theatlantic--2020-04-02--The Four Rules of Pandemic Economics

The Four Rules of Pandemic Economics

What are the economic rules of this upside-down world , where opening the economy too soon produces mass death , but shutting it down for too long produces mass suffering ?
Over the past few weeks , I ’ ve asked a version of this question to a dozen economists .
What follows is an attempt to distill their thoughts into four rules that should govern our short-term reaction to the health crisis .
It is not just a rebuke to the gospel of growth .
It is a new playbook for pandemic economics .
Rule 1 : “ Save @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a false choice .
Last week , a group of economists from the Federal Reserve and MIT published a paper on the 20th century ’ s most murderous flu , the 1918 outbreak .
Because the federal government in 1918 offered little if any economic assistance to suffering Americans , the local response from city leaders varied widely .
Some places , such as New York and St. Louis , quickly ordered social distancing and other interventions , while others , such as New Haven and Buffalo , allowed public gatherings even weeks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ This variance gave researchers the ability to see which cities recovered the fastest after the outbreak .
“ We were expecting that the areas with more [ social distancing ] would have a worse economy but less mortality , ” said Emil Verner , a co-author of the paper and a finance professor at MIT .
But early and aggressive interventions both saved lives and triggered a faster rebound in several measures , such as job growth and banking assets .
Alan Lightman : The virus is a reminder of something lost long @ @ @ @ @ @ @ GDP ?
It doesn ’ t exist—or , at least , it didn ’ t in 1918 .
The reason , Verner told me , is that pandemics are “ so , so disruptive that anything that you can do to mitigate that destructive impact of the pandemic itself is going to be useful.
” Without a healthy population , there can be no healthy economy .
This simple idea has some weird implications .
“ In a normal recession , you want to boost demand , ” said the Northwestern economist Martin @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t really want to boost demand in the very short run at all , right now .
We don ’ t want United to be flying full planes .
We don ’ t want restaurants serving food to dine-in customers .
We want everybody to stay in and hold on.
” It follows that we should—as incomprehensible as this may sound—hope for a deep , short recession , caused by a cliff dive in many forms of economic activity .
That would be a clear signal that people have gone home and that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to limit the spread of disease .
“ The question I would ask of our leaders is : What will you regret ?
” Eichenbaum said .
“ Will the government regret that it didn ’ t save money in early 2020 ?
Or will it regret that we let a viral infection kill millions of people , which also , by the way , led to the death of a lot of great companies ?
It ’ s pretty obvious what the worst-case scenario is .
You want to err on the @ @ @ @ @ @

“WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF.”
With this tweet, President Donald Trump summarized a disturbingly common reaction to social-distancing measures. Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick expressed the same sentiment when he told Americans to “get back to work,” even if doing so means more death. Fox News commentators, likewise, have argued that Americans should break free of the shackles of quarantine to reboot the economy.
Call it the gospel of growth: the notion that Americans cannot afford to save tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of lives, if it means sacrificing a quarter or two of gross domestic product.
Read: Reopening the economy is pointless when cities are under siege
While this might sound like an economic argument, it enjoys little support among economists. In a recent University of Chicago survey of dozens of prominent economists, almost all of them agreed with the idea that the economy would suffer if the U.S. abandoned “severe lockdowns” while the infection risk remained high.
Still, the growth evangelists are right about one thing. Severe lockdowns produce a parallel human misery—with millions of unemployed Americans, thousands of looming bankruptcies, and extreme financial anguish.
What are the economic rules of this upside-down world, where opening the economy too soon produces mass death, but shutting it down for too long produces mass suffering?
Over the past few weeks, I’ve asked a version of this question to a dozen economists. What follows is an attempt to distill their thoughts into four rules that should govern our short-term reaction to the health crisis. It is not just a rebuke to the gospel of growth. It is a new playbook for pandemic economics.
Rule 1: “Save the economy or save lives” is a false choice.
Last week, a group of economists from the Federal Reserve and MIT published a paper on the 20th century’s most murderous flu, the 1918 outbreak. Because the federal government in 1918 offered little if any economic assistance to suffering Americans, the local response from city leaders varied widely. Some places, such as New York and St. Louis, quickly ordered social distancing and other interventions, while others, such as New Haven and Buffalo, allowed public gatherings even weeks after the flu reached crisis levels. This variance gave researchers the ability to see which cities recovered the fastest after the outbreak.
“We were expecting that the areas with more [social distancing] would have a worse economy but less mortality,” said Emil Verner, a co-author of the paper and a finance professor at MIT. But early and aggressive interventions both saved lives and triggered a faster rebound in several measures, such as job growth and banking assets.
Alan Lightman: The virus is a reminder of something lost long ago
The infamous trade-off between people and GDP? It doesn’t exist—or, at least, it didn’t in 1918. The reason, Verner told me, is that pandemics are “so, so disruptive that anything that you can do to mitigate that destructive impact of the pandemic itself is going to be useful.” Without a healthy population, there can be no healthy economy.
This simple idea has some weird implications. “In a normal recession, you want to boost demand,” said the Northwestern economist Martin Eichenbaum. “But we don’t really want to boost demand in the very short run at all, right now. We don’t want United to be flying full planes. We don’t want restaurants serving food to dine-in customers. We want everybody to stay in and hold on.”
It follows that we should—as incomprehensible as this may sound—hope for a deep, short recession, caused by a cliff dive in many forms of economic activity. That would be a clear signal that people have gone home and that the face-to-face economy has been shut down to limit the spread of disease.
“The question I would ask of our leaders is: What will you regret?” Eichenbaum said. “Will the government regret that it didn’t save money in early 2020? Or will it regret that we let a viral infection kill millions of people, which also, by the way, led to the death of a lot of great companies? It’s pretty obvious what the worst-case scenario is. You want to err on the side of saving lives.”
Rule 2: Pay people a living wage to stop working.
In a pandemic, public gatherings are a kind of social pollution, and asymptomatic individuals who violate social-distancing rules are like factories that spew invisible carbon. “We can’t ask people to internalize health risks on an individual basis any more than we can expect polluting factories to self-regulate,” Eichenbaum said. “So governments have to freeze the economy and order people to stay home.”
Read: The four possible timelines for life returning to normal
But asking millions of able-bodied workers to stop working creates a crisis of unemployment for which the word unprecedented does no justice. On Thursday, the government announced that 3.28 million people had applied for jobless benefits in the previous week. That’s not just the highest weekly figure in recorded history; it’s roughly five times larger than the highest-ever figure in recorded history. In seven days, unemployment benefits rose by as much as they did during the first six months of job losses in the Great Recession.
Once the government has put the economy into an artificial coma, it must keep the patient alive. The U.S. economic-relief package does so in a few ways. Washington will send to most households one-time payments of $1,200 per adult—plus $500 per child—and expand unemployment benefits, bumping up weekly payments for eligible workers, including independent contractors and the self-employed, by $600 for the next few months. The new law also delays tax filing, suspends wage garnishing among those who have defaulted on their student loans, and establishes a four-month eviction moratorium among landlords with mortgages from federal entities, such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. This is a huge and kaleidoscopic response. But it still might not be enough.
Denmark and other northern-European countries are taking a different approach. Their governments are directly paying businesses to maintain their payrolls to avoid the sort of mass layoffs and furloughs that are already happening across the United States. The chief benefit of this approach is that restaurants, factories, and so on don’t have to go through the bureaucratic rigmarole of firing thousands of workers and then rehiring them all when the economy bounces back (and those workers don’t have to waste time applying for jobs, either). They’re putting their entire economy in the freezer for three months.
Rule 3: Build companies a time machine.
The U.S. has about 6 million companies, according to the census, and 99.7 percent of them employ fewer than 500 people. Many of these small- and medium-size companies face extinction during the pandemic shutdown. While their income has evaporated, they still owe wages to workers and rent to landlords. This is a recipe for cascading bankruptcies.
If America’s small businesses begin to fail en masse, the damage will spread quickly throughout the economy. Just imagine the closed wine bars in Manhattan. Without money from thirsty New Yorkers, they can’t afford to buy more bottles from family wineries. Without commercial buyers, those wineries can’t buy new fruit from local grape growers, who can’t pay tractor manufacturers for new equipment. One sector’s problem quickly becomes every sector’s problem.
Read: How the pandemic will end
Financial markets may experience a parallel domino effect. If thousands of restaurants suddenly can’t make rent, their property owners might default on mortgage payments. When their banks suffer catastrophic losses, the financial system will seize up because nobody wants to lend anybody money. This is how a pandemic recession could become the Great Depression of the 21st century.
How do we begin to solve this impossible problem? The Federal Reserve has said it will pull all available levers to keep the financial system alive, by buying up government debt, corporate debt, and a variety of asset-backed securities. But something more will be needed to save America’s businesses.
“We have to build companies a time machine,” Justin Wolfers, an economist at the University of Michigan, told me. He isn’t talking about the H. G. Wells contraption. He’s referring to anything—including grants, cheap loans, and debt relief—that would allow companies to shift their expenses to the future.
“My local burrito shop, which used to be a thriving business, could go belly-up any day now,” Wolfers said. “But in the post-coronavirus world, it should be a thriving business again. What that burrito business needs is what every business needs right now—a time machine to go from the present pandemic to the future.”
In the U.S. economic-rescue package, that time machine looks like $370 billion in low-interest loans backed by the government. Many businesses won’t have to pay back a cent if they use the cash to make basic expenses, like payroll or rent, and don’t lay off workers. As Slate’s Jordan Weissmann explains, private banks will make the loans to local companies with whom they already have a relationship, and the Small Business Administration will guarantee those loans—at least, until they run out of the roughly $370 billion.
Most economists I spoke with had the same reaction to the economic-rescue plan: Nice idea, too late, and too small. “This should have been passed three weeks ago, and it should have been much larger,” said John Lettieri, CEO of the Economic Innovation Group, a think tank and an advocacy group. Steven Hamilton, an economist at George Washington University, wrote that if the bill is intended to cover 11 weeks of payroll for all companies with fewer than 500 employees, the right figure should be closer to $600 billion. When the U.S. Senate returns to draft follow-up legislation, small-business relief will have to be at the top of the list.
Rule 4: The business of America is now science.
The new rules of pandemic economics are meant to guide U.S. policy during a period of weeks or months—not quarters or years. A three- or four-month freeze is one thing, but a full year of isolation and economic inactivity is untenable.
That brings us to the $100 trillion question: How do we get out of this? A lot more science.
Liz Neeley: How to talk about the coronavirus
Our lack of knowledge about the virus is our greatest weakness in combatting it. Not knowing who has the virus, or who is most susceptible, contributes to higher infection rates. Not knowing who has recovered from, and built immunity to, the virus delays our ability to treat individuals, or release select individuals from isolation. The possibility that the virus is anywhere means that we have to shut down economic activity everywhere. The road back to normalcy is through more clear and public information.
First, we need more tests, which can tell us where the virus already is. As The Atlantic’s Ed Yong explains, that means we need more masks, more nasopharyngeal swabs for collecting samples, more extraction kits to retrieve the virus’s genetic material, and more trained people to administer the tests.
Second, we need sophisticated tracing technology to tell us where the virus is spreading. “Contact tracing” means reaching out immediately to people who came into contact with an infected person, testing them, and recommending isolation if they test positive. While some countries’ tracing methods draw on mobile data in a way that might make Americans uncomfortable, Germany is looking to deploy a national app that has (for now) won approval from its health minister and data-protection commissioner.
In addition to coordinating a test-and-trace strategy, Washington should train its prodigious energies toward defeating the disease as fast as possible, by establishing billion-dollar prizes for vaccine and antiviral breakthroughs and by relaxing regulations to accelerate the approval of new treatments. After weeks of delay, the administration is finally using the wartime Defense Production Act to force manufacturers to produce ventilators and surgical masks.
We need to get people money, or they will die. We need to get companies cash, or they will die. But if we don’t clear the way for health-care workers to treat the sick, or for scientists to treat the disease, people and companies are going to die, anyway. There is no such thing as a normal economy until we contain the virus. But if we can’t contain the virus quickly, we might not have anything normal to return to.


