theatlantic--2020-03-24--It Wasn’t Just Trump Who Got It Wrong

It Wasn’t Just Trump Who Got It Wrong

Widespread asystemic thinking may have cost America the entire month of February , and much of what we ’ d normally consider credible media were part of that failure .
On January 29 , about a week after China ’ s government shifted from a deny-and-censor strategy to massive action and communication , Chinese scientists published a significant paper in The New England Journal of Medicine .
The paper estimated the R0 ( the basic reproduction number of an infectious disease ) from the first known case of coronavirus in early December through January 4 to be little more than @ @ @ @ @ @ @ somewhat unchecked , each infected person infected two more people .
Crucially , the paper pointed out evidence of mild and even asymptomatic cases , unlike SARS , which almost always came with a high fever .
It also confirmed the reports that the disease was most dangerous for the elderly or people with underlying conditions .
The paper came out just after China made the unprecedented move to shut down all of Wuhan , a metropolis of 10 million people , and also Hubei , a province of 50 million people .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ so successful For people stuck in asystemic thinking , all this may well have seemed like a small , faraway threat .
If one merely looked at the R0 , the virus wasn ’ t outrageously contagious .
The number was similar to seasonal flu , but nothing explosive like measles , which has an R0 of 12 to 18—one ill person can infect another 12 to 18 people .
For an asystemic thinker , it probably didn ’ t look that deadly , either .
The mortal threat was disproportionately to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and influenza at much higher rates than younger , healthier people .
The case-fatality rate ( CFR ) , or the percent of infected people who die , for younger people seemed fairly low , perhaps comparable to seasonal influenza , which kills about 0.1 percent of its victims , exacting a toll in the tens of thousands in the United States alone .
On January 29 , the known global death total for COVID-19 , the disease caused by the coronavirus , was still under 200 , less than a weekend ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ United States , let alone the flu .
And to an asystemic thinker , the threat seemed remote , unfolding as it was in Wuhan , a place that many people outside China may not have heard of .
Thus from the end of January through most of February , a soothing message got widespread traction , not just with Donald Trump and his audience , but among traditional media in the United States , which exhorted us to worry about the flu instead , and warned us against overreaction .
It seemed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Get a Grippe , America , ” read the headline of one piece that made fun of those worried about this pandemic with a play on grippe ( French for “ flu , ” how clever . )
The title said that the flu was a much bigger threat “ for now.
” There was a New York Times op-ed with a nice alliteration , telling us to “ Beware of the Pandemic Panic , ” again comparing the coronavirus to the flu , and warning us that overreaction would be worse @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wrote a follow-up admitting he was wrong , but claiming that this was a “ black swan ” event , something unpredictable , rather than what it was : predictable and predicted , a gray rhino ) .
Another New York Times op-ed , on February 5 , provocatively titled “ Who Says It ’ s Not Safe to Travel to China ?
” and written by a tourism-industry reporter , claimed travel bans were unjust and ineffective , and were racist especially because they weren ’ t issued for flu—and , astonishingly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ most coronavirus victims recovered .

Updated at 3:49 p.m. ET on August 25, 2020.
Many will be tempted to see the tragic coronavirus pandemic through a solely partisan lens: The Trump administration spectacularly failed in its response, by cutting funding from essential health services and research before the crisis, and later by denying its existence and its severity. Those are both true, but they don’t fully explain the current global crisis that has engulfed countries of varying political persuasions.
As it turns out, the reality-based, science-friendly communities and information sources many of us depend on also largely failed. We had time to prepare for this pandemic at the state, local, and household level, even if the government was terribly lagging, but we squandered it because of widespread asystemic thinking: the inability to think about complex systems and their dynamics. We faltered because of our failure to consider risk in its full context, especially when dealing with coupled risk—when multiple things can go wrong together. We were hampered by our inability to think about second- and third-order effects and by our susceptibility to scientism—the false comfort of assuming that numbers and percentages give us a solid empirical basis. We failed to understand that complex systems defy simplistic reductionism.
Widespread asystemic thinking may have cost America the entire month of February, and much of what we’d normally consider credible media were part of that failure.
On January 29, about a week after China’s government shifted from a deny-and-censor strategy to massive action and communication, Chinese scientists published a significant paper in The New England Journal of Medicine. The paper estimated the R0 (the basic reproduction number of an infectious disease) from the first known case of coronavirus in early December through January 4 to be little more than 2. That means that, left somewhat unchecked, each infected person infected two more people. Crucially, the paper pointed out evidence of mild and even asymptomatic cases, unlike SARS, which almost always came with a high fever. It also confirmed the reports that the disease was most dangerous for the elderly or people with underlying conditions. The paper came out just after China made the unprecedented move to shut down all of Wuhan, a metropolis of 10 million people, and also Hubei, a province of 50 million people.
Read: Why the coronavirus has been so successful
For people stuck in asystemic thinking, all this may well have seemed like a small, faraway threat. If one merely looked at the R0, the virus wasn’t outrageously contagious. The number was similar to seasonal flu, but nothing explosive like measles, which has an R0 of 12 to 18—one ill person can infect another 12 to 18 people. For an asystemic thinker, it probably didn’t look that deadly, either. The mortal threat was disproportionately to the elderly, who already succumb to colds and influenza at much higher rates than younger, healthier people. The case-fatality rate (CFR), or the percent of infected people who die, for younger people seemed fairly low, perhaps comparable to seasonal influenza, which kills about 0.1 percent of its victims, exacting a toll in the tens of thousands in the United States alone. On January 29, the known global death total for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, was still under 200, less than a weekend’s worth of traffic accidents in the United States, let alone the flu. And to an asystemic thinker, the threat seemed remote, unfolding as it was in Wuhan, a place that many people outside China may not have heard of.
Thus from the end of January through most of February, a soothing message got widespread traction, not just with Donald Trump and his audience, but among traditional media in the United States, which exhorted us to worry about the flu instead, and warned us against overreaction. It seemed sensible, grown-up, and responsible. “Get a Grippe, America,” read the headline of one piece that made fun of those worried about this pandemic with a play on grippe (French for “flu,” how clever.) The title said that the flu was a much bigger threat “for now.” There was a New York Times op-ed with a nice alliteration, telling us to “Beware of the Pandemic Panic,” again comparing the coronavirus to the flu, and warning us that overreaction would be worse than the pandemic. (The author wrote a follow-up admitting he was wrong, but claiming that this was a “black swan” event, something unpredictable, rather than what it was: predictable and predicted, a gray rhino). Another New York Times op-ed, on February 5, provocatively titled “Who Says It’s Not Safe to Travel to China?” and written by a tourism-industry reporter, claimed travel bans were unjust and ineffective, and were racist especially because they weren’t issued for flu—and, astonishingly, went on to reassure readers that most coronavirus victims recovered.
Other media also framed the initial response as an overreaction. BuzzFeed News ran a headline telling people to worry about the flu instead of the coronavirus.* (It has since wisely changed its headline, though that doesn’t erase the damage.) Recode published an article titled “The Tech Industry Is Terrified of the Virus,” emphasizing that “public officials in the area say the virus is contained”—and even mentioning the eccentric doomsday scenarios of tech billionaires.
Read: Now is the time to overreact
These pieces were neither exceptional nor exceptionally bad. In fact, they were routine examples of the common sentiment among mainstream media. There was coverage of the coronavirus, but we did not have what we desperately needed: the clear and loud warning that a tsunami was about to land on our shores, and that we needed to start getting ready, immediately. The appropriate message for a tsunami headed our way isn’t that it’s not a threat “for now” or that we should worry about falling in the tub instead. A massive reaction would not have been an overreaction at all; it would have been appropriate. If nothing else, that China’s efficient top-down regime, which highly values its own survival, was willing to take such drastic steps was a sign that the coronavirus was a profound threat.
This complacency went on until about early March, when the severity of the crisis finally sunk in, seemingly only after Italy started suffering the same kind of crisis that had hit Wuhan months earlier.
Many pieces with these flu comparisons usually included discussions of R0 and case-fatality rate, but numbers alone do not make science or sensible risk calculation in complex systems. We needed instead to think about these numbers and measurements in the context of the global system, including how epidemics and the health-care infrastructure work, and consider the trade-offs between resilience, efficiency, and redundancy within the system, and how the second- and third-order impacts can reverberate.
Let’s then go back to what we knew as of January 29 and think about it from a complex-systems perspective. A novel coronavirus (the same family as SARS and MERS) had been observed in Wuhan in early December 2019. The NEJM paper informed us that unlike SARS, this coronavirus included hard-to-detect cases. With SARS, the infectious phase reliably came with a high fever, allowing airports and health authorities to use temperature checks to quickly find and isolate affected individuals. And despite being easily detected, SARS still threatened to become a terrible pandemic in the much-less-interconnected world of 2003. In 2020, Wuhan may seem remote to Western audiences, but it’s a bustling, giant city with more than 500 direct international flights a day, situated in a country that has made great strides in domestic transportation since 2003, with more flights and high-speed train lines. Plus, in 2020, China is practically the manufacturing base of the world economy—something that had started in 2003, of course, but on a smaller scale.
Without using systemic thinking, in isolation, the case-fatality rate may not have seemed that alarming, especially because the virus seemed to disproportionately affect the elderly. But viewed through a systemic lens, even a small fatality rate foretold a disaster. It is true that the flu kills tens of thousands annually, but the choice here wasn’t between worrying about this coronavirus or seasonal influenza. It was about assessing what adding a COVID-19 pandemic on top of a flu season would mean—and how it would overwhelm health-care systems.
In complex systems, one can think about linear interactions and complex or nonlinear interactions. In linear interactions, we can add numbers to guess at combined impact. If the flu kills about 40,000 people annually in the U.S., and car accidents kill another 40,000 people annually, their combined impact is pretty much just that. They are both predictable events for which we have built infrastructure and expectations; our system anticipates both. But adding one more flu-like illness (as COVID-19 was presented) isn’t a linear event. Tipping points, phase transitions (water boiling or freezing), and cascades and avalanches (when a few small changes end up triggering massive shifts) are all examples of nonlinear dynamics in which the event doesn’t follow simple addition in its impacts—that’s why this coronavirus was never just about its R0 or CFR.
Read: The deceptively simple number sparking coronavirus fears
In many complex systems, efficiency, redundancy, and resiliency pull in different directions: More efficient systems, which are cheaper, eliminate redundancies, which provide resilience but cost more. For example, commercial airplanes always have two or more engines and have a co-pilot, even though one pilot and one engine is sufficient to fly the plane safely. The redundancy adds to expenses, but increases safety and resiliency in case something happens to one pilot or engine. In fact, commercial aviation is so safe because redundancy is mandated by regulation and built into every level, but our commercial-flying experience is so miserable because airlines have made it as efficient as possible to save money. (If one plane doesn’t arrive on time, there is no backup waiting to fly instead, for example.)
Health systems are prone to nonlinear dynamics exactly because hospitals are resource-limited entities that necessarily strive for efficiency. Hospitals in wealthy nations have some slack built in for surge capacity, but not that much. As a result, they can treat only so many people at once, and they have particular bottlenecks for their most expensive parts, such as ventilators and ICUs. The flu season may be tragic for its victims; however, an additional, unexpected viral illness in the same season isn’t merely twice as tragic as the flu, even if it has a similar R0 or CFR: It is potentially catastrophic.
Worse, COVID-19 wasn’t even just another flu-like illness. By January 29, it was clear that COVID-19 caused severe primary pneumonia in its victims, unlike the flu, which tends to leave patients susceptible to opportunistic, secondary pneumonia. That’s like the difference between a disease that drops you in the dangerous part of town late at night and one that does the mugging itself. COVID-19’s characteristics made it clear that the patients would need a lot of intensive, expensive resources, as severe pneumonia patients do: ICU beds, ventilators, negative-pressure rooms, critical-care nurses.
This is why the case-fatality rate for COVID-19 was never a sufficient indicator of its threat. If emergency rooms and ICUs are overloaded from COVID-19, we will see more deaths from everything else: from traffic accidents, heart attacks, infections, seasonal influenza, falls and traumas—basically anything that requires an emergency-room response to survive. If COVID-19 causes a shortage of masks for emergency-room workers, hospitals will stop everything that looks “elective” or nonurgent to fight that fire, but that means people will then suffer and die from things that those surgeries were intended to treat or improve. An angioplasty may not be urgent that week, but it is still a lifesaving intervention without which more people will die. This is true for even seemingly optional health interventions: If people can’t get knee-replacement surgeries, for example, they will be less active, which will increase their health risks.
Nonlinear dynamics and complex-system failures can also come about because of tight coupling between the components. Tight coupling means that every part of the system moves together, which in turn means that even small things can cause a crisis—for want of a nail. For example, COVID-19 testing requires skinny swabs that can reach the nasopharynx. Forget the tests themselves; we have a shortage of swabs because we didn’t ramp up their production when we had time, and now there aren’t enough. Reagents required for testing also are in short supply. Addressing these shortages may have other nonlinear effects: Medical-equipment producers are being told, understandably, to drop everything and produce more swabs. That means something else will not be produced, which we might notice as a crisis in a year.
The phrase flatten the curve is an example of systems thinking. It calls for isolation and distancing not because one is necessarily at great risk from COVID-19, but because we need to not overwhelm hospitals with infections in the aggregate. Also, R0 is not a fixed number: If we isolate ourselves, infectiousness decreases. If we keep traveling and congregating, it increases. Flattening the curve is a system’s response to try to avoid a cascading failure, by decreasing R0 as well as the case-fatality rate by understanding how systems work.
Juliette Kayyem: The crisis could last 18 months. Be prepared.
None of this erases the administration’s failures, which are grave, but the painful truth is that we could have tried to do a lot at the local level that would have helped. Not everything had to wait for the government. Hong Kong, too, had a largely unresponsive government, but great popular pressure and people’s own actions—immediate adoption of social distancing in January, universal mask wearing, calling for closures and cancellations even when the government dragged its feet—have meant that the city had a very low rate of infection until late March, despite its nearness to China and its status as one of the most densely populated places in the world. Hong Kong is now facing a second wave, but even that uptick, which has caused the anti-government and pro-democracy Telegram channels I follow in Hong Kong to burst with exhortations to the people not to let their guard down, still brings it to only about 360 cases total. That’s a minuscule number compared with, say, the more than 15,000 cases just in New York.
In the United States and Europe, the die is mostly cast for the immediate future. But understanding our failures leading up to this moment isn’t an abstract exercise. Maybe we will muddle through the next few months, at great cost. But we will still need all the systemic thinking we can muster to anticipate the second- and third-order effects that will follow this crisis. And if we hope to blunt the impact of others like it, let’s not forget, again, that all of our lives are, together, embedded in highly complex systems.


