Category Archives: COVID-19

Coronavirus Diary (37): Dorm Re-Purposing and the “Surge”

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I’m pleased to see versions of the dorm re-purposing proposal that my brother and I made back in March being considered and adopted in a variety of places.

Obviously, we weren’t the first or only people to have come up with the idea. This piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education preceded mine. So did this one on ABC News. Here’s a more recent piece making a similar case in The Nation. Another one regarding universities in the San Diego area. This piece by a University of Portland undergraduate closely resembles our proposal. Continue reading →

Phillip Magness’s Ministry of Truth

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When the truth hides
And integrity falls shy
On the faultline between then and now

–Geddy Lee, “Grace to Grace“

Why would a historian, of all people, delete such a post (below the fold) from his Facebook timeline?* Isn’t it an important part of the historical record worth preserving? And I’m curious: has the time come to close the universities yet? Or should they have been kept open this whole time? To the end of the semester, maybe? Into summer session? Continue reading →

When Arguments Fail: A Response to Jason Brennan

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So far, the BHL crowd has had literally nothing useful–explanatory, action-guiding, otherwise illuminating–to say about the COVID-19 pandemic. They have mostly kept their counsel, and offered up a series of pointless, incoherent, ranting tweets masquerading as the latest wisdom in statistical modeling. Add it all together, and it amounts to less in the way of insight than might be dished up by a just-buried corpse. Continue reading →

COVID-19 Narratives (3): A Physician’s View of the Front Lines

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[An anonymous submission by a physician at a New York City-area hospital.]

If you wanted to concoct a story of a cruel, vengeful god who plotted to induce madness upon all of humanity, you could not do better than the COVID-19 pandemic. Under normal circumstances, all it takes is a few sensible, simple, commonsense hygiene practices to prevent infectious illness from becoming a major public health problem. As diseases go, the usual suspects are pathogens we know well (influenza, rhinovirus, etc.), whose disease courses tend to follow a familiar and predictable narrative: prodrome, syndrome, convalescence, immunity. Serious illness is an exception to the rule with these players, and it clusters predictably in familiar groups of outlier hosts: the very old, those with severe medical problems, the very young. These individuals are at risk roughly as to how old, close to being newborns, or medically complicated they are. Continue reading →

Coronavirus Diary (36): “Coronavirus: The Hammer and the Dance” Redux

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Back on March 21st, David Potts offered up an article recommendation on dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, Tomas Pueyo’s “Coronavirus: The Hammer and the Dance,” on Medium (first published March 19, updated April 1). Since then, David’s recommendation has gotten buried in the blog storm I’ve posted, so I’m seconding his recommendation (along with the further auxiliary recommendation I made in the comments of his post, and have repeatedly made since then: the hammer requires the direct provision of aid to those in desperate need of it, whether health care workers, or the unemployed). Continue reading →

Coronavirus Diary (35): Pizza–Who Needs It

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From my cousin Noreen Mahmood, a nurse at Fraser Health Authority, Delta, British Columbia, Canada:

I am a healthcare worker, an RN, and to be honest I don’t need free pizza or free cups of coffee. I don’t need money off of vouchers etc. I am grateful that I won’t be losing all my income due to this virus, and as much as I greatly appreciate the gesture: please please please offer a free cup of coffee or pizza instead to the families who are struggling to feed their children, the homeless on the streets, the older generation or self employed, and to anyone else who is suffering financially from Covid-19 measures, and is not covered by government grants or loans.

To my colleagues past and present, please copy and paste to get this message out there !! Thank you x
💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖

Continue reading →

Coronavirus Diary (34): PPE–It’s Now or Never

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It’s really this simple: the clever assholes who’ve spent their time snarking their way through denial or minimization of the COVID-19 pandemic have nothing to offer in the way of solutions to the actual problems anyone is facing right now. At this point, there’s only one solution at the disposal of the average person: ignore such people and render direct assistance to those in need. Continue reading →

Coronavirus Diary (32): Who Does Not Treat Shall Not Eat

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All those thought-experiments you might have encountered while studying consequentialism versus deontology in grad school or some intro ethics course are about to become terrible realities in New York City and northern New Jersey within the next few hours. I’m writing this on Sunday night, April 5th. By tomorrow morning, there’ll be no escape in this area from the misery I’m about to describe. The surge is imminent. The minimizers, deniers, and skeptics were wrong. What you’re about to see is the twenty-first century equivalent of a painting by Hieronymous Bosch. Figure out now whether you want to look or avert your eyes. Continue reading →