theatlantic--2020-04-17--Politics Daily: The Stories That Stuck With Us

Our team has been reimagining another newsletter in our portfolio , The Atlantic Daily , over the last year , and it has become the definitive expression of The Atlantic in email form .
The politics newsletter you ’ re reading now will cease today .
Where possible , you ’ ll be subscribed to The Atlantic Daily automatically ( with a clear and easy way to unsubscribe ) .
You can also sign yourself up here anytime .
For this final issue of the Politics Daily , I asked some colleagues to share with me the political stories from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to them .
For me , Russell Berman ’ s story on one of the defining concerns of the Democratic 2020 campaign—electability—forever changed how I talk about politics with friends and family .
And Peter Nicholas ’ s story on the isolation of Donald Trump helped me understand the president ’ s mentality more than any other story about the Trump administration written in the past year .
Without further ado , here ’ s what others recommended , just in time for your weekend reflection .
This Adam Serwer story is a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ moments in America ’ s history .
It gave voice to a thought that has been with me for the last few years I ’ ve been living in the U.S. : “ Rather , the source of greatest danger has been those who would choose white purity over a diverse democracy .
”

Our team has been reimagining another newsletter in our portfolio, The Atlantic Daily, over the last year, and it has become the definitive expression of The Atlantic in email form.
The politics newsletter you’re reading now will cease today.
Where possible, you’ll be subscribed to The Atlantic Daily automatically (with a clear and easy way to unsubscribe). You can also sign yourself up here anytime.


Rick Reilly

Rick Reilly is the author of Commander in Cheat : How Golf Explains Trump .
• I Miss Sports So @ @ @ @ @ Their sudden disappearance due to the coronavirus left a gigantic hole in American life .
@ @ @ @ @ their way to a World Series title—and mostly got away with it .
• The @ @ @ @ @ s Side If Mitch McConnell ran the Super Bowl , would the game even have @ @ @ @ @ Trump Is Playing , It Isn ’ t Golf The sport means a lot to @ @ @ @ @ him from cheating outrageously at it .

Rick Reilly is the author of Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump.
Lucas Uebel / Getty I Miss Sports So, So, So Much Their sudden disappearance due to the coronavirus left a gigantic hole in American life.
Aaron Doster / AP The Crookedest Team in Baseball History The Houston Astros cheated their way to a World Series title—and mostly got away with it.
Charlie Neibergall / AP The Referees Have Taken Trump’s Side If Mitch McConnell ran the Super Bowl, would the game even have to happen?


theatlantic--2020-03-15--For Subscribers: Our Best Journalism About the Coronavirus Pandemic

Dear reader , I write today to thank you for supporting The Atlantic .
A democratic civilization depends on an independent press to stay free , and an independent press counts on the generosity of readers to support it through vexing times .
We are immensely grateful that you have chosen to support our mission , and we hope that you are finding our work helpful and illuminating .
Our own offices have emptied .
Our team is scattered across the country—across much of the globe .
But we are working harder than ever to provide you with the best @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pandemic .
I am very proud of our team ; they have trail-blazed all along the way , leading international coverage of this crisis .
We at The Atlantic often look to our long history for solace .
Our magazine was born before the Civil War , and it survived that conflagration .
It survived the 1918 influenza pandemic , and the Great Depression , and World War II , and every other period of tumult and dislocation in America these past 163 years .
We will struggle through this new pandemic , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to examine what went wrong , and how this experience has changed America , and the world .
One of my predecessors , Edward Weeks , wrote in 1957 that The Atlantic is most in demand during times of anxiety .
An excellent way to answer anxiety is with information—smart , accurate , rigorously vetted information—information that our team has been providing our tens of millions of readers right from the beginning .
I want to share with you some of the best of our most recent work .
The stories I 've @ @ @ @ @ @ @ well ahead of the curve—a testament to the brilliance and tenacity of our journalists .
Thank you again for your support , and let me wish you good health and safety at this trying moment .

A note from our editor in chief: We are working harder than ever to provide you with the best possible information and analysis about the coronavirus pandemic.
Dear reader,
I write today to thank you for supporting The Atlantic. A democratic civilization depends on an independent press to stay free, and an independent press counts on the generosity of readers to support it through vexing times. We are immensely grateful that you have chosen to support our mission, and we hope that you are finding our work helpful and illuminating.
Our own offices have emptied. Our team is scattered across the country—across much of the globe. But we are working harder than ever to provide you with the best possible information and analysis about the coronavirus pandemic. I am very proud of our team; they have trail-blazed all along the way, leading international coverage of this crisis.
We at The Atlantic often look to our long history for solace. Our magazine was born before the Civil War, and it survived that conflagration. It survived the 1918 influenza pandemic, and the Great Depression, and World War II, and every other period of tumult and dislocation in America these past 163 years. We will struggle through this new pandemic, and come out the other side needing to examine what went wrong, and how this experience has changed America, and the world.
One of my predecessors, Edward Weeks, wrote in 1957 that The Atlantic is most in demand during times of anxiety. An excellent way to answer anxiety is with information—smart, accurate, rigorously vetted information—information that our team has been providing our tens of millions of readers right from the beginning.
I want to share with you some of the best of our most recent work. The stories I've selected here were all written and published well ahead of the curve—a testament to the brilliance and tenacity of our journalists. Thank you again for your support, and let me wish you good health and safety at this trying moment.
All good wishes,
Jeffrey Goldberg
Editor in Chief, The Atlantic
****
HANNA BARCZYK AND FRANZISKA BARCZYK
1. Here’s How Many People Have the Coronavirus in Your State
An investigation co-led by The Atlantic (March 20)
The country still hasn’t tested enough people to discover most cases, experts say. Our tracker has the latest numbers of confirmed cases for every state. You can explore our data by state here.
2. Exclusive: Amazon Confirms First Known Coronavirus Case in an American Warehouse
By Olga Khazan (March 18)
Workers at the Queens, New York, facility say employees were expected to come in for their night shift after the case was identified. Amazon denies this.
3. Exclusive: The Strongest Evidence Yet That America Is Botching Coronavirus Testing
By Alexis Madrigal and Robinson Meyer (March 6)
The number of tests performed across the country has fallen far short of projections, despite extraordinarily high demand.
“I don’t know what went wrong,” a former CDC chief told The Atlantic.
EMARYS / GETTY
4. Why the Coronavirus Has Been So Successful
By Ed Yong (March 20)
We’ve known about SARS-CoV-2 for only three months, but scientists can make some educated guesses about where it came from and why it’s behaving in such an extreme way.
5. You’re Likely to Get the Coronavirus
By James Hamblin (February 24)
The emerging consensus among epidemiologists is that the most likely outcome of this outbreak is a new seasonal disease—a fifth “endemic” coronavirus. With the other four, people are not known to develop long-lasting immunity. If this one follows suit, and if the disease continues to be as severe as it is now, “cold and flu season” could become “cold and flu and COVID-19 season.”
6. What Will You Do If You Start Coughing?
By James Hamblin (March 11)
“Stay home” is not a sufficient plan.
7. Cancel Everything
By Yascha Mounk (March 10)
We don’t yet know the full ramifications of the novel coronavirus. But three crucial facts have become clear in the first months of this extraordinary global event. And what they add up to is not an invocation to stay calm, as so many politicians around the globe are incessantly suggesting; it is, on the contrary, the case for changing our behavior in radical ways—right now.
8. The Dos and Don’ts of ‘Social Distancing’
By Kaitlyn Tiffany (March 12)
Experts weigh in on whether you should cancel your dates, dinner parties, and gym sessions, and whether you should take your kids to the playground or go to a park.
9. What Do You Tell Someone Who Still Won’t Stay Home?
By Joe Pinsker (March 19)
A guide to convincing your loved ones to take the coronavirus pandemic seriously
10. How You Should Get Food During the Pandemic
By Amanda Mull (March 14)
The coronavirus makes an age-old dilemma much more fraught: Order in, or cook at home?
11. A Frontline Physician Speaks Out on the Coronavirus
By Franklin Foer (March 16)
“I’ve been walking around for the last week seeing what’s coming and feeling somehow unable to share that clearly and effectively,” said Daniel Horn, a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston helping lead a team charged with planning for the influx of coronavirus patients.
12. COVID-19 Is Upending Parents’ Birth Plans
By Ashley Fetters (March 19)
A global pandemic adds several more layers of logistical and emotional overwhelm to the already overwhelming time of new parenthood.
13. When it’s illegal to leave home
(Recorded on March 19)
As American cities start shutting down, Jeffrey Goldberg and Anne Applebaum talk through the consequences of increasing restrictions on civil liberties on our new podcast Social Distance.
You can find the rest of our COVID-19 coverage on our site.


