“We Cannot Cross Until We Carry Each Other”

Arielle Angel in Jewish Currents:

As I watched people online debate the models of anti-colonial struggle, raising comparisons to Algeria and North America and South Africa, I found myself returning to the foundational Jewish liberation myth: the Exodus. It was hard not to think about the moment in the Passover seder when we lessen the wine in our full cups with our pinkies as we recite the plagues. This ritual has materialized as an indispensable touchstone, insisting that to hold onto our humanity we must grieve all violence, even against the oppressor.

But I also thought of the plagues themselves, particularly the final one, the slaying of the first born—children, adults, the elderly. It seems that hiding in our liberation myth is a recognition that violence will visit the oppressor society indiscriminately. I know that I have many friends, and that Currentshas many readers, who are asking themselves how they can be part of a left that seems to treat Israeli deaths as a necessary, if not desirable, part of Palestinian liberation. But what Exodus reminds us is that the dehumanization that is required to oppress and occupy another people always dehumanizes the oppressor in turn. For people who feel like their pain is being devalued, it’s because it is; and that devaluation is itself a hallmark of the cycle of the diminishing value of human life. As the abolitionist geographer Ruth Wilson Gilmore has said, “Where life is precious, life is precious.” We are seeing the ways that Jews as the agents of apartheid will not be spared—even those of us who have devoted our lives to the work of ending it.

"Christian Socialists Are Reclaiming Faith from the Right"

The loudest Christian factions in the US have made themselves puppets of the powerful for decades, resulting in one of the largest generational shifts against Christianity in this country’s history. Thankfully, there are those who take the second greatest commandment seriously, and are organizing to push back against greed, in love of one’s neighbor.

Matt McManus in In These Times:

The Institute for Christian Socialism (ICS), founded in the late 2010s by scholars and activists, is one of a growing number of left Christian organizations to emerge or be revived over the past decade, from radical Black churches to LGBTQ-affirming congregations…

…

Economic anthropologist Karl Polyani traces the roots of early ​“utopian” socialism to 17th-century Quakers, whose reading of scripture foregrounded equality and collective self-help. In the 19th and 20th centuries, forms of ​“ethical” Christian socialism and liberation theology flourished in Europe and Latin America. In the United States, Christian socialism has shaped the Left from the Civil War to Eugene Debs’ Socialist Party, from the civil rights movement to the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). The most influential U.S. Christian socialist, Martin Luther King Jr., combined his demands for racial equality and economic democracy with biblical moral authority — most notably in the mass anti-poverty crusade he was building when he was assassinated.

…

Just as there is no singular socialist movement, there is no singular ​“Christian socialism.” But its history proves that political religiosity has never been the sole province of conservatives. As the Right promotes new fusions of church and state, Christian socialism provides a much-needed corrective, reminding us that it’s the poor and the meek who inherit the earth.

The Colorado river basin crisis is a result of our insufficiently democratic economy

In spite of institutions which can and should fix the massive misuse of water resources around the Colorado river, each local and state government is fighting each other to win the last drop. But they don’t have to. If we truly democratized our economy, we would diagnose and fix the underlying problem—raising cows in the desert.

Wade Davis in Rolling Stone:

“…the entire water crisis in the American West comes down to cows eating alfalfa in a landscape where neither belongs. That the delta of the Colorado could be reborn with the water that today goes to produce a third of 1 percent of the nation’s cattle production. That the federal government sets aside 250 million acres of open land for ranchers who produce less than 10 percent of America’s beef. That no amount of water conservation in the home, on the golf course, or in the swimming pools and fountains of Los Angeles and Las Vegas will make a difference as long as half of the country’s water supply is used to fatten cattle.”

NYT: "Why the US Electric Grid Isn't Ready for the Energy Transition"

We can have nice things, and avoid catastrophe, if we can democratize every system we rely on.

Monthly checks from the government are a good idea, and should continue after COVID-19 passes

Every level of our economic system is designed for short term return on investments. One big consequence is that if cash isn’t flowing to those at the bottom, it flows nowhere else. Luckily there’s a very simple—and indefinitely sustainable!—solution: direct cash transfer from the federal government. We print our own money, and we’re nowhere near any theoretical limit on amount of debt the US government can hold.

And we can easily turn this into a normal thing we do, just like Alaska’s “Permanent Fund” or Norway’s current program: to make it sustainable, the government could immediately purchase stocks and bonds cheaply (which would help restore some trust in the stock market, too), so when things start to return to normal, and those investments are growing again, the dividend and interest income could be used to keep the checks flowing, indefinitely. This has the added bonuses of acting as a permanent social safety net, and going a small way toward fixing income inequality. (For a full argument, read the People’s Policy Project’s paper, Social Wealth Fund for America.)

