Weaknesses revealed

Last week Erudite Partner picked up a friend from a hospital who had gone in with a complaint that had nothing to do with the virus. The next day, E.P. herself tripped and had to avail herself of the emergency room for diagnosis of torn muscles and tendons. (This too will pass.) Last night a friend who has been working partially out and about reported she'd decided she needed to be tested for the virus through her regular health care provider.

All these instances suggest that, in this city, the system has begun to overcome and normalize the disruption in healthcare caused by the pandemic. It's a darn good thing too.

Doctors Tomislav Mihaljevic and Gianrico Farrugia suggest that the more than 100,000 people we know have died from infection by the virus in the U.S. may be equaled by the number killed by the disruption of accustomed medical care. Other ailments that might have been treated have been deadly.

The toll from their deaths may be close to the toll from Covid-19. The trends are clear and concerning. Government orders to shelter in place and health care leaders’ decisions to defer nonessential care successfully prevented the spread of the virus. But these policies — complicated by the loss of employer-provided health insurance as people lost their jobs — have had the unintended effect of delaying care for some of our sickest patients. ...

Across the country, we have seen sizable decreases in new cancer diagnoses (45 percent) and reports of heart attacks (38 percent) and strokes (30 percent). Visits to hospital emergency departments are down by as much as 40 percent, but measures of how sick emergency department patients are have risen by 20 percent, according to a Mayo Clinic study, suggesting how harmful the delay can be. Meanwhile, non-Covid-19 out-of-hospital deaths have increased, while in-hospital mortality has declined.

It's not just gyms and movie theaters that we're afraid to venture out to -- it's also our doctors and medical centers.

The pandemic reveals the fragility of our civilization, less dramatically, but as surely, as Officer Derek Chauvin's crime captured on video.

Both were preventable disasters. "Preventable" seems to be my word for this season.

Unwelcome letter from the IRS

This ugly item turned up in the mail today. That man sure has a messy mind -- and wields a messy Sharpie.

As happened for most(?) of us, the stimulus money turned up weeks ago and went right out again. We were fortunate enough to be able to do some passing on. Democrats darn well better play hard ball and pry more stimulus from the GOPers; eventually we're all going to notice that all of us suffer when nearly one quarter of us are out of work.

This was preventable.

A preview of the next wave of COVID-19

When the original Obamacare website failed abysmally on its launch in 2013, Andy Slavitt was the tech health entrepreneur brought in to turn things around. Subsequently he served in the Obama administration as Acting Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). He's a guy who fixes things.

Many more functional federal and state public health officials have been consulting Slavitt as we have blundered through the current emergency.

Yesterday Slavitt offered a grim prognosis for the pandemic's course among us in a twitter thread I'm excerpting here.

I talked to today [with a health leader in a state] that has one of the biggest growth in cases in the country. There are some big differences with states that were hit hard with the virus in March or April. ... when we see high case growth in Southern states and Western states, it is not the same as when we saw it happen in NY. ...

The [unnamed] Health Secretary told me that some county health officials are being prohibited by local leaders from increasing testing so as not to perpetuate the “hoax” against president Trump. For the last few weeks, cases in this state have gone up. But at first it was waved off. Testing was higher. Cases were inevitable. But more recently, perhaps reflecting the opening of that state, hospitalizations started to increase. This was of course after the state had been closed down for a number of weeks in April with the rest of the country to prevent the virus from taking hold there. Saving lives but trying the patience of many in the state.

And here we come to crux of what he fears will be the situation in many places in the fall of this year:

If things get worse, the reservoir of will in this state to do anything resembling another shut down is gone. Many people have been told they sacrificed for nothing. The state officials know they just dodged a bullet but that the virus would eventually come. But now their political capital is spent.

The good news is they are more prepared than early states were. Older people who can are presumably being more cautious. Hospitals have PPE and plenty of beds & infection controls in place. The death rates should be lower. ...

But the political capital is already spent. Closing businesses isn’t an option even if things get worse. And the more politically conservative the part of the state impacted, the fewer the options. ... They believe that even a high death toll wouldn’t be enough to take action since the Coronavirus has become such a political hot potato. ...

States that were spared early are nervous & are left with fewer options to respond given the state of the politics. The virus is enough to battle. ...