theatlantic--2020-04-07--We’re Replicating the Mistakes of 2008

We’re Replicating the Mistakes of 2008

This article is a collaboration between The Atlantic and ProPublica .
In 2008 , the first of the once-in-a-lifetime economic calamities of most of our lifetimes engulfed the country and the world .
Now , just over a decade later , we get to experience the second .
How well the country responded to the 2008 global financial crisis is still subject to debate .
After the crisis peaked in September 2008 and the government intervened with various bailout programs , the financial system and corporate America stabilized .
Corporate profits were rising again by the second half of 2009 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Did the efforts to save the economy do enough to help average Americans ?
The global financial crisis of 2008 threw millions out of their home and jobs .
The Obama administration designed programs to help people stay in their home , but they were spectacular disappointments .
The median household income stayed below where it was in 2007 ( and in 2000 ) until 2016 .
Read : The Great Recession is still with us But at least the Great Recession taught the country two broad-brush lessons : Bailouts should help @ @ @ @ @ @ @ should be made more resilient to shocks .
Or so we thought .
Still in the early stages of the pandemic economic fallout , we are already replicating many of the same mistakes from 2008 .
True , the two crises have striking differences .
The previous global panic arose thanks to the financial system ’ s lending recklessness and , in some cases , deception and fraud .
Here , something akin to a natural disaster has swallowed lives and the economy with it .
But the rescue and recovery imperatives are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to aid the economy , how that ’ s done , who benefits , and who is left behind matter .
So far , the signs are ominous .
• The Next Recession Will Destroy Millennials • Reasons to Doubt the Middle Class Can Be Saved The “ bailout is going to repeat a lot of mistakes of the 2008 interventions , ” said Amanda Fischer , the policy director for the Washington Center for Equitable Growth , a left-leaning economic think tank .
After those rescue efforts , “ Corporate America ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ most working people have not seen their conditions improve.
” Just as the two crises are not the same , neither are the rescues .
This time around , help for working Americans is more of a priority .
The marquee provision of the multitrillion-dollar CARES Act , passed by Congress late last month , is the expansion of unemployment insurance and direct payments to citizens .
If those go out quickly ( and there are already concerns about that ) , that will be helpful .
But the package also bolsters corporations @ @ @ @ @ @ @ taxpayers .
In the 2008 version of this aid , the Troubled Asset Relief Program , banks were asked politely to expand lending with their taxpayer largesse .
They did not—and the same thing could happen again .
Restrictions attached to the money going to small- and medium-size businesses are spelled out clearly .
Funds should be used to help companies retain more of their workforce .
Companies can not pay out dividends or buy back stock .
Companies must honor collective-bargaining agreements and stay neutral during union drives .
They can ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But the enforcement mechanism is weak .
The Treasury secretary “ shall endeavor ” to implement these aspects of the program , the law says .
The companies need to produce a “ good faith certification ” that they have adhered to these conditions .
The real problems lie with the aid to large corporations .
Most of the $ 454 billion earmarked for this program will go to them ( another portion of loans and grants are earmarked for airlines and Boeing ) .
Though the law contains some language for these @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dividends , and set limits on executive compensation , no employee protections are spelled out .
And the executive compensation limits are set at last year ’ s levels—not exactly the stuff of great sacrifice during a spectacular economic cratering .
For every condition , there ’ s a loophole .
The Treasury secretary can waive any of the Big Business conditions if , as the law states , it is necessary to “ protect the interests of the federal government.
” What that means will be up to Steve Mnuchin , a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Business .
( The Treasury Department did not respond to a request seeking comment . )
What ’ s more , the key aspect of the lending program is that the Federal Reserve will lend to corporations to borrow on top of the government ’ s contribution , up to 10 times .
Anything from the Fed that isn ’ t a “ direct loan ” to a company is not subject to the restrictions attached to the Treasury money .
In addition to the squishy language that gives flexibility to Mnuchin , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ does set up a congressional-oversight panel to monitor the program , but this provision , too , replicates a problem with the 2008 bailout .
Last time around , Congress created the Congressional Oversight Panel , but it didn ’ t have much in the way of power beyond that of the bully pulpit .
Elizabeth Warren , then a private citizen who served as the chair , turned that into a powerful cudgel to point out the lack of banker accountability and the failure to help homeowners .
But the panel ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ course of the bailout or correct its flaws .
Here again , the new body , the Congressional Oversight Commission , has few weapons .
It does not have subpoena power , it has no independent enforcement authority , and it can not police compliance with the worker-aid conditions of the law .
As in 2008 , there ’ s an oversight board and a special inspector general .
But last time , Neil Barofsky , a gritty and independent former prosecutor had that special appointment ; this time , a loyal White @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pandemic IG job .
Another hallmark of the 2008 bailout was needlessly complex programs with the wrong incentive structures .
As ProPublica chronicled in story after story , the government programs to help people get mortgage relief were plagued by ongoing chaos , lax enforcement , and outright failure .
The biggest banks could not handle the demand and did not have the proper financial incentives to actually give people loan relief .
We are seeing early signs that the small-business program , called the Paycheck Protection Program , administered through the Small @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It ’ s a complex program offered through banks .
One concern is that banks stand to make billions in fees ( on top of the interest ) , money that could be used to help businesses .
What ’ s more , the banks may struggle to dispense loans quickly and efficiently .
In addition to repeating failures in how we send out the lifeboats and to whom , we also failed during the calm before the inevitable storm .
After the financial crisis , the government started conducting the annual @ @ @ @ @ @ @ financial institutions , subjecting them to pretend crashes to gauge whether they could withstand crises .
But it ’ s turning out that the stress tests were inadequate .
They did not predict anything close to what ’ s happening now .
Take just one portion of the stress tests .
The “ severely adverse scenario ” for the Fed ’ s 2020 stress tests had unemployment rising from 3.5 % , where it was in early 2020 , to a peak of 10 % a year and a half later .
Now @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a matter of weeks — and will probably be much more dire .
Sure , almost no one predicted a cataclysm happening this deep , this fast .
Stephen Cecchetti , a former banking regulator who is now an economist at Brandeis University , recalled working with a risk-officer colleague who had taken on the role of thinking about all the bad things that could happen to the financial system .
“ He was very good at this nightmare business and even he would not have had this nightmare , ” he said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t anywhere near pessimistic enough , according to Cecchetti .
The Fed suffered a similar failure of imagination .
Its stress tests were similar every year .
Unemployment went up , but over several quarters .
Economic growth went down but then went up .
Some regulators called for testing a much wider range of scenarios .
Pandemics are not unknown .
Nor is war .
How about crippling cyberattacks or assaults on the electrical grid that shut down growth for a month ?
The Fed doesn ’ t subject banks to any @ @ @ @ @ @ @ central bank test against more modest , but still unusual , recessions , such as one where growth and unemployment drop but then do not rebound for a long time .
“ We are very , very ready for a standard deep recession , ” said a person who helped design the stress tests and who had urged his colleagues to be more imaginative .
( This person and sources quoted below were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record . )
“ We are not ready for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ anything else ” is upon us .
And just as in the acute phase of the 2008 crisis , the government doesn ’ t understand the urgency of making the banking system stronger .
The U.S. government has not mandated a suspension of dividends , stock buybacks , or bonuses for all financial institutions , despite former Federal Reserve officials ’ calling for such a move .
Europe is already implementing a variety of these measures .
Making banks keep capital right now is smart because a true financial crisis , if not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to come , especially the longer the economic downturn lasts .
Annie Lowrey : This is not a recession .
It ’ s an Ice Age .
In still another echo of 2008 , regulators spent the period before this crisis easing up on the reforms implemented after the last crisis .
Led by Randal Quarles , a Trump appointee on the Federal Reserve Board , regulators loosened numerous bank rules in the past couple of years .
They also allowed banks and financial players to load up vulnerable companies with risky debt @ @ @ @ @ @ @ capital-market wobbles , bank regulators have eased a variety of regulations even more . )
Relaxing financial regulations in the past few years did not cause this economic crisis .
And so far , large American banks are not suffering nearly as badly as they did in 2008 .
But these rollbacks could make the system more vulnerable in the coming months than it should be .
Trump regulators “ seemed to have an almost willful ignorance about the causes of the last crisis that will make the situation we are in that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ person involved in the reform efforts and who fought the rollbacks .
“ The crisis in the markets is just beginning and [ the easing of the regulations ] will exacerbate the economic pain we are feeling as a result of the coronavirus.
” The design of the rescue package has left those who watched and studied 2008 deeply frustrated .
“ I do not have a good explanation of how we continue to fumble this .
I was thinking when this started , ‘ At least we have 2008 to guide us @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ ” said a Hill staffer familiar with the CARES Act .
“ This will paper over bank balance-sheet problems , help tech valuations and boost leveraged loans .
In three months , I think the stock market will look good .
But the vast majority of workers will be worse off .
The law will amplify inequality and the power of large corporations over labor and the workforce , and they won ’ t be able to recover for a generation.
” Perhaps we ’ ll learn the lessons in time for @ @ @ @ @