theatlantic--2020-04-16--Is It Ethically Okay to Get Food Delivered Right Now?

But there ’ s no comprehensive , up-to-date database with this information for all the places you can get food from .
In the absence of that , Jayaraman suggested a general guideline : “ I would say employers that have already demonstrated before coronavirus that they care about their workers and prioritize them are going to provide you with safer and healthier environments , not just for their own workers but for you as a customer.
” To some extent , it ’ s also possible to gauge whether a business is taking the pandemic seriously just based on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have cart wipes , hand-sanitizer dispensers , plexiglass dividers at registers , and limits on how many shoppers are allowed in at once , to prevent crowding .
If you go to a store that isn ’ t doing those things , see if other nearby stores are—for your sake and for workers ’ .
Certainly , though some things are quicker and easier than others .
Alberto Giubilini , a senior research fellow at the University of Oxford ’ s Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities , said that when people perform @ @ @ @ @ @ @ risks to do so , they should be compensated accordingly .
Ideally , he said , the employer or , failing that , the government would see to it that the worker gets paid extra .
“ If there is no compensation scheme in place—either by the government or by the individual employers—then there certainly is a moral obligation to tip a lot , ” he wrote in an email .
“ We ought to tip way more than we do in normal circumstances.
” Then there are the things you can do @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The question isn ’ t so much about individual choices as much as why the system is failing delivery workers , ” said Wilfred Chan , a writer and food-delivery worker in New York City who volunteers with the Biking Public Project , an advocacy group that focuses on food delivery .
“ Whether customers decide to order , we need their help in fighting for workers to get fair wages , hazard pay , insurance , sick leave , and the protection they need.
” What does that sort of help look @ @ @ @ @ @ @ consumers can do is to pressure companies to change their practices , and to vote for politicians that support a robust safety net , ” Debra Satz , a philosophy professor at Stanford , wrote in an email .
“ People should reward the best corporate actors—some stores/chains are stepping up.
” In other words , vote with your wallet , and with your actual vote .
Schaffner , the food-science professor , approves , so long as you are able to stay six feet away when you drop off or receive it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ after preparing or eating it .
( And don ’ t sneeze on it or anything . )
He says the same of CSAs , or community-supported agriculture , in which local farms distribute their produce to people ’ s homes .
The experts I interviewed aren ’ t all picking just one means of procuring food because they have some public-health or ethical concern on their mind .
They ’ re going to the grocery store , getting food delivered , and picking up takeout like many other people .
There ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ feed yourself—whatever you choose , if you ’ re careful and conscientious , that ’ s the best you can do .

