coronavirus

39 results back to index

Aftershocks: Pandemic Politics and the End of the Old International Order by Colin Kahl, Thomas Wright

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, biodiversity loss, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, British Empire, Carmen Reinhart, centre right, Charles Lindbergh, circular economy, citizen journalism, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, colonial rule, contact tracing, contact tracing app, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, cuban missile crisis, deglobalization, digital rights, disinformation, Donald Trump, drone strike, eurozone crisis, failed state, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fear of failure, future of work, George Floyd, German hyperinflation, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, global supply chain, global value chain, income inequality, industrial robot, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, it's over 9,000, job automation, junk bonds, Kibera, lab leak, liberal world order, lockdown, low interest rates, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, megacity, mobile money, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, one-China policy, open borders, open economy, Paris climate accords, public intellectual, Ronald Reagan, social distancing, South China Sea, spice trade, statistical model, subprime mortgage crisis, W. E. B. Du Bois, World Values Survey, zoonotic diseases

“Coronavirus: Prime Minister Boris Johnson Tests Positive,” BBC, March 27, 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-52060791; “What’s Gone Wrong with Covid-19 Testing in Britain,” The Economist, April 4, 2020, https://www.economist.com/britain/2020/04/04/whats-gone-wrong-with-covid-19-testing-in-britain; Andrew MacAskill, “UK Defends Coronavirus Response After Reuters Investigation,” Reuters, April 9, 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-britain-modelling/uk-defends-coronavirus-response-after-reuters-investigation-idUSKCN21R33D.   70.  Colin Dwyer, “Boris Johnson: U.K. Is ‘Past the Peak’ of Its Coronavirus Outbreak,” NPR, April 30, 2020, https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/30/848496099/boris-johnson-u-k-is-past-the-peak-of-its-coronavirus-outbreak.   71.  “Coronavirus: Boris Johnson Says UK Is Past the Peak of Outbreak,” BBC, April 30, 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-52493500; “In England, Reopening Has Not Been the Disaster Many Feared,” The Economist, September 3, 2020, https://www.economist.com/britain/2020/09/03/in-england-reopening-has-not-been-the-disaster-many-feared; James Gallagher, “Coronavirus: Oxford Vaccine Triggers Immune Response,” BBC, July 20, 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-53469839; Alistair Smout, “First Human Trial of Oxford Coronavirus Vaccine Shows Promise,” Reuters, July 20, 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-oxford-vaccine/first-human-trial-of-oxford-coronavirus-vaccine-shows-promise-idUSKCN24L1MP.   72.  

…

See Chapter 7 for more details.     9.  “Europe Needs New Measures to Tackle Coronavirus Threat: Italian President,” Reuters, March 27, 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-eu-italy/europe-needs-new-measures-to-tackle-coronavirus-threat-italian-president-idUSKBN21E36G.   10.  “Germany Bans Export of Medical Protection Gear Due to Coronavirus,” Reuters, March 4, 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-germany-exports/germany-bans-export-of-medical-protection-gear-due-to-coronavirus-idUSL8N2AX3D9.   11.  “French Mayor Defends Smurf Rally After Outcry over Virus,” France 24, March 10, 2020, https://www.france24.com/en/20200310-french-mayor-defends-smurf-rally-after-outcry-over-virus; Antonia Noori Farzan, “‘We Must Not Stop Living’: French Mayor Defends Smurf Rally That Drew Thousands amid Coronavirus Fears,” Washington Post, March 11, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/03/11/smurf-coronavirus-france/.   12.  

…

Hiromi Murakami, “Resolved: Japan’s Response to Covid-19 Is Prudent,” CSIS, May 20, 2020, https://www.csis.org/analysis/resolved-japans-response-covid-19-prudent; “Avoid the Three Cs,” Prime Minister’s Office of Japan, https://www.mhlw.go.jp/content/10900000/000619576.pdf; Motoko Rich, Hisako Ueno, and Makiko Inoue, “Japan Declared a Coronavirus Emergency. Is It Too Late?,” New York Times, April 16, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/07/world/asia/japan-coronavirus-emergency.html.   47.  William Sposato, “Japan’s Halfhearted Coronavirus Measures Are Working Anyway,” Foreign Policy, May 14, 2020, https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/05/14/japan-coronavirus-pandemic-lockdown-testing/; Lawrence Repeta, “The Coronavirus and Japan’s Constitution,” Japan Times, April 14, 2020, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2020/04/14/commentary/japan-commentary/coronavirus-japans-constitution/; Mari Yamaguchi, “Japan’s State of Emergency Is No Lockdown.

Uncontrolled Spread by Scott Gottlieb

"World Economic Forum" Davos, additive manufacturing, Atul Gawande, Bernie Sanders, Citizen Lab, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, data science, disinformation, Donald Trump, double helix, fear of failure, global pandemic, global supply chain, Kevin Roose, lab leak, Larry Ellison, lockdown, medical residency, Nate Silver, randomized controlled trial, social distancing, stem cell, sugar pill, synthetic biology, uranium enrichment, zoonotic diseases

Chinese Scientist at the Center of COVID-19 Origin Theories Speaks Out,” Science, June 24, 2021; and Zeynep Tufekci, “Where Did the Coronavirus Come From? What We Already Know Is Troubling.,” New York Times, June 25, 2021. 13.Xing-Yi Ge et al., “Isolation and Characterization of a Bat SARS-Like Coronavirus That Uses the ACE2 Receptor,” Nature 503 (2013): 535–8. 14.Xing-Lou Yang et al., “Isolation and Characterization of a Novel Bat Coronavirus Closely Related to the Direct Progenitor of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus,” Journal of Virology 90, no. 6 (2016). 15.Hongying Li et al., “Human-Animal Interactions and Bat Coronavirus Spillover Potential among Rural Residents in Southern China,” Biosafety and Health 1, no. 2 (2019): 84–90. 16.Ning Wang et al., “Serological Evidence of Bat SARS-Related Coronavirus Infection in Humans, China,” Virologica Sinica 33, no. 1 (2018): 104–7. 17.Christophe Fraser et al., “Factors That Make an Infectious Disease Outbreak Controllable,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 101, no. 16 (2004): 6146–51. 18.Scott Gottlieb, “The Casualties That Never Arrived,” British Medical Journal 323, no. 7314 (2001): 654. 19.Keith Bradsher and Liz Alderman, “The World Needs Masks.

…

., “Into the Eye of the Cytokine Storm,” Microbiology and Molecular Biology Review 76, no. 1 (2012): 16–32; and Alison George, “Cytokine Storm: An Overreaction to the Body’s Immune System,” New Scientist. 17.Yu et al., “In Depth: How Early Coronavirus Signs Were Spotted and Throttled.” 18.Ibid. 19.Ibid; and Jon Cohen, “Mining Coronavirus Genomes for Clues to the Outbreak’s Origins,” Science, January 31, 2020. 20.Edward Wong, Julian E. Barnes, and Zolan Kanno-Youngs, “Local Officials in China Hid Coronavirus Dangers From Beijing, U.S. Agencies Find,” New York Times, September 17, 2020. 21.Yu et al., “In Depth: How Early Coronavirus Signs Were Spotted and Throttled.” 22.Kristin Huang, “Coronavirus: Wuhan Doctor Says Officials Muzzled Her for Sharing Report on WeChat,” South China Morning Post, March 11, 2020. 23.Reporters Without Borders, “Whistleblowing Doctor Missing After Criticizing Beijing’s Coronavirus Censorship,” April 14, 2020. 24.Jianxing Tan, “新冠肺炎"吹哨人"李文亮：真相最重要” [“Covid-19 “Whistleblower” Li Wenliang: the Truth is Most Important”], Caixin, January 31, 2020. 25.Lin Zehong, “‘Whistleblower’ of Wuhan Pneumonia: I Knew It Could Be ‘Person-to-Person’ Three Weeks Ago,” United Daily News, January 31, 2020. 26.Michelle Chan, “Beijing Urges Calm over Mysterious Virus Ahead of Lunar New Year,” Nikkei Asia, January 8, 2020. 27.Chan, “Beijing Urges Calm over Mysterious Virus Ahead of Lunar New Year.” 28.Jeff Kao and Mia Shuang Li, “How China Built a Twitter Propaganda Machine Then Let It Loose on Coronavirus,” ProPublica, March 26, 2020. 29.Masashi Crete-Nishihata et al., “Censored Contagion II: A Timeline of Information Control on Chinese Social Media during COVID-19,” Citizen Lab, August 25, 2020. 30.On December 30, the health commission sent an “urgent notice” to all hospitals about the existence of “pneumonia of unclear cause”—but omitted any mention of SARS or a coronavirus.

…

Withdrawal from the World Health Organization,” Politico, May 29, 2020. 13.Susan Jakes, “Beijing Hoodwinks WHO Inspectors,” Time, April 18, 2003. 14.Wright, “The Plague Year.” 15.Mackenzie, The Pandemic That Never Should Have Happened. 16.Nicholas King, “The Scale Politics of Emerging Diseases,” Osiris 19, (2004): 62–76. 17.Will Feuer, “World Health Organization to Send Delegation to China to Help Combat Coronavirus Outbreak,” CNBC, January 28, 2020. Chapter 4: The Outbreak We Didn’t Want to See 1.Michelle L. Holshue et al., “First Case of 2019 Novel Coronavirus in the United States,” New England Journal of Medicine 382 (2020): 929–36. 2.Peter Robison, Dina Bass, and Robert Langreth, “Seattle’s Patient Zero Spread Coronavirus Despite Ebola-Style Lockdown,” Bloomberg Businessweek, March 10, 2020. 3.Holshue et al., “First Case of 2019 Novel Coronavirus in the United States.” 4.Robert Costa and Philip Rucker, “Woodward Book: Trump Says He Knew Coronavirus Was ‘Deadly’ and Worse than the Flu While Intentionally Misleading Americans,” Washington Post, September 9, 2020. 5.Wright, “The Plague Year.” 6.University of Washington Medicine, “Paul S.

Apollo's Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live by Nicholas A. Christakis

agricultural Revolution, Anthropocene, Atul Gawande, Boris Johnson, butterfly effect, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, classic study, clean water, Columbian Exchange, contact tracing, contact tracing app, coronavirus, COVID-19, dark matter, data science, death of newspapers, disinformation, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, Edward Jenner, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, George Floyd, global pandemic, global supply chain, helicopter parent, Henri Poincaré, high-speed rail, income inequality, invention of agriculture, invisible hand, it's over 9,000, job satisfaction, lockdown, manufacturing employment, mass immigration, mass incarceration, medical residency, meta-analysis, New Journalism, randomized controlled trial, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, school choice, security theater, social contagion, social distancing, Steven Pinker, TED Talk, the scientific method, trade route, Upton Sinclair, zoonotic diseases

Myers, “The Army Corps of Engineers Has Two or Three Weeks to Get Thousands of New Hospital Beds Up and Running,” Military Times, March 27, 2020. 112 J. McKinley, “New York City Region Is Now the Epicenter of the Coronavirus Pandemic,” New York Times, March 22, 2020. 113 Ibid. 114 H. Cooper et al., “Coronavirus Hot Spots Emerging Near New York City,” New York Times, April 5, 2020. 115 M. Bryant, “New York Veterinarians Give Ventilators to ‘War Effort’ against Coronavirus,” The Guardian, April 2, 2020. 116 C. Campanile and K. Sheehy, “NY Issues Do-Not-Resuscitate Guideline for Cardiac Patients amid Coronavirus,” New York Post, April 21, 2020. 117 L. Widdicombe, “The Coronavirus Pandemic Peaks in New York’s Hospitals,” The New Yorker, April 15, 2020. 118 M.

…

Mosher, “Don’t Buy China’s Story: The Coronavirus May Have Leaked from a Lab,” New York Post, February 22, 2020. 70 A. Stevenson, “Senator Tom Cotton Repeats Fringe Theory of Coronavirus Origins,” New York Times, February 17, 2020. 71 Anonymous, “Coronavirus: Trump Stands by China Lab Origin Theory for Virus,” BBC, May 1, 2020. 72 K.G. Andersen et al., “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2,” Nature Medicine 2020; 26: 450–455; P. Zhou et al, “A Pneumonia Outbreak Associated with a New Coronavirus of Probable Bat Origin,” Nature 2020; 579: 270–273. 73 S. Andrew, “Nearly 30% in the US Believe a Coronavirus Theory That’s Almost Certainly Not True,” CNN, April 13, 2020; W.

…

Reals, “Chinese Doctor Was Warned to Keep Quiet After Sounding the Alarm on Coronavirus,” CBS News, February 4, 2020. 18 K. Elmer, “Coronavirus: Wuhan Police Apologise to Family of Whistle-Blowing Doctor Li Wenliang,” South China Morning Post, March 19, 2020. 19 C. Buckley, “Chinese Doctor, Silenced After Warning of Outbreak, Dies from Coronavirus,” New York Times, February 6, 2020; Anonymous, “China Identifies 14 Hubei Frontline Workers, Including Li Wenliang, as Martyrs,” Global Times, April 2, 2020. 20 C. Huang et al., “Clinical Features of Patients Infected with 2019 Novel Coronavirus in Wuhan, China,” The Lancet 2020; 395: 497–506. 21 M.H.

Spike: The Virus vs The People - The Inside Story by Jeremy Farrar, Anjana Ahuja

"World Economic Forum" Davos, bioinformatics, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, dark matter, data science, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, disinformation, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, double helix, dual-use technology, Future Shock, game design, global pandemic, Kickstarter, lab leak, lockdown, machine translation, nudge unit, open economy, pattern recognition, precautionary principle, side project, social distancing, the scientific method, Tim Cook: Apple, zoonotic diseases

Rather than DNA, some viruses are made from RNA, such as SARS-CoV-2 and Ebola. SAGE Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies SARS SARS stands for ‘severe acute respiratory syndrome’, a serious disease caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-1. SARS-CoV-1 The coronavirus that causes SARS. It is closely related to SARS-CoV-2. SARS-CoV-2 The coronavirus that causes Covid-19. Previously known as WN-CoV (or Wuhan coronavirus) and 2019-nCoV (or novel coronavirus 2019). spike protein Sometimes called the S protein, it appears as thorn-like protrusions on the surface of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. These ‘spikes’ unpick the locks of human cells to start the infection process and hijack the cell’s own replication machinery so that it begins making new copies of the virus.

…

This variant is, as of June 2021, the most mutated form of SARS-CoV-2 ever documented, with 31 mutations compared to the ancestral Wuhan virus (sometimes called the wild-type virus) first seen in December 2019. Among those 31 changes are 11 mutations in the spike protein of the coronavirus, again including E484K. The three travellers picked up in Luanda came from Tanzania, where coronavirus has raged largely unchecked thanks to a leader in denial. John Magafuli, Tanzania’s president, consistently denied that coronavirus was a threat to his country. An outlier among African nations, Tanzania stopped reporting coronavirus infections and deaths to the WHO in May 2020, and even refused an offer of vaccines from COVAX. Magafuli claimed that his countrymen enjoyed God’s protection, despite senior churchmen urging Tanzanians to take the virus seriously.

…

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 372(1721), 26 May 2017. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5394645/ p. 39 ‘The Ebola PHEIC in 2019 …’ ‘Ebola Outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the CongoDeclared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern’. www.who.int/news/item/17-07-2019-ebola-outbreak-in-the-democratic-republic-of-the-congo-declared-a-public-health-emergency-of-international-concern p. 40 ‘And then came a dramatic update…” Lily Kuo, ‘Coronavirus: Panic and Anger in Wuhan as China Orders City into Lockdown’. Guardian. www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/23/coronavirus-panic-and-anger-in-wuhan-as-china-orders-city-into-lockdown p. 42 ‘I appeared at a press conference at Davos …’ ‘Press Conference: Coronavirus (COVID-19)/DAVOS 2020’. YouTube. www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDQtXzu6z08 p. 43 ‘His company had quietly picked up the genetic sequence …’ ‘Moderna Announces First Participant Dosed in NIH-led Phase 1 Study of mRNA Vaccine (mRNA-1273) Against Novel Coronavirus’. Moderna. https://investors.modernatx.com/news-releases/news-release-details/moderna-announces-first-participant-dosed-nih-led-phase-1-study p. 44 ‘He was referring to a 2007 study on how 43 US cities …’ Howard Markel et al., ‘Nonpharmaceutical Interventions Implemented by US Cities During the 1918-1919 Influenza Pandemic’.

