons?” Trump asked.
“You can have all the balloons you want,” the virologist said. “I promise you.”
Speaking to reporters, Dr. Fauci said he believed that, after laboriously explaining the situation to Trump, “I think I got through to him,” adding, “I’ve gotta lie down now.”
Read More Satire from the Borowitz Report