Slavitt adds that he can't report who he was talking with or where because "I’m trying to help them right now & that won’t help."...Two points to never let go of as the disease cuts its swath through us:

• Unless something changes drastically, Black and Latinx people will almost certainly be the largest fraction of those who sicken and die. This is what our racism has wrought.

• This was preventable. Trump's ignorance and self-absorption impeded the public health response which is the most basic responsibility of government. And his political party played along, as always.

A long walk through time and troubles

My prior familiarity with Timothy Egan was as an oped columnist for the New York Times who brought a western, Montanan, sensibility to the paper. I sometimes liked his writing. So when I learned he'd written an account of his traverse of the ancient Via Francigena, I knew A Pilgrimage to Eternity: From Canterbury to Rome in Search of a Faith was a book I wanted to read.

This turns out to be at least two books in one. The first is the historical travelogue. Unlike the Camino de Santiago in Spain (which E.P. and I walked in 2017), the Via Francigena is not well-marked, richly documented, nor overrun with pilgrims. Egan did the research to explicate the many artifacts of a complex Christian history along the way; this is story at its most vivid: monasteries, massacres, mysticism, miracles and all.

But what gives the book its heart is its exploration of what a Roman Catholic faith formed in the United States might mean to him today. That's not an easy cultural or spiritual position to occupy -- but neither is his heritage something that any Irish-American can lightly slough off. One expression of the anguish that grips him and his fellows is exemplified by this April 28 lament from an editorial by the National Catholic Reporter:

The capitulation is complete. Without a whimper from any of his fellow bishops, the cardinal archbishop of New York has inextricably linked the Catholic Church in the United States to the Republican Party and, particularly, President Donald Trump. ... The Catholic voice, capable of a priceless contribution to the public conversation, has been sold for cheap to political hucksters.

Egan goes on pilgrimage to try to figure it all out, what he can retain and what he must lose. He writes:

I'm a skeptic by profession, an Irish Catholic by baptism, culture, and upbringing--lapsed but listening, like half of all Americans of my family's faith. I'm no longer comfortable with the squishy middle; it's too easy. ... It's time to force the issue, to decide what I believe or admit what I don't.
... I start as a father, a husband, an American deeply troubled by the empty drift of our country. And for the next thousand miles or so, I will try to be a pilgrim.

Egan's pilgrimage was hard, materially, and physically, as well as spiritually. There were long days walked in nasty weather and uncertainty about whether he'd find somewhere to stay in the next town. He tore a tendon and limped on. There was a climb over snowy Alps that this very fit almost-elder found daunting. There were disabling blisters. And finally there was a gorgeous welcoming Italian landscape, where Egan speaks the language. To his own surprise, he begins to wonder whether there might be something miraculous locked away in a Catholic piety whose bloody history and abusive betrayals, he knows too well. And finally, he limps into Rome -- not snagging the papal interview his journalist self had hoped for, but carrying away his stamped pilgrim's passport proving he'd completed this long journey.

The Via Francigena is a trail of ideas, and it helps to walk with eyes open -- otherwise you miss the breadcrumbs of epiphany along the way. There's no Testimonium for the memories I'm loaded down with here at the pathway's end, but my passport is full. ... There is no way. The way is made by walking. I first heard that in Calais, words attributed to a homeless man, the patron saint of wanderers. I didn't understand it until Rome.

If the history of European Christianity, or the travails of American Roman Catholicism, or the possibilities of pilgrimage call you, they are all here and well worth wandering through.

Wisdom for this moment and for the long struggle ahead ...

Rachel Herzing, director of the Center for Political Education and one of the founders of the prison abolitionist movement Critical Resistance, passed along thoughts for A Time of Rebellion. Here are some excerpts.

As thousands of people across the world protest in the wake of George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis cops, it’s clear that we need the both the expressions of rage and frustration, and solidarity and care that have been communicated by the uprisings. We also need continued political education. ...

None of us is born already understanding how to do all this. We learn how and improve our practice by trial and error (which is a form of study), but also by paying attention to what others around us do, in conversation with people with more experience, by reading things in formal educational settings and many other ways. None of these methods is the single best way and none of them are bad ways if we’re gaining knowledge and skills that help us make our work more effective. We join struggles already in motion. Being curious about what has already happened and why helps us avoid repeating old errors. It also helps us build off previous momentum, connect our actions to a lineage of fight back, and acknowledge those who have helped our struggles develop. ...