Unless you produce your own food, some combination of you and other humans has to transport it from wherever it’s made to your stomach. In normal circumstances, most people don’t dwell much on that fact, but during a pandemic, it makes deciding just how to procure sustenance highly fraught: Because every option comes with potential negative consequences for you and others—cashiers, shelf stockers, delivery people, restaurant workers, and so on—it can seem like there’s no right way to get dinner.
For example, is it better to cook at home or get food from a restaurant? Getting takeout means leaving the house and potentially spreading or catching the coronavirus (and ordering delivery means shifting that risk onto someone else). Meanwhile, sticking to your own kitchen is safer for everyone involved—but it means not financially supporting workers and businesses that may desperately need the money. And if you cook, you still have to get groceries somehow, which again means either you or someone else going outside to transport the food.
What follows is an attempt to work through specific food dilemmas such as this one, including the ethics of getting delivery and how often you should go to the grocery store. In a lot of cases, there are no right answers, but establishing all the trade-offs makes it possible to feed yourself in a way that doesn’t feel wrong.
Read: Our pandemic summer
Whatever food choices you end up making, it’s important to follow the pandemic eating commandments that many journalists (including my colleague Amanda Mull) and public-health experts have already laid out: Don’t shop at a crowded grocery store; have a shopping list and don’t browse; ask delivery people to leave food on your doorstep (and not hand it off to you); stay home if you have symptoms of COVID-19 or are at greater risk of dying from it; and of course, wash your hands before and after getting food, try not to touch your face, and wear a mask when you go out. Taken together, these guidelines are a powerful way of reducing the potential health risks to you and others that come with getting food—whether from a grocery store or a restaurant, via pickup or delivery.
If I’m trying to reduce the risk of getting infected and infecting others, how much does it matter if I pick one way of getting food versus another?
Frustratingly, this is a very difficult question to answer straightforwardly. That’s because so much depends on the precautions taken by each grocery store, restaurant, and delivery company. For instance, a crowded grocery store is riskier (for you and for workers) than one that caps its occupancy, and a restaurant that gives paid leave to its staff when they’re feeling sick is safer (again, for everyone) than one that doesn’t.
That said, the experts I spoke with generally agreed that delivery seems to be safer for individual consumers than going into a store or restaurant, because you are exposed to the fewest people (ideally none, if the delivery worker doesn’t hand the food off to you directly). Picking up curbside from a grocery store or restaurant is also relatively low-risk.
Grocery-store, restaurant, and delivery workers, though, are all at risk of getting or spreading the virus no matter which choice you make. Even if you opt out of delivery and spare a courier another potentially risky trip, leaving home to get groceries yourself still heightens others’ risk. “You may be in the store for half an hour, but the workers are there for eight-, nine-, 10-hour shifts, so they have the potential for far more interactions with people,” said Elizabeth Carlton, a professor at the Colorado School of Public Health. Moreover, working conditions can vary greatly, so gauging the risk to whole categories of workers is really hard.
When I peppered Robert Salata, a medical professor at Case Western Reserve University, with questions about the various health considerations of each method of obtaining food, he said that I was probably splitting hairs—if you’re not in an at-risk group, choosing one method over another will likely not add so much risk to you and others that it would nullify any other concerns you might have, such as wanting to support a local restaurant or contribute to delivery workers’ income.
Of course, not everyone has this range of choices available to them. Some areas don’t have many online food-delivery options, and many people don’t have the money for delivery, now or ever. But no matter what choices you have, as long as you’re observing the aforementioned general principles, no option seems to be significantly riskier than the others on a per-trip basis—but the risk does go up with each trip, and getting restaurant food is something you’d probably have to do more often than (and in addition to) getting groceries.
Lastly, a bit of good news: “We have no evidence that the virus is transmitted by food,” said Donald Schaffner, a food-science professor at Rutgers University. So wherever you get your food from, it’s most likely safe to eat, though discarding the packaging that takeout meals come in and washing your hands after bringing home groceries are good practices.
How often should I go to the grocery store?
“The less often you can go, the better,” Carlton said.
What that looks like in practice likely depends on how much food you can transport and store. The example Tamar Lasky, an epidemiologist, gave me was, “If I used to buy groceries three times a week, I am now trying to consolidate my purchases to once a week.” There’s no correct frequency, but I’d say, after speaking with several public-health experts, that if you’re going to the store more than once a week, you should try to space out your visits more, if you can. (You might also consider buying foods that last longer, such as root vegetables, apples, yogurt, and hard cheeses.)
Keeping your number of grocery-store visits down doesn’t mean eating like a prepper, with dehydrated meal kits and Spam. When I asked Salata how much riskier it would be if I went to the grocery store once a week versus once every two weeks, he said, “I think if you’re careful, in the long run it’s not going to make that much of a difference”—careful being a reference to the guidelines mentioned above.
This minimize-your-trips mentality also applies to takeout and restaurant deliveries: Instead of getting meals from two different restaurants in one week, consider getting two meals’ worth of food from the same restaurant. (Of course, this way of thinking is also an implicit argument against ordering food from restaurants at all, because if you can get a week’s worth of food from a grocery store, that spares you and others from making any other food-related trips on your behalf that week.)
If I limit myself to one grocery-store trip every two weeks, is it possible that I’d have to buy so much food that I’d produce shortages for others?
Nope. “Shopping for a 2-week supply is reasonable in the current circumstances and unlikely to threaten the supply chain,” Steven Taylor, a professor at the University of British Columbia and the author of The Psychology of Pandemics, wrote to me in an email. “Even panic-buying at its worst didn’t threaten the supply chain. It simply created short-term shortages in stores (and food banks), which were replenished fairly quickly.”
Is it ethical to get delivery?
The people ferrying food from grocery stores and restaurants to paying customers are currently caught in a terrible bind: They can either make money and risk exposure to the virus or stay home and forgo some or all of their income. “I’m afraid to make deliveries because I’m afraid to die,” one delivery worker wrote in a group chat that was shared with The New York Times.
So is it morally wrong to order delivery and put workers in that position, or is ordering delivery a good thing because it directs money to restaurants and workers? “Right now, I think workers would largely ask you to please keep ordering,” said Saru Jayaraman, the director of the Food Labor Research Center at UC Berkeley. “It’s essential for these workers to be able to survive. Our industry is definitely worried about people’s safety, including their own, but they’re also worried about survival and feeding their kids … It’s not that they don’t think this is a scary time to be doing delivery, but they also need their jobs.”
Read: The pandemic will cleave America in two
Besides, the ethical calculations might not be as simple as they seem at first, because going to the grocery store also puts other people at risk—you could be infected and contagious but not know it. “In a moral sense, that at least makes it more gray,” said Christopher Robichaud, a senior lecturer in ethics and public policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School.
Because there’s no clear correct answer, “it’s probably far more important that you simply do your best to be decent, conscientious, gracious, and so forth in all your dealings with everyone you interact with right now,” Jorah Dannenberg, a philosophy professor at Stanford, wrote in an email. (And wash your hands, I’d add.)
One last ethical consideration, though: “We’d want to make sure that those who are at highest risk have opportunities to have food delivered to them,” Robichaud said. So if every grocery-delivery service has a 10-day wait, and if you’re not in an at-risk group, it might be better to just go to the store and leave that delivery slot open for someone who needs it more than you.
Is it better to order food from a restaurant or buy a gift certificate to use later?
Many small businesses are in danger of going bankrupt during the pandemic, and one common suggestion for supporting local restaurants is to purchase a gift certificate from them, providing them with a cash infusion.
But it’s probably better to spend money on food now, whether you pick it up or order in. “Ordering delivery will maintain delivery [and restaurant] workers’ jobs,” Jayaraman said. With “gift certificates, it’s not clear what will happen to the money, because restaurants are in such dire straits right now just to pay basic bills and stay afloat. If your goal is to keep people employed, I would say delivery is the way to go. But gift certificates are great if you can do both.”
How hard is it to figure out which businesses take good care of their workers?
Somewhat hard—which is unfortunate, because both you and food-industry workers are at lower risk of getting the virus when employers provide paid sick leave as well as hand sanitizer, masks, and the like.
Some of this information is available because media outlets have reported on certain companies’ practices. For instance, my colleague Olga Khazan noted that Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Kroger, Stop & Shop, and Target all give workers two weeks of paid leave if they contract COVID-19. Also, Eater and Consumer Reports have described the policies of several national chains and delivery services. Agitation for safer and fairer pandemic protocols has made headlines, too, providing further hints as to which companies are prioritizing workers.
But there’s no comprehensive, up-to-date database with this information for all the places you can get food from. In the absence of that, Jayaraman suggested a general guideline: “I would say employers that have already demonstrated before coronavirus that they care about their workers and prioritize them are going to provide you with safer and healthier environments, not just for their own workers but for you as a customer.”
To some extent, it’s also possible to gauge whether a business is taking the pandemic seriously just based on your own observations. Some grocery stores have cart wipes, hand-sanitizer dispensers, plexiglass dividers at registers, and limits on how many shoppers are allowed in at once, to prevent crowding. If you go to a store that isn’t doing those things, see if other nearby stores are—for your sake and for workers’.
Is there anything I can do to help the people working at grocery stores, restaurants, and delivery companies?
Certainly, though some things are quicker and easier than others.
Alberto Giubilini, a senior research fellow at the University of Oxford’s Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities, said that when people perform essential work but must take on extra risks to do so, they should be compensated accordingly. Ideally, he said, the employer or, failing that, the government would see to it that the worker gets paid extra. “If there is no compensation scheme in place—either by the government or by the individual employers—then there certainly is a moral obligation to tip a lot,” he wrote in an email. “We ought to tip way more than we do in normal circumstances.”
Then there are the things you can do to support workers more broadly. “The question isn’t so much about individual choices as much as why the system is failing delivery workers,” said Wilfred Chan, a writer and food-delivery worker in New York City who volunteers with the Biking Public Project, an advocacy group that focuses on food delivery. “Whether customers decide to order, we need their help in fighting for workers to get fair wages, hazard pay, insurance, sick leave, and the protection they need.”
What does that sort of help look like exactly? “The best thing consumers can do is to pressure companies to change their practices, and to vote for politicians that support a robust safety net,” Debra Satz, a philosophy professor at Stanford, wrote in an email. “People should reward the best corporate actors—some stores/chains are stepping up.” In other words, vote with your wallet, and with your actual vote.
Is it safe to cook food for, or receive home-cooked food from, friends or people in My community?
Schaffner, the food-science professor, approves, so long as you are able to stay six feet away when you drop off or receive it, and wash your hands before and after preparing or eating it. (And don’t sneeze on it or anything.) He says the same of CSAs, or community-supported agriculture, in which local farms distribute their produce to people’s homes.
How are these epidemiologists and ethicists feeding themselves these days?
The experts I interviewed aren’t all picking just one means of procuring food because they have some public-health or ethical concern on their mind. They’re going to the grocery store, getting food delivered, and picking up takeout like many other people. There’s no single most ethical way to feed yourself—whatever you choose, if you’re careful and conscientious, that’s the best you can do.


John Hendrickson

John Hendrickson is a senior editor on The Atlantic ’ s politics team .
• This is The Atlantic ’ @ @ @ @ @ close look at the issues our newsroom is watching , just for you .
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• The president refuses to believe that even New @ @ @ @ @ Northeast state , is beyond his electoral grasp in 2020 .
• What Joe Biden @ @ @ @ @ to Say His verbal stumbles have voters worried about his mental fitness .
Maybe they @ @ @ @ @ if they knew he ’ s still fighting a stutter .