As the government rushes to aid the economy, how that’s done, who benefits, and who is left behind matter. So far, the signs are ominous.
This article is a collaboration between The Atlantic and ProPublica.
In 2008, the first of the once-in-a-lifetime economic calamities of most of our lifetimes engulfed the country and the world. Now, just over a decade later, we get to experience the second.
How well the country responded to the 2008 global financial crisis is still subject to debate. After the crisis peaked in September 2008 and the government intervened with various bailout programs, the financial system and corporate America stabilized. Corporate profits were rising again by the second half of 2009.
Almost everything else is in dispute. Did the efforts to save the economy do enough to help average Americans? The global financial crisis of 2008 threw millions out of their home and jobs. The Obama administration designed programs to help people stay in their home, but they were spectacular disappointments. The median household income stayed below where it was in 2007 (and in 2000) until 2016.
Read: The Great Recession is still with us
But at least the Great Recession taught the country two broad-brush lessons: Bailouts should help working Americans, and the financial system should be made more resilient to shocks.
Or so we thought. Still in the early stages of the pandemic economic fallout, we are already replicating many of the same mistakes from 2008.
True, the two crises have striking differences. The previous global panic arose thanks to the financial system’s lending recklessness and, in some cases, deception and fraud. Here, something akin to a natural disaster has swallowed lives and the economy with it.
But the rescue and recovery imperatives are the same. As the government rushes to aid the economy, how that’s done, who benefits, and who is left behind matter. So far, the signs are ominous.
The “bailout is going to repeat a lot of mistakes of the 2008 interventions,” said Amanda Fischer, the policy director for the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, a left-leaning economic think tank. After those rescue efforts, “Corporate America’s profits bounced back quickly, but most working people have not seen their conditions improve.”
Just as the two crises are not the same, neither are the rescues. This time around, help for working Americans is more of a priority. The marquee provision of the multitrillion-dollar CARES Act, passed by Congress late last month, is the expansion of unemployment insurance and direct payments to citizens. If those go out quickly (and there are already concerns about that), that will be helpful.
But the package also bolsters corporations, mainly through $500 billion from taxpayers. In the 2008 version of this aid, the Troubled Asset Relief Program, banks were asked politely to expand lending with their taxpayer largesse. They did not—and the same thing could happen again.
Restrictions attached to the money going to small- and medium-size businesses are spelled out clearly. Funds should be used to help companies retain more of their workforce. Companies cannot pay out dividends or buy back stock. Companies must honor collective-bargaining agreements and stay neutral during union drives. They can’t outsource or ship jobs offshore.
But the enforcement mechanism is weak. The Treasury secretary “shall endeavor” to implement these aspects of the program, the law says. The companies need to produce a “good faith certification” that they have adhered to these conditions.
The real problems lie with the aid to large corporations. Most of the $454 billion earmarked for this program will go to them (another portion of loans and grants are earmarked for airlines and Boeing). Though the law contains some language for these giant corporations to prevent buybacks, preclude dividends, and set limits on executive compensation, no employee protections are spelled out. And the executive compensation limits are set at last year’s levels—not exactly the stuff of great sacrifice during a spectacular economic cratering.
For every condition, there’s a loophole. The Treasury secretary can waive any of the Big Business conditions if, as the law states, it is necessary to “protect the interests of the federal government.” What that means will be up to Steve Mnuchin, a reliable friend of Wall Street and Big Business. (The Treasury Department did not respond to a request seeking comment.)
What’s more, the key aspect of the lending program is that the Federal Reserve will lend to corporations to borrow on top of the government’s contribution, up to 10 times. Anything from the Fed that isn’t a “direct loan” to a company is not subject to the restrictions attached to the Treasury money.
In addition to the squishy language that gives flexibility to Mnuchin, the oversight lacks teeth. The law does set up a congressional-oversight panel to monitor the program, but this provision, too, replicates a problem with the 2008 bailout. Last time around, Congress created the Congressional Oversight Panel, but it didn’t have much in the way of power beyond that of the bully pulpit. Elizabeth Warren, then a private citizen who served as the chair, turned that into a powerful cudgel to point out the lack of banker accountability and the failure to help homeowners. But the panel’s work did not substantially affect the course of the bailout or correct its flaws.
Here again, the new body, the Congressional Oversight Commission, has few weapons. It does not have subpoena power, it has no independent enforcement authority, and it cannot police compliance with the worker-aid conditions of the law. As in 2008, there’s an oversight board and a special inspector general. But last time, Neil Barofsky, a gritty and independent former prosecutor had that special appointment; this time, a loyal White House soldier is in line for the pandemic IG job.
Another hallmark of the 2008 bailout was needlessly complex programs with the wrong incentive structures. As ProPublica chronicled in story after story, the government programs to help people get mortgage relief were plagued by ongoing chaos, lax enforcement, and outright failure. The biggest banks could not handle the demand and did not have the proper financial incentives to actually give people loan relief.
We are seeing early signs that the small-business program, called the Paycheck Protection Program, administered through the Small Business Administration, may suffer similar problems. It’s a complex program offered through banks. One concern is that banks stand to make billions in fees (on top of the interest), money that could be used to help businesses. What’s more, the banks may struggle to dispense loans quickly and efficiently.
In addition to repeating failures in how we send out the lifeboats and to whom, we also failed during the calm before the inevitable storm. After the financial crisis, the government started conducting the annual “stress tests” of the largest financial institutions, subjecting them to pretend crashes to gauge whether they could withstand crises. But it’s turning out that the stress tests were inadequate. They did not predict anything close to what’s happening now.
Take just one portion of the stress tests. The “severely adverse scenario” for the Fed’s 2020 stress tests had unemployment rising from 3.5%, where it was in early 2020, to a peak of 10% a year and a half later. Now that rise is going to happen in a matter of weeks — and will probably be much more dire.
Sure, almost no one predicted a cataclysm happening this deep, this fast. Stephen Cecchetti, a former banking regulator who is now an economist at Brandeis University, recalled working with a risk-officer colleague who had taken on the role of thinking about all the bad things that could happen to the financial system. “He was very good at this nightmare business and even he would not have had this nightmare,” he said. The scenarios he envisioned weren’t anywhere near pessimistic enough, according to Cecchetti.
The Fed suffered a similar failure of imagination. Its stress tests were similar every year. Unemployment went up, but over several quarters. Economic growth went down but then went up. Some regulators called for testing a much wider range of scenarios. Pandemics are not unknown. Nor is war. How about crippling cyberattacks or assaults on the electrical grid that shut down growth for a month? The Fed doesn’t subject banks to any of those scenarios. Nor does the central bank test against more modest, but still unusual, recessions, such as one where growth and unemployment drop but then do not rebound for a long time. “We are very, very ready for a standard deep recession,” said a person who helped design the stress tests and who had urged his colleagues to be more imaginative. (This person and sources quoted below were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record.) “We are not ready for much of anything else.”
Now “anything else” is upon us. And just as in the acute phase of the 2008 crisis, the government doesn’t understand the urgency of making the banking system stronger. The U.S. government has not mandated a suspension of dividends, stock buybacks, or bonuses for all financial institutions, despite former Federal Reserve officials’ calling for such a move. Europe is already implementing a variety of these measures. Making banks keep capital right now is smart because a true financial crisis, if not upon us right now, is likely to come, especially the longer the economic downturn lasts.
Annie Lowrey: This is not a recession. It’s an Ice Age.
In still another echo of 2008, regulators spent the period before this crisis easing up on the reforms implemented after the last crisis. Led by Randal Quarles, a Trump appointee on the Federal Reserve Board, regulators loosened numerous bank rules in the past couple of years. They also allowed banks and financial players to load up vulnerable companies with risky debt. (In recent weeks, amid capital-market wobbles, bank regulators have eased a variety of regulations even more.)
Relaxing financial regulations in the past few years did not cause this economic crisis. And so far, large American banks are not suffering nearly as badly as they did in 2008. But these rollbacks could make the system more vulnerable in the coming months than it should be.
Trump regulators “seemed to have an almost willful ignorance about the causes of the last crisis that will make the situation we are in that much more precarious,” said one person involved in the reform efforts and who fought the rollbacks. “The crisis in the markets is just beginning and [the easing of the regulations] will exacerbate the economic pain we are feeling as a result of the coronavirus.”
The design of the rescue package has left those who watched and studied 2008 deeply frustrated. “I do not have a good explanation of how we continue to fumble this. I was thinking when this started, ‘At least we have 2008 to guide us to not make the same mistakes,’” said a Hill staffer familiar with the CARES Act. “This will paper over bank balance-sheet problems, help tech valuations and boost leveraged loans. In three months, I think the stock market will look good. But the vast majority of workers will be worse off. The law will amplify inequality and the power of large corporations over labor and the workforce, and they won’t be able to recover for a generation.”
Perhaps we’ll learn the lessons in time for our third once-in-a-lifetime crisis.