Right now there is a cacophony of opinions trying to lead us, get our attention, and provide us with the “correct” ideas. Being able to make sense of our own opinions in relationship to what’s out there and deciding what to keep and what to ignore requires developed skills of analysis. When Attorney General Bill Barr says he will bring federal charges against people crossing state lines to “riot” we benefit from understanding what’s underneath this threat—the long legacy of state actors suggesting that “outside agitators” are always behind protests as a way of discrediting dissent, the weight of federal charges versus local ones, and the contradiction of this statement on the heels of right-wing “open up” protestors amassing to challenge COVID-19 public health orders.

... When groups promote demands, it’s important that we understand them and take the time to consider if we agree with them before signing on or circulating them. It’s not enough to just take in these pieces of information, we need to sharpen our skills to make meaning from them.

[She explains some points for this moment:]

• Don’t fall for the myth that study is the enemy of action. ...

• Avoid false distinctions between thinkers and doers. ...

• Put effort into locating and using the many, many good resources already out there ...

• If you find something that is useful but not 100% perfect for your situation, credit it, adapt it, and circulate it. ...

• Be accountable for your own learning and develop something on your own or with others and then test it out. ...

• The time when you think you’ve got it all figured out is probably the time you need to push yourself to learn even more. ...

Political education isn’t just education about politics. It’s education for the specific purpose of making our politics more powerful. It is front line work. It is core to advancing our struggles, not the “extra” activity we take up after the struggle is over or for recreation. ...

Now go read it all.

The virus and the climate: all of us or none of us

Eve Andrews, the advice columnist at Grist spells it out.

COVID-19 could have popped up at any time, as viruses do. The degree to which it’s ravaged American society, however, has little to do with the virus itself. Other countries such as New Zealand and South Korea, faced the same disease and came out the other side with far fewer deaths and less severe economic devastation. This is, to a significant degree, about governance and leadership.

It’s also a preview of what climate change can do. A very contagious respiratory virus is an unfortunate fact; it’s not going away, and it is a challenge to be dealt with. Climate change, just the same, is coming whether or not we pay attention to it. Communities, cities, and states are going to have to put measures into place to ensure that it doesn’t literally kill us all. That’s what adaptation means, and that’s why people talk about things like seawalls and tree cover and managed retreat.

But creating a climate-resilient society requires a lot more than just building or planting stuff! This is where I would normally tell you to vote for leaders who support all that building and planting and, more importantly, cutting carbon emissions in the first place. Yes, do that. And additionally, vote for leaders who will feed our starving public systems to make it so they actually support the people who need them. Vote for those who understand and want to change what non-white people experience, what poor people experience, what immigrants experience. Without all of these things, there cannot be a climate-resilient civilization.

Without more justice for all, nobody makes it.

Public health trumps Trump

We're living a strange moment when any elected official simply doing their job seems a kind of hero. It should not be that way, but it is.

With this in mind, we can say "Well done!" to North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper.

Before there was COVID, back when 1000s of boisterous Republicans looked like an economic boon to the city of Charlotte (the state's largest city), the national Republican convention was to take place there in late August. Like pretty much all large cities, Charlotte is run by politicians who tend to be Democrats. But the city was pleased at the prospect. After the coronavirus shut down, the convention seemed a life saver.

Many businesses, particularly in the hard-hit hospitality industry, see the convention as a lifeline. At one point officials expected it to draw 50,000 people to Charlotte.

The state health authorities pointed out that the coronavirus has made the gathering dangerous to both assembled participants and to the North Carolinians who would be working it. They suggested modifications; they asked the Republicans to propose rules for masks, social distancing, and other safety precautions.

Not good enough for Donald Trump. He demanded that he should be allowed to deliver his acceptance speech in the form of one of his packed, raucous stadium rallies. Little Orange Caesar must play on his unmodified stage.