John Hendrickson is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Life on Delay .
Scott Olson / Getty Trump’s Inevitability Problem His apparent stranglehold on the GOP race is both emboldening and hindering.
Harold M. Lambert / Getty Oppenheimer Nightmares? You’re Not Alone. The movie is everywhere—including in our subconscious mind.
Michael Duva / Getty Images Boiling the Ocean Between record-setting heat and warming ocean water, this summer feels like the start of an unsettling new era.
Photograph by Chris Buck for The Atlantic The First MAGA Democrat Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is feeding Americans’ appetite for conspiracies.
Scott Olson / Getty The Secret Presidential-Campaign Dress Code As candidates descend on Iowa and other early-voting states, the “everyman” cosplay picks up.
CNN Entirely Unrepentant In an unhinged town hall, Donald Trump repeated familiar lies and tested new talking points.
Apple TV+ What Michael J. Fox Figured Out How do you maintain optimism as things keep getting worse?
Illustration by Diego Cadena Bejarano The Painstaking Journey to a David Grann Book How the best-selling nonfiction author finds the facts that drive his books
Timothy A. Clary / AFP / Getty Fox News on Trial The most influential media company in America is about to be tested like never before.
Andrew Kelly / Reuters Inside Manhattan Criminal Court With Donald Trump The former president of the United States is officially a defendant.
Bill Pugliano / Getty Trump’s WWE Theory of Politics The former president grew up a wrestling fan—and mastered the dark art of arena-style rhetoric.
Illustration by The Atlantic; Wally McNamee / Corbis … How Wrestling Explains America Did Trump and his buddy Vince McMahon turn politics upside down, or was it already that way?
Travis P. Ball / Getty for SXSW Nancy Pelosi: ‘Follow the Money’ The former speaker of the House discussed Silicon Valley Bank, January 6 revisionist history, and more in an interview focused on money and greed.
Anna Moneymaker / Getty The Martyr at CPAC Donald Trump came to the conservative conference to air some grievances.
Daniel Zender / The Atlantic; Getty The Next Big Political Scandal Could Be Faked Imagine a convincing AI “Joe Biden” talking about ballot harvesting, or hacked voting machines.
Matt Chase / The Atlantic. Source: Getty. Six Memoirs That Go Beyond Memories Sometimes, a writer can use more than their own recollections to tell a personal story.
The Atlantic The Truth About Aliens Is Still Out There What were those three “aerial objects” downed following the Chinese spy balloon?
Tyler Comrie / The Atlantic; Getty Why I Dread Saying My Own Name Nearly every decision in my life has been shaped by my stutter.
A Disability Film Unlike Any Other I Didn’t See You There depicts, with a hypnotic realism, life from the perspective of a disabled person.


theatlantic--2020-04-04--The Spanish Sci-Fi Thriller Putting a Brutal Spin on Inequality

Gaztelu-Urrutia ’ s movie toggles between lengthy philosophical conversations and scenes of extreme violence .
It follows Goreng ( played by Ivan Massagué ) , a man who chose to enter the facility for six months in exchange for an accredited diploma , as he tries to survive in The Hole without losing his sense of decency .
The film will delight genre lovers with its gory depiction of the lower levels ’ inevitable desperation .
Blood and feces streak the walls of the Center and the faces of its occupants .
Cannibalism is—it ’ s not a spoiler to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lens is unflinching : Against backdrops of gray and muted browns , the characters ’ injuries and anguished faces command attention .
The film ’ s sound design stretches out every slash , scream , and fall .
These are fantastical representations of the human toll within a system that promotes competition and self-interest .
The Platform never lets you forget that its characters ’ decisions , no matter how small , could result in others ’ deprivation .
Though the film was made long before the pandemic struck , it ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , knowing that others won ’ t see a crumb , and not think of the people who hoarded masks and hand sanitizer around the U.S. in the disaster ’ s earliest days .
Read : An ethicist on how to make impossible decisions But The Platform also reminds viewers over and over that none of this depravity is necessary .
The film indicts individuals for their participation in a violent system ; it ’ s not content to saddle abstract concepts with all the guilt .
Because the prisoners are randomly shuffled @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you can be moved from Level 6 to Level 201 and vice versa ) , everyone operates from a position of scarcity .
In this , The Hole deviates from more entrenched real-life economic dynamics , but the film emphasizes a message that nonetheless applies : Even amid impossible conditions , human beings have a responsibility to one another—regardless of whether they will tangibly benefit from their own actions .
Beginning with Goreng ’ s early claim that “ it ’ s fairer to ration the food , ” The Platform teases some @ @ @ @ @ @ @ something has to happen in the VSC , ” one of Goreng ’ s cellmates tells him .
“ Something that fosters a spontaneous sense of solidarity.
” Without revealing too much , Goreng and another detainee do attempt to bring about that revolutionary upheaval—but the film ’ s ending offers no easy answers or simple moral takeaways .
While it ’ s unclear what the real-life counterpart of that effort would look like during the COVID-19 crisis , The Platform hints at a reworking of the system that recalls the ending of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2013 science-fiction film .

Netflix’s viral new thriller is set in what sounds like a stodgy WeWork facility: the “Vertical Self-Management Center.” But the people trapped inside refer to it by a more evocative title—“The Hole”—because the building is, in fact, a skyscraperlike prison with a giant void in the middle. This hole is central to The Platform’s disturbing premise: An inmate named Goreng wakes up and learns that he is in a concrete reformatory composed of hundreds of levels. Each day, an elaborate feast is laid out on the titular platform, which drops from floor to floor. Each level can only eat the leftovers of those above. There’s supposedly enough food for everyone—if the prisoners only eat what they need.
The Spanish director Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia’s film (originally titled El hoyo) isn’t a delicate satire. The people on the top levels always gorge themselves so that by the time the table reaches the lower floors, there’s nothing left. But the current resonance of The Platform’s brutalist portrait of real-life inequality is not hard to understand right now, during an unprecedented global pandemic.
The movie premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September but has rocketed up Netflix’s most-popular list in recent weeks as existing disparities widen around the world and in the U.S. The movie’s portrayal of avarice and desperation in response to scarcity cuts close to the bone in a moment when states are competing for respirators, panic shopping has left grocery shelves bare, price gouging is rampant, scammers are offering fake tests and vaccines, and the most vulnerable Americans have become only more endangered. In The Platform, the decisions of a select few in the highest echelons determine the survival of those below them. The film is as heavy-handed as it sounds, but these aren’t subtle times.
Gaztelu-Urrutia’s movie toggles between lengthy philosophical conversations and scenes of extreme violence. It follows Goreng (played by Ivan Massagué), a man who chose to enter the facility for six months in exchange for an accredited diploma, as he tries to survive in The Hole without losing his sense of decency. The film will delight genre lovers with its gory depiction of the lower levels’ inevitable desperation. Blood and feces streak the walls of the Center and the faces of its occupants. Cannibalism is—it’s not a spoiler to say—a frequent occurrence. Gaztelu-Urrutia’s lens is unflinching: Against backdrops of gray and muted browns, the characters’ injuries and anguished faces command attention. The film’s sound design stretches out every slash, scream, and fall.
These are fantastical representations of the human toll within a system that promotes competition and self-interest. The Platform never lets you forget that its characters’ decisions, no matter how small, could result in others’ deprivation. Though the film was made long before the pandemic struck, it’s hard to watch prisoners stuff their faces, knowing that others won’t see a crumb, and not think of the people who hoarded masks and hand sanitizer around the U.S. in the disaster’s earliest days.
Read: An ethicist on how to make impossible decisions
But The Platform also reminds viewers over and over that none of this depravity is necessary. The film indicts individuals for their participation in a violent system; it’s not content to saddle abstract concepts with all the guilt. Because the prisoners are randomly shuffled to new levels once a month (you can be moved from Level 6 to Level 201 and vice versa), everyone operates from a position of scarcity. In this, The Hole deviates from more entrenched real-life economic dynamics, but the film emphasizes a message that nonetheless applies: Even amid impossible conditions, human beings have a responsibility to one another—regardless of whether they will tangibly benefit from their own actions.
In The Platform, the decisions of a select few in the highest echelons of a bleak environment determine the survival of those below them. (Netflix)
Beginning with Goreng’s early claim that “it’s fairer to ration the food,” The Platform teases some kind of revolt. “Eventually, something has to happen in the VSC,” one of Goreng’s cellmates tells him. “Something that fosters a spontaneous sense of solidarity.” Without revealing too much, Goreng and another detainee do attempt to bring about that revolutionary upheaval—but the film’s ending offers no easy answers or simple moral takeaways. While it’s unclear what the real-life counterpart of that effort would look like during the COVID-19 crisis, The Platform hints at a reworking of the system that recalls the ending of Snowpiercer, Bong Joon Ho’s 2013 science-fiction film.
In Snowpiercer, all of Earth’s remaining inhabitants circumnavigate the globe in a luxury train broken up into strata: The poorest residents live in the back, and the wealthiest are up front, closest to the engine. Both films leave audiences on a curious, uncertain note. The future of their unequal systems appears forever changed, if only because of who is tasked with carrying their populations forward. That The Platform’s final scenes find even a shred of optimism within its twisted world is strangely comforting, an unexpected balm in a film—and a world—that seems to relish in inflicting wounds.


Jeremy Raff

Jeremy Raff is a video producer at The Atlantic .
• Undocumented immigrants sick with COVID-19 are scared to seek care .
Gladys Vega is trying to help .
• ‘ Don ’ t Let Us Die in Here ’ A group of women in an ICE detention center calls for help .
• What Doctors Are Afraid Of At the forefront of the COVID-19 pandemic , health-care workers describe a new world of chaos , fear , and suffering .
• Karlena Dawson is at high risk of complications from COVID-19 .
Where she lives makes her even more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ • As a Border Patrol agent , Raul Rodriguez deported thousands of people .
Now he faces his own deportation .
• After spending nearly two decades facilitating deportations as a Customs and Border Protection officer , Raul Rodriguez discovered that he was not a U.S. citizen .
Now he ’ s at risk of deportation himself .
• Sick Migrant Children Are at the Whims of U.S. Border Guards Agents repeatedly denied entry to a 7-year-old with a life-threatening illness .
Why did they change their minds ?
• He Fought for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Juan Sanchez built his career fighting for migrant children .
Later , he made millions off them .
• Juan Sanchez was once hailed as a champion for social justice .
Then his network of shelters started taking in children split from their relatives .
• Dolly Lucio Sevier evaluated dozens of sick children at a facility in South Texas .
She found evidence of infection , malnutrition , and psychological trauma .
• The Chapel at the Border A “ cowboy priest ” confronts the wall and the military presence on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ • At the U.S.-Mexico border , a priest tries to save his chapel , which is in the direct path of the proposed border wall .
• Kevin Simmers locked up hundreds of drug users—including his own daughter—while the opioid epidemic raged .
Now he wants 24-hour treatment on demand .
• Immigrant children separated from their parents can spend months , even years , in American foster homes .
There have even been rare cases in which state officials have authorized permanent adoptions without notifying deported parents .