Something I want to address:

Lots of people are calling for direct $ transfers to households. $1000/per person, $5000/house etc.

And I've seen some people say things in response, well like "If we can give people $1,000, why not just give them $100,000 and we'd all be rich." /1

— Joe Weisenthal (@TheStalwart) March 15, 2020

Continued on ThreadReader:

So here's how to think about it.

As Larry Summers put it, "economic time has been stopped, but financial time has not been stopped."

We're witnessing a virtually unprecedented shock to real economic activity. Certain sectors of the economy are getting obliterated (restaurants, traval bars) while others are just getting crushed. How many people are buying sneakers right now?

But financial time marches on. Every day or month, people have to pay money for things. Their rent. Their mortgage. Their insurance. Medical costs. Auto bill. They have to buy basic necessities. Food. We can all hide in our homes, but the bills keep piling up regardless.

Financial time and economic time usually move roughy in sync with each other. Right now they're not. Hence the need for direct cash. So that people can hide in their homes, and meet their financial obligations. 

Ok, so why not give people $100,000 per month instead of $1k

Because at some point, you need to restore balance between financial time and economic time. Right now we still have plenty of stuff. Basic necessities. Food etc. And if we were to take a one or two month pause on building homes or cars, it wouldn't be the end of the world

If everyone suddenly had $100,000 extra, then we'd be in a position where the demand from new households would absolutely swamp supply, leading to shortages and inflation. Which would get people nowhere. (Especially at a time where for health reasons, people must stay in)

Now is absolutely the time to GO BIG. Make sure households have plenty of money to buy all their basic necessities, rent etc. But the reductio ad absurdum fails, because by going so extreme you create all kinds of shortages an inflation/inflation that aren't an issue now.

Bottom line: Although many people hate to hear it, you *CAN* create wealth by printing money, because if that prevents foreclosures and evictions etc. then that's a societal plus. But ultimately we need production to come back on and get even with finance

And hopefully that production and normal real economic activity is something we see as soon as a couple of months from now.

Why we're in "suppression" mode in the US, for SARS-CoV-2

We missed the initial “containment” phase, so now we’re in “suppression,” trying to make sure everyone in the country is in contact with as few other people as possible. Jeremy Young on Twitter lays out the standard epidemiological reasoning, plugging in the estimates for infection and mortality rates, to show why this is necessary. And we really need to get this under control before things go back to normal, or we run a sizable risk of spreading it all over again.

We can now read the Imperial College report on COVID-19 that led to the extreme measures we've seen in the US this week. Read it; it's terrifying. I'll offer a summary in this thread; please correct me if I've gotten it wrong.https://t.co/AwE2cHIbeJ

— Jeremy C. Young (@jeremycyoung) March 17, 2020

Continued on ThreadReader:

The Imperial College team plugged infection and death rates from China/Korea/Italy into epidemic modeling software and ran a simulation: what happens if the US does absolutely nothing -- if we treat COVID-19 like the flu, go about our business, and let the virus take its course? 

Here's what would happen: 80% of Americans would get the disease. 0.9% of them would die. Between 4 and 8 percent of all Americans over the age of 70 would die. 2.2 million Americans would die from the virus itself. 

It gets worse. People with severe COVID-19 need to be put on ventilators. 50% of those on ventilators still die, but the other 50% live. But in an unmitigated epidemic, the need for ventilators would be 30 times the number available in the US. Nearly 100% of these patients die. 

So the actual death toll from the virus would be closer to 4 million Americans -- in a span of 3 months. 8-15% of all Americans over 70 would die. 

How many is 4 million people? It's more Americans than have died all at once from anything, ever. It's the population of Los Angeles. It's 4 times the number of Americans who died in the Civil War...on both sides combined. It's two-thirds as many people as died in the Holocaust. 

Americans make up 4.4% of the world's population. If we extrapolate these numbers to the rest of the world (warning: MOE is high here), this gives us 90 million deaths globally from COVID-19, in 3-6 months. 15 Holocausts. 1.5 times as many people as died in all of World War II. 

Now, of course countries won't stand by and do nothing. So the Imperial College team ran the numbers again, this time assuming a "mitigation" strategy: all symptomatic cases in the US in isolation. Families of those cases quarantined. All Americans over 70 social distancing. 

This mitigation strategy is what you've seen a lot of people talking about when they say we should "flatten the curve": try to slow the spread of the disease to the people most likely to die from it, to avoid overwhelming hospitals. 