Governor Cooper stuck up for the public health and science. He refused to bow to bluster. He insisted the convention observe safety precautions. Trump tantrumed and tweeted; he wanted his spectacle. At length Republicans have pulled back:

Republicans said Tuesday night that they were moving President Trump’s convention speech out of Charlotte, N.C., and to another city, after coming to a stalemate with Democratic officials in the state about safety and crowd size restrictions because of the coronavirus.

Michael Ahrens, communications director of the Republican National Committee, said that “the celebration of the president’s acceptance of the Republican nomination will be held in another city.” But Republican officials also said they could still hold other convention business in Charlotte, so as not to break a formal contract they signed with the city more than two years ago.

It shouldn't require even a small measure of heroism to ask sacrifices for the common good. But in these degraded times, doing the right thing can become an arduous act of political audacity. Every little bit helps.

This uprising is on the Island

The good people of Martha's Vineyard raise their voices too.

In the town of Oak Bluffs last Sunday, Ebony Goldwire explained why she could not be silent.

“I have actually not been able to watch George Floyd’s murder in its entirety. I have not been able to stomach it. I’ve only been able to watch clips. And it was Thursday morning [when] I was finally able to see the clip when he cried out for his mother. And in that moment I saw my son and I promised myself that would not be his reality.”

On Monday, some 300 people rallied at the intersection of Fives Corners where the intra-Island public life happens.

All items via MV Times.

This uprising has reach

Erudite Partner's social network, Ravelry, a worldwide "knit and crochet community," is on it.

We support the protestors who are out on the streets calling for justice and an end to state-sanctioned violence against Black people.

... We are matching donations, up to a total of $13,000, made to Black Visions Collective, Reclaim the Block, the Philando Castile Relief Foundation, and Know Your Rights Camp.

UPDATE: We've matched all $13,000 in under 6 hours. Thank you everyone!

The movement for justice for all of us requires all of us, from our different situations. Bravo to the knitters!

How the credibility gap became a chasm in the age of Trump

... And a new generation gap grew wider

Writing before George Floyd was nonchalantly strangled on video by a cop, Erudite Partner explores how different experiences separate generations. Her college students live in a far tougher world than she came up in -- and that was tough enough. The coronavirus divides us by age yet more.

Might outrage in response to murder on the street bring caring people closer again?

EP's article is thought provoking, as her offerings always are.

Times they are a changing?

Morning Consult poll, May 29-June 1, 2020

I am astonished by what this poll seems to show. Can it be that majority of the people in this country have come to see what our heritage of white supremacy would hide from us? Not everyone, but you don't win over everyone ...

As long as the media continue to report reasonably accurately what police do -- to protesters in this moment and every day to Black and brown people -- we have a chance to recreate the terrain of struggle. And as police turn their fury at losing legitimacy against the media, some tough reporting squeezes through the conventional racist filters.

Brave people in struggle take most of the casualties -- but these same brave people are carrying the day. So much pain along the road.

A love story

For their fortieth wedding anniversary, Dick and Robin joined a photography trip to France, a couple of happy empty-nesters contemplating immanent retirement and vigorous further exploration of their art form. Within a month of returning home, Dick fell ill and was diagnosed with glioblastoma, a fatal brain cancer that allowed them only a short, uncertain future of unknowable duration. Robin Gross' memoir, Through the Lens of Love: Facing Terminal Illness, recounts Dr. Gross' professional life and accomplishments, the course of his illness, and the community that formed around them and held them tight over the two years of Dick's survival and gradual waning.

Above all this is a love story. These two had found their perfect soul mate in each other.

Dick's diagnosis naturally threw Robin into a panic.

How would I survive without him? We were a team. I could never go on by myself. ..

A friend who had known loss offered advice.

Gena’s letter reminded me that we still had each other and could talk about our lives together, share our love, experiences, and memories, and comfort one another through this difficult journey.

And this they did. Dick retired abruptly, struggled to hand off his patients responsibly -- and then turned to caring for how Robin would live after he would be gone. He insisted on their moving to a smaller place in an elder condo community in a nearby town, a residential development with plenty of community facilities and a lively Jewish community with which they could affiliate. And, somehow, they got the move done and all the little details of set up and decorating in the new place completed before Dick deteriorated so much as to be unable to help.

And meanwhile, in the short time they had left, they lived.