Jeremy Raff is a former video producer at The Atlantic.
How Fear Spreads the Coronavirus Undocumented immigrants sick with COVID-19 are scared to seek care. Gladys Vega is trying to help.
‘Don’t Let Us Die in Here’ A group of women in an ICE detention center calls for help.
What Doctors Are Afraid Of At the forefront of the COVID-19 pandemic, health-care workers describe a new world of chaos, fear, and suffering.
The Atlantic ‘We Are Like Sitting Ducks’ Karlena Dawson is at high risk of complications from COVID-19. Where she lives makes her even more vulnerable: a Seattle immigrant-detention center.
Matthew Genitempo The Undocumented Agent After spending nearly two decades facilitating deportations as a Customs and Border Protection officer, Raul Rodriguez discovered that he was not a U.S. citizen. Now he’s at risk of deportation himself.
A Secret at the Border As a Border Patrol agent, Raul Rodriguez deported thousands of people. Now he faces his own deportation.
John Moore / Getty Sick Migrant Children Are at the Whims of U.S. Border Guards Agents repeatedly denied entry to a 7-year-old with a life-threatening illness. Why did they change their minds?
He Fought for Migrant Kids. Then He Got Rich. Juan Sanchez built his career fighting for migrant children. Later, he made millions off them.
Robert Spriggs / Nana_Studio / Shutterstock / Katie … How Family Separations Brought Down a Migrant Mogul Juan Sanchez was once hailed as a champion for social justice. Then his network of shelters started taking in children split from their relatives.
Jeremy Raff / The Atlantic What a Pediatrician Saw Inside a Border Patrol Warehouse Dolly Lucio Sevier evaluated dozens of sick children at a facility in South Texas. She found evidence of infection, malnutrition, and psychological trauma.
Jeremy Raff The Chapel at the Border A “cowboy priest” confronts the wall and the military presence on the banks of the Rio Grande.
‘Christians Build Bridges, Not Walls’ At the U.S.-Mexico border, a priest tries to save his chapel, which is in the direct path of the proposed border wall.
He Was a Drug Cop. Then His Daughter Overdosed. A personal tragedy forces a narcotics officer to rethink his stance on the drug war.
Aaron Raff A Narcotics Officer Ends His War on Drugs Kevin Simmers locked up hundreds of drug users—including his own daughter—while the opioid epidemic raged. Now he wants 24-hour treatment on demand.
Rebecca Blackwell / Reuters Some Immigrant Parents Fear Losing Their Children Forever Immigrant children separated from their parents can spend months, even years, in American foster homes. There have even been rare cases in which state officials have authorized permanent adoptions without notifying deported parents.
Jeremy Raff / The Atlantic Putting Family Separation on Film A bonus video for Masthead members. And Jeremy Raff reflects on his documentary, The Separated.
Jeremy Raff / The Atlantic ‘The Separation Was So Long. My Son Has Changed So Much.’ U.S. border guards took a 6-year-old Honduran boy from his mother, and ultimately returned a deeply traumatized child.
How Family Separation Traumatized Children An unflinching look at one family's experience being forcibly separated at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Fear and Anxiety at Refugee Road Hundreds of immigrants in Columbus, Ohio face an ICE crackdown.


Jemele Hill

Jemele Hill is a contributing writer at The Atlantic .
• The NFL Is Suddenly Worried About Black Lives When the league had the opportunity to be on the right side of history , it chose the coward ’ s path .
• For those who strive to be more than average , discomfort is a source of strength .
• The Game Can not Go On Events without live spectators don ’ t change the basic problem : Athletes are vulnerable to the coronavirus too .
• NFL Owners Have a Problem With Coaches of Color League policy requires @ @ @ @ @ @ @ jobs , but one rule doesn ’ t make up for deep-seated prejudice .
• American Values Were Never the Issue Conservatives blasted the NBA for giving in to China .
But no such outrage greets the golfers playing in an upcoming Saudi tournament .
• In the End , the NFL Proved Colin Kaepernick Right In pronouncing the outspoken quarterback ’ s career dead , the league underscored its own unwillingness to let players exercise their own power .
• The NCAA Had to Cut Athletes a Better Deal Universities take advantage @ @ @ @ @ @ @ legislators are forcing college sports to find a fairer business model .
• James didn ’ t defend free speech .
But in China , the NBA has made a mess that its biggest star can ’ t be expected to clean up .
• The NCAA Will Never Fix Itself The presidential candidate Cory Booker , a former Stanford athlete , thinks big-name college sports have gone awry—and he wants Congress to step in .
• The NBA Is Going to Have to Choose Pro basketball was a progressive beacon , allowing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ freely .
And then China got involved .
• Young Black Athletes Are Starting to Understand Their Power With intercollegiate athletics under intense scrutiny , the basketball phenom Josh Christopher considers taking his talents to a historically black school .
• Antonio Brown Has Only Himself to Blame Pro football can look past allegations of predatory behavior toward women , but making the NFL look bad is a different story .
• What the Right Doesn ’ t Understand About Black Colleges Historically African American institutions serve a vital purpose , and it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ athletes to attend them .
• They attract money and attention to the predominantly white universities that showcase them , while HBCUs struggle .
What would happen if they collectively decided to go to black schools ?
• The Colts quarterback ’ s sudden retirement is a harbinger .
Fame , fortune , and team spirit are no longer enough to make star players endure crippling injuries .
• The former quarterback caused a problem for the league—which turned to the celebrated rapper for assistance .

Jemele Hill is a contributing writer at The Atlantic.
She is the author of Uphill: A Memoir . She was formerly a reporter for ESPN, where she co-anchored SportsCenter, and in 2018, she was named journalist of the year by the National Association of Black Journalists. She previously co-hosted Vice’s Cari & Jemele (Won’t) Stick to Sports and currently hosts the podcast Jemele Hill Is Unbothered .
Danny Moloshok / Getty College Football’s Power Brokers Are Destroying It What colleges’ relentless drive for more television revenue is doing to the sport
Cliff Hawkins / Getty The PGA Tour’s Stunning Hypocrisy The preeminent golf league suddenly decided that Saudi Arabia’s many sins are not a problem.
Adam Pantozzi / NBAE / Getty Brittney Griner Has the Right to Change Her Mind The WNBA player has a different perspective on “The Star-Spangled Banner” but hasn’t given up the cause of justice.
Adam Hagy / NBAE / Getty Ja Morant Flunks the Common-Sense Test Maybe a suspension will convince the Grizzlies star that he has too much to lose.
Tom Pennington / Getty Angel Reese Meets the Same Old Stereotypes The LSU star doesn’t deserve the second-guessing.
Aaron Ontiveroz / The Denver Post / Getty NFL Owners Are Making an Example of Lamar Jackson Teams are always looking for a top-tier quarterback, but the Baltimore Ravens star is garnering surprisingly little interest.
Scott Olson / Getty Michigan State Deserves More Than Thoughts and Prayers After the mass shooting at my alma mater, I don’t need trauma bonding. I’m furious.
Scott Taetsch / Getty; The Atlantic Jalen Hurts and Patrick Mahomes Had to Disprove a Misconception A historic Super Bowl matchup defies professional football’s reluctance to let Black athletes call plays.
David Madison / Getty The NHL Is Gutless Professional hockey claims to want greater diversity but won’t stand up to criticism.
Amy Kaplan / Icon Sportswire / Getty The Sports Scandal Almost Nobody Is Talking About UFC’s Dana White faces almost no consequences for publicly slapping his wife.
Mauro Pimentel / AFP / Getty Megan Thee Stallion Is the Victim, Not the Defendant The acclaimed rapper’s sexual history is wrongly under scrutiny.
Charles A. Smith / JSU University Communications / … Deion Sanders’s Disappointing Exit The former NFL star got a great new coaching job. But what happens to schools like Jackson State?
William P. Straeter / AP; The Atlantic The Jerry Jones Photo Explains a Lot A 1957 image of the Dallas Cowboys’ owner highlights long-standing inequities in the NFL.
Brett Davis / Reuters What Does Kyrie Irving See in Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theories? The NBA star joins a troubling club.
Ashley Gilbertson / VII / Redux What My Mother Taught Me About Black Conservatives Her viewpoint isn’t uncommon. It’s just widely overlooked.
Nicole Craine / The New York Times / … Herschel Walker’s Candidacy Is Just Insulting The contrast with his opponent renders it all the more egregious.
Cameron Spencer / Getty Serena Williams Faces Another Challenge What will the greatest player in women’s tennis do next?
Bettmann / Getty What Made Bill Russell a Hero The basketball legend was a champion not just on the court but off it—through his groundbreaking activism for racial justice.
Keith Birmingham / Pasadena Star-News / Getty College Football Is Cannibalizing Itself In pursuit of money, universities and conferences are uprooting traditional rivalries and regional loyalties.


James Parker

James Parker is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Turned On • In the deepest reaches of history , the poet found a voice for the troubled present .
• My Soccer Fandom Is Out of Shape A lifelong fan took in yesterday ’ s Manchester City–Arsenal game , and struggled to connect with his onetime obsession .
• The Advice That Most 2020 Commencement Speakers Won ’ t Give Here ’ s the speech that graduates need to hear .
• The 1798 Poem That Was Made for 2020 “ The Rime of the Ancient @ @ @ @ @ @ @ during the coronavirus pandemic .
• An Ode to Running in the Movies What makes Harrison Ford such a great cinematic sprinter , and why does Tom Cruise always pump his arms like that ?
• Boston ’ s most vulnerable citizens are experiencing a drastic reduction in places to eat , places to sit , places to use the bathroom , places to be safe , places to be .
• A pandemic that won ’ t last forever and ever , amen • Before she died , Emily Hale donated love @ @ @ @ @ @ @ while his wife was ill. Now public , the writings reveal his quiet duplicity .
• What Happened When the Sex Pistols Threw a Christmas Party A new book showcases a collection of photos that captures the band ’ s last concert in England—they were in their pomp , on their mission , and fully charged .
• Fling wide the plastic curtain , take a breath , and step right in .
• A recent work by the late critic Clive James about his literary idol , Philip Larkin , artfully examines @ @ @ @ @ @ @ • Your body begins to betray you .
You have neither the vitality of youth nor the license of old age .
But being over the hill has its pleasures .