Shutdown: How COVID Shook the World's Economy by Adam Tooze

2021 United States Capitol attack, air freight, algorithmic trading, Anthropocene, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, Ayatollah Khomeini, bank run, banking crisis, Basel III, basic income, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Benchmark Capital, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, blue-collar work, Bob Geldof, bond market vigilante , Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, business cycle, business process, business process outsourcing, buy and hold, call centre, capital controls, central bank independence, centre right, clean water, cognitive dissonance, contact tracing, contact tracing app, coronavirus, COVID-19, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, cryptocurrency, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, currency risk, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, energy transition, eurozone crisis, facts on the ground, failed state, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fear index, financial engineering, fixed income, floating exchange rates, friendly fire, George Floyd, gig economy, global pandemic, global supply chain, green new deal, high-speed rail, housing crisis, income inequality, inflation targeting, invisible hand, It's morning again in America, Jeremy Corbyn, junk bonds, light touch regulation, lockdown, low interest rates, margin call, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, mass incarceration, megacity, megaproject, middle-income trap, Mikhail Gorbachev, Modern Monetary Theory, moral hazard, oil shale / tar sands, Overton Window, Paris climate accords, Pearl River Delta, planetary scale, Potemkin village, price stability, Productivity paradox, purchasing power parity, QR code, quantitative easing, remote working, reserve currency, reshoring, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, Ronald Reagan, secular stagnation, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, six sigma, social distancing, South China Sea, special drawing rights, stock buybacks, tail risk, TikTok, too big to fail, TSMC, universal basic income, Washington Consensus, women in the workforce, yield curve

., “Committee to Save World Is a No-Show, Pushing Economy to Brink,” Bloomberg, March 13, 2020. 30. “Coronavirus: Iran Cover-up of Deaths Revealed by Data Leak,” BBC, August 3, 2020. 31. J. Horowitz, “The Lost Days That Made Bergamo a Coronavirus Tragedy,” New York Times, November 29, 2020. 32. M. Johnson, “Italy Quarantines Northern Towns in Coronavirus Outbreak,” Financial Times, February 23, 2020. 33. Herszenhorn and Wheaton, “How Europe Failed the Coronavirus Test.” 34. Elder, “Markets Not Live, Monday 24th February 2020.” 35. Martin, “Markets Face Fresh Jolt of Coronavirus Nerves.” 36. C. Smith and C. Henderson, “US 10-Year Treasury Yield Nears Record Low,” Financial Times, February 24, 2020. 37.

…

Anderson, “In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, Trump’s Close Ally, Dangerously Downplays the Coronavirus Risk,” New Yorker, April 1, 2020. P. Asmann, “What Does Coronavirus Mean for Criminal Governance in Latin America,” InSight Crime, March 31, 2020. 42. McGraw and Oprysko, “Inside the White House During ‘15 Days to Slow the Spread.’ ” 43. V. Chandrashekhar, “1.3 Billion People. A 21-Day Lockdown. Can India Curb the Coronavirus?” Science, March 31, 2020. 44. Chandrashekhar, “1.3 Billion People. A 21-Day Lockdown. Can India Curb the Coronavirus?” 45. K. Komireddi, “Modi’s India Isn’t Prepared for the Coronavirus,” Foreign Policy, April 10, 2020. 46.

…

Weinland, “Chinese Developers Hit by Coronavirus Sales Ban,” Financial Times, February 15, 2020. 20. A. J. He, Y. Shi, and H. Liu, “Crisis Governance, Chinese Style: Distinctive Features of China’s Response to the Covid-19 Pandemic,” Policy Design and Practice 3, no. 3 (2020): 242–58. 21. R. Zhong and P. Mozur, “To Tame Coronavirus, Mao-Style Social Control Blankets China,” New York Times, February 15, 2020. 22. R. McGregor, “China’s Deep State: The Communist Party and the Coronavirus,” Lowy Institute, July 23, 2020. 23. D. Weinland, “Chinese Villages Build Barricades to Keep Coronavirus at Bay,” Financial Times, February 7, 2020. 24.

Pandemic, Inc.: Chasing the Capitalists and Thieves Who Got Rich While We Got Sick by J. David McSwane

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, commoditize, coronavirus, COVID-19, disinformation, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, fake it until you make it, fake news, global pandemic, global supply chain, Internet Archive, lockdown, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, microaggression, military-industrial complex, obamacare, open economy, Ponzi scheme, race to the bottom, ransomware, remote working, ride hailing / ride sharing, shareholder value, side hustle, Silicon Valley, social distancing, statistical model, stem cell, Steve Bannon, stock buybacks, TaskRabbit, telemarketer, uber lyft, Y2K

In Italy, just weeks after Angelo Amante, “Update 2—Italy Declares Coronavirus Emergency after First Two Cases Confirmed,” Reuters, January 31, 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/china-health-italy/update-2-italy-declares-coronavirus-emergency-after-first-two-cases-confirmed-idUSL8N2A02S1. On February 23, just after 9 a.m. “In His Own Words: Trump and the Coronavirus,” Reuters, October 2, 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-usa-trump-comments/in-his-own-words-trump-and-the-coronavirus-idUKKBN26N0VF. “The Coronavirus is very much under control” Morgan Chalfant, “Trump Asserts Coronavirus ‘Under Control’ as Stocks Plunge,” The Hill, February 24, 2020, https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/484408-trump-asserts-coronavirus-under-control-as-stocks-plunge.

…

Rashbaum, “A Car Salesman, a Macedonian Ex-Minister and a $45 Million Mask Scheme,” New York Times, May 26, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/26/nyregion/coronavirus-fraud-masks-new-york.html. The city’s first COVID death “A COVID-19 Day of Remembrance,” NYC.gov, March 14, 2021, https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/covidmemorial/. And in just two weeks Kif Leswing, “New York City Death Toll Passes 1,000, Coronavirus Expected to Cripple US Auto Sales,” CNBC, April 1, 2020, https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/31/coronavirus-latest-updates.html. In a press briefing that day PIX11 Web Team, “Latest Coronavirus Updates in New York: Wednesday, April 1, 2020,” PIX11, April 1, 2020, https://pix11.com/news/coronavirus/latest-coronavirus-updates-in-new-york-wednesday-april-1-2020/.

…

Into a Gunfight with a Box of Tissues He downplayed the virus Katie Cox, “President Trump Thinks Coronavirus Will ‘Miraculously’ Go Away When the Weather Warms Up,” WRTV, February 12, 2020, https://www.wrtv.com/news/national-politics/president-trump-thinks-coronavirus-will-miraculously-go-away-when-the-weather-warms-up. the World Health Organization coined the name “Naming the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) and the Virus That Causes It,” World Health Organization, February 11, 2020, https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/technical-guidance/naming-the-coronavirus-disease-(covid-2019)-and-the-virus-that-causes-it. He said the risk was “relatively low” “Straight from the Source: Experts Discuss Novel Coronavirus: Aspen Ideas,” Aspen Ideas Festival, February 12, 2020, https://www.aspenideas.org/podcasts/straight-from-the-source-experts-discuss-novel-coronavirus.

Failures of State: The Inside Story of Britain's Battle With Coronavirus by Jonathan Calvert, George Arbuthnott

Boeing 747, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, Bullingdon Club, centre right, collapse of Lehman Brothers, contact tracing, contact tracing app, coronavirus, COVID-19, data science, disinformation, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, Etonian, gig economy, global pandemic, high-speed rail, Jeremy Corbyn, Kickstarter, lockdown, nudge unit, open economy, Rishi Sunak, Ronald Reagan, Skype, social distancing, zoonotic diseases

‘UK has plans to deal with pandemic causing up to 315,000 deaths’, Guardian, 6 March 2020. 2. ‘Coronavirus: Did the government get it wrong?’, Dispatches, Channel 4, 3 June 2020. 3. Ibid. 8: Herd Immunity 1. ‘Boris Johnson heckled during visit to flood-hit Bewdley’, The Times, 8 March 2020. 2. ‘Coronavirus: Did the government get it wrong?’, Dispatches, Channel 4, 3 June 2020. 3. Ibid. 4. ‘Coronavirus: Care home residents could be “cocooned”’, BBC News, 11 March 2020. 5. ‘Haunted, exhausted and under attack as coronavirus death toll doubles’, The Sunday Times, 15 March 2020. 6. ‘Coronavirus: Did the government get it wrong?’

…

‘Special Report: Into the fog – How Britain lost track of the coronavirus’, Reuters, 29 June 2020. 8. ‘Rory Stewart interview: Deploy the army to combat coronavirus’, Joe, 12 March 2020. 9. ‘Coronavirus: Did the government get it wrong?’, Dispatches, Channel 4, 3 June 2020. 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid. 12. ‘How the alarm went off too late in Britain’s virus response’, Bloomberg, 24 April 2020. 9: Dither 1. ‘Public request to take stronger measures of social distancing across the UK with immediate effect’, 14 March 2020. 2. ‘Inside Westminster’s coronavirus blame game’, Financial Times, 16 July 2020. 3. ‘Coronavirus: Did the government get it wrong?’

…

‘How the future PM, Boris Johnson, and NHS boss, Simon Stevens, formed an unlikely bond at Oxford’, Telegraph, 7 August 2019. 5. ‘Coronavirus: Did the government get it wrong?’, Dispatches, Channel 4, 3 June 2020. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid. 10: Disaster 1. ‘Coronavirus crisis: Sickness, fear and now isolation for Boris Johnson’, The Sunday Times, 29 March 2020. 2. ‘NHS staff feel like “cannon fodder” over lack of coronavirus protection’, Guardian, 22 March 2020. 3. ‘“No surprise” Boris Johnson got coronavirus when he failed to “practise what he preached”, scientists say’, Evening Standard, 28 March 2020. 4. ‘Coronavirus: Doctors “told not to discuss PPE shortages”’, BBC News, 15 May 2020. 5.

The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide by Steven W. Thrasher

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, California gold rush, carbon footprint, Chelsea Manning, clean water, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, critical race theory, crowdsourcing, David Graeber, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, drug harm reduction, East Village, Edward Jenner, ending welfare as we know it, European colonialism, Ferguson, Missouri, food desert, gentrification, George Floyd, global pandemic, informal economy, lockdown, Louis Pasteur, mandatory minimum, mass incarceration, means of production, medical bankruptcy, moral panic, Naomi Klein, obamacare, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, peak TV, pill mill, QR code, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, San Francisco homelessness, Saturday Night Live, Scramble for Africa, Silicon Valley, social distancing, the built environment, transatlantic slave trade, transcontinental railway, Upton Sinclair, War on Poverty, white flight, working poor

on January 20, 2020: Victor Cha, “A Timeline of South Korea’s Response to COVID-19,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, March 27, 2020, https://www.csis.org/analysis/timeline-south-koreas-response-covid-19; “CDC Museum COVID-19 Timeline,” time line, CDC, August 14, 2021, https://www.cdc.gov/museum/timeline/covid19.html#:~:text=January%2020%2C%202020%20CDC,18%20in%20Washington%20state. 909 daily cases on February 29: Hyonhee Shin, “South Korea Reports Fewest New Coronavirus Cases Since February 29 Peak,” Reuters, March 22, 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-southkorea-toll/south-korea-reports-fewest-new-coronavirus-cases-since-february-29-peak-idUSKBN21A043. 13,000 confirmed cases: “South Korea Coronavirus Cases,” graph, Worldometer, n.d., https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/south-korea/. 130,000 confirmed deaths: “Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Cases in the US,” CDC, https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases_casesper100klast7days.

…

: Black Lives Matter Protestors Confront Clinton at South Carolina Fundraiser,” Salon, February 25, 2016, https://www.salon.com/2016/02/25/im_not_a_superpredator_hillary_black_lives_matter_protestors_crash_clinton_south_carolina_fundraiser/. New York Times’s coronavirus tracker: “Coronavirus in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count,” graph, New York Times, last modified January 14, 2021, https://drive.google.com/file/d/12YyqzSOp5H8TnCsZ8QWqQl3crCui0Yc3/view?usp=sharing and https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html#hotspots. Democratic governor Gavin Newsom: “Coronavirus in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count,” New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html#hotspots. firefighters to smother such blazes: Dale Kasler et al., “Can California Handle This Many Wildfires at Once?

…

culture that is deeply homophobic: Patrick Strudwick, “LGBTQ People Have Become the New Scapegoats for the Coronavirus,” BuzzFeed, May 13, 2020, https://www.buzzfeed.com/patrickstrudwick/coronavirus-lgbtq-scapegoats-south-korea-uganda-hungary. was infectious or gay: Victoria Kim, “One of South Korea’s Most Reviled Criminal Defendants: A College Student with Covid Who Lied to Contact Tracers,” Los Angeles Times, August 28, 2020, https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020–08–28/jailed-for-a-coronavirus-lie-south-korea-brings-the-hammer-down-on-coronavirus-prosecutions. two additional years in prison: Josh Smith, “S Korean Accused of Lying to Covid-19 Investigators Sent to Jail,” Al Jazeera, October 8, 2020, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/10/8/s-korean-accused-of-lying-to-covid-19-investigators-sent-to-jail.

The Plague Year: America in the Time of Covid by Lawrence Wright

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, blockchain, business cycle, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, Donald Trump, Edward Jenner, fake news, full employment, George Floyd, global pandemic, Great Leap Forward, income inequality, jimmy wales, Kickstarter, lab leak, lockdown, Louis Pasteur, meta-analysis, mouse model, Nate Silver, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, plutocrats, QAnon, RAND corporation, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, social distancing, Steve Bannon, the scientific method, TikTok, transcontinental railway, zoonotic diseases

To their credit, Shi and Daszak have been warning for years that new pandemics could emerge from the bat caves of southern China. However, Shi has downplayed the likelihood that the miners who died in 2012 were infected by a coronavirus, claiming that they were sickened by a fungus that caused pneumonia. And yet her own lab had discovered the coronavirus antibodies in the miners. The doctor who treated them listed the probable cause of death as a SARS-like coronavirus from a horseshoe bat. * * * — There is another scenario that might account for the precocious adaptability of the coronavirus in humans. There is an experiment called “gain of function.” Suppose you have an animal virus that is potentially deadly but not yet contagious in humans.

…

in more than fifty years: Transcript for CDC Media Telebriefing: Update on 2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV), Jan. 31, 2020. “The best way”: Bill Chappell, “Coronavirus: CDC Puts Americans Who Left Wuhan Into ‘Unprecedented’ 14-Day Quarantine,” NPR, Jan. 31, 2020. 6. “IT’S COMING TO YOU” “the fastest we’ve ever”: Rebecca Ballhaus and Stephanie Armour, “Health Chief’s Early Missteps Set Back Coronavirus Response,” Wall Street Journal, April 22, 2020. Azar denies the quote. German test: Peter Whoriskey and Neena Satija, “Coronavirus: German company developed 1.4m tests in six weeks while US production stalled,” Independent, Mar. 17, 2020.

…

fewer than 500: Julie Steenhuysen, Andrew Hay, and Brad Brooks, “Mixed messages, test delays hamper U.S. coronavirus response,” Reuters, Feb. 27, 2020. 1.6 million per week: “Scoop: Lab for coronavirus test kits may have been contaminated,” Axios, March 1, 2020. “filthy”: Interview with FDA officials. Sheila Kaplan, “C.D.C. Labs Were Contaminated, Delaying Coronavirus Testing, Officials Say,” New York Times, May 7, 2020. “When Dr. Stenzel”: FDA: “Regulatory history of CDC’s molecular diagnostic test for SARS-CoV-2,” draft, Dec. 1, 2020. Biogen: Sarah Kaplan and Chris Mooney, “Genetic data show how a single superspreading event sent coronavirus across Massachusetts and the nation,” Washington Post, Aug. 25, 2020; Emma Brown, “A look inside coronavirus preparations at a major U.S. hospital,” Washington Post, March 9, 2020; “Second Presumptive Positive Case Identified by Massachusetts State Laboratory,” Massachusetts Department of Health, March 5, 2020.

Breathtaking: Inside the NHS in a Time of Pandemic by Rachel Clarke

Airbnb, Boris Johnson, call centre, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, disruptive innovation, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, global pandemic, lockdown, social distancing, zero-sum game

Archer, B., ‘Boris Johnson braves coronavirus outbreak with pregnant fiancée to support England’, Daily Express, 8 March 2020. Peston, R., ‘British government wants UK to acquire coronavirus “herd immunity” ’, ITV News, 12 March 2020. Hunt, J., quoted in ‘Coronavirus: UK measures defended after criticism’, BBC News, 13 March 2020. ‘Has the Government Failed the NHS?’ BBC Panorama, 8 April 2020. A Long Deep Breath Bostridge, M., Florence Nightingale: The Woman and Her Legend (London: Penguin, 2020). Horton, R., ‘Scientists have been sounding the alarm on coronavirus for months. Why did Britain fail to act?’

…

., ‘Covid-19 and the Stiff Upper Lip – The Pandemic Response in the United Kingdom’, New England Journal of Medicine, 16 April 2020. Dunhill, L., ‘Critical care unit overwhelmed by coronavirus patients’, Health Service Journal, 20 March 2020. Jones, D., https://twitter.com/WelshGasDoc/status/1241083898999771137, 20 March 2020. Campbell, D., et al., ‘London hospitals struggle to cope with coronavirus surge’, Guardian, 20 March 2020. Hopson, C., ‘Confronting coronavirus in the NHS: The story so far’, NHS Providers, 15 April 2020. Cook, T., ‘I’m an ICU doctor. The NHS isn’t ready for the coronavirus crisis’, Guardian, 3 March 2020. COVID-19 Hospital Discharge Service Requirements, HM Government, 19 March 2020.

…

In medicine, a name is the first step towards controlling the menace of a new threat to life, even if all that is really achieved is a linguistic illusion of control. The WHO assigns the newest member of the coronavirus family the name SARS-CoV-2, which stands for ‘severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2.’ The infectious disease to which the virus gives rise is itself termed, with equal blandness, COVID-19, which refers to ‘coronavirus disease 2019’. These are uninspiring monikers – and deliberately so. Medical history is littered with examples of disease names that inadvertently insult or stigmatise people, places or animals.

