Hello,
This week I thought about skipping the newsletter, as everyone’s attention rightly turns to the protests erupting in cities across the country. It’s another whiplash change — another crisis that seems to render unserious things that had just a few days earlier seemed most urgent. But of course the protests and the pandemic are deeply intertwined. The anger and frustration on display in the streets now isn’t just about the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, or the lynching of Ahmed Aubrey in Georgia, but about generations worth of structural injustice; pain that is compounded by a pandemic that has inflicted disproportionate harm on black communities in terms of both sickness and economic hardship.
The conditions that motivated these protests are inseparable from the conditions that are socially structuring the pandemic and that without intervention will remain after the disease has passed. And the protests themselves are likely to influence the course of Covid’s spread in this country.
At this hour it’s hard to get a good handle on what’s going on with these protests and unrest, so I’m not going to try to give a roundup here. Hopefully a clearer picture will emerge by next week. For now, just a link roundup while I try to learn more.
[Demonstrators near the White House. Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times.]
// Link Roundup
An insightful and moving interview on race, racism and the pandemic with University of Maryland sociologist Rashawn Ray, on Scott Knowles’ Covid podcast (above).
Reflections from a terrible milestone: From ProPublica, a roundup of lessons we should have learned from the first 100,000 Covid deaths to prevent the next 100,000.
— “100,000 Lives Lost to COVID-19. What Did They Teach Us?” Caroline Chen, ProPublica.“[A]ugmented by the act of singing”: A study of a cluster of infections in Washington State found between 32 and 52 people likely contracted Covid from attending a choir practice in which one person was showing symptoms of the disease. The high spread rate is attributed to prolonged close contact indoors and the singing.
— “High SARS-CoV-2 Attack Rate Following Exposure at a Choir Practice — Skagit County, Washington, March 2020.” CDC Weekly Morbidity and Mortality Report.
White House overrules warning about choir risk: Based on the above study the CDC posted guidance on its website stating that because “singing may contribute to the transmisison of Covid-19, possibly through the emission of aerosols,” houses of worship should “consider suspending or at least decreasing use of choir/musical ensembles and congregant singing, chanting, or reciting during services or other programming, if appropriate within the faith tradition.” Over the weekend, the guidance was removed at the order of unnamed White House officials.
— “White House and CDC Remove Coronavirus Warnings About Choirs in Faith Guidance.” Lena H. Sun and Josh Dawsey, The Washington Post.“It takes resources to quarantine.” A new study highlights the effect of economic and racial inequality on Covid exposure risk. In one San Francisco census tract, “About 2% of people tested positive for the coronavirus. Nearly all of them — 95% — were Latinx. The other 5% were Asian or Pacific Islander. Not a single white person tested positive, though 34% of the tract’s residents are white, according to the U.S. Census; 58% are Hispanic.”
— “When Hard Data Are ‘Heartbreaking’: Testing blitz in San Francisco shows Covid-19 struck mostly low-wage workers.” Usha Lee McFarling, STAT News.
— “Initial Results of Mission District COVID-19 Testing Announced.” University of California San Francisco.Why Covid-19 causes runaway inflammation: New research details a behavior unique to SARS-CoV-2 — it disables human cells’ ability to dampen viral replication, but amplifies other parts of our immune response, resulting in lingering infections and “a storm of inflammatory molecules in the lungs.”
— “‘It’s Something I Have Never Seen’: How the Covid-19 Virus Hijacks Cells.” Sharon Begley, STAT News.
— “Imbalanced Host Response to SARS-CoV-2 Drives Development of COVID-19.” Daniel Blanco-Melo et al, Cell.The just-in-time recession: The speed of the pandemic-related economic contraction is faster than any in history. The recovery will take years.
— “Harvard’s Reinhart and Rogoff Say This Time Really Is Different.” Simon Kennedy, Bloomberg Markets.The flour kings: How an employee-owned flour company adapted to consumers’ suddenly insatiable need to bake.
— “Inside the Flour Company Supplying America’s Sudden Baking Obsession.” David H. Freedman, Medium.Educational inequality in a plague: “Distance learning has cracked open the real reason New York City parents spend staggering amounts of money to educate their children. It’s not just to learn physics, or French, or history; it’s for the culture and camaraderie of the institution. It’s the physical experience of, say, shaking hands with the principal … every morning and learning the social codes and cues of blueblood manners and etiquette.”
— “School's Out For ... Ever? With Distance Learning as the New Status Quo, the Most Privileged New York Parents are Seeking Alternative Arrangements.” Hannah Seligson, Air Mail.Inside St. Johns Hospital in Far Rockaway. Please take 13 minutes to watch this short video documentary on the experiences of workers in a Queens hospital after the pandemic peaked in New York.
— “‘Lord Have Mercy’: Inside One of New York’s Deadliest ZIP Codes.” Kassie Bracken and Emily Rhyne, The New York Times.
Thanks for reading!
R