theatlantic--2020-04-07--Trump’s Allies Know He Has Failed

Trump’s Allies Know He Has Failed

It ’ s difficult to decide which of these defenses is the most absurd .
But one defense that has emerged in recent weeks as the go-to explanation certainly has the honor of being the most unintentionally damning .
The argument , as put forward by Republican officeholders and other supporters of the president , goes like this : Don ’ t blame Trump for his administration ’ s appalling handling of the crisis .
Rather , it ’ s all the Democrats ’ fault , as their drummed-up impeachment drama distracted the president during the key period during which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ response to the pandemic .
The intent may be to shift blame , but the argument is actually a concession of Trump ’ s own failure .
While Trump ’ s defense of his leadership has been erratic , one theme has been the insistence that—despite a great deal of evidence to the contrary—he has handled the crisis excellently .
At every stage , he has congratulated himself for a job well done , even insisting that “ we altogether have done a very good job ” while warning Americans to expect as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Yet , in making their impeachment-distraction defense , his supporters are all of a sudden acknowledging that his performance could have been better .
Some are more explicit about that than others : Olsen argued outright that Trump failed to “ act ... decisively in February when he had time , ” and the aggressively pro-Trump outlet The Federalist published a piece conceding that it was “ a fair point ” to say that the president had taken his eye off the ball .
But even those who focus exclusively on attacking @ @ @ @ @ @ @ counter the pandemic are implicitly admitting that the government could have done more—that its response to the crisis was not , as Trump declared , “ 10 out of 10.
” In pointing to impeachment as a distraction , McConnell can ’ t also argue that Trump did everything perfectly .
Perhaps understanding the political risks of this particular argument , Trump has equivocated on it .
When asked at a press conference whether the impeachment trial had “ divert [ ed ] his attention , ” he seemed to give some credence @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I handled it very well , but I guess it probably did [ distract me ] .
I mean , I got impeached .
I think , you know , I certainly devoted a little time to thinking about it , right ?
” But then he swung back , arguing , “ I don ’ t think I would have done any better had I not been impeached .
Okay ?
...
I don ’ t think I would have acted any differently or I don ’ t think I would have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the point is understandable .
If you ’ ve been impeached and you have to justify the fact that you ’ ve been allowed to remain in office , you want to come off as the sort of leader who was not distracted , who “ compartmentalized ” —as was said of Bill Clinton during his impeachment—not the sort of leader who crumbled under pressure and allowed a global pandemic to kill more Americans than was necessarily fated .
What ’ s more , Trump never acknowledges failure .
The call with Ukrainian @ @ @ @ @ @ @ too was the coronavirus response .
To say otherwise , as Trump ’ s supporters are now doing , is to concede the leader ’ s imperfection and to make excuses for it—rather than insisting on his infallibility .

Defenders of the president seem to have settled on the excuse that the White House botched its pandemic preparations because it was too distracted by the drama on Capitol Hill.
“The White House was focused on addressing the threat to its survival,” argued the columnist Henry Olsen in The Washington Post, “not on preparing for a threat from China that might not even materialize.”
“DEMOCRATS PUSHED IMPEACHMENT WHILE CORONAVIRUS SPREAD,” blared a Breitbart News headline, which was soon picked up by Sean Hannity on Fox.
Senator Tom Cotton has also adopted the theory, telling Politico, “It’s unfortunate that during the early days of a global pandemic, the Senate was paralyzed by a partisan impeachment trial.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has been pushing this theory too, telling the conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that the Senate impeachment trial “diverted the attention of the government” from the virus, “because everything every day was all about impeachment.”
Over the past two months, President Donald Trump has deployed a dizzying array of lies about why the coronavirus wasn’t a cause for concern, then defenses to excuse or deny his deadly mishandling of the pandemic. The virus was under control in the United States, he argued. The warm weather would make it go away. It would miraculously vanish. It was China’s fault, and limiting travel from China had solved the problem. It was the media’s fault for exaggerating things. It was Barack Obama’s fault. States in urgent need of ventilators should have purchased the medical equipment months ago, and it isn’t the president’s responsibility to fix that problem.
It’s difficult to decide which of these defenses is the most absurd. But one defense that has emerged in recent weeks as the go-to explanation certainly has the honor of being the most unintentionally damning. The argument, as put forward by Republican officeholders and other supporters of the president, goes like this: Don’t blame Trump for his administration’s appalling handling of the crisis. Rather, it’s all the Democrats’ fault, as their drummed-up impeachment drama distracted the president during the key period during which the government could have ramped up its response to the pandemic.
The intent may be to shift blame, but the argument is actually a concession of Trump’s own failure. While Trump’s defense of his leadership has been erratic, one theme has been the insistence that—despite a great deal of evidence to the contrary—he has handled the crisis excellently. At every stage, he has congratulated himself for a job well done, even insisting that “we altogether have done a very good job” while warning Americans to expect as many as 200,000 deaths from the virus.
Yet, in making their impeachment-distraction defense, his supporters are all of a sudden acknowledging that his performance could have been better. Some are more explicit about that than others: Olsen argued outright that Trump failed to “act ... decisively in February when he had time,” and the aggressively pro-Trump outlet The Federalist published a piece conceding that it was “a fair point” to say that the president had taken his eye off the ball. But even those who focus exclusively on attacking congressional Democrats for not doing enough to counter the pandemic are implicitly admitting that the government could have done more—that its response to the crisis was not, as Trump declared, “10 out of 10.” In pointing to impeachment as a distraction, McConnell can’t also argue that Trump did everything perfectly.
Perhaps understanding the political risks of this particular argument, Trump has equivocated on it. When asked at a press conference whether the impeachment trial had “divert[ed] his attention,” he seemed to give some credence to the idea: “I think I handled it very well, but I guess it probably did [distract me]. I mean, I got impeached. I think, you know, I certainly devoted a little time to thinking about it, right?” But then he swung back, arguing, “I don’t think I would have done any better had I not been impeached. Okay? ... I don’t think I would have acted any differently or I don’t think I would have acted any faster.”
His reticence on the point is understandable. If you’ve been impeached and you have to justify the fact that you’ve been allowed to remain in office, you want to come off as the sort of leader who was not distracted, who “compartmentalized”—as was said of Bill Clinton during his impeachment—not the sort of leader who crumbled under pressure and allowed a global pandemic to kill more Americans than was necessarily fated. What’s more, Trump never acknowledges failure. The call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was perfect. So too was the coronavirus response. To say otherwise, as Trump’s supporters are now doing, is to concede the leader’s imperfection and to make excuses for it—rather than insisting on his infallibility.
One irony of the impeachment defense is that it may contain significant elements of truth. A lengthy report from The Washington Post on the “denial and dysfunction” of the administration’s pandemic response suggests that Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar had trouble getting the president’s attention about the coronavirus in mid-January because Trump was busy “calling lawmakers late at night to rant” about impeachment and “making lists of perceived enemies he would seek to punish when the case against him concluded.” (Of course, the fact that impeachment may really have distracted Trump in January and February does not mean that his administration’s response to the virus would have been flawless if it hadn’t been for the Senate trial.)
Indeed, strong evidence indicates that Trump is still distracted by impeachment and that this is affecting his crisis response. The administration’s negotiations with the House of Representatives over relief measures had to be handled by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, because Trump and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi aren’t speaking, Politico reported recently; the president is still bitter about the House impeachment vote. Meanwhile, in a letter to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Trump makes explicit reference to his ongoing resentment. “If you spent less time on your ridiculous impeachment hoax, which went haplessly on forever and ended up going nowhere (except increasing my poll numbers), and instead focused on helping the people of New York, then New York would not have been so completely unprepared for the ‘invisible enemy,’” Trump wrote.
And on April 3, Trump continued his wave of retaliatory firings of people involved in the impeachment saga—dismissing the intelligence-community Inspector General Michael Atkinson, the man who first notified Congress of the whistleblower report that ultimately led to Trump’s impeachment. The president made no secret of the reason for his decision: Atkinson, he said candidly, "took a fake report and gave it to Congress." In a statement, Atkinson himself wrote, “It is hard not to think that the President’s loss of confidence in me derives from my having faithfully discharged my legal obligations as an independent and impartial Inspector General.” (Perhaps, in a weird inversion, Trump is betting that the public is sufficiently distracted by the coronavirus that it won’t notice or care much about such retaliatory gestures related to his impeachment.)
More to the point, the argument that impeachment distracted Trump from the coronavirus is, even if true, a terrible argument against impeachment. Impeachment will always distract a president. That is a good reason not to undertake an impeachment lightly, and it is an excellent reason for a president not to engage in impeachable conduct. A merited impeachment, however, is necessary because the risks of inaction—of letting an unfit person remain in office, unchecked—exceed the risks of his or her distraction and the risks of the disruption associated with his or her removal.
The current crisis could not illustrate that last point better, because Trump has been engaged in conduct remarkably similar to that for which the House impeached him, this time at the domestic level. During the impeachment hearings, the Stanford Law professor Pamela S. Karlan imagined a hypothetical scenario in which a president shook down a governor in the context of disaster relief for political favors, instead of a foreign leader:
Imagine living in a part of Louisiana or Texas that’s prone to devastating hurricanes and flooding. What would you think if you lived there, and your governor asked for a meeting with the president to discuss getting disaster aid that Congress has provided for. What would you think if that president said, “I would like you to do us a favor. I’ll meet with you, and I’ll send the disaster relief, once you brand my opponent a criminal.” Wouldn’t you know in your gut that such a president had abused his office?”
Today, with Trump openly playing extortionate politics with governors over medical supplies—publicly intimating that more personal protective equipment and ventilators will go to governors that offer him sycophantic praise—Karlan’s example no longer seems like a hypothetical.
Trump may have been distracted by impeachment, but the experience also taught him something: Whatever he does, however much he leverages his power for personal benefit at the public’s expense—whether with foreign heads of state or state officials, whether in public or in private—he can get away with it. And the death toll will only rise as a result.