How to Survive a Pandemic by Michael Greger, M.D., FACLM

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, Anthropocene, coronavirus, COVID-19, data science, double helix, Edward Jenner, friendly fire, global pandemic, global supply chain, global village, Helicobacter pylori, inventory management, Kickstarter, lockdown, mass immigration, megacity, meta-analysis, New Journalism, out of africa, Peace of Westphalia, phenotype, profit motive, RAND corporation, randomized controlled trial, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, social distancing, statistical model, stem cell, supply-chain management, the medium is the message, Westphalian system, Y2K, Yogi Berra, zoonotic diseases

Receptor recognition by the novel coronavirus from Wuhan: an analysis based on decade-long structural studies of SARS coronavirus. J Virol. 94(7):e00127–20. https://doi.org/10.1128/JVI.00127-20. 42. Wan Y, Shang J, Graham R, Baric RS, Li F. 2020. Receptor recognition by the novel coronavirus from Wuhan: an analysis based on decade-long structural studies of SARS coronavirus. J Virol. 94(7):e00127–20. https://doi.org/10.1128/JVI.00127-20. 43. Hu B, Zeng LP, Yang XL, Ge XY, Zhang W, Li B, Xie JZ, Shen XR, Zhang YZ, Wang N, et al. 2017. Discovery of a rich gene pool of bat SARS-related coronaviruses provides new insights into the origin of SARS coronavirus. PLoS Pathog. 13(11):e1006698. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.ppat.1006698. 44.

…

Six weeks into the 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak—it is time to consider strategies to impede the emergence of new zoonotic infections. Chin Med J (Engl). [accessed 2020 Mar 28]. https://doi.org/10.1097/CM9.0000000000000760. 87. Westcott B, Deng S. 2020 Mar 5. China has made eating wild animals illegal after the coronavirus outbreak. But ending the trade won’t be easy. CNN; [accessed 2020 Apr 8]. https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/05/asia/china-coronavirus-wildlife-consumption-ban-intl-hnk/index.html. 88. Loeb J. 2020. China bans sale of wildlife following coronavirus. Vet Record. 186(5):144–145. http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/vr.m495. 89.

…

[accessed 2020 Mar 31]. https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19—16-march-2020. 2678. Normile D. 2020 Mar 17. Coronavirus cases have dropped sharply in South Korea. What’s the secret to its success? Science. [accessed 2020 Mar 31]. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abb7566. 2679. Khazan O. 2020 Mar 13. The 4 key reasons the U.S. is so behind on coronavirus testing. The Atlantic. [accessed 2020 Mar 31]; https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/03/why-coronavirus-testing-us-so-delayed/607954/. 2680. Meyer R, Madrigal AC. 2020 Mar 6. Exclusive: the strongest evidence yet that America is botching coronavirus testing. The Atlantic. [accessed 2020 Mar 31]; https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/03/how-many-americans-have-been-tested-coronavirus/607597/. 2681.

A Shot to Save the World: The Inside Story of the Life-Or-Death Race for a COVID-19 Vaccine by Gregory Zuckerman

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Albert Einstein, blockchain, Boris Johnson, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, double helix, Edward Jenner, future of work, Recombinant DNA, ride hailing / ride sharing, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, stealth mode startup, stem cell, Steve Jobs, TikTok, Travis Kalanick, WeWork

World Health Organization, “WHO Coronavirus (COVID-19) Dashboard,” July 29, 2021, https://covid19.who.int/. 2. Julie Bosman, “A Ripple Effect of Loss: U.S. Covid Deaths Approach 500,000,” New York Times, February 21, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/21/us/coronavirus-deaths-us-half-a-million.html. 3. Thalia Beaty, Eugene Garcia, and Lisa Marie Pane, “U.S. Tops 4,000 Daily Deaths from Coronavirus for 1st Time,” Associated Press, January 8, 2021, https://apnews.com/article/us-coronavirus-death-4000-daily-16c1f136921c7e98ec83289942322ee4. 4. Carl Zimmer, “The Secret Life of a Coronavirus,” New York Times, February 26, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/26/opinion/sunday/coronavirus-alive-dead.html. 5.

…

.,” Wall Street Journal, February 25, 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/cdc-warns-it-expects-coronavirus-to-spread-in-u-s-11582653829. 14. Brianna Abbott, “Test Kits for Novel Coronavirus Hit a Snag in the U.S.,” Wall Street Journal, February 13, 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/test-kits-for-novel-coronavirus-hit-a-snag-in-the-u-s-11581565817. 15. Mike Esterl, “Flu Pandemic Is Declared—First Time in 41 Years,” Wall Street Journal, June 12, 2009, https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB124471165680705709; Jeremy Brown, “What Past Crises Tell Us About the Coronavirus,” Wall Street Journal, January 31, 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-past-crises-tell-us-about-the-coronavirus-11580403056.

…

Mike Esterl, “Flu Pandemic Is Declared—First Time in 41 Years,” Wall Street Journal, June 12, 2009, https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB124471165680705709; Jeremy Brown, “What Past Crises Tell Us About the Coronavirus,” Wall Street Journal, January 31, 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-past-crises-tell-us-about-the-coronavirus-11580403056. CHAPTER FIFTEEN 1. Leslie Brody, “Covid-19’s ‘Patient Zero’ in New York: What Life Is Like for the New Rochelle Lawyer,” Wall Street Journal, March 5, 2021, https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-19s-patient-zero-what-life-is-like-for-the-new-york-lawyer-11614686401. 2. Gina Kolata, “How the Coronavirus Short-Circuits the Immune System,” New York Times, June 26, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/26/health/coronavirus-immune-system.html. 3. Pam Belluck, “What Does the Coronavirus Do to the Body?” New York Times, March 26, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/article/coronavirus-body-symptoms.html. 4.

Covid-19: The Pandemic That Never Should Have Happened and How to Stop the Next One by Debora MacKenzie

Anthropocene, anti-globalists, butterfly effect, Citizen Lab, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, dark matter, Donald Trump, European colonialism, gig economy, global supply chain, income inequality, Just-in-time delivery, lockdown, machine translation, megacity, meta-analysis, microcredit, planetary scale, reshoring, social distancing, supply-chain management, TED Talk, uranium enrichment, zoonotic diseases

Authorities later… enforced: Josephine Ma and Zhuang Pinghui, “5 million left Wuhan before lockdown, 1,000 new coronavirus cases expected in city,” South China Morning Post, January 26, 2020, www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3047720/chinese-premier-li-keqiang-head-coronavirus-crisis-team-outbreak. 23. Chris Dye… the 23rd: Huaiyu Tian, et al., “An investigation of transmission control measures during the first 50 days of the COVID-19 epidemic in China,” Science, March 31, 2020, doi.org/10.1126/science.abb6105. 24. My first… global: Debora MacKenzie, “New coronavirus looks set to cause a pandemic—how do we control it?” January 29, 2020, www.newscientist.com/article/2231864-new-coronavirus-looks-set-to-cause-a-pandemic-how-do-we-control-it. 25.

…

The quote is slightly different in its other iteration from October 1960. 3. Covid-19… November 2019: Josephine Ma, “Coronavirus: China’s first confirmed Covid-19 case traced back to November 17.” 4. Secrecy… Tufekci: Zeynep Tufekci, “How the coronavirus revealed authoritarianism’s fatal flaw,” The Atlantic, February 22, 2020, www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/02/coronavirus-and-blindness-authoritarianism/606922. 5. by January 20th… China: James Kynge, Sun Yu, and Tom Hancock, “Coronavirus: the cost of China’s public health cover-up.” 6. I wrote… funding: Debora MacKenzie, “Can we afford not to track deadly viruses?”

…

Yet many… hit: Mike Stobbe, “Health official says US missed some chances to slow virus,” Associated Press, May 1, 2020, apnews.com/a758f05f337736e93dd0c280deff9b10. 13. The virus is… for war: Gary P. Pisano, Raffaella Sadun, and Michele Zanini, “Lessons from Italy’s response to coronavirus,” Harvard Business Review, March 27, 2020, hbr.org/2020/03/lessons-from-italys-response-to-coronavirus. 14. Some experts… meltdown too: Adam Tooze, “How coronavirus almost brought down the global financial system,” Guardian, April 14, 2020, www.theguardian.com/business/2020/apr/14/how-coronavirus-almost-brought-down-the-global-financial-system. 15. shut down… ever known: Christopher J. Fettweis, “Unipolarity, hegemony, and the new peace,” Security Studies 26, no. 3 (August 2017): 423–51, doi.org/10.1080/09636412.2017.1306394. 16.

Deadly Quiet City: True Stories From Wuhan by Murong Xuecun

Boris Johnson, citizen journalism, coronavirus, COVID-19, Deng Xiaoping, disinformation, Donald Trump, fake news, global pandemic, lockdown, megacity, Ponzi scheme, QR code, social distancing, TikTok

A kind old doctor tells them, ‘The whole building is full of novel coronavirus patients. Your father probably has TB but that’s not immediately fatal. The novel coronavirus is much more dangerous because it would be over in a few days if he were infected. Best take him home.’ Later, Liu Xiaoxiao learns that the doctor was not telling the truth, because on an upper floor in the hospital is a secret ward that admits patients with illnesses like Liu Shiyu’s. As he carries his father out of the hospital, he thinks: ‘Maybe it would be better if my father really had the novel coronavirus, because at least then he would be looked after.’

…

A pre-print of an article released by scientists in Guangzhou and Wuhan concludes that it’s unlikely the virus got into humans from the seafood market: ‘In summary, somebody was entangled with the evolution of 2019-nCoV coronavirus. In addition to origins of natural recombination and intermediate host, the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan.’ The article is quickly removed. Xi announces the fast-tracking of a new law for ‘biosecurity at laboratories’ specifically targeting the use of biological agents that ‘may harm national security’. The next day, the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology publishes a new directive strengthening biosecurity in labs that ‘handle advanced viruses like the novel coronavirus’. A thorough study by twenty-seven Chinese scientists is published in The Lancet re-examining forty-one cases admitted to hospital in the early stages of the outbreak, confirming that fourteen of them – including the first person diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2 on 1 December – had no contact with the seafood market and lived a long way from it.

…

It followed the eviction of hundreds of Africans from hotels and apartments after online rumours that they were spreading coronavirus. African ambassadors in Beijing band together to write a letter to China’s foreign ministry: ‘The singling out of Africans for compulsory testing and quarantine, in our view, has no scientific or logical basis and amounts to racism towards Africans in China.’ By 16 April, global infections exceed two million, with at least 130,000 deaths. Countries are calling on China to pay for damages arising from the coronavirus. Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne calls for an independent global review of the origin and early handling of the coronavirus outbreak. Beijing sternly rejects Australia’s proposal, saying the idea disrespects ‘the Chinese people’s tremendous efforts and sacrifices’.

Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections by Mollie Hemingway

2021 United States Capitol attack, active measures, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, critical race theory, defund the police, deplatforming, disinformation, Donald Trump, fake news, George Floyd, global pandemic, illegal immigration, inventory management, lab leak, lockdown, machine readable, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, military-industrial complex, obamacare, Oculus Rift, Paris climate accords, Ponzi scheme, power law, QR code, race to the bottom, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, statistical model, tech billionaire, TikTok

Bill D’Agostino, “Study: Trump-Bashing Takes Up Majority of CNN’s Coronavirus Coverage,” NewsBusters, February 28, 2020, https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/bill-dagostino/2020/02/28/study-trump-bashing-takes-majority-cnns-coronavirus-coverage. 166. Peter Hessler, “How China Controlled the Coronavirus,” New Yorker, August 10, 2020, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/08/17/how-china-controlled-the-coronavirus. 167. Alexander Nazaryan, “ ‘They Know How to Keep People Alive’: Why China’s Coronavirus Response Is Better Than You Think,” Yahoo, March 13, 2020, https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/they-know-how-to-keep-people-alive-why-chinas-coronavirus-response-is-better-than-you-think-211702070.html. 168. Steven Lee Myers and Alissa J. Rubin, “Its Coronavirus Cases Dwindling, China Turns Focus Outward,” New York Times, March 18, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/18/world/asia/coronavirus-china-aid.html. 169.

…

Tyrone Beason, “Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden Spring to the Finish in Michigan Primary amid Coronavirus Crisis,” Los Angeles Times, March 9, 2020, https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-03-09/sanders-biden-michigan-sprint-to-the-finish. 13. Scott Neuman, “Tom Hanks, Wife Rita Wilson Test Positive for Coronavirus,” National Public Radio, March 12, 2020, https://www.npr.org/2020/03/12/814807838/tom-hanks-wife-rita-wilson-test-positive-for-coronavirus; Jabari Young, “NBA Suspends Season Indefinitely after Utah Jazz Player Tests Positive for Coronavirus,” CNBC, March 12, 2020, https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/12/coronavirus-nba-suspends-season-after-player-tests-positive.html; Taylore Telford and Thomas Heath, “U.S.

…

Airports for 2019 Novel Coronavirus,” Centers for Disease Control, January 17, 2020, https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/p0117-coronavirus-screening.html#:~:text=Starting%20January%2017%2C%202020%2C%20travelers,Los%20Angeles%20(LAX)%20airports. 108. Elizabeth Cohen, “Vaccine for New Chinese Coronavirus in the Works,” CNN, January 20, 2020, https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/20/health/coronavirus-nih-vaccine-development/index.html. 109. “CDC Emergency Operations Center Activations,” CDC, n.d., https://emergency.cdc.gov/recentincidents/. 110. Rebecca Ballhaus, “Trump Announces Coronavirus Taskforce,” Wall Street Journal, January 29, 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-announces-coronavirus-task-force-11580359187. 111.

Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World by Fareed Zakaria

"there is no alternative" (TINA), 15-minute city, AlphaGo, An Inconvenient Truth, anti-fragile, Asian financial crisis, basic income, Bernie Sanders, Boris Johnson, butterfly effect, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, car-free, carbon tax, central bank independence, clean water, cloud computing, colonial rule, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, Credit Default Swap, David Graeber, Day of the Dead, deep learning, DeepMind, deglobalization, Demis Hassabis, Deng Xiaoping, digital divide, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, Edward Glaeser, Edward Jenner, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, failed state, financial engineering, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, gentrification, George Floyd, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, global reserve currency, global supply chain, green new deal, hiring and firing, housing crisis, imperial preference, income inequality, Indoor air pollution, invention of the wheel, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Snow's cholera map, junk bonds, lockdown, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, means of production, megacity, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, middle-income trap, Monroe Doctrine, Nate Silver, Nick Bostrom, oil shock, open borders, out of africa, Parag Khanna, Paris climate accords, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, popular capitalism, Productivity paradox, purchasing power parity, remote working, reserve currency, reshoring, restrictive zoning, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, social distancing, software is eating the world, South China Sea, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Suez crisis 1956, TED Talk, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, Tim Cook: Apple, trade route, UNCLOS, universal basic income, urban planning, Washington Consensus, white flight, Works Progress Administration, zoonotic diseases

,” Politico, March 30, 2020, https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/30/coronavirus-masks-trump-administration-156327. 30 faulty test kits: Eric Lipton et al., “The C.D.C. Waited ‘Its Entire Existence’ for This Moment. What Went Wrong?,” New York Times, June 3, 2020. 30 “Not the United States”: Selena Simmons-Duffin, “As States Reopen, Do They Have the Workforce They Need to Stop Coronavirus Outbreaks?,” NPR, June 18, 2020. 32 750 million people: Raymond Zhong and Paul Mozur, “To Tame Coronavirus, Mao-Style Social Control Blankets China,” New York Times, February 15, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/15/business/china-coronavirus-lockdown.html. 32 built two new hospitals: Lingling Wei, “China’s Coronavirus Response Toughens State Control and Weakens the Private Market,” Wall Street Journal, March 18, 2020. 32 restricting the publication: Nectar Gan, Caitlin Hu, and Ivan Watson, “Beijing Tightens Grip over Coronavirus Research, amid US-China Row on Virus Origin,” CNN, April 16, 2020, https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/12/asia/china-coronavirus-research-restrictions-intl-hnk/index.html. 33 dictatorships often mishandle: “Diseases Like Covid-19 Are Deadlier in Non-Democracies,” Economist, February 18, 2020. 33 respond to famines better: Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (New York: Anchor, 1999), 16. 33 over $6 trillion: Andrew Van Dam, “The U.S.

…

Some countries locked down fully, while others—using their own epidemiologists and models—did not. What should we make of all this? The reality is that science does not yield one simple answer, especially not with a new phenomenon like the coronavirus. Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, came to a reasonable conclusion given the initial evidence. Many scientists at first believed that the coronavirus was not a significant danger—but everyone was making quick judgments with little data. The novel coronavirus was just that, novel. Its transmission rates and lethality remained unclear. As the evidence changed, Fauci and others changed their minds. This is normal.

…

,” NPR, June 18, 2020. 32 750 million people: Raymond Zhong and Paul Mozur, “To Tame Coronavirus, Mao-Style Social Control Blankets China,” New York Times, February 15, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/15/business/china-coronavirus-lockdown.html. 32 built two new hospitals: Lingling Wei, “China’s Coronavirus Response Toughens State Control and Weakens the Private Market,” Wall Street Journal, March 18, 2020. 32 restricting the publication: Nectar Gan, Caitlin Hu, and Ivan Watson, “Beijing Tightens Grip over Coronavirus Research, amid US-China Row on Virus Origin,” CNN, April 16, 2020, https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/12/asia/china-coronavirus-research-restrictions-intl-hnk/index.html. 33 dictatorships often mishandle: “Diseases Like Covid-19 Are Deadlier in Non-Democracies,” Economist, February 18, 2020. 33 respond to famines better: Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (New York: Anchor, 1999), 16. 33 over $6 trillion: Andrew Van Dam, “The U.S.

