The Power of the Individual in an Exponential Crisis

Like Teru, Hisako possesses uncanny intuition. What’s more, she has an extrasensory prowess that not only compensates for her sightlessness but magnifies her instinctual grasp of things that others cannot even fathom:

She couldn’t see but she had a sense of size, and to her emotions were like balloons expanding in the dark. She knew their scale and texture. An excited cheerful mood would sparkle, because she could tell that something was twinkling high up in the air. Love and adoration were like air currents, or heat. 

 Destroyed Habitat Creates the Perfect Conditions for Coronavirus to Emerge

Americans love living in a disaster movie: “The only language we have to describe our present reality comes from referencing the Hollywood films our culture churns out. ‘I’m in Times Square and it’s like I Am Legend’, a friend texted me this week. ‘I wish it was always like this’.”

The luxury of apocalypticism. The elites want us to panic about Covid-19 – we must absolutely refuse to do so.

Coronavirus updates LIVE: Scott Morrison shuts down pubs, gyms and restaurants for six months as COVID-19 cases surpass 335,000 worldwide

If you suspect you or a family member has coronavirus you should call (not visit) your GP or ring the national Coronavirus Health Information Hotline on 1800 020 080.

What Coronavirus Content Is Showing Us About Ourselves (It Ain’t Pretty)

“The pandemic has clarified the dark bargain of our internet-connected devices: We look to them to protect our bodies and soothe our nerves, and in return, we hand over our minds.” – The New York Times

1,000 singers, 18 countries: Pub Choir's Couch Choir brings light during coronavirus crisis

The evolution of Pub Choir for the age of coronavirus, Couch Choir, draws more than 1,000 videos worldwide striving to bring people together during social isolation.

The Power of the Individual in an Exponential Crisis

We May Be In This for the Long Haul…

CAPITALISM: Why there will soon be tons of toilet paper, and what food may be scarce, according to supply chain experts.

 Coronavirus updates LIVE: Ruby Princess passenger dies, NSW records 'substantial' spike in infections

One-fifth of the world's population have been told to stay home to try to stop the virus spreading, as the World Health Organisation said the pandemic was accelerating. Follow our live coverage here.

The Role Of Plagues In Ancient Greek Stories – Tests Of Leadership

Plagues functioned as a setup for an even more crucial theme in ancient myth: a leader’s intelligence. At the beginning of the “Iliad,” for instance, the prophet Calchas – who knows the cause of a nine-day plague – is praised as someone “who knows what is, what will be and what happened before.” This language anticipates a chief criticism of Homer’s legendary King Agamemnon: He does not know “the before and the after.” – The Conversation

 A simple symptoms checker for COVID-19

I don’t know if they specifically had this in mind when making it, but this video from Vox about the importance of hand washing with soap to kill coronavirus is very kid-friendly. From my pals at the excellent The Kid Should See This

Wash your hands for 20 seconds with soap and water. This is the very best way to kill viruses like coronavirus. But why? What’s happening on our hands when we use soap and water? And why do we have to wash with soap for 20 seconds? Why not ten?

The glow-in-the-dark explanation of the 20-second rule was extremelyconvincing.

See also How to Wash Your Hands Properly and Washing Your Hands Is Important Because Soap “Absolutely Annihilates” Coronavirus. 

• Ethicists on who gets treated when hospitals are overcrowded— Olivia Goldhill at Quartz asks several philosophers their views 

Sweden to Close Borders to Visitors From Non-EU Countries.

18% of U.S. workers have lost jobs or hours since coronavirus hit, poll finds Los Angeles Times 

Supermarket sick Popular Information

 

The Coronavirus Exposes Education’s Digital Divide NYT. In China

Hyman Minsky at 100: Was Minsky a Communist?

 What the Next 18 Months Can Look Like, if Leaders Buy Us Time, Tomas Pueyo, Medium:  “Strong coronavirus measures today should only last a few weeks, there shouldn’t be a big peak of infections afterwards, and it can all be done for a reasonable cost to society, saving millions of lives along the way. If we don’t take these measures, tens of millions will be infected, many will die, along with anybody else that requires intensive care, because the healthcare system will have collapsed.

Monthly Review

Episode 53: Love in the Time Of Corona Pt. 2 (podcast) TrueAnon. Well worth a listen.

Please don’t put a price on my soul

Emily Cauble (DePaul), Time for a Tax Return Filing Fee, 57 Harv. J. on Legis.  ___ (2020):

The IRS faces the monumental task of verifying, to the extent possible, the tax consequences reported on the hundreds of millions of tax returns filed each year. It does so with meager and shrinking resources. Some taxpayers burden the filing system more than others. At one extreme, a taxpayer who earns only income that is subject to third-party reporting and withholding and who claims the standard deduction adds very little to the IRS’s burden. At the other end of the extreme, a large business engaged in numerous complex transactions the tax treatment of which are not free from doubt demands significant resources if that taxpayer’s claimed tax outcomes are fully examined. In light of this landscape, this Article makes the novel proposal that Congress require payment of a tax return filing fee by some taxpayers. The amount of the fee would vary based on some of the factors that make each taxpayer more or less difficult to audit, with carveouts for difficult-to-audit items that are disproportionately claimed by lower-income individuals.

Volunteers are 3D printing $1 replacement valves for machines used in life-saving COVID-19 treatments. The company that normally makes the value sells them for $11,000.

Ten Considerations Before You Create Another Chart About COVID-19. "Visualizations are powerful for communicating information, but can also mislead, misinform, and – in the worst cases – incite panic." (via @spavis)

Some online college classes during quarantine are going to be more entertaining than others...

Some potentially positive COVID-19 news: this preprint paper suggests that SARS-CoV-2 infection confers immunity. "Our results indicated that the primary SARS-CoV-2 infection could protect from subsequent exposures."

QuarantineChat: free service that connects random people from around the world for phone chats. "Get calls at random times and get paired with another person in a one-on-one." It's Chatroulette for phone calls.

"Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus." It's really great that scientists who could be working on something urgent need to spend time debunking conservative conspiracy theories.

If you’ve been unable to post @kottke articles to Facebook (about COVID-19 & other things), they had a bug in a content removal algorithm that they say has now been fixed

Kevin Durant has tested positive for COVID-19

In dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, America Is Acting Like a Failed State.
Gothamist is reporting that supply and staff shortages are starting to hit NYC hospitals