Thomas Levenson

Thomas Levenson , a professor of science writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , is the author of Money @ @ @ @ @ book about the South Sea Bubble and the invention of financial capitalism .
• Conservatives @ @ @ @ @ The term Wuhan virus treats COVID-19 as a Chinese scourge—and ignores an ugly history .
@ @ @ @ @ the Royal Society ’ s highest honor for her book The Invention of Nature , @ @ @ @ @ attributed it to a new fondness for “ female-friendly ” biographies among prize juries .
@ @ @ @ @ in the Habitable Zone of a Nearby Star The newly discovered worlds are now the @ @ @ @ @ search for life among the stars—and the race to take a closer look at them @ @ @ @ @ history of astronomy gives us plenty of reasons to be skeptical about the potential new @ @ @ @ @ .
• Science is not a separate realm that sits outside culture .

Thomas Levenson, a professor of science writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is the author of Money For Nothing, a forthcoming book about the South Sea Bubble and the invention of financial capitalism.
Hulton Archive / Corbis / Getty / Katie … Investors Have Been Making the Same Mistake for 300 Years If Isaac Newton could lose all reason in the pursuit of riches, so can anyone else.
Matt York / AP Conservatives Try to Rebrand the Coronavirus The term Wuhan virus treats COVID-19 as a Chinese scourge—and ignores an ugly history.
AP The Scientist and the Fascist How Einstein reacted to Hitler’s rise
Matt Dunham / AP The Sexist Response to a Science Book Prize After Andrea Wulf won the Royal Society’s highest honor for her book The Invention of Nature, a writer at The Guardian attributed it to a new fondness for “female-friendly” biographies among prize juries.
ESO / M. Kornmesser / N. Risinger Astronomers Have Found Planets in the Habitable Zone of a Nearby Star The newly discovered worlds are now the most promising targets in the search for life among the stars—and the race to take a closer look at them has begun.
R.Hurt / Caltech / IPAC A New Planet or a Red Herring? The history of astronomy gives us plenty of reasons to be skeptical about the potential new addition to our solar system.
Larry Downing / Reuters What Chief Justice Roberts Misunderstands About Physics Science is not a separate realm that sits outside culture.
Corbis Science Doesn’t Work the Way You Might Think Not even for Einstein


theatlantic--2020-05-07--I Was Depressed Before All of This. Now What?

The pandemic has been variously described as a mass trauma , a collective grief , and a feeling like it ’ s the end of the world .
In a recent poll , the Kaiser Family Foundation found that nearly half of Americans have seen their mental health impacted by the coronavirus .
But while the pandemic is grief-inducing for many , it can be especially difficult for people who were already depressed .
The signs of depression look a lot like life in lockdown : social withdrawal , a feeling of hopelessness , trouble concentrating , a lack of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , sleeping too much or not at all .
It ’ s also confusing to experience depression or anxiety when it feels like others are dealing with so much more .
And when everyone is broadcasting sadness or fear—even here in Taos , away from the major outbreaks—it can be overwhelming and harder than ever to cope .
Read : All the things we have to mourn now I ’ ve dealt with depression for as long as I can remember .
As a kid I was mostly buoyant , but sometimes I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ When people asked me about them , I often said my grandfather had just died , even though his death had happened years before .
I didn ’ t have a better explanation .
The anxiety came later , as the traumas of life stacked up .
Even before the virus , every day involved finding the armor to keep myself protected enough to live , work , and love .
Since depression and anxiety can happen at the same time , it is sometimes hard to disentangle the two .
But they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ depression is that it can make you feel so sad , so drained of hope , that you do not want to get out of bed .
Meanwhile , anxiety swarms the body—you sweat , you tremble , you can not breathe—and also interferes with daily life .
The pandemic is heightening both responses .
We are mourning what has already happened and we are fearful of what is to come .
We are profoundly isolated and we are sick with worry .
Some of us are feeling this intensity for the first @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this way all our lives .
I tried to stick with therapy even after stay-at-home orders went into place .
I switched to Zooming with my therapist , as many around the country have , even though she lives just down the road .
The coronavirus had worsened my mental health , but I felt foolish telling her so , given the life-or-death scenarios that others are dealing with .
I have work , I have a home , and I am ( mostly ) physically healthy .
Who am I to complain @ @ @ @ @ @ @ head ?
And yet I knew it was a fallacy that just because one person has it worse , another person is not allowed to be sad .
Pain is pain .
Since the coronavirus arrived , I ’ ve found it harder than ever to get out of bed in the morning—to feel that this life is worth getting up for .
My anxiety has multiplied as the virus has become personal .
Three family members have reported symptoms of COVID-19 ; my sister , a doctor , is exposing herself day @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in assisted living , keep asking me with a wavering voice over the phone if and when we might be able to visit again .
In the desert , I worry that I am far away and powerless to help .
My therapist demonstrates grounding exercises for me on Zoom , but after our sessions I am always too distracted by the news to do them .

Before all of this, I was already struggling. In early March, when many of us weren’t taking the coronavirus seriously, my partner staged an intervention. “You have not seemed happy in so long,” he said. “You cry all the time. I’m worried about you.”
I was feeling depressed, anxious, and isolated. A year ago, after living in big cities for three decades, we moved to Taos, New Mexico, a small town in the high desert, population 6,000. It was a choice made out of necessity because it was affordable, and it was also a challenge to myself, as a journalist and as a person, to push myself to grow. We moved into a small adobe-style house, 30 minutes north of town, situated in a rolling expanse of sage. The gray-green brush stretches on for so long, and grows so tall, that it sometimes feels like we’re living waist deep in an ocean.
Ever since we’d moved to Taos, I had felt as if I were coming face-to-face with every trauma I’d spent my life trying to avoid. Locals warned me about this—that the snow-capped, imposing Taos Mountain shows a person whatever they need to learn about themselves. “Come here and get the big medicine, if you can handle it,” they said. “The mountain will either accept or reject you.” It seemed to me that I was in the latter category. Though Taos had offered me plenty of lessons, it had also cleaved me in two. I understood that I was deeply struggling here, and needed to be closer to friends and family to keep crippling anxiety and depression at bay. Then, the coronavirus hit.
The pandemic has been variously described as a mass trauma, a collective grief, and a feeling like it’s the end of the world. In a recent poll, the Kaiser Family Foundation found that nearly half of Americans have seen their mental health impacted by the coronavirus. But while the pandemic is grief-inducing for many, it can be especially difficult for people who were already depressed. The signs of depression look a lot like life in lockdown: social withdrawal, a feeling of hopelessness, trouble concentrating, a lack of exercise or the activities you once enjoyed, sleeping too much or not at all. It’s also confusing to experience depression or anxiety when it feels like others are dealing with so much more. And when everyone is broadcasting sadness or fear—even here in Taos, away from the major outbreaks—it can be overwhelming and harder than ever to cope.
Read: All the things we have to mourn now
I’ve dealt with depression for as long as I can remember. As a kid I was mostly buoyant, but sometimes I had sudden bouts of deep sadness. When people asked me about them, I often said my grandfather had just died, even though his death had happened years before. I didn’t have a better explanation. The anxiety came later, as the traumas of life stacked up. Even before the virus, every day involved finding the armor to keep myself protected enough to live, work, and love.
Since depression and anxiety can happen at the same time, it is sometimes hard to disentangle the two. But they are different. The old story of depression is that it can make you feel so sad, so drained of hope, that you do not want to get out of bed. Meanwhile, anxiety swarms the body—you sweat, you tremble, you cannot breathe—and also interferes with daily life. The pandemic is heightening both responses. We are mourning what has already happened and we are fearful of what is to come. We are profoundly isolated and we are sick with worry. Some of us are feeling this intensity for the first time and some of us have felt this way all our lives.
I tried to stick with therapy even after stay-at-home orders went into place. I switched to Zooming with my therapist, as many around the country have, even though she lives just down the road. The coronavirus had worsened my mental health, but I felt foolish telling her so, given the life-or-death scenarios that others are dealing with. I have work, I have a home, and I am (mostly) physically healthy. Who am I to complain about the war taking place in my head? And yet I knew it was a fallacy that just because one person has it worse, another person is not allowed to be sad. Pain is pain.
Since the coronavirus arrived, I’ve found it harder than ever to get out of bed in the morning—to feel that this life is worth getting up for. My anxiety has multiplied as the virus has become personal. Three family members have reported symptoms of COVID-19; my sister, a doctor, is exposing herself day after day; my grandmothers, both in assisted living, keep asking me with a wavering voice over the phone if and when we might be able to visit again. In the desert, I worry that I am far away and powerless to help. My therapist demonstrates grounding exercises for me on Zoom, but after our sessions I am always too distracted by the news to do them.
On our most recent call, my therapist started out the session by telling me how her neighbors had gotten violent, and how unsafe she felt in her home. She thought she might have to move. “Sorry, I feel like you’re doing therapy on me,” she said. But we all need therapy now. A dear friend in New York texted me that her boyfriend was repeatedly calling different doctors fearing he had COVID-19, but they all told him it was anxiety that was making it hard for him to breathe. A previously sunny friend who lives in an impossibly sunny place told me he cried himself to sleep.
One month into quarantine, that same friend and I got into the worst fight I’ve ever had with a friend, provoked by the anxiety of the virus. Afterwards, I felt a tearing stomach pain. At the ER, the doctor told me that I was likely suffering from a bad ulcer, brought on by psychological distress. The doctor put me on fentanyl and I drifted home in the clouds, forgetting about the pandemic for the first time.
John Dickerson: Spare a moment for sorrow
But it is impossible to forget about the virus for long, even here in New Mexico, where with the exception of the hard-hit Navajo Nation we seem to be largely containing it. Taos County so far has only had 20 confirmed cases. The pandemic is present in the plastic shield at the post-office counter where I pick up my mail, separating me from the clerks risking their lives to deliver it. It is apparent in the uncertainty of whether to hold a door for my neighbor, who just last month I hugged goodnight after sharing a meal by a fire. It is unmistakable in the dire headlines now broadcast over local radio, in hours previously filled by silly jams from the ’80s. As nearby states such as Texas and Colorado begin to reopen, a hum of unease rises in Taos—a fear that out-of-state residents will bring the virus here. I have long known what personal anxiety feels like, but I have never before felt it blanket a town.
All we can do right now, no matter how we are struggling, is try to get through it. Here is what is helping me: Working with my hands in any way that I can, allowing my brain to momentarily forget. Growing vegetables—signs of new life. Participating in local mutual aid, to remember we aren’t powerless after all. Reading poetry also helps: Pablo Neruda on keeping still, Shakespeare on isolation, Theodore Roethke on how, “in a dark time, the eye begins to see.” And sending friends letters, and receiving mail in return, is a tangible reminder that connection continues despite physical distance.
Still, there are very rough days—and I know that I am not the only one. There are few things more isolating than being depressed, and there is little that can ramp up depression more than being in isolation. Yet we are muddling our way through. Those of us who are depressed are still struggling to live, even if we’re not fighting death from the virus. I know that hopelessness can attach itself to a person for years, and intensify just when you need hope the most. But I also know that, just as the news zigzags from optimism to despair, every day is different.
Nearly every morning in Taos I go on a walk or a run on the mesa. Sometimes it is lonely, but often it helps me clear my head. On a walk last week I noticed that, here in the supposedly inhospitable desert, all along the path wildflowers have begun to bloom.