The Survival of the City: Human Flourishing in an Age of Isolation by Edward Glaeser, David Cutler

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, agricultural Revolution, Alvin Toffler, Andrei Shleifer, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, British Empire, business cycle, buttonwood tree, call centre, carbon footprint, Cass Sunstein, classic study, clean water, collective bargaining, Columbian Exchange, contact tracing, Corn Laws, Cornelius Vanderbilt, coronavirus, COVID-19, crack epidemic, defund the police, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, desegregation, discovery of penicillin, Donald Trump, Edward Glaeser, Elisha Otis, Fellow of the Royal Society, flying shuttle, future of work, Future Shock, gentrification, George Floyd, germ theory of disease, global pandemic, global village, hiring and firing, Home mortgage interest deduction, Honoré de Balzac, income inequality, industrial cluster, James Hargreaves, Jane Jacobs, Jevons paradox, job automation, jobless men, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Snow's cholera map, knowledge worker, lockdown, Louis Pasteur, Mahatma Gandhi, manufacturing employment, mass incarceration, Maui Hawaii, means of production, megacity, meta-analysis, new economy, New Urbanism, Occupy movement, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, out of africa, place-making, precautionary principle, RAND corporation, randomized controlled trial, remote working, Richard Florida, Salesforce, Saturday Night Live, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart cities, social distancing, Socratic dialogue, spinning jenny, superstar cities, Tax Reform Act of 1986, tech baron, TED Talk, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, TikTok, trade route, union organizing, universal basic income, Upton Sinclair, urban planning, working poor, Works Progress Administration, zero-sum game, zoonotic diseases

Ardern and Bloomfield did: Cheng, “Covid 19 Coronavirus: Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s D-Day Decision Already Made for Her.” Visits to sit-down restaurants: Glaeser et al., “Learning from Deregulation.” 100,000 COVID-19 cases by June 22: “Florida Coronavirus Map and Case Count,” The New York Times. on June 26: Tisch et al., “Florida Suspends Drinking at Bars.” grown to 250,000: “Florida Coronavirus Map and Case Count.” on July 6: Selig and Vazquez, “Miami-Dade Closing Indoor Dining amid Coronavirus Spike; Gyms Can Now Stay Open.” half a million Floridians: “Florida Coronavirus Map and Case Count.”

…

“Contamination at CDC Lab Delayed Rollout of Coronavirus Tests.” The Washington Post, April 18, 2020. www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/contamination-at-cdc-lab-delayed-rollout-of-coronavirus-tests/2020/04/18/fd7d3824-7139-11ea-aa80-c2470c6b2034_story.html. Wilson, Chris. “These Graphs Show How COVID-19 Is Ravaging New York City’s Low-Income Neighborhoods.” Time, April 15, 2020. https://time.com/5821212/coronavirus-low-income-communities. Wilson, Michael. “Coronavirus in N.Y.C.: Eerie Streetscapes Are Stripped of Commerce.” The New York Times, March 21, 2020. www.nytimes.com/2020/03/21/nyregion/coronavirus-empty-nyc.html.

…

Accessed December 26, 2020. www.who.int/westernpacific/news/feature-stories/detail/new-zealand-takes-early-and-hard-action-to-tackle-covid-19. ———. “Novel Coronavirus—China.” January 12, 2020. www.who.int/csr/don/12-january-2020-novel-coronavirus-china/en. ———. “Novel Coronavirus—Thailand (Ex-China).” Accessed January 17, 2021. www.who.int/csr/don/14-january-2020-novel-coronavirus-thailand-ex-china/en. ——— (@WHO). “Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China.” Twitter, January 14, 2020, 6:18 a.m. https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152. ———.

How to Talk to a Science Denier: Conversations With Flat Earthers, Climate Deniers, and Others Who Defy Reason by Lee McIntyre

2021 United States Capitol attack, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alfred Russel Wallace, An Inconvenient Truth, Boris Johnson, carbon credits, carbon tax, Climategate, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, crisis actor, different worldview, disinformation, Donald Trump, Dunning–Kruger effect, en.wikipedia.org, Eratosthenes, experimental subject, fake news, false flag, green new deal, Higgs boson, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, Michael Shellenberger, obamacare, off-the-grid, Paris climate accords, post-truth, precautionary principle, Recombinant DNA, Richard Feynman, scientific mainstream, selection bias, social distancing, sovereign wealth fund, stem cell, Steven Levy, the scientific method, University of East Anglia, Upton Sinclair, Virgin Galactic, WikiLeaks

Emma Reynolds, “Some Anti-vaxxers Are Changing Their Minds Because of the Coronavirus Pandemic,” CNN, April 20, 2020, https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/20/health/anti-vaxxers-coronavirus-intl/index.html; Jon Henley, “Coronavirus Causing Some Anti-vaxxers to Waver, Experts Say,” Guardian, April 21, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/21/anti-vaccination-community-divided-how-respond-to-coronavirus-pandemic; Victoria Waldersee, “Could the New Coronavirus Weaken ‘Anti-vaxxers’?” Reuters, April 11, 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-antivax/could-the-new-coronavirus-weaken-anti-vaxxers-idUSKCN21T089. 4    Close Encounters with Climate Change Climate change denial represents the biggest, most important case of science denial in our time.

…

Emma Reynolds, “Some Anti-vaxxers Are Changing Their Minds because of the Coronavirus Pandemic,” CNN, April 20, 2020, https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/20/health/anti-vaxxers-coronavirus-intl/index.html; Jon Henley, “Coronavirus Causing Some Anti-vaxxers to Waver, Experts Say,” Guardian, April 21, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/21/anti-vaccination-community-divided-how-respond-to-coronavirus-pandemic; Victoria Waldersee, “Could the New Coronavirus Weaken ‘Anti-vaxxers’?” Reuters, April 11, 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-antivax/could-the-new-coronavirus-weaken-anti-vaxxers-idUSKCN21T089. 18. Andrew E. Kramer, “Russia Sets Mass Vaccinations for October After Shortened Trial,” New York Times, August 2, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/02/world/europe/russia-trials-vaccine-October.html. 19.

…

An even more fine-grained analysis has revealed that there was a correlation between specific Fox News programming and the prevalence of coronavirus cases and deaths. Zack Beauchamp, “A Disturbing New Study Suggests Sean Hannity’s Show Helped Spread the Coronavirus,” Vox, April 22, 2020, https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/4/22/21229360/coronavirus-covid-19-fox-news-sean-hannity-misinformation-death. 13. Dan Diamond and Nahal Toosi, “Trump Team Failed to Follow NSC’s Pandemic Playbook,” Politico, March 25, 2020, https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/25/trump-coronavirus-national-security-council-149285. 14. Sharon LaFraniere et al., “Scientists Worry About Political Influence over Coronavirus Vaccine Project,” New York Times, August 2, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/02/us/politics/coronavirus-vaccine.html 15.

Duty of Care: One NHS Doctor's Story of the Covid-19 Crisis by Dr Dominic Pimenta

3D printing, Boris Johnson, cognitive dissonance, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, disinformation, Dominic Cummings, fake news, global pandemic, iterative process, lockdown, post-truth, Rubik’s Cube, school choice, Skype, social distancing, stem cell

Should we test her for coronavirus? I ask myself and decide yes. On the way back with the machine, I ask the nurses to collect a viral swab for the usual viruses, and another one for coronavirus. They aren’t sure how to do a swab for coronavirus. I suppose no one here has done it, and I don’t know if there’s a special bottle. I call microbiology. There’s no answer. Then I try virology, and after 12 rings, I get through to a registrar. “Yes?” “I was just wondering if we could test a patient up on the heart ward for coronavirus?” “Any travel?” “No, but . . . ” “Any coronavirus contacts?” “No, but . . . ” “She doesn’t meet the criteria.

…

That sixth patient never arrived and, fortunately, all of the five survived, but even that short run gave me a now all-too-familiar sinking feeling, as if we were being overrun. Five years ago, I saw the only other serious possible coronavirus patient I’d ever seen. She was a young lady, just off the plane from Qatar, who was feverish and barely able to breathe. She had suspected MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome), a cousin of the coronavirus we’re now facing. A few years before that we’d had SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, also a type of coronavirus) scares when we were travelling in Bali. But these incidents simply became touchstones of interest, isolated cases and potential diagnoses to learn from.

…

The last thing we should be doing is discouraging people from identifying to health professionals that they have suspected coronavirus and hiding them in the community. I tweet along these lines on one of my commutes to work, a brisk chilly run to the station and then 30 minutes down the Piccadilly line. Swiping through my Twitter feed, something catches my eye. In the replies I find a recurring theme, with people dismissing coronavirus entirely as “just flu” and declaring everything else “media hysteria”. Up until that point I haven’t really looked hard at the research around the “Wuhan coronavirus”. Trying to catch the tube Wi-Fi, I spend the journey trawling the literature, trying to answer the question: is it worse than everyday annual flu?

Essential: How the Pandemic Transformed the Long Fight for Worker Justice by Jamie K. McCallum

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, American Legislative Exchange Council, Anthropocene, antiwork, Bear Stearns, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, carbon tax, cognitive dissonance, collective bargaining, company town, coronavirus, COVID-19, death from overwork, defund the police, deindustrialization, deskilling, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, future of work, George Floyd, gig economy, global pandemic, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, green new deal, housing crisis, income inequality, independent contractor, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, job automation, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, labor-force participation, laissez-faire capitalism, lockdown, Loma Prieta earthquake, low-wage service sector, Lyft, manufacturing employment, market fundamentalism, minimum wage unemployment, moral hazard, Naomi Klein, occupational segregation, post-work, QR code, race to the bottom, remote working, rewilding, ride hailing / ride sharing, side hustle, single-payer health, social distancing, stock buybacks, strikebreaker, subprime mortgage crisis, TaskRabbit, The Great Resignation, the strength of weak ties, trade route, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, union organizing, Upton Sinclair, women in the workforce, working poor, workplace surveillance , Works Progress Administration, zoonotic diseases

Meagan Flynn, “They Lived in a Factory for 28 Days to Make Millions of Pounds of Raw PPE Materials to Help Fight Coronavirus,” Washington Post, April 23, 2020, www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/04/23/factory-masks-coronavirus-ppe/. 10. Katie Ferrari, “GE Workers Protest, Demand to Make Ventilators,” Labor Notes, April 13, 2020, https://labornotes.org/blogs/2020/04/ge-workers-protest-demand-make-ventilators. 11. Sarah Kliff et al., “There Aren’t Enough Ventilators to Cope with the Coronavirus,” New York Times, March 18, 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/03/18/business/coronavirus-ventilator-shortage.html. 12. Yelena Dzhanova, “Trump Compelled These Companies to Make Critical Supplies, but Most of Them Were Already Doing It,” CNBC, April 3, 2020, www.cnbc.com/2020/04/03/coronavirus-trump-used-defense-production-act-on-these-companies-so-far.html. 13.

…

It Was Still a Success,” Vox, May 1, 2020, www.vox.com/recode/2020/5/1/21244151/may-day-strike-amazon-instacart-target-success-turnout-fedex-protest-essential-workers-chris-smalls; Michael Sainato, “Strikes Erupt as US Essential Workers Demand Protection amid Pandemic,” Guardian, May 19, 2020, www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/19/strikes-erupt-us -essential-workers-demand-better-protection-amid-pandemic; Bridget Read, “Every Food and Delivery Strike Happening over Coronavirus,” The Cut, May 27, 2020, www.thecut.com/2020/05/whole-foods-amazon-mcdonalds-among-coronavirus-strikes.html; Daniel A. Medina, “As Amazon, Walmart, and Others Profit amid Coronavirus Crisis, Their Essential Workers Plan Unprecedented Strike,” The Intercept, April 28, 2020, https://theintercept.com/2020/04/28/coronavirus-may-1-strike-sickout-amazon-target-whole -foods/. 16. Tanya Modersitzki, “Perdue Farms Employees Walk Out After No Wage Increase amid COVID-19,” 41NBC News/WMGT-DT, March 23, 2020, www.41nbc.com/perdue-farms-employees-strike-no-wage-increase-amid-covid-19/. 17.

…

So bans on social gatherings, such as holiday and birthday parties, were among the most effective ways to limit coronavirus transmission.20 Yet, as the epidemiologist Justin Feldman notes, whites demonstrated they were the most likely to attend social gatherings, but they were among the least likely to contract the coronavirus.21 Boisterous invocations to social distancing bled easily into Facebook filters and Twitter hashtags like #staythefuckhome, messages that were amplified by dishonest political elites. In a November 2020 press conference, then governor of New York Andrew Cuomo placed the blame for a coronavirus surge on individual failings.22 “If you’re socially distant, and you wore a mask, and you were smart, none of this would be a problem.

The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race by Walter Isaacson

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, Anne Wojcicki, Apollo 13, Apple II, Asilomar, Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA, Bernie Sanders, Colonization of Mars, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, Dean Kamen, discovery of DNA, discovery of penicillin, double helix, Edward Jenner, Gregor Mendel, Hacker News, Henri Poincaré, iterative process, Joan Didion, linear model of innovation, Louis Pasteur, Mark Zuckerberg, microbiome, mouse model, Nick Bostrom, public intellectual, Recombinant DNA, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, Skype, stealth mode startup, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Steven Pinker, synthetic biology, the scientific method, Thomas Malthus, wikimedia commons

., “Inside the Coronavirus Testing Failure”; David Willman, “Contamination at CDC Lab Delayed Rollout of Coronavirus Tests,” Washington Post, Apr. 18, 2020. 4. JoNel Aleccia, “How Intrepid Lab Sleuths Ramped Up Tests as Coronavirus Closed In,” Kaiser Health News, Mar. 16, 2020. 5. Julia Ioffe, “The Infuriating Story of How the Government Stalled Coronavirus Testing,” GQ, Mar. 16, 2020; Boburg et al., “Inside the Coronavirus Testing Failure.” Greninger’s email to a friend is in the excellent Washington Post reconstruction. 6. Boburg et al., “Inside the Coronavirus Testing Failure”; Patrick Boyle, “Coronavirus Testing: How Academic Medical Labs Are Stepping Up to Fill a Void,” AAMC, Mar. 12, 2020. 7. Author’s interview with Eric Lander; Leah Eisenstadt, “How Broad Institute Converted a Clinical Processing Lab into a Large-Scale COVID-19 Testing Facility in a Matter of Days,” Broad Communications, Mar. 27, 2020.

…

., Neena Satija, and Amy Goldstein, “Inside the Coronavirus Testing Failure,” Washington Post, Apr. 3, 2020; Robert Baird, “What Went Wrong with Coronavirus Testing in the U.S.,” New Yorker, Mar. 16, 2020; Michael Shear, Abby Goodnough, Sheila Kaplan, Sheri Fink, Katie Thomas, and Noah Weiland, “The Lost Month: How a Failure to Test Blinded the U.S. to COVID-19,” New York Times, Mar. 28, 2020. 2. Kary Mullis, “The Unusual Origin of the Polymerase Chain Reaction,” Scientific American, Apr. 1990. 3. Boburg et al., “Inside the Coronavirus Testing Failure”; David Willman, “Contamination at CDC Lab Delayed Rollout of Coronavirus Tests,” Washington Post, Apr. 18, 2020. 4.

…

That meeting, which is the one described in the introduction of this book, was at 2 p.m. on Friday, March 13—the day after Doudna and her husband made their predawn drive to Fresno to retrieve their son from his robotics competition. SARS-CoV-2 The rapidly spreading new coronavirus had by then been given an official name: severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, or SARS-CoV-2. It was so named because it was similar in its symptoms to the SARS coronavirus that spread out of China in 2003, infecting more than eight thousand people worldwide. The disease caused by the new virus was named COVID-19. Viruses are deceptively simple little capsules of bad news.I They are just a tiny bit of genetic material, either DNA or RNA, inside a protein shell.

The COVID-19 Catastrophe: What's Gone Wrong and How to Stop It Happening Again by Richard Horton

Anthropocene, biodiversity loss, Boris Johnson, cognitive bias, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, Deng Xiaoping, disinformation, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, fake news, Future Shock, global pandemic, global village, Herbert Marcuse, informal economy, lockdown, nowcasting, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Peace of Westphalia, Slavoj Žižek, social distancing, South China Sea, zoonotic diseases

Four human coronaviruses cause only mild to moderate symptoms – NL63 (identified in the Netherlands in 2004), HKU1 (discovered in Hong Kong in 2005) and OC43 and 229E (both major causes of the common cold). But two coronaviruses pose much more serious threats to human health – Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV-1) and Middle-East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV). Could the virus discovered in Wuhan be a seventh and also more dangerous type of coronavirus? The genetic code of the novel virus was quickly sequenced. Comparisons with existing viral genomes showed that it was closely related to a bat SARS-like strain. Those four letters – S-A-R-S – struck fear and not a little panic into Chinese health officials when the news arrived in Beijing.