[A counselor] wanted to know if Dick was experiencing some kind of euphoria or if this was his normal personality. I assured her it was just who he was. He certainly understood the reality of his terminal illness, but he was not going to waste time getting angry or depressed over it. He wanted to live life. He wanted to enjoy the good times. He saw the best in everyone and everything. He was truly grateful for every day.

... we loved jumping headlong into enjoying the moment. This was our new philosophy of life. Although there were often challenges, we didn’t waste time worrying about the elements and the logistics. We just said yes.

They had always loved travel and though they no longer attempted international jaunts, they still flew about the country visiting friends and family and enjoying theater and concerts.

And they found joy in the community that gathered to assist them.

Through the two years of Dick’s illness, we witnessed the hand of God in the people who helped us. I was constantly amazed at the outpouring of love and assistance from family, friends, patients, and acquaintances. I began to form a new understanding of God as residing in people. The power of goodness was so strong, it felt tangible.

... I did not get the miracle I prayed to God for in those first nights of diagnosis. But I got miracles of a different sort: a miraculous husband who accepted his prognosis with courage and grace and focused his energy on making life the best it could be, and a miraculous community of people who carried us through our journey.

Inevitably, eventually the cancer won. Dr. Richard Gross died at home with Robin, surrounded by family, two years after they had discovered the tumor.

Robin's story is harrowing -- and oddly inspiring. ...
This is not, perhaps, a book for everyone. Dick and Robin, as she portrays them here, lived in an apparently untroubled, upper middle class white suburban world. They performed traditional gender roles apparently without questioning. They seem utterly conventional. Yet Robin has shared a portrait of a relationship that feels exceptional in its depth, bravery, decency, and imagination.

I met them through unlikely happenstance. Robin and Dick were members of our party when we hiked Mt. Kilimanjaro in 2002. Robin tells something in her memoir of how Dick saved the life of a Tanzanian porter during that high altitude ascent; I've told my version as well. Dick was a very special person -- blessed with a partner equal to him in the pain and joy of love.

The anger doesn't go away; nor do the outraged

Solidarity or prudence? Hard to know. Valencia Street was already fully boarded up by the coronavirus, but the slogan is new as of this morning, May 31.

I like to think that my neighbors by and large understand the righteous anger of protest against police impunity. But I also remember that five years ago, our own police department carried out a public execution of a cowering black man by firing squad. No officer suffered any consequences.

It feels strange not to be out among the people in the streets. This is the first occasion since 1965 when I haven't at least cautiously run in the fringes of what is called "civil unrest." But I'm too old, too slow, and too scared of COVID-19 this time. I don't like this, but it's okay. There are plenty of young people striving to be heard. We don't listen as a society until forced to -- and there are almost always too many casualties when demanding the attention of people whose power can make a difference. Some of what we do is dumb, but that too is part of the long struggle.

Stay safe out there.

The labor movement should eject police unions

When I saw the video of a police officer strangling George Floyd while his buddies looked on, I thought: "bet Minneapolis has a doozie of a white supremacist police union." I recalled Philando Castile, shot by a cop in 2016 while his girlfriend streamed the encounter on Facebook.

When it came out that Officer Derek Chauvin had been involved in a previous police killing and had collected at least 17 complaints in a two decade career, it seemed to me certain that Minneapolis must have just such a corrupt police union -- the sort that defends its members as if they were soldiers in a war with a hostile public. San Franciscans are all too aware of what that's like. But I didn't know the underlying history.

Nancy LeTourneau does know the history. She points to a Star Tribune account from last year of what happened when Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey tried to implement new training to reduce police violence.

... the union that represents the city’s roughly 900 rank-and-file police officers announced that it is partnering with a national police organization to offer free “warrior-style” training for any officer who wants it.

According to a news release posted to the Law Officer website, the free online training — valued at $55,000 a year — is offered to officers for as long as Frey remains mayor. The training, which covers a range of issues, from “officer survival” and leadership to fitness and de-escalation, was designed to ensure that officers could “return home each day to their family regardless of the dangers that they may face and the ignorance of some politicians,” the release said.