theatlantic--2020-04-14--Listen: Where the Curve Has Flattened

Listen: Where the Curve Has Flattened

Wells : Why do you choose to focus on San Francisco ?
Berman : There ’ s a lot of focus on the political leaders on the East Coast .
You have a ton of focus on Andrew Cuomo in New York .
He ’ s been drawing a lot of praise for the way that he ’ s conducted the public messaging around social distancing .
This was an effort to say , Let ’ s look at the cities that are doing this well and spotlight a leader who is not getting the attention that the leaders in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ earning it as much .
Even though Cuomo is doing a good job in front of the cameras , he didn ’ t act early enough .
Mayor de Blasio didn ’ t act early enough .
But it appears that London Breed in San Francisco did act early enough to prevent a wholesale outbreak on the scale of New York that would overwhelm their health system .
Wells : Cuomo is interesting to me .
For several weeks , there were kind of these dueling press conferences .
Trump was inflammatory , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people were kind of fawning over .
He seemed competent , from at least a performative standpoint .
Can you tell me what to make of Cuomo becoming sort of a corona-lebrity ?
Berman : A big part of public leadership is the public part of it .
Everybody is stuck inside .
Everybody is watching TV .
Everybody is scared and anxious .
They have no other choice but to look to their leaders for crucial information and a sense of where we are and where we are going .
Cuomo has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s met that need .
He ’ s clearly striking a balance where it doesn ’ t seem overly rosy , but he ’ s also saying “ We can do this .
We will get through this.
” People want to hear that from their leaders .
People do not want to despair 24 hours a day .
Wells : Public communication and the performance of competence is part of any leader ’ s staff .
But it also seems like maybe there are leaders that are not putting on entertaining press @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t heard anything about the great competence of their response .
Berman : That is a big part of it , and part of it is just simply the media environment .
The national media is centered in New York , and New York has always gotten disproportionate attention from the media nationally .
Wells : What ’ s the lesson of all of this ?
Berman : Leaders need to do two things .
They need to make the right decisions at the right time to the best [ ability ] they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ communicate those decisions and communicate about the situation in a competent , accessible way .
Governor Cuomo certainly has gotten the second half of that right over the last month or so .
But the question is , did he get the first part right ?
Did he make those correct decisions at the right time ?
Part of the story in comparison with people like Mayor Breed and Jay Inslee in Washington State and Governor Gavin Newsom in California and others , is that , whether or not they ’ ve been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ earlier and probably saved more lives than Andrew Cuomo or Bill de Blasio .

On March 17, San Francisco Mayor London Breed issued a citywide shelter-in-place order. The Bay Area city had fewer than 50 confirmed coronavirus cases. By contrast, New York City didn’t take similar action for several days, and when it did shut down on March 22, the city’s five boroughs totaled more than 10,000 reported cases.
Staff writer Russell Berman recently wrote about Breed, under whose leadership San Francisco has apparently succeeded at “flattening the curve.” Berman joins James Hamblin and Katherine Wells on the podcast Social Distance to discuss the parts of the country where responses seem to have worked, and what has made the difference.
Listen to their full conversation here:
Subscribe to Social Distance on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or another podcast platform to receive new episodes as soon as they’re published.
What follows is an edited and condensed transcript of their conversation.
James Hamblin: Russell, you wrote about San Francisco’s coronavirus response, which was uplifting to see. They’re actually flattening the curve.
Russell Berman: I wrote about London Breed, the mayor of San Francisco. She activated the city’s emergency-operations center in late January, only a short while after public-health officials in the United States even acknowledged that there was human-to-human transmission of the coronavirus. In late February, she became the first big-city mayor to declare a state of emergency, in San Francisco. She did so before there was even a single confirmed case in her city. Also, leaders in the surrounding Bay Area counties acted in unison to enact social-distancing measures. Their lockdowns went into effect on March 17, and that was when they only had a few dozen cases in San Francisco.
In New York at that time, they had hundreds of cases, quickly getting into the thousands. Governor Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York acted several days after that. On the calendar, San Francisco and its surrounding counties acted only a few days before they did in New York, but on the coronavirus scale, they acted much earlier. San Francisco is now reaping the benefits. Yes, it has nearly a thousand cases, but people have died at a much lower scale than in New York and other cities of similar size, like Detroit and Washington, D.C., and New Orleans. One caveat to that is that California has struggled much more than New York in testing.
Katherine Wells: How much do we know if those numbers really are useful? Is it possible that they’re just not testing as much, so it doesn’t seem like they have as many cases?
Berman: They’re not testing enough anywhere. There certainly are more cases in San Francisco than there are confirmed positive tests. But that is true everywhere, and the evidence is in the hospitals. Their hospitals are not being overrun, as one epidemiologist told me for this story. Deaths are hard to hide.
Hamblin: There’s about a two-week period where it can be unclear whether you have a lot of cases and you’re just not detecting them. But after a certain time frame, you would know because your morgues would be filling up.
Berman: It’s also important to mention, of course, that they’re not out of the woods. They don’t want to relapse. There is this fear that good news will beget bad news because people will say, “Okay, San Francisco is doing all right. We can cut corners; we don’t need to be quite as fastidious about social distancing.” Then you’re going to be in trouble. A couple of days after I talked to Mayor Breed, there was a large outbreak at a homeless shelter, which is a big concern in San Francisco. Seventy people in one of the largest shelters were infected. It’s possible that San Francisco could have a worse situation. We’ll have to just continue to monitor it.
Hamblin: It sounds like you attribute most of this apparent success to shutting down early and social distancing early.
Berman: That’s what the epidemiologists I talked to attributed it to, but there are potentially other factors, like San Francisco’s proximity to Asia. The Trump administration restricted travel from China relatively early on, at least compared to when they restricted travel from Europe. That helped the West Coast in terms of limiting what was coming in from China and other Asian countries. People travel to New York from everywhere, including Asia and China, but there’s a lot more travel directly from Europe, and they did not restrict travel from Europe until the middle of March. It’s clear that it was already well into New York, probably for a month or longer by then.
Wells: Why do you choose to focus on San Francisco?
Berman: There’s a lot of focus on the political leaders on the East Coast. You have a ton of focus on Andrew Cuomo in New York. He’s been drawing a lot of praise for the way that he’s conducted the public messaging around social distancing. This was an effort to say, Let’s look at the cities that are doing this well and spotlight a leader who is not getting the attention that the leaders in New York arguably are getting without maybe earning it as much. Even though Cuomo is doing a good job in front of the cameras, he didn’t act early enough. Mayor de Blasio didn’t act early enough. But it appears that London Breed in San Francisco did act early enough to prevent a wholesale outbreak on the scale of New York that would overwhelm their health system.
Wells: Cuomo is interesting to me. For several weeks, there were kind of these dueling press conferences. Trump was inflammatory, and Cuomo had all these PowerPoints that people were kind of fawning over. He seemed competent, from at least a performative standpoint. Can you tell me what to make of Cuomo becoming sort of a corona-lebrity?
Berman: A big part of public leadership is the public part of it. Everybody is stuck inside. Everybody is watching TV. Everybody is scared and anxious. They have no other choice but to look to their leaders for crucial information and a sense of where we are and where we are going. Cuomo has been successful in that. He’s met that need. He’s clearly striking a balance where it doesn’t seem overly rosy, but he’s also saying “We can do this. We will get through this.” People want to hear that from their leaders. People do not want to despair 24 hours a day.
Wells: Public communication and the performance of competence is part of any leader’s staff. But it also seems like maybe there are leaders that are not putting on entertaining press conferences, and so I haven’t heard anything about the great competence of their response.
Berman: That is a big part of it, and part of it is just simply the media environment. The national media is centered in New York, and New York has always gotten disproportionate attention from the media nationally.
Wells: What’s the lesson of all of this?
Berman: Leaders need to do two things. They need to make the right decisions at the right time to the best [ability] they can, and then they need to communicate those decisions and communicate about the situation in a competent, accessible way. Governor Cuomo certainly has gotten the second half of that right over the last month or so. But the question is, did he get the first part right? Did he make those correct decisions at the right time?
Part of the story in comparison with people like Mayor Breed and Jay Inslee in Washington State and Governor Gavin Newsom in California and others, is that, whether or not they’ve been communicating well, they made better decisions earlier and probably saved more lives than Andrew Cuomo or Bill de Blasio.
Hamblin: The question on everybody’s mind right now is about opening up society or “returning to normal.” I dispute the premise, but still. President Trump tweeted that the president gets to make the call as to when to open up the government. That’s not right. In most ways, it’s going to come down to state governors to open things back up, just the way it came down to state governors to close things down.
Berman: That’s right. Although, we’ve seen that Trump has a lot of influence with Republican leaders in this country. If he wants to open up, you can expect, for example, Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida, or Brian Kemp, the Republican governor of Georgia, to follow the president’s lead in a way that Andrew Cuomo or Gavin Newsom would not. So it is a concern. But he can’t just turn the light switch back on.
The federal government has not ordered anything. The shutdown, to the extent there is nationwide, is actually just guidance from the CDC. It’s the governors and the mayors that are actually making orders. The reopening part is probably going to be done in a fairly haphazard way, but that is probably going to lead to more outbreaks in certain areas. Governor Cuomo and the governors of Connecticut, New Jersey, and Delaware, and Pennsylvania are working together to develop a regional approach to have some coherence in the Northeast region so that you don’t have Connecticut reopening, but not New York, because there’s so much travel commuting back and forth.
Wells: It’s not that Trump’s bully pulpit has no power, but if the decision is ultimately with state and local governments, their decisions are the ones that we should be scrutinizing.
Berman: That’s right. They are making sort of the decisions about when to open and when to close, more so than the federal government is. But the president could undermine decisions by state governments to keep the economy closed down. You could see a situation where the president says, from the White House, that the nation should be open. But Andrew Cuomo would say that New York, which is such a huge portion of the nation’s economy, is still shut down. How is that going to work? We’re in uncharted territory, and we just don’t know what that’s going to look like.