…

., Early dynamics of transmission and control of COVID-19, Lancet Infectious Diseases, 11 March 2020. 6. Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia Emergency Response Epidemiology Team, The epidemiological characteristics of an outbreak of 2019 novel coronavirus diseases (COVID-19) – China 2020, China CDC Weekly, 2/8 (2020): 113–22. 7. Kiesha Prem et al., The effect of control strategies to reduce social mixing on outcomes of COVID-19 epidemic in Wuhan, China, Lancet Public Health, 25 March 2020. 8. Benjamin J. Cowling et al., Impact assessment of non-pharmaceutical interventions against coronavirus disease 2019 and influenza in Hong Kong, The Lancet, 17 April 2020. 9.

…

Because we can’t afford to fail again. We may not have a second chance. Notes 1. Chaolin Huang et al., Clinical features of patients infected with 2019 novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China, The Lancet, 24 January 2020. 2. Jasper Fuk-Woo Chan et al., A familial cluster of pneumonia associated with the 2019 novel coronavirus indicating person-to-person transmission, The Lancet, 24 January 2020. 3. Roujian Lu et al., Genomic characterisation and epidemiology of 2019 novel coronavirus: implications for virus origins and receptor binding, The Lancet, 29 January 2020. 4. Joseph T. Wu et al., Nowcasting and forecasting the potential domestic and international spread of the 2019-nCoV outbreak originating in Wuhan, China, The Lancet, 31 January 2020. 5.

Limitless: The Federal Reserve Takes on a New Age of Crisis by Jeanna Smialek

Alan Greenspan, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Bretton Woods, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, central bank independence, Colonization of Mars, coronavirus, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, decarbonisation, distributed ledger, Donald Trump, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fiat currency, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, George Akerlof, George Floyd, Glass-Steagall Act, global pandemic, Henri Poincaré, housing crisis, income inequality, inflation targeting, junk bonds, laissez-faire capitalism, light touch regulation, lockdown, low interest rates, margin call, market bubble, market clearing, meme stock, Modern Monetary Theory, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Nixon shock, offshore financial centre, paradox of thrift, price stability, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, risk tolerance, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, Ronald Reagan, secular stagnation, short squeeze, social distancing, sovereign wealth fund, The Great Moderation, too big to fail, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, working-age population, yield curve

.: Princeton University Press. Cook, Nancy, and Matthew Choi. 2020. “Trump Rallies His Base to Treat Coronavirus as a ‘Hoax.’ ” Politico, February 28. Cooper, John Milton. 2021. “Woodrow Wilson.” Encyclopaedia Britannica, January 30. “Coronavirus: Armed Protesters Enter Michigan Statehouse.” 2020. BBC News, May 1. “Coronavirus, a Pavia 8 pazienti ricoverati al San Matteo: anche una coppia di medici.” 2020. Il Messaggero, February 22. https://www.ilmessaggero.it/italia/coronavirus_pavia_medici_contagiati_pieve_porto_morone_chignolo_po_cosa_sta_succedendo_22_febbraio_2020-5068178.html.

…

Preliminary Estimate of the Effects of H.R. 748, the CARES Act, Public Law 116–136, Revised, with Corrections to the Revenue Effect of the Employee Retention Credit and to the Modification of a Limitation on Losses for Taxpayers Other Than Corporations, April. https://www.cbo.gov/​system/​files/​2020-04/​hr748.pdf. Sykes, Jay B. 2020. “Section 4029 of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act and the Extension of the Federal Reserve’s Emergency-Lending Programs.” Coronavirus.house.gov, December 17. https://coronavirus.house.gov/​sites/​democrats.coronavirus.house.gov/​files/​Memo%20re%20CARES%20Act%20Section%204029.pdf. Tankersley, Jim, and Neil Irwin. 2019. “Trump’s Fury vs. Shaky Markets: Jerome Powell’s Balancing Act as Fed Chief.” New York Times, April 13.

…

“Warner Statement on the Economic Response to the Coronavirus.” Mark R. Warner, U.S. Senator, March 17. https://www.warner.senate.gov/​public/​index.cfm/​2020/​3/warner-statement-on-the-economic-response-to-the-coronavirus. Warren, Elizabeth. 2020a. “Senator Warren Unveils Legislation to De-Fund President’s Border Wall, Use Funds to Combat Coronavirus Outbreak.” Elizabeth Warren, U.S. Senator, February 27. https://www.warren.senate.gov/​newsroom/​press-releases/​senator-warren-unveils-legislation-to-de-fund-presidents-border-wall-use-funds-to-combat-coronavirus-outbreak. ——— . 2020b. “Any taxpayer assistance that goes to giant corporations must come with real strings attached to ensure the money is truly going to support the workforce through this crisis.”

The Corona Crash: How the Pandemic Will Change Capitalism by Grace Blakeley

Anthropocene, asset-backed security, basic income, Big Tech, bond market vigilante , Bretton Woods, business cycle, capital controls, carbon tax, central bank independence, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, creative destruction, credit crunch, crony capitalism, debt deflation, decarbonisation, degrowth, deindustrialization, don't be evil, financial deregulation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, gig economy, global pandemic, global value chain, green new deal, Greenspan put, income inequality, informal economy, inverted yield curve, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, liberal capitalism, light touch regulation, lockdown, low interest rates, Martin Wolf, Modern Monetary Theory, moral hazard, move fast and break things, Network effects, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, pensions crisis, Philip Mirowski, post-war consensus, price mechanism, quantitative easing, regulatory arbitrage, rent control, reshoring, Rishi Sunak, savings glut, secular stagnation, shareholder value, social distancing, structural adjustment programs, too big to fail, universal basic income, unorthodox policies, Washington Consensus, yield curve

Central bankers and politicians have staged unprecedented economic interventions, not to help the most vulnerable through this crisis, but to save capitalism from itself. The beneficiaries will be big business, big banks and powerful political interests. As the coronavirus unfolds in the UK, the Right is in power, and they are demanding that journalists, citizens and even health officials fall in line behind the government narrative. Questioning government policy – whether on monetary policy, statutory sick pay or welfare payments – is ‘politicising’ a public health crisis. The idea that the coronavirus crisis can be ‘politicised’ is to imply that it is not already an inherently political event. Of course, the outbreak of the virus was a natural event – though one that seems to have been prompted by unsustainable farming practices undertaken in the name of profit maximisation.13 But its economic impact, and, in particular, the distribution of costs, could not be more political.

…

Bangladesh announced several fiscal measures worth nearly $8 billion34 – or 2.5 per cent of the country’s GDP – but began to reopen many of its textile factories early to boost exports, potentially worsening the spread of the virus and putting workers’ lives in jeopardy. Over the long term, as the coronavirus crisis continues and the impact of climate breakdown begins to hit both nations, the favour of international investors will do little to help these states. The response to both crises will require a significant increase in government borrowing, potentially leading to a loss of confidence among notoriously fickle bond investors. But without significant increases in state spending, tens of thousands more people could be killed over the coming years by both coronavirus and the increasing frequency and severity of natural disasters associated with climate breakdown.

…

From the structural adjustment programmes of the 1980s to modern-day Greece, the long arm of the imperial creditor has been used many times to subject peripheral states to the discipline of capital. The coronavirus pandemic will only deepen these relationships of imperial extraction. 4 Reconstruction It is often said that, in the midst of a crisis, everyone is a socialist. With massive state intervention now the only thing standing between economies battered by the coronavirus pandemic and global economic meltdown, few politicians or economists are calling on governments to step back, let businesses fail, banks go bust and homeowners default on their mortgages – even if some countries have attempted to extricate themselves from lockdown and return to ‘business as usual’ before getting the virus under control.1 In normal times, neoliberals have a knee-jerk reaction against any interference in the operation of supposedly free, competitive markets.

The Lonely Century: How Isolation Imperils Our Future by Noreena Hertz

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", Airbnb, airport security, algorithmic bias, Asian financial crisis, autism spectrum disorder, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, big-box store, Broken windows theory, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, car-free, Cass Sunstein, centre right, conceptual framework, Copley Medal, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, dark matter, deindustrialization, Diane Coyle, digital divide, disinformation, Donald Trump, driverless car, emotional labour, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, fake news, Fellow of the Royal Society, future of work, gender pay gap, gentrification, gig economy, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Greta Thunberg, happiness index / gross national happiness, housing crisis, illegal immigration, independent contractor, industrial robot, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, Jessica Bruder, job automation, job satisfaction, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, Kevin Roose, knowledge economy, labor-force participation, lockdown, longitudinal study, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, means of production, megacity, meta-analysis, move fast and break things, Network effects, new economy, Pepto Bismol, QWERTY keyboard, Ray Oldenburg, remote working, rent control, RFID, robo advisor, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, San Francisco homelessness, Second Machine Age, Shoshana Zuboff, side hustle, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, social distancing, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, SoftBank, Steve Jobs, surveillance capitalism, TaskRabbit, tech worker, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Future of Employment, The Great Good Place, the long tail, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, urban planning, Wall-E, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, WeWork, work culture , working poor, workplace surveillance

OECD, ‘Social Expenditure: Aggregated data’, OECD Social and Welfare Statistics (database), https://doi.org/10.1787/data-00166-en (accessed 30 June 2020). socialexp/social-spending.htm. 8 ‘Fauci, Governors Get Highest Marks For Response To Coronavirus, Quinnipiac University National Poll Finds; Majority Say Trump’s Response Not Aggressive Enough’, Quinnipiac University, 8 April 2020, https://poll.qu.edu/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=3658. 9 Luke Savage, ‘The Coronavirus Has Created Record Support for Medicare For All’, Jacobin, 2 April 2020, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/04/coronavirus-pandemic-medicare-for-all-support; original poll at Yusra Murad, ‘As Coronavirus Surges, ‘Medicare For All’ Support Hits 9-Month High’, Morning Consult, 1 April 2020, https://morningconsult.com/2020/04/01/medicare-for-all-coronavirus-pandemic/. 10 Laura Gardiner, ‘The shifting shape of social security: Charting the changing size and shape of the British welfare system’, Resolution Foundation, November 2019, https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/app/uploads/2019/11/The-shifting-shape-of-social-security.pdf. 11 Phillip Inman, ‘Rightwing thinktanks call time on age of austerity’, Guardian, 16 May 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/may/16/thatcherite-thinktanks-back-increase-public-spending-in-lockdown. 12 ‘A New Deal For The Arts’, The National Archives, https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/new_deal_for_the_arts/index.html#. 13 Although some countries have considerably more leeway here than others. 14 Jonathan Nicholson, ‘Tax “excess” profits of big money-making companies to fix coronavirus economy, scholar urges’, MarketWatch, 30 April 2020, https://www.marketwatch.com/story/tax-excess-profits-of-big-money-making-companies-to-fix-coronavirus-economy-scholar-urges-2020-04-30. 15 Tommy Wilson, ‘Budget wish list – look after those who look after others,’ New Zealand Herald, 31 May 2019, https://www.nzherald.co.nz/premium/news/article.cfm?

…

from=mdr; Mia Jankowicz, ‘More People Are Now in “Lockdown” Than Were Alive During World War II’, ScienceAlert, 25 March 2020, https://www.sciencealert.com/one-third-of-the-world-s-population-are-now-restricted-in-where-they-can-go. 2 Ido Efrati, ‘Calls to Israel’s Mental Health Hotlines Spike during Coronavirus Crisis’, Haaretz.com, 22 March 2020, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-calls-to-israel-s-mental-health-hotlines-spike-during-coronavirus-crisis-1.8698209?=&ts=_1585309786959. 3 ‘Coronavirus: “My Mum Won’t Hug Me” – Rise in Calls to Childline about Pandemic’, Sky News, 27 March 2020, https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-my-mum-wont-hug-me-rise-in-calls-to-childline-about-pandemic-11964290. The surge in loneliness is not limited to children. Shortly before the UK lockdown went into effect on 23 March, 10% of UK adults reported feelings of loneliness in the past two weeks.

…

Whilst a survey conducted in April 2020 in the US also found significant increases in loneliness during lockdown, especially amongst millennials and Generation K. See, respectively, ‘Loneliness During Coronavirus’, Mental Health Foundation, 16 June 2020, https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/coronavirus/coping-with-loneliness; ‘Report: Loneliness and Anxiety During Lockdown’, SocialPro, April 2020, https://socialpronow.com/loneliness-corona/. 4 Peter Hille, ‘Coronavirus: German Phone Helplines at “Upper limits”’, DW.com, 24 March 2020, https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-german-phone-helplines-at-upper-limits/a-52903216. 5 Cigna, ‘Loneliness and the Workplace: 2020 U.S. Report’, January 2020, https://www.multivu.com/players/English/8670451-cigna-2020-loneliness-index/docs/CignaReport_1579728920153-379831100.pdf. 6 ‘Two Thirds of Germans Think the Country Has a Major Loneliness Problem’, The Local (Germany), 23 March 2018, https://www.thelocal.de/20180323/two-thirds-of-germans-think-the-country-has-a-major-loneliness-problem. 7 Janene Pieters, ‘Over a Million Dutch Are Very Lonely’, NL Times, 21 September 2017, https://nltimes.nl/2017/09/21/million-dutch-lonely. 8 Rick Noack, ‘Isolation is rising in Europe.

COVID-19: Everything You Need to Know About the Corona Virus and the Race for the Vaccine by Michael Mosley

Boris Johnson, call centre, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, Donald Trump, Edward Jenner, lockdown, microbiome, randomized controlled trial, Silicon Valley, social distancing

via%3Dihub 34 http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2019-12-19-new-mers-vaccine-clinical-trial-starts-saudi-arabia 35 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/27/world/europe/coronavirus-vaccine-update-oxford.html 36 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2851497/ 37 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/27/world/europe/coronavirus-vaccine-update-oxford.html 38 https://academic.oup.com/jid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/infdis/jiaa152/5814216 39 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/30/opinion/coronavirus-vaccine-covid.html 40 https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/331976/WHO-2019-nCoV-Ethics_criteria-2020.1-eng.pdf?ua=1 41 https://www.bdi.ox.ac.uk/news/digital-contact-tracing-can-slow-or-even-stop-coronavirus-transmission-and-ease-us-out-of-lockdown 42 https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/health-coronavirus-usa-cost/ This publication contains the opinions and ideas of its author.

…

The first warnings that there were some potentially very dangerous pathogens living in the bat caves of China came in 2013, when scientists working at the Wuhan Institute of Virology reported that they had isolated a coronavirus from horseshoe bats that could infect human cells. Researchers from Harvard Medical School, who later studied this same coronavirus in the lab, found that it was especially good at infecting cells grown from the human respiratory tract. The Harvard scientists warned that this particular coronavirus was “poised for human emergence.” They were concerned that it might jump from the bats and start infecting humans at any time. They were right.

…

Tragic though his death was, he was just one of hundreds of doctors, nurses, paramedics, and other caregivers who would perish over the next few months. Day 43 February 11th. The new viral infection was given a name: Covid-19, short for “coronavirus disease 2019.” Day 48 I’d been following the unfolding story of this pandemic with increasing alarm, and on February 16th I wrote a column for a national newspaper, The Mail on Sunday, entitled “How to beat coronavirus? Sing Happy Birthday as you wash your hands.” It was obvious to me that this coronavirus was no longer a distant threat and it was time to start taking precautions. I suggested in my column that people should avoid shaking hands, hugging others, and that we should all wash our hands as often as possible for as long as it takes to sing “Happy Birthday to You” twice.

Vaxxers: The Inside Story of the Oxford AstraZeneca Vaccine and the Race Against the Virus by Sarah Gilbert, Catherine Green

Boris Johnson, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, discovery of DNA, disinformation, Edward Jenner, en.wikipedia.org, fake news, global pandemic, imposter syndrome, lockdown, lone genius, profit motive, Skype, social distancing, TikTok

s=20. 4. https://www.express­.co.uk/news­/uk/1263980/coronavirus­-vaccine-oxford­-university-uk-covid19­-testing-cure-spt. 5. https://www.ft.com/content­/b053f55b-2a8b-436c-8154-0e93dcdb3c1a. 6. https://www.thetimes.c­o.uk/article/russians-spread­-fake-news-over-oxford-­coronavirus-vaccine­-2nzpk8vrq. 7. https://edition.independent­.co.uk/editi­ons/uk.co.independent.is­sue.271120/data/­9726097/in­dex.html; https://www.te­legraph.co.uk/news­/2020/11/26/astrazeneca-running­-new-coronavirus­-vaccine-trial/; https://www.theguardian.com/world­/2020/nov/26/scrutiny-grows­-over-oxford-universityast­razeneca-vaccine; https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/astrazeneca-defends­-oxford-coronavirus-vaccine-as­-disquiet-mounts-over-the-­results-mf6t57rnr; https://www.politico.eu/article/questions-­grow-over-astrazeneca-­coronavirus-vax-trials/; https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news­/uk-news/chris-whitty-oxford-vaccine­-error-19354045. 8. https://www.handelsblatt.com­/politik/deutschland/pandemie-bekaempfung­-corona-impfstoff-diskussion-um­-wirksamkeit-von-astra-zeneca­-vakzin-bei-senioren/26849788.html and https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-eu-astrazeneca/germany-fears-astrazeneca-vaccine-wont-get-eu-approval-for-those-over-65-bild-idUSL8N2K05OP. 9. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?