More +
Turned On, his 1998 biography of the punk-rock performer Henry Rollins, has been described as “breathlessly brilliant” (New Musical Express) and “a modern-day Pilgrim’s Progress” (Feed.com). He was previously a staff writer for the Boston Phoenix, where he won New England Newspapers and Press Association awards for his reporting on history and religious issues, and an ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for music criticism. In 2012, he was nominated for a National Magazine Award for his columns at The Atlantic. In 2017–18 he was the Institute of Liberal Arts journalism fellow at Boston College. Since 2011, Parker has been running the Black Seed Writers Group—a weekly writing workshop for homeless, transitional, and recently housed writers–and editing The Pilgrim, a literary magazine from the homeless community of downtown Boston.


Social Distance

There ’ s promising news around a vaccine , but what does it mean ?
And should we speed up @ @ @ @ @ trials ’ by letting vaccinated people be exposed to the virus ?
Infectious disease expert @ @ @ @ @ the show to discuss the medical and ethical issues .
Also , Katherine faces a @ @ @ @ @ .

Journalists from The Atlantic document the first 15 months of the coronavirus pandemic through regular phone calls. Listen in as Dr. Jim Hamblin, the producer Katherine Wells, and the comedian and the writer Maeve Higgins ask journalists, experts, and friends about the news and science behind the pandemic, get some advice, and learn how to apply it.


theatlantic--2020-03-19--This Is How We Can Beat the Coronavirus

This Is How We Can Beat the Coronavirus

Why does the Imperial College team predict this for the West when things seem to be improving in Asia ?
Because we are taking different approaches .
Asian countries have engaged in suppression ; we are only engaging in mitigation .
Suppression refers to a campaign to reduce the infectivity of a pandemic , what experts call R0 ( R-naught ) , to less than one .
Unchecked , the R0 of COVID-19 is between 2 and 3 , meaning that every infected person infects , on average , two to three others .
An R0 less than 1 indicates @ @ @ @ @ @ @ than one new infection .
When this happens , the outbreak will slowly grind to a halt .
To achieve this , we need to test many , many people , even those without symptoms .
Testing will allow us to isolate the infected so they can ’ t infect others .
We need to be vigilant , and willing to quarantine people with absolute diligence .
Because we failed to set up a testing infrastructure , we can ’ t check that many people .
At the moment , we can ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Therefore , we ’ re attempting mitigation—accepting that the epidemic will advance but trying to reduce R0 as much as possible .
Our primary approach is social distancing—asking people to stay away from one another .
This has meant closing schools , restaurants , and bars .
It ’ s meant asking people to work from home and not meet in groups of 10 or more .
Our efforts are good , temporizing measures .
Impeding the growth of the infection improves the chance that our health-care system will be able to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t help those who are already infected .
It will take up to two weeks for those infected today to show any symptoms , and some people won ’ t show symptoms at all .
Social distancing can not prevent these infections , because they ’ ve already happened .
Therefore , things will appear to get worse for some time , even if what we ’ re doing is making things better in the long run .
The outbreak will continue to progress .
But buried in the Imperial College report @ @ @ @ @ @ @ finds that in the do-nothing scenario , many people die and die quickly .
With serious mitigation , though , many of the measures we ’ re taking now slow things down .
By the summer , the report calculates , the number of people who become sick will eventually reduce to a trickle .
On this path , though , the real horror show will begin in the fall and crush us next winter , when COVID-19 comes back with a vengeance .
This is what happened with the flu in 1918 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the summer , the numbers of sick dwindled and created a false sense of security .
Then , all hell broke loose .
In late 1918 , tens of millions of people died .
If a similar pattern holds for COVID-19 , then while things are bad now , it may be nothing compared with what we face at the end of the year .

Mitigation can buy us time, but only suppression can get us to where we need to be.
While many watched the coronavirus spread across the globe with disinterest for months, in the past week, most of us have finally realized it will disrupt our way of life. A recent analysis from Imperial College is now making some Americans, including many experts, panic. The report projects that 2.2 million people could die in the United States. But the analysis also provides reason for hope—suggesting a path forward to avoid the worst outcomes.
We can make things better; it’s not too late. But we have to be willing to act.
Polly J. Price: How a fragmented country fights a pandemic
Let’s start with the bad news. The Imperial College response team’s report looks at the impact of measures we might take to flatten the curve, or reduce the rate at which people are becoming sick with COVID-19. If we do nothing and just let the virus run its course, the team predicts, we could see three times as many deaths as we see from cardiovascular disease each year. Further, it estimates that infections would peak in mid-June. We could expect to see about 55,000 deaths in just one day.
Of course, we are doing something, so this outcome is unlikely to occur. We’re closing schools and businesses and committing to social (really, physical) distancing. But as the sobering charts from the analysis show, this isn’t enough. Even after we do these things, the report predicts that a significant number of infections will occur, that more people will need care than we can possibly provide in our hospitals, and that more than 1 million could die.
Why does the Imperial College team predict this for the West when things seem to be improving in Asia? Because we are taking different approaches. Asian countries have engaged in suppression; we are only engaging in mitigation.
Suppression refers to a campaign to reduce the infectivity of a pandemic, what experts call R0 (R-naught), to less than one. Unchecked, the R0 of COVID-19 is between 2 and 3, meaning that every infected person infects, on average, two to three others. An R0 less than 1 indicates that each infected person results in fewer than one new infection. When this happens, the outbreak will slowly grind to a halt.
Read: The deceptively simple number sparking coronavirus fears
To achieve this, we need to test many, many people, even those without symptoms. Testing will allow us to isolate the infected so they can’t infect others. We need to be vigilant, and willing to quarantine people with absolute diligence.
Because we failed to set up a testing infrastructure, we can’t check that many people. At the moment, we can’t even test everyone who is sick. Therefore, we’re attempting mitigation—accepting that the epidemic will advance but trying to reduce R0 as much as possible.
Our primary approach is social distancing—asking people to stay away from one another. This has meant closing schools, restaurants, and bars. It’s meant asking people to work from home and not meet in groups of 10 or more. Our efforts are good, temporizing measures. Impeding the growth of the infection improves the chance that our health-care system will be able to keep up.
But these efforts won’t help those who are already infected. It will take up to two weeks for those infected today to show any symptoms, and some people won’t show symptoms at all. Social distancing cannot prevent these infections, because they’ve already happened. Therefore, things will appear to get worse for some time, even if what we’re doing is making things better in the long run. The outbreak will continue to progress.
But buried in the Imperial College report is reason for optimism. The analysis finds that in the do-nothing scenario, many people die and die quickly. With serious mitigation, though, many of the measures we’re taking now slow things down. By the summer, the report calculates, the number of people who become sick will eventually reduce to a trickle.
On this path, though, the real horror show will begin in the fall and crush us next winter, when COVID-19 comes back with a vengeance.
This is what happened with the flu in 1918. The spring was bad. Over the summer, the numbers of sick dwindled and created a false sense of security. Then, all hell broke loose. In late 1918, tens of millions of people died.
If a similar pattern holds for COVID-19, then while things are bad now, it may be nothing compared with what we face at the end of the year.
Annie Lowrey: As usual, Americans must go it alone
Because of this, some are now declaring that we might be on lockdown for the next 18 months. They see no alternative. If we go back to normal, they argue, the virus will run unchecked and tear through Americans in the fall and winter, infecting 40 to 70 percent of us, killing millions, and sending tens of millions to the hospital. To prevent that, they suggest we keep the world shut down, which would destroy the economy and the fabric of society.
But all of that assumes that we can’t change, that the only two choices are millions of deaths or a wrecked society.
That’s not true. We can create a third path. We can decide to meet this challenge head-on. It is absolutely within our capacity to do so. We could develop tests that are fast, reliable, and ubiquitous. If we screen everyone, and do so regularly, we can let most people return to a more normal life. We can reopen schools and places where people gather. If we can be assured that the people who congregate aren’t infectious, they can socialize.
We can build health-care facilities that do rapid screening and care for people who are infected, apart from those who are not. This will prevent transmission from one sick person to another in hospitals and other health-care facilities. We can even commit to housing infected people apart from their healthy family members, to prevent transmission in households.
These steps alone still won’t be enough.
We will need to massively strengthen our medical infrastructure. We will need to build ventilators and add hospital beds. We will need to train and redistribute physicians, nurses, and respiratory therapists to where they are most needed. We will need to focus our factories on turning out the protective equipment—masks, gloves, gowns, and so forth—to ensure we keep our health-care workforce safe. And, most important, we need to pour vast sums of intellectual and financial resources into developing a vaccine that would finally bring this nightmare to a close. An effective vaccine would end the pandemic and protect billions of people around the world.
All of the difficult actions we are taking now to flatten the curve aren’t just intended to slow the rate of infection to levels the health-care system can manage. They’re also meant to buy us time. They give us the space to create what we need to make a real difference.
Of course, it all depends on what we do with that time. The mood of the country has shifted in the past few weeks, from dismissal to one of fear and concern. That’s appropriate. This is a serious pandemic, and it’s still very likely that the rate of infection will overwhelm the surge capacity in some areas of the United States. There will likely be more seriously ill people than we have resources to care for, meaning that providers will have to make decisions about whom to treat, and whom not to.
They may, explicitly or implicitly, have to decide who lives and who dies.
If we commit to social distancing, however, at some point in the next few months the rate of spread will slow. We’ll be able to catch our breath. We’ll be able to ease restrictions, as some early-hit countries are doing. We can move toward some semblance of normalcy.
The temptation then will be to think we have made it past the worst. We cannot give in to that temptation. That will be the time to redouble our efforts. We will need to prepare for the coming storm. We’ll need to build up our stockpiles, create strategies, and get ready.
If we choose the third course, when fall arrives, we will be ahead of a resurgence of the infection. We can keep the number of those who are exposed to a minimum, focusing our attention on those who are infected, and enacting more stringent physical distancing only when, and in locations where, that fails. We can keep schools and businesses open as much as possible, closing them quickly when suppression fails, then opening them back up again once the infected are identified and isolated. Instead of playing defense, we could play more offense.
We need to keep time on the clock, time to find a treatment or a vaccine.
The last time we faced a pandemic with this level of infectivity, that was this dangerous, for which we had no therapy or vaccine, was 102 years ago, and it led to 50 million deaths. The coronavirus pandemic isn’t unprecedented, but it’s not anything anyone alive has experienced before. We, are, however, much more knowledgeable, much more coordinated, and much more capable today.
Some Americans are in denial, and others are feeling despair. Both sentiments are understandable. We all have a choice to make. We can look at the coming fire and let it burn. We can hunker down and hope to wait it out—or we can work together to get through it with as little damage as possible. This country has faced massive threats before and risen to the challenge; we can do it again. We just need to decide to make it happen.


theatlantic--2020-03-22--I Used to Run ICE. We Need to Release the Nonviolent Detainees.