... Lt. Bob Kroll, president of the police union, was undeterred on Wednesday, saying in an interview that he consulted with the union’s attorneys, who said Frey’s directive was unlawful. Kroll also defended the training, saying, “It’s not about killing, it’s about surviving.”

The union teaches cops fear and recoil from Minneapolis citizens. Racism does the rest and George Lloyd is dead.

Police unions too often serve as poisonous enclaves of white bitterness against social changes which decenter white men; racism makes black men prime targets of these empowered guys with guns and grudges. Other people of color, women of all colors, and gender queers can also find themselves on the wrong side of the police gang's war against perceived dangerous civilians.

Kim Kelly, writing in The New Republic, calls out labor movement complicity in this.

Unfortunately, union protection plays no small role in keeping cops like Chauvin ... out on the streets. Collective bargaining agreements for police generally include normal language around wages and benefits but can also act as an unbreachable firewall between the cops and those they have injured. Typically, such contracts are chock full of special protections that are negotiated behind closed doors. Employment contract provisions also insulate police from any meaningful accountability for their actions and rig any processes hearings in their favor; fired cops are able to appeal and win their jobs back, even after the most egregious offenses. ...

Ultimately, police unions protect their own, and the contracts they bargain keep killers, domestic abusers, and white supremacists in positions of deadly power—or provide them with generous pensions should they leave. The only solidarity they show is for their fellow police officers; other workers are mere targets.

So should these organized white supremacist protection rackets be counted as part of organized labor? Most are, as affiliates of the International Union of Police Associations (IUPA). Kelly argues that, if the AFL-CIO is serious about standing up for the actual existing working class of the country, so heavily Black and Latinx, it should kick out the cop unions (and the Border Patrol union as well.)

It’s imperative to take action now. The AFL-CIO has a chance to atone for its past racial transgressions by moving toward a more just, equitable, and intersectional labor movement. Disaffiliating with the IUPA is only a start, but it would be an important step in the right direction. The decision would draw a line in the sand and show the federation’s broader membership that union leaders truly believe that Black lives matter—and that the working class deserves to feel safe and protected in our own communities.

That's a tough ask -- these police unions are politically powerful. But who are they powerful for anyway?

Deja vu all over again

@BrandingBrandi reminds that in 1968, operating under presidential mandate, the Kerner Commission was given the task of explaining civil unrest in the nation's cities.

[THREAD] Rereading the Kerner Report that was released after an exploration of the root causes of civil unrest that had occured in the late 60s. A few things stand out: “Disorder did not erupt as a result of a single ‘triggering’ or ‘precipitating’ incident.”

“Instead it was generated out of an increasingly disturbed social atmostphere, in which typically a series of tension-heightening incidents over a period of weeks or months became linked in the minds of many in the Negro community with a reservoir of underlying grievances...”

“Although specific grievances varied from city to city, at least 12 deeply held grievances can be identified and ranked into three levels of relative intensity...

First level intensity:
1. Police practices
2. Unemployment and underemployment
3. Inadequate housing

Second level intensity:
4. Inadequate education
5. Poor recreation facilities and programs
6. Ineffectiveness of the political structure and grievance mechanisms

Third level intensity:
7. Disrespectful white attitudes
8. Discriminatory administration of justice
9. Inadequacy of federal programs
10. Inadequacy of municipal services
11. Discriminatory consumer and credit practices
12. Inadequate welfare programs”

Like we knew all this in 1968 & NONE of it was remedied. This is why our history travels in a loop instead of line moving towards the beauty of progress. Sending thoughts & visions of a better world to everyone today.

Nothing much has changed for too many. Let us weep, resist, and all seek to break the deadly loop.

Never forget: this was preventable

Back in the day when I worked for a research outfit, I was dazzled by the brilliance of Edward Tufte's volume, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. I still am. Erudite Partner even was enabled by a sympathetic boss to attend the great man's course. Tufte had a rule:

... the fundamental principle of good statistical data: Above all else show the data.

Andrew Van Dam's The unluckiest generation in U.S. history in the today's Washington Post follows Tufte's rule brilliantly and sadly convincingly, illustrated by nine mostly simple charts.

People aged 20 to 40 have been hammered by the coronavirus shutdown. And they bring along far less buffer which might help them to weather the storm. Many have lost jobs and essentially will have to start adult life over -- for the second time, having endured the 2008 recession.