…

Very late at night on 8 January came official confirmation on ProMedMail that we were looking at a novel (meaning a previously unknown) coronavirus. A number of epidemiologists immediately posted on ProMedMail to say ‘I told you so’. And they were right, they had told us. As experts in this area they had been warning for some time that there was likely to be an outbreak of a novel coronavirus, most likely starting in China. On Friday the 10th, China reported the first fatality, a 61-year-old man. By the end of that Friday, Tess and I had decided that as soon as we could get hold of the genome sequence of the novel coronavirus we would start to make a vaccine. We would follow the same design approach we had used for our MERS vaccine, and go as fast as we could.

…

Telegraph: ‘Oxford scientists discover vaccine offers “double defence” against Covid’, https://www.telegraph.co.­uk/news/2020/07/15/coronavirus-vaccine­-breakthrough-oxford-scientists­-discover/. The Times: ‘Success of early trials lifts hope for vaccine’, https://www.thetimes.co­.uk/article/coronavirus-vaccine­-hopes-raised-by-success-of­-early-trials-c2gv2cpsd. The i: ‘All over the shop: muddle on face masks’, https://twitter.com/theipaper/­status/1283510998218006528. 3. https://twitter.com/NDMOxford/status/­1284038977159344128?s=20. 4. https://www.express­.co.uk/news­/uk/1263980/coronavirus­-vaccine-oxford­-university-uk-covid19­-testing-cure-spt. 5. https://www.ft.com/content­/b053f55b-2a8b-436c-8154-0e93dcdb3c1a. 6. https://www.thetimes.c­o.uk/article/russians-spread­-fake-news-over-oxford-­coronavirus-vaccine­-2nzpk8vrq. 7. https://edition.independent­.co.uk/editi­ons/uk.co.independent.is­sue.271120/data/­9726097/in­dex.html; https://www.te­legraph.co.uk/news­/2020/11/26/astrazeneca-running­-new-coronavirus­-vaccine-trial/; https://www.theguardian.com/world­/2020/nov/26/scrutiny-grows­-over-oxford-universityast­razeneca-vaccine; https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/astrazeneca-defends­-oxford-coronavirus-vaccine-as­-disquiet-mounts-over-the-­results-mf6t57rnr; https://www.politico.eu/article/questions-­grow-over-astrazeneca-­coronavirus-vax-trials/; https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news­/uk-news/chris-whitty-oxford-vaccine­-error-19354045. 8. https://www.handelsblatt.com­/politik/deutschland/pandemie-bekaempfung­-corona-impfstoff-diskussion-um­-wirksamkeit-von-astra-zeneca­-vakzin-bei-senioren/26849788.html and https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-eu-astrazeneca/germany-fears-astrazeneca-vaccine-wont-get-eu-approval-for-those-over-65-bild-idUSL8N2K05OP. 9. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?

The Wake-Up Call: Why the Pandemic Has Exposed the Weakness of the West, and How to Fix It by John Micklethwait, Adrian Wooldridge

Admiral Zheng, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, air traffic controllers' union, Alan Greenspan, basic income, battle of ideas, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, bike sharing, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, carbon tax, carried interest, cashless society, central bank independence, contact tracing, contact tracing app, Corn Laws, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, defund the police, Deng Xiaoping, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, Etonian, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Future Shock, George Floyd, global pandemic, Internet of things, invisible hand, it's over 9,000, James Carville said: "I would like to be reincarnated as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.", Jeremy Corbyn, Jones Act, knowledge economy, laissez-faire capitalism, Les Trente Glorieuses, lockdown, McMansion, military-industrial complex, night-watchman state, offshore financial centre, oil shock, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Parkinson's law, pensions crisis, QR code, rent control, Rishi Sunak, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, school vouchers, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, smart cities, social distancing, Steve Bannon, surveillance capitalism, TED Talk, trade route, Tyler Cowen, universal basic income, Washington Consensus

“New World Curriculum,” The Economist. 17.Shalini Ramachandran, Laura Kusisto, and Katie Hoanan, “How New York’s Coronavirus Response Made the Pandemic Worse,” Wall Street Journal, June 11, 2020. 18.Full disclosure: Paul Deighton is chairman of The Economist. 19.Gordon Lubold and Paul Vieira, “US Drops Proposal to Put Troops at Canadian Border,” Wall Street Journal, March 26, 2020. 20.Teresa Coratella, “Whatever It Takes: Italy and the Covid-19 Crisis,” European Council on Foreign Relations, March 18, 2020. 21.Andy Hoffman, “Sex Workers Can Get Back to Business in Switzerland, but Sports Remain Prohibited,” Bloomberg, May 20, 2020. 22.YouGov, “Americans Trust Local Governments over the Federal Government on COVID-19,” April 27, 2020. 23.John Lichfield, “Coronavirus: France’s strange defeat,” Politico, May 8, 2020. 24.Anne Applebaum, “The Coronavirus Called America’s Bluff,” The Atlantic, March 15, 2020. CHAPTER FIVE: THE MORBID SYMPTOMS 1.“The Right Medicine for the World Economy,” The Economist, March 7, 2020. 2.Song Luzheng, “Many Western Governments Ill-Equipped to Handle Coronavirus,” Global Times, March 15, 2020. 3.Iain Marlow, “China Trolls US over Protests After Trump Criticized Hong Kong,” Bloomberg, June 1, 2020. 4.

…

New York Times, March 19, 2020. 6.Gary Bass, “The Athenian Plague: A Cautionary Tale of Democracy’s Fragility,” New Yorker, June 10, 2020. 7.Doug Klain, “Azerbaijan’s Strongman Senses Opportunity in Coronavirus Pandemic,” Atlantic Council, March 19, 2020. 8.Marc Champion, “Coronavirus Is a Stress Test Many World Leaders Are Failing,” Bloomberg, May 22, 2020. 9.“Leviathan Rising,” The Economist, March 21, 2020, 24. 10.Sebastian Mallaby, “The Age of Magic Money,” Foreign Affairs, May 29, 2020. 11.June 18, 2020. 12.“The Fiscal Response to the Economic Fallout from the Coronavirus,” Bruegel Datasets, May 27, 2020. 13.Isabel Reynolds and Emi Urabe, “Japan to Fund Firms to Shift Production Out of China,” Bloomberg, April 8, 2020. 14.Catarina Saraiva, “Unrest Spotlights Depth of Black Americans’ Economic Struggle,” Bloomberg, June 2, 2020. 15.Public Health England, “Disparities in the Risk and Outcomes of COVID-19,” June 2020. 16.Gerald Seib and John McCormick, “Coronavirus Means the Era of Big Government Is . . .

…

It led the airlift that saved Berlin. It stood up against the spread of Communism in Europe and Southeast Asia. For all its failures in Iraq, it nevertheless led an international coalition against Saddam. With the Coronavirus, it has looked weak, ineffective, and, frankly, weird. What should the rest of the world make of a country whose leader suggests injecting bleach to counteract the Coronavirus? Covid was a devastating epiphany for the United States—a moment when a country “long accustomed to thinking of itself as the best, most efficient, and most technically advanced society in the world is about to be proved an unclothed emperor,” as Anne Applebaum has put it.24 “Empire” seems an appropriate word.

Risk: A User's Guide by Stanley McChrystal, Anna Butrico

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, Abraham Maslow, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, airport security, Albert Einstein, Apollo 13, banking crisis, Bernie Madoff, Boeing 737 MAX, business process, cognitive dissonance, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, computer vision, coronavirus, corporate governance, cotton gin, COVID-19, cuban missile crisis, deep learning, disinformation, don't be evil, Dr. Strangelove, fake news, fear of failure, George Floyd, Glass-Steagall Act, global pandemic, Googley, Greta Thunberg, hindsight bias, inflight wifi, invisible hand, iterative process, late fees, lockdown, Paul Buchheit, Ponzi scheme, QWERTY keyboard, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, San Francisco homelessness, School Strike for Climate, Scientific racism, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, social distancing, source of truth, Stanislav Petrov, Steve Jobs, Thomas L Friedman, too big to fail, Travis Kalanick, wikimedia commons, work culture

Chinese authorities suspended transportation: Taylor, “Timeline of the Coronavirus Pandemic”; Bollyky and Patrick, “Improving Pandemic Preparedness,” 40. death toll had climbed to at least 360: Taylor, “Timeline of the Coronavirus Pandemic.” moved cautiously, declaring: Erin Schumaker, “Timeline: How Coronavirus Got Started,” ABC News, September 22, 2020, https://abcnews.go.com/Health/timeline-coronavirus-started/story?id=69435165; Sui-Lee Wee, Donald G. McNeil Jr., and Javier C. Hernández, “W.H.O. Declares Global Emergency as Wuhan Coronavirus Spreads,” The New York Times, April 16, 2020, https://nytimes.com/2020/01/30/health/coronavirus-world-health-organization.html.

…

The WHO requests verification: Bollyky and Patrick, “Improving Pandemic Preparedness,” 36, 38. China announces its first virus death: Taylor, “Timeline of the Coronavirus Pandemic.” first case outside of China in Thailand: “Archived: WHO Timeline—COVID-19,” April 27, 2020. United States confirms its first case: Taylor, “Timeline of the Coronavirus Pandemic.” infected more than 570: Taylor, “Timeline of the Coronavirus Pandemic.” global death toll reaches at least 360: Taylor, “Timeline of the Coronavirus Pandemic.” outside of China in the Philippines: “Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Situation Report—13,” World Health Organization, February 2, 2020, https://who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200202-sitrep-13-ncov-v3.pdf?

…

first COVID-19 death: Derrick Bryson Taylor, “A Timeline of the Coronavirus Pandemic,” The New York Times, August 6, 2020, https://nytimes.com/article/coronavirus-timeline.html. no new cases since January 3: Bollyky and Patrick, “Improving Pandemic Preparedness,” 37. virus sprang up in Thailand: “Archived: WHO Timeline—COVID-19,” World Health Organization, April 27, 2020, https://www.who.int/news/item/27-04-2020-who-timeline---covid-19. spread to Japan and South Korea: “Coronavirus Timeline: Tracking the Critical Moments of COVID-19,” NBC News, accessed September 23, 2020, https://nbcnews.com/health/health-news/coronavirus-timeline-tracking-critical-moments-covid-19-n1154341.

Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism by Harsha Walia

anti-communist, antiwork, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, blood diamond, borderless world, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, California gold rush, clean water, climate change refugee, collective bargaining, colonial rule, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, crack epidemic, dark matter, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, drone strike, Elon Musk, European colonialism, eurozone crisis, export processing zone, extractivism, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Food sovereignty, G4S, gentrification, George Floyd, global pandemic, global supply chain, Global Witness, green new deal, guest worker program, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, informal economy, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, joint-stock company, land reform, late capitalism, lockdown, mandatory minimum, mass immigration, mass incarceration, means of production, microcredit, military-industrial complex, Monroe Doctrine, moral panic, Naomi Klein, neoliberal agenda, Occupy movement, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, open borders, pension reform, Rana Plaza, Richard Florida, Ronald Reagan, Shoshana Zuboff, social distancing, special economic zone, Steve Bannon, strikebreaker, structural adjustment programs, surveillance capitalism, trade liberalization, transatlantic slave trade, transcontinental railway, union organizing, upwardly mobile, urban planning, W. E. B. Du Bois, wages for housework, Washington Consensus, women in the workforce

-Mexico Border Since July 2017: ACLU,” Associated Press, October 25, 2019, https://globalnews.ca/news/6081217/migrant-children-separated-tally-aclu/; American Civil Liberties Union, “Family Separation: By the Numbers,” www.aclu.org/issues/immigrants-rights/immigrants-rights-and-detention/family-separation; Associated Press, “Tally of Children Split at US Border Tops 5,400 in New Count,” Al Jazeera, October 24, 2019, www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/10/tally-children-split-border-tops-5400-count-191025020652717.html. 5.Sara Boboltz, “18 Migrant Infants and Toddlers Separated for Weeks or Months, House Report Finds,” Huffington Post, July 12, 2019, www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/migrant-infants-toddlers-separated_n_5d288c60e4b0060b11eb0ec7; Associated Press, “‘I Can’t Feel My Heart’: Children Separated Under Trump Show Signs of PTSD, Watchdog Finds,” Guardian, September 5, 2019, www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/sep/04/child-separation-ptsd-trump-zero-tolerance. 6.Gaby Del Valle, “The Most Horrifying Allegations in the ACLU’s Newest Family Separation Lawsuit,” Vice, October 4, 2019, www.vice.com/en_ca/article/8xwvy5/the-most-horrifying-allegations-in-the-aclus-newest-family-separation-lawsuit. 7.Ted Hesson and Mica Rosenberg, “U.S. Deports 400 Migrant Children under New Coronavirus Rules,” Reuters, April 7, 2020, www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-deportations/u-s-deports-400-migrant-children-under-new-coronavirus-rules-idUSKBN21P354; Nick Miroff, “Under Coronavirus Immigration Measures, U.S. is Expelling Border-Crossers to Mexico in an Average of 96 Minutes,” Washington Post, March 30, 2020, www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/coronavirus-immigration-border-96-minutes/2020/03/30/13af805c-72c5-11ea-ae50-7148009252e3_story.html; Nina Lakhani, “US Using Coronavirus Pandemic to Unlawfully Expel Asylum Seekers, Says UN,” Guardian, April 17, 2020, www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/17/us-asylum-seekers-coronavirus-law-un. 8.Nick Miroff, “Under Trump Border Rules, U.S.

…

Madan, “Millions of Immigrant Families Won’t Get Coronavirus Stimulus Checks, Experts Say,” Miami Herald, March 26, 2020, www.miamiherald.com/news/local/immigration/article241531211.html#storylink=cpy. 26.Americans for Tax Fairness and Institute for Policy Studies, “Tale of Two Crises: Billionaires Gain as Workers Feel Pandemic Pain,” May 21, 2020, https://americansfortaxfairness.org/wp-content/uploads/2020-5-21-Billionaires-Press-Release-at-Two-month-Covid-Pandemic-FINAL.pdf. 27.Eren Orbey, “Trump’s “Chinese Virus” and What’s at Stake in the Coronavirus’s Name,” New Yorker, March 25, 2020, www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/whats-at-stake-in-a-viruss-name; Salvador Rizzo, “Trump’s Wobbly Claim That His Wall Could Stop the Coronavirus,” Washington Post, March 12, 2020, www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/03/12/trumps-wobbly-claim-that-his-wall-could-stop-coronavirus/. 28.Arelis R. Hernández and Nick Miroff, “Facing Coronavirus Pandemic, Trump Suspends Immigration Laws and Showcases Vision for Locked-Down Border,” Washington Post, April 3, 2020, www.wasMngtonpost.com/national/coronavirus-trump-immigration-border/2020/04/03/23cb025a-74f9-11ea-ae50-7148009252e3_story.html. 29.Geoffrey York, “African Countries Move to Restrict European Visitors amid Coronavirus Pandemic,” Globe and Mail, March 11, 2020, www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-african-countries-move-to-restrict-european-visitors-amid-coronavirus/. 30.S.

…

“Italy Closes Ports to Refugee Ships Because of Coronavirus,” Al Jazeera, April 8, 2020, www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/04/italy-closes-ports-refugee-ships-coronavirus-200408091754757.html; Faisal Mahmud, “Rohingya Stranded at Sea, Bangladesh Says Not Its Responsibility,” Al Jazeera, April 23, 2020, www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/04/rohingya-stranded-sea-bangladesh-responsibility-200425082607464.html; Lydia Gall, “Hungary Weaponizes Coronavirus to Stoke Xenophobia,” Human Rights Watch, March 19, 2020, www.hrw.org/news/2020/03/19/hungary-weaponizes-coronavirus-stoke-xenophobia. 19.Human Rights Watch, “Lebanon: Refugees at Risk in COVID-19 Response,” April 2, 2020, www.hrw.org/news/2020/04/02/lebanon-refugees-risk-covid-19-response. 20.Hsiao-Hung Pai, “The Coronavirus Crisis Has Exposed China’s Long History of Racism,” Guardian, April 25, 2020, www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/25/coronavirus-exposed-china-history-racism-africans-guangzhou; Geoffrey York, “African Diplomats Protest Alleged Racism and Inhumane Treatment of Migrants in China,” Globe and Mail, April 12, 2020, www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-african-diplomats-protest-alleged-racism-and-inhumane-treatment-of/. 21.Rozanna Latiff, “Malaysia Rounds Up Migrants to Contain Coronavirus, U.N.

Trillion Dollar Triage: How Jay Powell and the Fed Battled a President and a Pandemic---And Prevented Economic Disaster by Nick Timiraos

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, asset-backed security, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Bonfire of the Vanities, break the buck, central bank independence, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, coronavirus, corporate raider, COVID-19, credit crunch, cryptocurrency, Donald Trump, fear index, financial innovation, financial intermediation, full employment, George Akerlof, George Floyd, global pandemic, global supply chain, Greta Thunberg, implied volatility, income inequality, inflation targeting, inverted yield curve, junk bonds, lockdown, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, managed futures, margin call, meme stock, money market fund, moral hazard, non-fungible token, oil shock, Phillips curve, price stability, pushing on a string, quantitative easing, Rishi Sunak, risk tolerance, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, secular stagnation, Skype, social distancing, subprime mortgage crisis, Tesla Model S, too big to fail, unorthodox policies, Y2K, yield curve

Chloe Taylor, “Economic impact of coronavirus will be clearer in ‘three or four weeks,’ Mnuchin says,” CNBC, February 23, 2020. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/23/coronavirus-mnuchin-says-economic-impact-will-be-clearer-within-weeks.html 2. Rob Stein, Laurel Wamsley, “Health Officials Warn Americans to Plan for the Spread of Coronavirus in US,” NPR, February 25, 2020 https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/02/25/809318447/health-officials-warn-americans-to-start-planning-for-spread-of-coronavirus-in-us 3. Fred Imbert, “Larry Kudlow says US has contained the coronavirus and the economy is holding up nicely,” CNBC, February 25, 2020. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/25/larry-kudlow-says-us-has-contained-the-coronavirus-and-the-economy-is-holding-up-nicely.html Chapter 1 1.