And it does flatten the curve -- but not nearly enough. The death rate from the disease is cut in half, but it still kills 1.1 million Americans all by itself. The peak need for ventilators falls by two-thirds, but it still exceeds the number of ventilators in the US by 8 times. 

That leaves the actual death toll in the US at right around 2 million deaths. The population of Houston. Two Civil Wars. One-third of the Holocaust. Globally, 45 million people die: 7.5 Holocausts, 3/4 of World War II. That's what happens if we rely on mitigation & common sense. 

Finally, the Imperial College team ran the numbers again, assuming a "suppression" strategy: isolate symptomatic cases, quarantine their family members, social distancing for the whole population, all public gatherings/most workplaces shut down, schools and universities close. 

Suppression works! The death rate in the US peaks 3 weeks from now at a few thousand deaths, then goes down. We hit but don't exceed the number of available ventilators. The nightmarish death tolls from the rest of the study disappear. 

But here's the catch: if we EVER relax suppression before a vaccine is administered to the entire population, COVID-19 comes right back and kills millions of Americans in a few months, the same as before. 

After the 1st suppression period ends in July, we could probably lift restrictions for a month, followed by 2 more months of suppression, in a repeating pattern without triggering an outbreak or overwhelming the ventilator supply. Staggering breaks by city could do a bit better. 

But we simply cannot EVER allow the virus to spread throughout the entire population in the way other viruses do, because it is just too deadly. If lots of people we know end up getting COVID-19, it means millions of Americans are dying. It simply can't be allowed to happen. 

How quickly will a vaccine be here? Last week three separate research teams announced they had developed vaccines. Yesterday, one of them (with FDA approval) injected its vaccine into a live person, without waiting for animal testing. That's an extreme measure, but necessary. 

Now, though, they have to monitor the test subject for 14 months to make sure the vaccine is safe. This part can't be rushed: if you're going to inoculate all humans, you have to make absolutely sure the vaccine itself won't kill them. It probably won't, but you have to be sure. 

Assuming the vaccine is safe and effective, it will still take several months to produce enough to inoculate the global population. For this reason, the Imperial College team estimated it will be about 18 months until the vaccine is available. 

During those 18 months, things are going to be very difficult and very scary. Our economy and society will be disrupted in profound ways. And if suppression actually works, it will feel like we're doing all this for nothing, because infection and death rates will remain low. 

It's easy to get people to come together in common sacrifice in the middle of a war. It's very hard to get them to do so in a pandemic that looks invisible precisely because suppression methods are working. But that's exactly what we're going to have to do.

Leaders set the pace when responding to crises...

Instead of informing the public about the spread and danger of the coronavirus, Trump spent months downplaying its significance, spread, and severity. That matters. The executive branch takes cues from what he says and tweets, to try to implement his vision, especially given how often he publicly belittle and fires people who disagree with him. It’s no surprise that there were serious delays in responding to this crisis. This video of Trump waving off concern, time after time, is damning:

As Trump pivots to coronavirus crisis mode, let’s not forget the months of downplaying and denial. pic.twitter.com/gH1xZAHXm5

— The Recount (@therecount) March 17, 2020

"If we want everybody to stay home during a coronavirus crisis, we need deep change to make that possible"

Because we have a weak social safety net, most people in this country can’t simply take off the two weeks necessary to stop this virus in its tracks. We need guaranteed housing, and universal paid sick and family leave.

Rossana Rodriguez, Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, Byron Sigcho Lopez, Daniel La Spata and Jeanette Taylor in an op-ed in the Chicago Sun-Times:

The COVID-19 crisis makes it impossible to ignore what has always been true: 

Our collective health and safety as a city and a society depends on the health and safety of the most vulnerable among us. 

As a result of rampant inequality and a nearly non-existent safety net, the United States appears to be on the brink of an especially devastating virus outbreak. Thus far, the primary response has been to urge individuals to change their behavior, in ways that are often impossible for working-class people in Chicago and nationwide.

Stay home if you’re sick, though Chicago requires that companies provide employees with just five paid sick days, while the virus can incubate for up to 14 days. Stock up on supplies, though nearly 40 percent of all Americans don’t have enough in the bank to cover a $400 emergency. Practice social distancing, though an estimated 86,000 Chicagoans are living on the streets, in crowded shelters or doubled-up with relatives. 

We applaud Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s decisions this week to close schools, bars and eat-in dining at restaurants. But unless we take action to guarantee healthcare, housing and income security for everybody, the virus is likely to continue to spread as it has, further stressing our already gutted public health system. 

If we want everyone to stay home, we need universal social benefits that leave no one out…