He explains:

After accounting for the present crisis, the average millennial has experienced slower economic growth since entering the workforce than any other generation in U.S. history.

Millennials will bear these economic scars over the rest of their lives, in the form of lower earnings, lower wealth and delayed milestones, such as homeownership.

... Millennials had much less of a financial cushion than previous generations did at their age, Kent said, even though they had been doing many things right. The deck has been stacked against them. They just don’t have as many assets as previous generations did at their age.

The horror of this moment for the largest, most diverse, to my mind most interesting, generation in the country's history is all laid out here. Must reading....Another Washington Post article, A third of Americans now show signs of clinical anxiety or depression, Census Bureau finds amid coronavirus pandemic, tells more of the story, with charts not quite elegant.

Some groups have been hit harder than others. Rates of anxiety and depression were far higher among younger adults, women and the poor. The worse scores in young adults were especially notable, given that the virus has been more likely to kill the elderly or leave them critically ill.

No kidding. What would you expect? My generation has full lives behind us, however fraught our pasts may have been; young people coming up face a very hard future. And they know it. We need to listen to them and learn.

A "Slow Street" in the Mission during shelter-in-place

I've been using our designated street where traffic is mildly discouraged on some morning runs. There are these warning signs on Shotwell between 14th and Cesar Chavez.

There's been talk of adding 20th Street from Valencia to Potrero to the program, but nothing yet.

I can't say that this "slowing" makes much difference. After all, there's an open cross street at each block. Running the full length of the designated stretch requires no less situational awareness than running the bike lanes on Valencia. And I'm slow all the time.

Running at sunrise is what makes this possible, before there is active traffic. Traffic does seem still to be reduced. There's more than a month ago, but still not the full weekday volume of an open San Francisco. And the air remains a little clearer.

But we all chafe at our limitations.

A party with a death wish

That's Latin for "stick a stake in the Republican Party." It seems warranted.

The Orange Tweeter is insisting on his right to infect as many North Carolinians, not to mention fellow Republicans, as he wants. And he's trying to intimidate one of those governors (Democratic as it happens) he's left out on their own to fight the pandemic.

President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence are holding the upcoming Republican National Convention (RNC) hostage to force North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) to reopen his state enough to let the event space in Charlotte reach full capacity even during the COVID-19 outbreak.

“Unfortunately, Democrat Governor, @RoyCooperNC is still in Shutdown mood & unable to guarantee that by August we will be allowed full attendance in the Arena,” Trump tweeted on Monday morning.

He demanded that Cooper “immediately” inform GOP convention goers as to whether the event, which is scheduled for August 24 – 27, will be “allowed to be fully occupied” at Charlotte’s Spectrum Center.

TPM

With any luck, most of those who fall ill for the sake of Trump's big shindig will be his out-of-state GOP fans/delegates. Some of the smarter ones might just absent themselves.

'Reopening' is the ultimate democratic process since we are all voting constantly with our feet. -- Josh Marshall

But there'll be North Carolina waiters and hotel staff and bar tenders and cops risking their lives. And their families.

@TopherSpiro

A time to mourn ...

Writes E.J. Dionne:

Mourning death is an intensely private act that calls for public ritual. Each of us wants to know that others share our love for the person we have lost and that they stand with us in our pain.

The coronavirus does not allow us the public rituals we wish we could perform marking the passing of the 100,000 U.S. dead of COVID or of the 350,000 around the world.

Yesterday the National Council of Churches presented a video memorial service for lives lost. It was very Jesus-centered, more than a little evangelical Black Protestant, multi-lingual, and artful in a good way with violin music and a vocal soloist. Every biblical text you've ever heard at a funeral was included. For an event so clearly organized by a committee, it was powerful. I found myself weeping for a friend who died of cancer several years ago because I knew she would have liked it. If you have a tolerance for this sort of thing, this video is easily as much worth watching as, or alongside, today's tributes to the country's fallen soldiers.

Coughs and sneezes ...

These are World War II-era posters from Great Britain's Ministry of Health. Hard to figure why they seem to think women were likely carriers of infection -- unless perhaps all the men were in the armed services. And snooty women always make unifying targets.

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