Here is a sincerely modest proposal for promoting social distancing, at least in New Jersey: give us self-service gas. Please. New Jersey’s been debating this issue fruitlessly for years. Every other state has it. Even Jersey’s own gas stations want it at this point. And some towns are begging for it, as well. Now is the time, for God’s sake. Naturally, the state legislature and the station owners’ association want to relax the rules “for now,” so that they have the freedom to default back to business as usual when the pandemic passes. I guess we’ll have to fight that battle when we get to it. But let’s at least have self-serve now. Continue reading →

Messages like this, delivered like this, are the only antidote to a society that prizes lies, valorizes liars, and denigrates the honest expression of raw emotion. If anything noble or redemptive is left in this country, it’s to be found in people like D’neil Schmall.

News is slowly starting to trickle into my inbox of students whose parents have succumbed to COVID-19, and of others taking care of sick parents while struggling not to get it themselves…An image to hold in mind of this generation alongside the images of irresponsible students frolicking at spring break. Same generation, different circumstances, different people.

This is a wonderful photo essay, by photographer Jeff Rhode, of front-line health care workers at Holy Name Hospital in Teaneck, New Jersey, the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic here. As I understand it, Rhode has been “embedded” at Holy Name for the duration of the crisis there. Though the essay was published a few weeks ago, it helps put faces on the otherwise faceless “health care workers” currently working on the front lines, in hospitals and elsewhere. Thanks to my Felician colleague Julie O’Connell for mentioning it to me.

PS., Bigger, better photos at Rhode’s Instagram.

I’ve so far tried to avoid writing posts on highly technical subjects–epidemiological, pathophysiological, statistical, methodological, or otherwise–partly because I lack the expertise for it, partly because we lack the data for it, and partly because I don’t see a good practical rationale for it. Continue reading →

For people in the north Jersey/New York City area (see tweet below): here’s the link that takes you to information and the application. Test location is Bolger Medical Arts Building, 970 Linwood Ave, Paramus, New Jersey.

The worst of the surge seems to have come and gone in New York City; so far, the damage there seems to have taken the form of a bad, but not worst-case scenario, partly due to the efforts to avoid a worst-case scenario. This article from Harvard Business Review describes what was done at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, at the center of the epicenter. Don’t think of the New York situation as one of “dodging a bullet.” Think of it more as a case of donning a bulletproof vest at the last minute as the gunman got a shot off, being hit in the torso, then being hit in the thigh, with the second bullet missing the femoral artery by inches but still lodged there. The patient probably won’t die; he’ll just be crippled for awhile. And the gunman is still on the loose. Continue reading →