…

Kate Davidson and Bob Davis, “How Mnuchin Became Washington’s Indispensable Crisis Manager,” The Wall Street Journal, March 31, 2020. https://www.wsj.com/articles/steven-mnuchin-is-trying-to-rescue-the-economy-from-the-coronavirus-11585654202 2. Matthew J. Belvedere, “Trump says he trusts China’s Xi on coronavirus and the US has it ‘totally under control,’” CNBC, January 22, 2020. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/22/trump-on-coronavirus-from-china-we-have-it-totally-under-control.html 3. Lael Brainard, Commencement Address at Claremont McKenna College, May 17, 2014, https://www.cmc.edu/news/read-the-commencement-address-by-dr-lael-brainard 4.

…

sref=1X5UIU0Y 6. Author’s interview. 7. Colby Itkowitz, Ashley Parker, and Seung Min Kim, “Coronavirus continues its rapid spread, confounding efforts by global leaders,” The Washington Post, March 7, 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/03/07/coronavirus-continues-its-rapid-spread-confounding-efforts-by-global-leaders/ Chapter 8 1. Robert Costa, Josh Dawsey, Jeff Stein, and Ashley Parker, “Trump urged Mnuchin to pressure Fed’s Powell on economic stimulus in explosive tirade about coronavirus,” The Washington Post, March 11, 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/trump-urged-mnuchin-to-pressure-feds-powell-on-economic-stimulus-in-explosive-tirade-about-coronavirus/2020/03/11/db7bfeea-63c9-11ea-b3fc-7841686c5c57_story.html 2.

Reset by Ronald J. Deibert

23andMe, active measures, air gap, Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, Anthropocene, augmented reality, availability heuristic, behavioural economics, Bellingcat, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, blood diamond, Brexit referendum, Buckminster Fuller, business intelligence, Cal Newport, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, carbon footprint, cashless society, Citizen Lab, clean water, cloud computing, computer vision, confounding variable, contact tracing, contact tracing app, content marketing, coronavirus, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, data acquisition, data is the new oil, decarbonisation, deep learning, deepfake, Deng Xiaoping, disinformation, Donald Trump, Doomsday Clock, dual-use technology, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, end-to-end encryption, Evgeny Morozov, failed state, fake news, Future Shock, game design, gig economy, global pandemic, global supply chain, global village, Google Hangouts, Great Leap Forward, high-speed rail, income inequality, information retrieval, information security, Internet of things, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, Lewis Mumford, liberal capitalism, license plate recognition, lockdown, longitudinal study, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, mass immigration, megastructure, meta-analysis, military-industrial complex, move fast and break things, Naomi Klein, natural language processing, New Journalism, NSO Group, off-the-grid, Peter Thiel, planetary scale, planned obsolescence, post-truth, proprietary trading, QAnon, ransomware, Robert Mercer, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, single source of truth, Skype, Snapchat, social distancing, sorting algorithm, source of truth, sovereign wealth fund, sparse data, speech recognition, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Stuxnet, surveillance capitalism, techlash, technological solutionism, the long tail, the medium is the message, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, TikTok, TSMC, undersea cable, unit 8200, Vannevar Bush, WikiLeaks, zero day, zero-sum game

., Stubbs, J., & Bing, C. (2020, March 23). Exclusive: Elite hackers target WHO as coronavirus cyberattacks spike. Retrieved from https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-who-hack-exclusive/exclusive-elite-hackers-target-who-as-coronavirus-cyberattacks-spike-idUSKBN21A3BN Mistakenly removed links: Orr, C. (2020, March 17). Facebook is removing links to coronavirus information on government websites. Retrieved from https://www.nationalobserver.com/2020/03/17/news/facebook-removing-links-coronavirus-information-government-websites Platforms introduced measures to point users: Gadde, V., & Derella, M. (2020, March 16).

…

“Shoot them dead”: Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte orders police and military to kill citizens who defy coronavirus lockdown. Retrieved from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/rodrigo-duterte-philippines-president-coronavirus-lockdown-shoot-people-dead/?ftag=CNM-00-10aab7e&linkId=85694802; Gebrekidan, S. (2020, March 30). For autocrats, and others, coronavirus is a chance to grab even more power. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/30/world/europe/coronavirus-governments-power.html; Gershgorn, D. (2020, April 9). We mapped how the coronavirus is driving new surveillance programs around the world. Retrieved from https://onezero.medium.com/the-pandemic-is-a-trojan-horse-for-surveillance-programs-around-the-world-887fa6f12ec9; See also Kamradt-Scott, A., & McInnes, C. (2012).

…

Retrieved from https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/02/russian-disinformation-coronavirus/ Widely accepted throughout Chinese society: Gilbert, D. (2020, April 6). The Chinese government has convinced its citizens that the U.S. Army brought coronavirus to Wuhan. Retrieved from https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wxe9yq/the-chinese-government-has-convinced-its-citizens-that-the-us-army-brought-coronavirus-to-wuhan One YouTube video … falsely claimed that Africa was immune: Shanapinda, S. (2020, April 7). No, 5G radiation doesn’t spread the coronavirus. Here’s how we know. Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/no-5g-radiation-doesnt-cause-or-spread-the-coronavirus-saying-it-does-is-destructive-135695 More than thirty incidents of arson and vandalism: Satariano, A., & Alba, D. (2020, April 10).

Investing to Save the Planet: How Your Money Can Make a Difference by Alice Ross

"World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, An Inconvenient Truth, barriers to entry, British Empire, carbon footprint, carbon tax, circular economy, clean tech, clean water, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, creative destruction, decarbonisation, diversification, Elon Musk, energy transition, Extinction Rebellion, family office, food miles, Future Shock, global pandemic, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, green transition, Greta Thunberg, high net worth, hiring and firing, impact investing, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jeff Bezos, lockdown, low interest rates, Lyft, off grid, oil shock, passive investing, Peter Thiel, plant based meat, precision agriculture, risk tolerance, risk/return, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, social distancing, sovereign wealth fund, TED Talk, Tragedy of the Commons, uber lyft, William MacAskill

EV Volumes, which collates monthly figures on electric vehicle sales, warned that the coronavirus fall-out could further impact sales in 2020, though this was likely to apply to sales of all cars as factory production slowed. A report from Wood Mackenzie, an energy consultancy, in April 2020 warned that electric vehicle sales were likely to drop drastically for the year, predicting global sales of just 1.3m, down from 2.2m in 2019. ‘Most new EV buyers are still first-time owners of the technology,’ a Wood Mackenzie analyst, Ram Chandrasekaran, wrote in a research note. ‘The uncertainty and fear created by the [coronavirus] outbreak have made consumers less inclined to adopt a new technology.’

…

Corporate decisions affecting workers … have become increasingly important as a wider array of investors have begun looking at companies through an ESG lens.’ Analysts at Barclays predicted that the coronavirus crisis could even accelerate investors’ interest in climate change, arguing that while ESG implementation might be delayed in the short term, ‘it is unlikely to be abandoned in the long run – and it may even accelerate in a post-Covid-19 world’. Of course, not all the developments were positive. The Financial Times warned in April that the coronavirus outbreak had delayed most of the big climate events and policy announcements expected in 2020. Glen Peters, research director at the Center for International Climate Research in Oslo, warned that climate might not be mentioned in policy discussions in the near term, telling the Financial Times: ‘It’s going to put a pause on anything climate related.’

…

But then I thought: surely the average investor on the street could get involved too, by looking at what was in their pension fund, for example, or thinking about whether they should invest in fossil fuel companies. It seemed to me that explaining what we can do to fight climate change as investors as well as consumers would give people some sense of control over the situation. Looking back at that time, some things have changed. The bad news we got used to waking up to in 2020 was of course the coronavirus: the daily death tolls, the hit to the economy. The climate crisis seemed almost to have been sidelined. I wrote much of this book in lockdown at my home in London while my two young children were out of school. It was a busy, stressful time. But it was also a quiet time. I was woken up, like so many others, not by planes roaring overhead to Heathrow but by birdsong.

Rule of the Robots: How Artificial Intelligence Will Transform Everything by Martin Ford

AI winter, Airbnb, algorithmic bias, algorithmic trading, Alignment Problem, AlphaGo, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, artificial general intelligence, Automated Insights, autonomous vehicles, backpropagation, basic income, Big Tech, big-box store, call centre, carbon footprint, Chris Urmson, Claude Shannon: information theory, clean water, cloud computing, commoditize, computer age, computer vision, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, data is the new oil, data science, deep learning, deepfake, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, deskilling, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, factory automation, fake news, fulfillment center, full employment, future of work, general purpose technology, Geoffrey Hinton, George Floyd, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, Googley, GPT-3, high-speed rail, hype cycle, ImageNet competition, income inequality, independent contractor, industrial robot, informal economy, information retrieval, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Markoff, Kiva Systems, knowledge worker, labor-force participation, Law of Accelerating Returns, license plate recognition, low interest rates, low-wage service sector, Lyft, machine readable, machine translation, Mark Zuckerberg, Mitch Kapor, natural language processing, Nick Bostrom, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, Ocado, OpenAI, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, passive income, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, Phillips curve, post scarcity, public intellectual, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, remote working, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Gordon, Rodney Brooks, Rubik’s Cube, Sam Altman, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, social distancing, SoftBank, South of Market, San Francisco, special economic zone, speech recognition, stealth mode startup, Stephen Hawking, superintelligent machines, TED Talk, The Future of Employment, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, the scientific method, Turing machine, Turing test, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, universal basic income, very high income, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, Y Combinator

If cashierless stores do gain traction, they have the potential to unleash a major industry disruption and eventually put the jobs of more than three and a half million cashiers in the United States alone at significant risk. Beyond the increase in convenience and the time saved by not standing in checkout lines, these stores may be an especially good fit in a future shaped by the coronavirus because they offer completely touch-free payment without the need to ever come in close proximity to a human worker. Ironically, Amazon temporarily shut down most of its Go stores as the coronavirus unfolded, perhaps because the stores are so popular that they attract long lines of shoppers. However, in the long run, the technology seems ideally suited to a world where social distancing is, at least for a time, at a premium.

…

Google’s system was 94.4 percent accurate and “outperformed all six radiologists” in cases in which a prior CT scan for the patient was not available, and “was on-par with the same radiologists” when a previous image was available for comparison.45 Likewise, radiology AI systems were employed on an emergency basis in some cases as the coronavirus pandemic threatened to overwhelm hospitals. Amidst a shortage of tests for COVID-19, chest X-rays that showed evidence of the pneumonia often caused by the virus became an important alternative diagnostic technique. Some hospitals experienced backlogs resulting in delays of six hours or more as radiologists struggled to analyze the images. In response, two manufacturers of AI diagnostic tools, Mumbai-based Qure.ai and the Korean company Lunit, were able to rapidly recalibrate their systems to focus on the coronavirus. One study found that Qure.ai’s system was ninety-five percent accurate in distinguishing COVID-19 from other conditions that cause pneumonia.46 Results like these have led to enthusiasm that can sometimes blur into hype, and among some deep learning experts it’s often taken almost as a given that AI systems will completely replace human radiologists in the relatively near future.

…

In other words, I think we face a scenario where a significant fraction of our workforce is eventually at risk of being disenfranchised from the job market. But is there any evidence that anything like this has actually occurred? After all, the unemployment rate prior to the advent of the coronavirus pandemic was well below four percent. THE STORY UP UNTIL THE ONSET OF THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC Over the ten-year period from the end of the Great Recession in 2009 until January 2020, the longest postwar economic recovery on record, the unemployment rate fell from ten percent to 3.6 percent—a level lower than any recorded in the past fifty years.5 An important caveat, however, is that this headline unemployment rate, which is measured on the basis of a household survey conducted by the U.S.

Tenants: The People on the Frontline of Britain's Housing Emergency by Vicky Spratt

Airbnb, Albert Einstein, basic income, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, British Empire, Buy land – they’re not making it any more, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, centre right, clean water, coronavirus, COVID-19, credit crunch, cryptocurrency, edge city, en.wikipedia.org, full employment, garden city movement, gender pay gap, gentrification, gig economy, global pandemic, housing crisis, Housing First, illegal immigration, income inequality, Induced demand, Jane Jacobs, Jeremy Corbyn, land bank, land reform, land value tax, lockdown, longitudinal study, low interest rates, mass immigration, mega-rich, meta-analysis, negative equity, Overton Window, Own Your Own Home, plutocrats, quantitative easing, rent control, Right to Buy, Rishi Sunak, Rutger Bregman, side hustle, social distancing, stop buying avocado toast, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trickle-down economics, universal basic income, urban planning, urban renewal, working-age population, young professional, zero-sum game

The extent to which successive governments: At the time, I reported on this for the i Paper. You can read more here: ‘When it comes to housing during coronavirus, Rishi Sunak’s claim that “we are all in this together” isn’t true’, 16 April 2020, inews.co.uk/opinion/housing-coronavirus-renting-rishi-sunak-418924 The Chancellor’s support package: Vicky Spratt, ‘Coronavirus help for renters: The assistance available if you are renting in the UK’, i Paper, 27 March 2020, inews.co.uk/opinion/coronavirus-rent-help-government-uk-home-pay-assistance-how-claim-explained-412072 you can buy a flat in Dorrington Court: www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/71201970#/ or rent one privately: www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/70771572#/ Macintosh’s work, her vision: Pre-war, most council housing was for those on middle incomes.

…

In 2020 record numbers of people applied for Universal Credit – some of them probably considered themselves ‘middle class’ and did so for the first time – and too many found out just how paltry the available support really was. As part of its coronavirus support package, Boris Johnson’s government unfroze LHA; it had to do this because it knew it didn’t fully cover rents, but in many parts of the country this slight rise still didn’t stretch far enough – and it certainly didn’t restore the benefit to its pre-austerity levels, even though rents had risen since then. This mattered. In areas where there were high numbers of coronavirus cases, there were also high levels of unaffordable housing. At the time, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), an independent charity which works to end poverty, found that private renters in these places – large areas of London such as Lambeth, Wandsworth, Westminster, Tower Hamlets, Hackney, the City of London, Kensington and Chelsea, Hammersmith and Fulham, Islington, Haringey and Camden, for example – faced significantly higher than average rents as well as higher than average rates of child poverty and temporary accommodation.

…

Charities, which had long been calling for these measures, were suddenly being listened to, their policy suggestions taken up wholesale. If private renters were, shockingly, overlooked in the coronavirus response, perhaps it is because their plight, while no less or more important, is less emotive and inspires less political goodwill than rough sleeping, which is visible and visceral, particularly during a global pandemic. When it came to private renting, the response was, indeed, scandalous. The initial emergency coronavirus legislation didn’t have a section on the eviction of private renters at all. One was added as an amendment at a second reading on 23 March.

The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations by Daniel Yergin

"RICO laws" OR "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations", 3D printing, 9 dash line, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, addicted to oil, Admiral Zheng, Albert Einstein, American energy revolution, Asian financial crisis, autonomous vehicles, Ayatollah Khomeini, Bakken shale, Bernie Sanders, BRICs, British Empire, carbon tax, circular economy, clean tech, commodity super cycle, company town, coronavirus, COVID-19, decarbonisation, deep learning, Deng Xiaoping, Didi Chuxing, disruptive innovation, distributed generation, Donald Trump, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, energy security, energy transition, failed state, Ford Model T, geopolitical risk, gig economy, global pandemic, global supply chain, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, hydraulic fracturing, Indoor air pollution, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), inventory management, James Watt: steam engine, John Zimmer (Lyft cofounder), Kickstarter, LNG terminal, Lyft, Malacca Straits, Malcom McLean invented shipping containers, Masayoshi Son, Masdar, mass incarceration, megacity, megaproject, middle-income trap, Mikhail Gorbachev, mutually assured destruction, new economy, off grid, oil rush, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, open economy, paypal mafia, peak oil, pension reform, power law, price mechanism, purchasing power parity, RAND corporation, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, rolling blackouts, Ronald Reagan, Russian election interference, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, smart cities, social distancing, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, Suez crisis 1956, super pumped, supply-chain management, TED Talk, trade route, Travis Kalanick, Twitter Arab Spring, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, ubercab, UNCLOS, UNCLOS, uranium enrichment, vertical integration, women in the workforce

In 2000, 1.9 million cars were sold in China, 17.3 million in the United States. By 2019, the number was 25 million in China and 17 million in the United States. The weight of China in the world economy was made clear by the novel coronavirus. When the SARS epidemic began in 2002, China accounted for only 4 percent of world GDP. When the coronavirus hit in 2020, it was 16 percent, meaning that the economic impact would reverberate around the world even before the coronavirus shut down much of the rest of the world.7 When GDP is measured by exchange rates, the U.S. economy is still larger than China’s. By the other major measure of GDP—purchasing power parity—China is already the largest economy in the world.