ICE is fortunate that the threat posed by these detention centers can be mitigated rather easily .
By releasing from custody the thousands of detainees who pose no threat to public safety and do not constitute an unmanageable flight risk , ICE can reduce the overcrowding of its detention centers , and thus make them safer , while also putting fewer people at risk .
This doesn ’ t mean that dangerous criminals will be walking the streets .
Those who threaten Americans ’ safety can and must continue to be detained .
However , the immigration detention system is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have committed serious crimes or pose a significant flight risk .
In fact , only a small percentage of those in ICE detention have been convicted of a violent crime .
Many have never even been charged with a criminal offense .
ICE can quickly reduce the detained population without endangering our communities .
The large-scale release of detainees doesn ’ t mean that undocumented immigrants should get a free pass either .
Those who are released can and should continue to go through the deportation process .
ICE can employ electronic monitoring @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at mandated hearings and remove them from the country when appropriate .
When an outbreak of COVID-19 occurs in an ICE facility , the detainees won ’ t be the only ones at risk .
An outbreak will expose the hundreds of ICE agents and officers , medical personnel , contract workers , and others who work in these facilities to the virus .
Once exposed , many of them will unknowingly take the virus home to their family and community .
Moreover , once the virus tears through a detention center , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to be diverted to treat those infected .
ICE can , and must , reduce the risk it poses to so many people , and the most effective way to do so is to drastically reduce the number of people it is currently holding .

With more than 37,000 detainees closely confined in facilities across the country, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centers are extremely susceptible to outbreaks of infectious diseases. The design of these facilities requires inmates to remain in close contact with one another—the opposite of the social distancing now recommended for stopping the spread of the lethal coronavirus.
Read: What you need to know about the coronavirus
As the former Acting Director of ICE under President Obama, I know that preventing the virus from being introduced into these facilities is impossible. This week, the Trump administration announced that, in light of its concern that the virus could be introduced into detention centers, it would shift its enforcement operations to focus only on criminals and dangerous individuals. This means that the agency will arrest and place in detention only those undocumented immigrants who have serious criminal convictions. Those without a criminal record will be allowed to stay at home as they go through the deportation process. This is a necessary and crucial first step, but the administration must do more: It must release the thousands of nonviolent, low-flight-risk detainees currently in ICE custody.
ICE is fortunate that the threat posed by these detention centers can be mitigated rather easily. By releasing from custody the thousands of detainees who pose no threat to public safety and do not constitute an unmanageable flight risk, ICE can reduce the overcrowding of its detention centers, and thus make them safer, while also putting fewer people at risk.
This doesn’t mean that dangerous criminals will be walking the streets. Those who threaten Americans’ safety can and must continue to be detained. However, the immigration detention system is not designed to detain only those who have committed serious crimes or pose a significant flight risk. In fact, only a small percentage of those in ICE detention have been convicted of a violent crime. Many have never even been charged with a criminal offense. ICE can quickly reduce the detained population without endangering our communities.
Read: How Trump radicalized ICE
The large-scale release of detainees doesn’t mean that undocumented immigrants should get a free pass either. Those who are released can and should continue to go through the deportation process. ICE can employ electronic monitoring and other tools to ensure their appearance at mandated hearings and remove them from the country when appropriate.
When an outbreak of COVID-19 occurs in an ICE facility, the detainees won’t be the only ones at risk. An outbreak will expose the hundreds of ICE agents and officers, medical personnel, contract workers, and others who work in these facilities to the virus. Once exposed, many of them will unknowingly take the virus home to their family and community. Moreover, once the virus tears through a detention center, crucial and limited medical resources will need to be diverted to treat those infected. ICE can, and must, reduce the risk it poses to so many people, and the most effective way to do so is to drastically reduce the number of people it is currently holding.


theatlantic--2020-04-02--Politics Daily: There Goes the Economy

Politics Daily: There Goes the Economy

It ’ s Thursday , April 2 .
The White House will reportedly advise all Americans to wear face coverings in public to slow the spread of the coronavirus .
In today ’ s newsletter : The economy is toast , but it didn ’ t have to be like this , our economics reporter argues .
Plus : The unique threat the coronavirus poses to southern states .
There goes the economy .
Remember when the White House was toying with the idea of reopening the economy by Easter , in a little over a week ?
After the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ U.S. government ’ s official position has moved toward keeping society—and the economy—shut down for at least another month .
As my colleagues have reported before , the economic devastation is still building , but we now have a better data on what the crisis looks like .
Nearly 10 million Americans have filed for unemployment in the last two weeks , new figures out today are showing .
But it didn ’ t have to be this way , my colleague Derek Thompson writes , and Congress can still act , despite @ @ @ @ @ @ @ accelerating toward an economic and human disaster unlike anything recorded in American history.
” The U.S. economic rescue package implicitly encourages layoffs and increases spending on the unemployed .
Jobless benefits have been expanded , and many households will receive one-time payments of $ 1,200 per adult—plus $ 500 per child .
Strengthening our jobless benefit programs in this way was necessary to keep families from starving , given the inevitability of historic layoffs .
But had the U.S. reacted swiftly and creatively to the prospect of a historic sudden-stop recession , this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ inevitable .
We could have paid workers a living wage to stay with their companies .
Instead , companies are firing workers en masse , and we ’ re scrambling to pay them a living wage anyway .

Almost 10 million Americans have already filed for unemployment benefits. It didn’t have to be this way, Derek Thompson argues. Plus: COVID-19’s unique threat to the South.
It’s Thursday, April 2. The White House will reportedly advise all Americans to wear face coverings in public to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
In today’s newsletter: The economy is toast, but it didn’t have to be like this, our economics reporter argues. Plus: The unique threat the coronavirus poses to southern states.
*
« TODAY IN POLITICS »
(Katie Martin / The Atlantic)
There goes the economy.
Remember when the White House was toying with the idea of reopening the economy by Easter, in a little over a week?
After the jaw-dropping mortality estimates this week, the U.S. government’s official position has moved toward keeping society—and the economy—shut down for at least another month.
As my colleagues have reported before, the economic devastation is still building, but we now have a better data on what the crisis looks like. Nearly 10 million Americans have filed for unemployment in the last two weeks, new figures out today are showing.
But it didn’t have to be this way, my colleague Derek Thompson writes, and Congress can still act, despite the fact that the U.S. is “accelerating toward an economic and human disaster unlike anything recorded in American history.”
The U.S. economic rescue package implicitly encourages layoffs and increases spending on the unemployed. Jobless benefits have been expanded, and many households will receive one-time payments of $1,200 per adult—plus $500 per child. Strengthening our jobless benefit programs in this way was necessary to keep families from starving, given the inevitability of historic layoffs. But had the U.S. reacted swiftly and creatively to the prospect of a historic sudden-stop recession, this level of layoffs would not have been inevitable. We could have paid workers a living wage to stay with their companies. Instead, companies are firing workers en masse, and we’re scrambling to pay them a living wage anyway.
Derek runs through other recommendations.
It’s too late to stop these layoffs, but the federal government can soften the economic blow by expanding its messaging to companies about the $300 billion loan program it launched last week, and then funnel more money into it:
The message should be: You have a patriotic and moral duty to hold on to your workers during this national crisis, and the government has a patriotic and moral duty to pay you to do it.
Here are four rules we should be operating by, Derek also writes. The first? That saving the economy should be pitted against saving lives is a false choice.
Moreover, it’s foolish to begin thinking about reopening the economy when the cities that fuel the economy remain under a vicious COVID-19 siege, our political analyst Ron Brownstein writes:
In interviews with me this week, the mayors of several of those big cities told me that it will take much longer than a few weeks to restart their economy—and that even when economic activity resumes, the process will be gradual and halting.
You can read the full story here.
*
Politics Daily readers: Are you applying for an emergency small-business loan, or know someone who is? Our economics reporters would like to hear about the experience. Write to us by replying directly to this newsletter, or emailing us here. Include your name as well as the name, size, and location of your enterprise.
—Christian Paz
*
« THE CORONAVIRUS READER »
(THE ATLANTIC)
+ The White House said it estimated anywhere from 100,000 to 240,000 people to die from COVID-19 in the U.S. The debate rages on over whether the official estimates are correct. But that’s the wrong way to be understanding these models. Epidemiological models are not meant to be “right” or “wrong,” Zeynep Tufekci aruges.
+ The coronavirus is advancing on the American South: So far, about one in 10 deaths in the U.S. from COVID-19 has occurred in the four-state arc of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia, according to data assembled by the COVID Tracking Project. And more young people are dying, Vann R. Newkirk II writes.
+ Closing schools and restaurants, shutting down public spaces, and postponing events was the easiest part of states’ responses to the coronavirus, one former DHS official argues. There are a range of ugly decisions forthcoming (think, for instance, “which crimes to investigate”).
You can keep up with The Atlantic’s most crucial coronavirus coverage here.
*