theatlantic--2020-03-31--How to Talk About the Coronavirus

How to Talk About the Coronavirus

Second , pick your battles .
On Thursday , I watched Steph Curry ’ s Instagram Live chat with Anthony Fauci .
“ Information , as we all know , is power , ” Curry told his viewers .
Yes , and here ’ s the catch : Just throwing information at people is also a powerful way of frustrating and alienating them .
People are cognitive misers .
We all tend not to expend mental energy when possible ; we are subject to profound cognitive biases ; and we rely on heuristics to help us make decisions quickly .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ meaning in randomness , biases and heuristics reduce the complexity of our judgments .
And they almost always do so in line with our existing beliefs , values , and identities , and without our conscious awareness .
Humans will go to tremendous lengths to preserve our dignity and social status .
Science communication becomes especially challenging when it deals with politically polarized topics .
Criticism of a disastrous press conference , for example , can feel like an attack on an elected official , and therefore on anyone who voted for them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as motivated reasoning .
If you want to argue politics , argue politics !
This is never as important as when the stakes are so high .
But don ’ t conflate that with science communication .
Identify and affirm your shared values and identities first , and only then ask your audience to submit to the unpleasantness of cognitive dissonance .
Notice how this is so much easier within your own community .
I may hate the politician my dad once voted for , but I love my dad , and he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that .
Third , avoid unforced errors .
I ’ ve learned that many of my instinctive responses are counterproductive .
When I encounter a false rumor , I want to correct it ; when I see people sharing a dangerous piece of advice , I want to condemn it .
But repeating misinformation inadvertently reinforces it .
Dangerous ideas are contagious : Think of this as information hygiene to limit their viral spread .
In one of the most highly cited peer-reviewed papers on correcting misinformation , scientists recommend including pre-exposure warnings @ @ @ @ @ @ @ simple , repeated rebuttals that focus on the correct information .
Try saying , for example , “ I ’ m worried that you might have been hearing reports about medicines and the coronavirus .
Some of the information out there is very wrong.
” That way , you ’ ll open the door for a conversation about a variety of topics that have been in the news lately , and give yourself space to figure out what the first priorities for the conversation should be .
I won ’ t know where @ @ @ @ @ @ @ good if I don ’ t know what my audience is focused on or worried about .
Besides , starting a conversation from a place of humility and genuine curiosity is always healthy and helpful behavior .

As the coronavirus pandemic explodes, so does our exposure to a virulent combination of misinformation, disinformation, and hackneyed amateur analysis. We are all trying to make sense of what this means and what to do.
I’ve spent 15 years as a science communicator—digging deep into complicated research on topics outside my own expertise, figuring out what we know, and then deciding what needs to be shared and how to do that effectively. Sometimes, that has led to anxiety, nightmares, and fights about science with people I love. Perhaps those experiences sound familiar.
Read: The four possible timelines for life returning to normal
We are all science communicators now: COVID-19 has conscripted us. The way we seek out and share information can either make things better or make them worse. Here’s some of what I’ve learned along the way about how to communicate science effectively.
First, start where you are. You are already an influential source of information for the people closest to you. Even if they vehemently disagree with you, your family and friends likely pay more attention to you, and think more highly of you, than do people whom you’ve never met.
Researchers who study the flow of information through networks talk about strong and weak social ties—those formed by close-knit networks with frequent interactions, and those built of more distant and less frequent interactions. Both are crucially important, and weak ties can be surprisingly important. Being an effective science communicator requires understanding your identity as a messenger. You are most effective when culture, context, and identity align. I’ll never forget first hearing about the idea of being a “nerd node of trust”—the person friends and family turn to for technical expertise. It’s a powerful antidote to fruitless agonizing over audience reach. You already have reach. Focus your energy on your own close community first.
Second, pick your battles. On Thursday, I watched Steph Curry’s Instagram Live chat with Anthony Fauci. “Information, as we all know, is power,” Curry told his viewers. Yes, and here’s the catch: Just throwing information at people is also a powerful way of frustrating and alienating them.
People are cognitive misers. We all tend not to expend mental energy when possible; we are subject to profound cognitive biases; and we rely on heuristics to help us make decisions quickly. By offering us patterns in chaos and meaning in randomness, biases and heuristics reduce the complexity of our judgments. And they almost always do so in line with our existing beliefs, values, and identities, and without our conscious awareness. Humans will go to tremendous lengths to preserve our dignity and social status.
Read: The social-distancing culture war has begun
Science communication becomes especially challenging when it deals with politically polarized topics. Criticism of a disastrous press conference, for example, can feel like an attack on an elected official, and therefore on anyone who voted for them. Identity threats trigger identity-protective behaviors such as motivated reasoning. If you want to argue politics, argue politics! This is never as important as when the stakes are so high. But don’t conflate that with science communication.
Identify and affirm your shared values and identities first , and only then ask your audience to submit to the unpleasantness of cognitive dissonance. Notice how this is so much easier within your own community. I may hate the politician my dad once voted for, but I love my dad, and he loves me. We can build on that.
Third, avoid unforced errors. I’ve learned that many of my instinctive responses are counterproductive. When I encounter a false rumor, I want to correct it; when I see people sharing a dangerous piece of advice, I want to condemn it. But repeating misinformation inadvertently reinforces it. Dangerous ideas are contagious: Think of this as information hygiene to limit their viral spread. In one of the most highly cited peer-reviewed papers on correcting misinformation, scientists recommend including pre-exposure warnings, fostering healthy skepticism, and providing simple, repeated rebuttals that focus on the correct information.
Try saying, for example, “I’m worried that you might have been hearing reports about medicines and the coronavirus. Some of the information out there is very wrong.” That way, you’ll open the door for a conversation about a variety of topics that have been in the news lately, and give yourself space to figure out what the first priorities for the conversation should be. I won’t know where my science communication can do the most good if I don’t know what my audience is focused on or worried about. Besides, starting a conversation from a place of humility and genuine curiosity is always healthy and helpful behavior.
Fourth, be as honest and transparent as possible. We can’t read every paper, track every development, perform our own analyses, or represent the complete body of knowledge we now have about COVID-19. Take comfort in the complexity of the research. Seek out and respect the expertise of those with domain-specific knowledge. Revise your positions as new information accumulates. Accept and acknowledge the limits of your knowledge, even as you work to expand it. Allow yourself to step away when it becomes too much, so that you can step back in when you are needed most.
Read: How the pandemic will end
These steps will help you improve, and check the quality of, your own knowledge, as well as enhance your credibility when you try to communicate it. Inviting your audiences to explore a topic with you and equipping them with the tools to interrogate the process respect their agency and autonomy. Science communication should be about service, not self-importance.
I’ve been grappling with each of these challenges as I write. There is still a massive disconnect between theory and practice in science. I caught myself downloading dozens of papers to get a single sentence right. I questioned whether I should link directly to those academic contributions behind their paywalls or to the popular journalism interpreting their results. I questioned whether I am the right person to write this, whether anyone would read it, and if it would genuinely matter that you are.
But it has never been so important to get people to pay attention to hard truths, and perhaps it has never has been as difficult to do that as it is right now. The key is to confront the most brutal facts of reality unflinchingly, while maintaining an unwavering hope for the future. This is called the Stockdale paradox, after Vice Admiral James Stockdale, who survived years of torture as a prisoner of war. In a conversation with Jim Collins, Stockdale later attributed his survival to the fact that he “never lost faith in the end of the story,” unlike those “who said, ‘We’re going to be out by Christmas.’ And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they’d say, ‘We’re going to be out by Easter.’ And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart.”
We will not be out of this pandemic by Easter either. But I have not lost faith in the end of the story, and you can help us get there.