Thomas Pueyo<\/a> put a post on Medium back on March 10 that is, for my money, still the best entry-level explanation of the challenges in measuring and reporting on the spread and impact of the disease. If you only have mental energy for one mid-length article, read that one. It\u2019ll inoculate you against the major sorts of misunderstanding and disinformation that we\u2019re being peddled these days.<\/p>\n\n\n\nSpeaking of which, I\u2019ve muted the president and his cronies on social media, and I won\u2019t read so much as a summary of his news conferences. The office of the president, shamefully enough, is nothing more than a fountain of disinformation, grandstanding, ego, and bullying. That was painful and damaging before the epidemic hit \u2013 and now it\u2019s going to get tens to hundreds of thousands of us killed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Through it all, there are bright spots:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I attended the very first virtual meeting of my city council, and even thought there were rough spots with the technology \u2013 it gave me hope. If you work with local politics at any level, you quickly become aware of the challenges in providing access to, and soliciting input from, the entire community. There are so many barriers, and they all point in the same direction. Political access is inequitably allocated to able bodied people who speak english fluently, have the time and energy to attend meetings, are in \u201cgood standing\u201d with the law, and so on. In this virtual meeting, I saw the glimmerings of a possible future where things could be substantially more accessible, open, and fair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Along the same lines, I think that we can all see that internet connectivity is at least as much of a life-essential utility as a twisted-pair phone line \u2026 and perhaps even on the order of gas, electricity, and water. The outpouring of offers of aid on my various neighborhood groups and lists has been incredibly heartening. My various social groups, after taking a bit of a pause, have self-organized around virtual coffees and happy hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m also super glad to see some shred of dawning recognition that the (traditionally) low-prestige jobs like driving trucks, preparing and delivering food, keeping spaces clean, and so on are actually incredibly<\/em> critical<\/em> to keeping our society running.<\/p>\n\n\n\nI hope we get to keep that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Stay safe and well out there, everybody. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The epidemic has really put a dent in my blogging. I\u2019m amazed at the people who have been able to maintain their usual steady, productive output. For my part, I feel like I\u2019m running on about half my usual emotional \/ mental capacity. I make…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,47,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-covid","category-real-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1414"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1414\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1417,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1414\/revisions\/1417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}