Helen Lewis

Helen Lewis is a London-based staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Difficult Women : A History of Feminism in 11 Fights • Britain has finally passed a new law allowing for no-fault divorce , all without a culture war .
• The Mainstream Media Won ’ t Tell You This Peddle misinformation .
Cry “ conspiracy ” when no one else reports it .
Repeat .
• Crises Are No Time for Political Unity The leader of Britain ’ s Labour Party is showing what you can do when you don ’ t have a leader ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ ve Never Believed in ‘ Believe Women ’ The Biden allegations reveal the weakness of the # MeToo movement ’ s rallying cry .
• When Will We Want to Be in a Room Full of Strangers Again ?
Theater , an industry full of optimists , is reckoning with a heartbreaking realization .
• The Pandemic Has Revealed the Weakness of Strongmen Women leaders are a symptom of a political system ’ s success , not necessarily its cause .
• You Should Politicize the Coronavirus The pandemic raises unavoidable and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ suspicious of any attempt to dismiss them .
• The U.K. Labour Party ’ s new leader wants to disown Jeremy Corbyn ’ s toxic legacy .
• What Happens When a Joke Is Followed by Silence Usually , that ’ s bad .
The pandemic makes it normal .
• How Panic-Buying Revealed the Problem With the Modern World The pandemic has shown how just-in-time systems are also fragile .
• The heir to the British throne getting the coronavirus will make this outbreak seem real to many people .
• The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Protect Britain From the Coronavirus As the government inevitably restricts Britons ’ lives , the country must reject the voices arguing that it is overreacting .
• What It ’ s Like to Be a Leftover Woman From China ’ s “ leftover women ” to Israel ’ s “ baby machines , ” society still dictates female lives .
• Why has Erin Pizzey , once a pioneer of the women ’ s movement , been written out of its history ?
• Reality Shows Don ’ t Have to Be Cruel @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that niceness among contestants can be really fun to watch .

Helen Lewis is a staff writer at The Atlantic.
She is the author of Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights and the host of the BBC’s long-form interview series, The Spark . Her next book, The Selfish Genius, is scheduled for publication in 2023. At The Atlantic, she writes about the intersection of politics, society, and digital culture.
The Atlantic The Gender War Is Over in Britain While upholding trans rights, the Labour Party disassociates itself from radical postmodern theories.
Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Getty. The Weird, Fragmented World of Social Media After Twitter The common forum that Elon Musk destroyed will never be replaced—and that’s okay.
Illustration by Ben Kothe / The Atlantic. Source: … The Wrath of Goodreads Authors are at the mercy of people who don’t bother reading their work.
Anna Moneymaker / Getty The Humiliation of Ron DeSantis The Florida governor isn’t Trump plus competence; he’s Trump minus jokes.
Eddie Keogh / The FA / Getty Can the Left Make Peace With a National Flag? An unassuming English soccer team manager reclaimed patriotism from the far right.
Illustration by Alex Cochran. Source: Getty. The Feminists Insisting That Women Are Built Differently An emerging strand of feminism zeroes in on the differences between male and female bodies.
Getty Beware of the Food That Isn’t Food The podcaster Chris van Tulleken has strong opinions about soft bread and candy that never decays.
Illustration by Ben Kothe / The Atlantic. Source: … Why So Many Conservatives Feel Like Losers Despite all of its victories, the populist right can’t stop moping.
Glyn Kirk / AFP / Getty King Charles’s Absurd, Awe-Inspiring Coronation Where does Britain keep all these horses and bishops the rest of the time?
Eric Audras / Getty The Only Way Out of the Child-Gender Culture War The U.S. is becoming an outlier. Punitive bans won’t help. Better evidence will.
Jacob King / Getty; Samir Hussein / WireImage … King Charles’s Very Hobbity Coronation What the new monarch’s investiture will reveal about his character—and Britain’s
Warner Bros / Portkey Games The Hogwarts Legacy Boycott That Wasn’t If the public response to the game was truly a referendum on J. K. Rowling, she won.
Brandon Celi How Did America’s Weirdest, Most Freedom-Obsessed State Fall for an Authoritarian Governor? A journey through Ron DeSantis’s magic kingdom
Illustration by Matt Chase / The Atlantic What You Can’t Say on YouTube Opaque demonetization rules make the platform a forest of invisible trip wires.
Keystone / Hulton Archive / Getty Roald Dahl Can Never Be Made Nice Rewriting his novels is about corporate safetyism, not social justice.
Pool / Getty What Happens When Politicians Brush Off Hard Questions About Gender Dismissing good-faith inquiries about a gender self-identification law drained Scottish leader Nicola Sturgeon’s authority.
Getty; The Atlantic The Internet Loves an Extremophile Online culture favors influencers who pinball from one enthusiasm to the next.
Chris Jackson / Getty Prince Harry’s Book Undermines the Very Idea of Monarchy The prince’s memoir, Spare, is a scorching account of life in a golden cage.
Netflix The Cringeworthy End of Harry & Meghan on Netflix The ex-royals insist they’re moving on. Viewers should be so lucky.


Annalise Pasztor

Annalise Pasztor is the fellow for video at The Atlantic .
• In a small town near Roanoke , churchgoers @ @ @ @ @ .
• In a new documentary from The Atlantic , coronavirus survivors describe frightening experiences @ @ @ @ @ • What Doctors Are Afraid Of At the forefront of the COVID-19 pandemic , health-care @ @ @ @ @ of chaos , fear , and suffering .
• In accordance with a centuries-old treaty @ @ @ @ @ a quest to give the Cherokee Nation a voice .

Annalise Pasztor is a former fellow for video at The Atlantic.
A Virginia Church Pivots to Drive-In In a small town near Roanoke, churchgoers convene for an unconventional service.
Medical Research Council/The Atlantic ‘COVID-19 Is a Delirium Factory’ In a new documentary from The Atlantic, coronavirus survivors describe frightening experiences in the intensive-care unit.
What Doctors Are Afraid Of At the forefront of the COVID-19 pandemic, health-care workers describe a new world of chaos, fear, and suffering.


theatlantic--2020-06-28--Vann R. Newkirk II

Vann R. Newkirk II

Vann R. Newkirk II is a staff writer at The Atlantic , where he covers politics and policy , and the host of the podcast Floodlines • Covering Katrina weakened my faith in the country ’ s preparedness .
The coronavirus has robbed me of it completely .
• The Coronavirus ’ s Unique Threat to the South More young people in the South seem to be dying from COVID-19 .
Why ?
• With the country ’ s attention turned north , the coronavirus pandemic is exploding in Louisiana .
• The Kids Aren ’ t All Right COVID-19 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ major concern for children ’ s health , but the youngest among us will still bear the larger burdens of trauma and economic fallout .
• A retrospective on the events that led to the disaster , and what came next • A conversation with the man behind the music in the podcast about his inspiration , the betrayal of Hurricane Katrina , and the unique history and future of New Orleans .
• A collection of research and writing that informed and inspired the podcast • The shameful story of how 1 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their farms • The debate over reparations highlights the dual purpose of the holiday : celebrating emancipation but also demanding accountability for historical and present wrongs .
• Us and Jordan Peele ’ s New Horror In his latest film , the comedian turned director continues to reinvent how the genre uses fear to comment on humanity ’ s evil .
• Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is unveiling a proposal to combat disenfranchisement , which he says is one of the “ three biggest issues ” the country faces going into 2020 .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ extend key provisions of the Voting Rights Act .
• Will Cohen ’ s Remarks on Trump ’ s Racism Change Anything ?
The president has somehow proved resilient to accusations that he is a racist .
• In her response to the president ’ s State of the Union address , the former Georgia legislator pushed voting rights to the heart of her party ’ s agenda .
• The Virginia governor ’ s main problem is not the particulars of his dalliances with racism , but the fact that they exist—and @ @ @ @ @ @ @

Vann R. Newkirk II is a senior editor at The Atlantic and the host of the podcasts Floodlines and Holy Week.
Holy Week: Kingdom Part 6: On Palm Sunday, Black D.C. wakes up to a broken dream.
Holy Week: Inferno Part 2: The Black capital of the world catches fire
Holy Week: Rupture Part 1: A day at the crossroads of chance and destiny
Holy Week: Overcome Part 4: In Memphis, the movement faces a reckoning.
Holy Week: Black Messiah Part 3: Who will rise next?
Holy Week: Covenant Part 7: A settlement in ashes
Holy Week: Resurrection Part 8: Whoever believes in him shall not perish
Holy Week: Prophecy Part 5: Leaders hope to stop that which had been foretold
Paul Spella Introducing: Holy Week The story of a revolution undone
Warrick Page / HBO / Charlie Le Maignan … The Frenetic Basketball Nostalgia of Winning Time Three basketball-loving writers discuss the first season of HBO’s controversial series about the 1980s Lakers.
Photograph by Yael Malka for The Atlantic When the Myth of Voter Fraud Comes for You To support the Republican narrative that our elections are rife with misconduct, someone needs to take the fall.
Dan Budnik / Contact Press Images; Flip Schulke … American Democracy Is Only 55 Years Old—And Hanging by a Thread Black civil-rights activists—and especially Black women—delivered on the promise of the Founding. Their victories are in peril.
Earth’s New Gilded Era The world is getting hotter, and the divide between rich and poor is getting bigger.
Vincent Laforet / Reuters How America Handles Catastrophe Covering Katrina weakened my faith in the country’s preparedness. The coronavirus has robbed me of it completely.
The Atlantic The Coronavirus’s Unique Threat to the South More young people in the South seem to be dying from COVID-19. Why?
Yusiki / Shutterstock / The Atlantic Watch New Orleans With the country’s attention turned north, the coronavirus pandemic is exploding in Louisiana.
Ezra Acayan / Stringer / Getty The Kids Aren’t All Right COVID-19 doesn’t appear to be a major concern for children’s health, but the youngest among us will still bear the larger burdens of trauma and economic fallout.
Shutterstock / The Atlantic Floodlines: Timeline of Events A retrospective on the events that led to the disaster, and what came next
Anthony Pidgeon / Redferns / Getty Floodlines: A Q&A With New Orleans Musician Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah A conversation with the man behind the music in the podcast about his inspiration, the betrayal of Hurricane Katrina, and the unique history and future of New Orleans.