The Pandemic Blog

Last week, Kellyanne Conway said "The more chaos and anarchy and vandalism and violence reigns, the better it is for the very clear choice on who's best on public safety and law and order.” This has to go down as a low point in American political history, where a presidential adviser states that anarchy and violence are a good thing because they help her party. But, as Trump says, “It is what it is.” The fact is that there is violence and anarchy. They need to be controlled, since we don’t want to live in such a country, period. And Kellyanne (who has always been so helpful in explaining the administration’s actions with a clear, unvarnished perspective – starting when she announced the advent of “alternative facts” early in the administration) has made it clear that it will be harmful to Trump’s re-election prospects if the violence ends. What more encouragement should we need to end it? I suggest: 1.       The governors of both states should tak...

Last week, Kevin Perry called my attention to this news story from South Korea, which has lately been having a “surge” in Covid-19 cases, although in their case that means 19,699 cases and 323 deaths so far in the pandemic. Even if you adjust for the fact that their population is a little less than one sixth of ours, they’re still far ahead of us in terms of their virus response – even though they never closed their border with China (they simply couldn’t). We’re now averaging about 40,000 new cases and 1,000 deaths every day . The story is that a lady who happened to be infected (and was presumably still asymptomatic) walked into a Starbucks and sat down under the air conditioner. That meant her exhaled droplets spread all over the store, not just in the six-foot space around her. She ended up infecting at least 56 people. This isn’t unprecedented, of course, but the important fact is that most of the other customers weren’t wearing masks all the time, since of course you ca...