…

Economy,” Dallas Federal Reserve, May 2020. 6. Coronavirus Task Force Briefing, March 19, 2020 (“person driving the car”); Javier Blas, “Trump’s Oil,” Bloomberg, April 13, 2020 (“so low” and “wiped out”); Coronavirus Task Force Briefing, April 1, 2020; Donald J. Trump, Tweet, April 2, 2020 (“my friend”). 7. Frank Kane, “Saudi Arabia Calls ‘Urgent Meeting of Oil Producers’,” Arab News, April 2, 2020; Meeting on the Situation in Global Energy Markets, April 3, 2020, Kremlin website. 8. Mohammad Barkindo, Remarks to OPEC+ Ministerial Meeting, April 9, 2020. 9. Coronavirus Task Force Briefing, April 8, 2020 (“hated OPEC”); Dan Brouillette, Remarks for G20 Extraordinary Energy Ministers Meeting, April 10, 2020; Benoit Faucon, Summer Said, and Tim Puko, “U.S., Saudi Arabia, Russia Lead Pact,” Wall Street Journal, April 12, 2020; “The Largest Oil Supply Cut in History,” Oil Market Insight, IHS Markit, April 12, 2020. 10.

…

Criticism of China is one thing that unites divided Democrats and Republicans in the United States, and the national security establishments in both countries increasingly focus on the other as the future adversary. Yet the two countries are more integrated economically and more interdependent than many recognize, as the 2020 coronavirus outbreak unhappily demonstrated; and they are mutually dependent on global prosperity. But that reality counts for less as calls grow louder for “decoupling” between the world’s two largest economies, accompanied by growing mistrust, which has been amplified by the coronavirus crisis, one of the lasting consequences of which will be greater tension between the two countries. * * * — The Middle East’s geographic boundaries were continually redrawn throughout antiquity, with the rise and fall of so many empires.

The Miracle Pill by Peter Walker

active transport: walking or cycling, agricultural Revolution, autonomous vehicles, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, call centre, car-free, Coronary heart disease and physical activity of work, coronavirus, COVID-19, driverless car, experimental subject, James Watt: steam engine, Kickstarter, lockdown, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, randomized controlled trial, Sidewalk Labs, social distancing, Stop de Kindermoord, the built environment, Traffic in Towns by Colin Buchanan, twin studies, Wall-E, washing machines reduced drudgery

Chapter 10 1 Dr Sabine L. van Elsland, Ryan O’Hare, ‘COVID-19: Imperial researchers model likely impact of public health measures’, Imperial College News, 17 March 2020. 2 Damian Carrington, ‘Indoor and outdoor air pollution “claiming at least 40,000 UK lives a year” ’, The Guardian, 22 February 2016. 3 Fiona Harvey, ‘Air pollution: UK government loses third court case as plans ruled “unlawful” ’, The Guardian, 21 February 2018. 4 Interview with the author. 5 Interview with the author. 6 Interview with the author. 7 David C. Nieman, ‘Coronavirus disease-2019: A tocsin to our aging, unfit, corpulent, and immunodeficient society’, Journal of Sport and Health Science, Vol. 9, No. 4 (2020): 293–301. 8 Peter Walker, Matthew Taylor, ‘Labour to plan green economic rescue from coronavirus crisis’, The Guardian, 17 May 2020. Interview took place on 15 May. 9 Briefing to political journalists in the daily ‘lobby’ conference (held via telephone conference call amid coronavirus). 10 Matthew Taylor, ‘Large areas of London to be made car-free as lockdown eased’, The Guardian, 15 May 2020. 11 Interview with the author. 12 Interview with the author. 13 Interview with the author. 14 Interview with the author. 15 Interview with the author. 16 Interview with the author.

…

It forms part of a wider shift in healthcare focus from infectious viral and bacterial illnesses and onto so-called non-communicable diseases, or NCDs, which are often linked to lifestyle or environment. To an extent, this focus has shifted back with the sudden arrival of coronavirus. But even here NCDs play a key role, given an emerging link between conditions like diabetes and high blood pressure and poor coronavirus outcomes. Academics gauge the impact of NCDs using a tool called Burden of Disease, which simply multiplies the risk an ailment poses to an individual by the extent of its spread. This system has been used to devise what public health officials call the ‘four by four’ threat – a list of the four most damaging NCDs around the world, and the four primary risk factors behind them.

…

And it is an undeniable paradox to have spent my days chronicling successive government failures over one public health disaster when, at precisely the same moment, many of them are tackling another life-threatening crisis with genuine boldness. In terms of scale, inactivity is not quite so acute as coronavirus, which, according to the scientific modelling which eventually persuaded Johnson to confine people to their homes, could have killed between 250,000 and 500,000 people in the UK alone if nothing was done.1 Coronavirus has also provoked a particularly urgent response by being new, rapid in its destructiveness, and directly fatal. In contrast, someone in their twenties who flops down on a sofa tonight might not start to feel the impact of an inactive lifestyle for several decades, and then only through the impact of various chronic illnesses.

The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America by Victor Davis Hanson

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, 23andMe, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, airport security, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, Boeing 737 MAX, borderless world, bread and circuses, British Empire, business climate, business cycle, carbon footprint, centre right, clean water, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, currency manipulation / currency intervention, defund the police, deindustrialization, deplatforming, disinformation, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, drone strike, El Camino Real, fake news, Ferguson, Missouri, fixed income, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, George Floyd, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, Herbert Marcuse, high-speed rail, Honoré de Balzac, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, Jeff Bezos, Joseph Schumpeter, laissez-faire capitalism, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, mass incarceration, Menlo Park, microaggression, military-industrial complex, mortgage debt, Nate Silver, new economy, New Urbanism, obamacare, old-boy network, Paris climate accords, Parler "social media", peak oil, Potemkin village, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, school choice, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Skype, social distancing, Social Justice Warrior, tech worker, Thomas L Friedman, transcontinental railway, upwardly mobile, vertical integration, WikiLeaks, working poor, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game

., “A Pneumonia Outbreak Associated with a New Coronavirus of Probable Bat Origin,” Nature 579 (2020): 270–273. 4. Joe Penney, “Racism, Rather Than Facts, Drove U.S. Coronavirus Bans,” The Intercept, May 16, 2020, https://theintercept.com/2020/05/16/racism-coronavirus-china-europe. 5. A possible late summer appearance of the coronavirus: Shelby Lin Erdman, “Satellite Images of Wuhan May Suggest Coronavirus Was Spreading as Early as August,” CNN, June 10, 2020, www.cnn.com/2020/06/08/health/satellite-pics-coronavirus-spread. Cissy Zhou, “China Coronavirus: As Travel Ban Is Issued for Wuhan, Many in City Rush to Escape,” South China Morning Post, January 23, 2020, www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3047263/china-coronavirus-travel-ban-issued-residents-wuhan. 6.

…

Closure of gun stores: “LA County Sheriff Closes Gun Stores in 42 Cities Due to Coronavirus Outbreak,” NBC Los Angeles, March 26, 2020, www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/la-county-sheriff-closes-gun-stores-in-42-cities-due-to-coronavirus-outbreak/2336094; cf. Alexandra Meeks and Leah Asmelash, “Los Angeles Sheriff Orders Gun Stores Shut Down Due to Coronavirus Restrictions,” CNN, March 24, 2020, www.cnn.com/2020/03/24/us/los-angeles-gun-store-close-coronavirus-trnd; Justin Carissimo, “1,700 Inmates Released from Los Angeles County in Response to Coronavirus Outbreak,” CBS News, March 24, 2020, www.cbsnews.com/news/inmates-released-los-angeles-county-coronavirus-response-2020-03-24.

…

Tobias Hoonhout, “Bill Gates Dismisses Chinese Coronavirus Coverup: ‘It’s Not Even Time for That Discussion,’” National Review, April 27, 2020, www.nationalreview.com/news/bill-gates-dismisses-chinese-coronavirus-coverup-its-not-even-time-for-that-discussion; Ariel Zilber, “Bill Gates Defends China’s Coronavirus Response: Billionaire Says Beijing ‘Did a Lot of Things Right’ at the Start of the Pandemic and Claims Criticism of the Communist Party Is a ‘Distraction,’” Daily Mail, April 26, 2020, www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8259591/Now-not-time-Bill-Gates-defends-China-coronavirus-response.html. 6. Jack Goldsmith and Andrew Keane Woods, “Internet Speech Will Never Go Back to Normal,” The Atlantic, April 25, 2020, www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/04/what-covid-revealed-about-internet/610549. 7.

The Lords of Easy Money: How the Federal Reserve Broke the American Economy by Christopher Leonard

2021 United States Capitol attack, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, Basel III, Bear Stearns, collateralized debt obligation, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, Donald Trump, Dutch auction, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, Ford Model T, forensic accounting, forward guidance, full employment, glass ceiling, Glass-Steagall Act, global reserve currency, Greenspan put, hydraulic fracturing, income inequality, inflation targeting, Internet Archive, inverted yield curve, junk bonds, lockdown, long and variable lags, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, market bubble, Money creation, mortgage debt, new economy, obamacare, pets.com, power law, proprietary trading, quantitative easing, reserve currency, risk tolerance, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, stock buybacks, too big to fail, yield curve

., 186–88, 191, 192, 194, 195, 198 AIG, 23 Airbnb, 297 allocation of money, 19, 20 allocative effects of quantitative easing, 27, 28 of zero bound, 19, 20, 27 American Banker, 209 American Enterprise Institute, 18 announcement effect, 134 Apollo Management, 168–70, 172–74, 180, 186, 191 Ares Capital, 213 asset bubbles, 20, 29, 54–56, 63, 69, 82, 83, 85, 88–89, 91–93, 95, 105, 134, 142, 148, 222, 228, 231, 234, 300 China and, 235 Florida real estate, 54–55, 86 asset prices and value, 53–55, 57–59, 68, 81, 82, 86–87, 98, 237, 259, 262 coronavirus relief and, 288 inflation and, 50, 68–69, 81–84, 87, 95, 119, 148, 182, 224, 295, 297, 305 interest rates and, 300 loans and, 49–51, 57–60 quantitative easing and, 119, 132, 148, 182, 300 ZIRP and, 119, 192 assets, 235 coronavirus bailouts and, 287 defined, 54 ownership of, 119, 287 AT&T, 270 auto workers, 74 Axel, Ralph, 254 bailouts, 87, 208–11, 248–49, 302 coronavirus, see coronavirus relief and bailout programs repo market, 243–58 in 2008 and 2009, 10, 23, 100–102, 206, 249, 286 Bain Capital, 180 Bair, Sheila, 210 Baker, James, III, 162 balance sheets of banks, 50–51, 57–58 defined, 343 of Fed, 102, 138, 147, 211, 227, 231, 236, 256, 257, 290–91, 301–2, 343, 349 bank failures, 45–46, 48, 66, 67, 68, 73, 96n, 98, 100 Continental Illinois, 65–66, 68–69, 97, 98, 100 coronavirus and, 269–70 FDIC and, 208–9 Fed’s loans to banks during, 46, 58, 63 of 1873, 46 of foreign banks, 101 liquidation of insolvent banks, 64 living wills and, 208–9, 269 of 1980s, 53, 58–59, 96 Penn Square, 63–65, 67–69, 97, 98 “too big to fail” banks, 66–67, 97, 202, 203, 209, 219 Bank Policy Institute, 206–7 banks, 43 bailouts of, see bailouts balance sheets of, 50–51, 57–58 Basel III accord and, 203, 204, 209–10 big, Hoenig’s plan to break up (the Hoenig rule), 203–7, 209 capital set aside for times of crisis, 209–11 central, 103–4, 112, 139–40, 217–18, 232, 235, 237–38, 345 central, U.S. creation of, 44–47 community, 202 coronavirus and, 269 divided into commercial and investment, 80, 348 Dodd-Frank rules and, 203, 204, 207, 209, 229, 252, 277, 350 early American system of, 45 economics and, 302 European, 134, 210 FDIC liquidation of, 64 FDIC’s protection of consumer deposits in, 80, 202, 345 FDR and, 79, 100, 204 free banking era, 45 Global Financial Crisis’s effect on, 202, 206 Hoenig’s disputes with bankers, 49–50, 55, 58–59, 65 Hoenig’s views on, 43–44 interstate banking laws, 96–97 lobbyists for, 206–7 mergers and consolidation of, 43, 202 New Deal and, 79–80, 204 overnight loans between, 114, 248, 249 regional, 279 regulation of, 48, 79, 80, 97, 100, 203, 204, 207, 209 reserves of, 121, 221, 244, 248–49, 251, 256 reserves of, excess, 227, 243, 244, 248–50 shadow, 202, 252, 291, 350 stock value of, 269, 270 stress tests for, 207–8, 229, 269 symposium of directors of, 96–99 see also loans Barstool Sports, 288 Basel III accord, 203, 204, 209–10 basis risk trades, 252–55, 265 BDCs (business development corporations), 181 bear market, 236 Bear Stearns, 277 Beck, Glenn, 109–11 Bell, Steve, 158–60 Belly Up (Zweig), 64 Bernanke, Ben, 10, 22–26, 31, 73, 93–94, 96, 102, 105, 108, 132, 136, 146, 217, 222, 223, 229, 243, 258, 267, 291 Citadel and, 289–90 Congressional testimony of, 99, 109 final meeting as Fed chairman, 222 Fisher and, 131 Hoenig and, 15, 29, 93–94, 104 inflation and, 93 memoir of, 22, 34 press conferences of, 144–45 quantitative easing and, 10, 25–34, 105, 112–13, 118n, 121, 126–30, 132–34, 136, 140–46, 148, 182, 247 Yellen and, 130 Bianco, Jim, 261–63, 269–70 Biden, Joe, 298–99, 304 Binder, Carola, 108, 109, 144 Bloomberg News, 101, 109, 231, 298 BlueCrest Capital Management, 254 BNP Paribas, 99–100 Boehne, Edward, 72 Boeing, 298 Boies Schiller Flexner, 284 bonds, 119, 134, 142, 147, 155–56, 170, 211, 218, 235, 237, 262, 270, 272, 279, 347 coronavirus relief and, 288 defined, 344 developing nations and, 216–17 Fed’s purchase of, 101, 110, 139, 227, 267, 279, 280, 282 Fed’s sale of, 231–34, 236 junk, see junk bonds negative-interest-rate, 217–18 Operation Twist and, 127 Treasury, see Treasury bonds Boston Market, 284 Bowman, Michelle, 280n Brady, Nicholas F., 156–58, 160–61 Brainard, Lael, 272, 280n Brazil, 217 Brookings Institution, 224, 257–58 Brown, Sherrod, 206 Bryan, Vicki, 177–78, 182 Bryan, William Jennings, 9, 46 Buffett, Warren, 159–60 Bullard, Jim, 34 Burns, Arthur, 22 Bush, George H.

…

CHAPTER 14: INFECTION The first waves of volatility: Sui-Lee Wee and Vivian Wang, “China Grapples with Mystery Pneumonia-Like Illness,” New York Times, January 6, 2020; Fanfan Wang, “China Reports First Death from New Coronavirus,” Wall Street Journal, January 11, 2020; Michael Levenson, “Scale of China’s Wuhan Shutdown Is Believed to Be Without Precedent,” New York Times, January 22, 2020; Jason Horowitz, “Italy Locks Down Much of the Country’s North over the Coronavirus,” New York Times, March 7, 2020; transcript of the CDC Telebriefing Update on COVID-19, February 26, 2020. The traders on Wall Street did start thinking: Jim Bianco and Scott Minerd, interviews with author, 2020. On Thursday, February 27: Catherine Thorbecke, “Dow Jones Plunges Most Since 2008 on Coronavirus Fears,” ABC News, February 27, 2020.

…

In retrospect, Tom Hoenig’s trip to Starbucks seemed like an especially poignant moment. He didn’t know it at the time, but this was the closing chapter on an epoch of American economic history. The daily headlines were about a growing viral epidemic. A novel coronavirus was quickly spreading around the world. One hundred and fifty-eight cases of coronavirus infection had been reported in the United States on March 4. This was scary, but the guests at Starbucks with Hoenig entered and left freely. Nobody wore a face mask. It was still taken for granted that people shook hands when they met. Things seemed normal.

The Controlled Demolition of the American Empire by Jeff Berwick, Charlie Robinson

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, airport security, Alan Greenspan, American Legislative Exchange Council, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, bank run, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, big-box store, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, bread and circuses, Bretton Woods, British Empire, call centre, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Cass Sunstein, Chelsea Manning, clean water, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, Comet Ping Pong, coronavirus, Corrections Corporation of America, COVID-19, crack epidemic, crisis actor, crony capitalism, cryptocurrency, dark matter, deplatforming, disinformation, Donald Trump, drone strike, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, energy transition, epigenetics, failed state, fake news, false flag, Ferguson, Missouri, fiat currency, financial independence, George Floyd, global pandemic, global supply chain, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, illegal immigration, Indoor air pollution, information security, interest rate swap, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, Jeffrey Epstein, Julian Assange, Kickstarter, lockdown, Mahatma Gandhi, mandatory minimum, margin call, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, megacity, microapartment, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, new economy, no-fly zone, offshore financial centre, Oklahoma City bombing, open borders, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, pill mill, planetary scale, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, power law, pre–internet, private military company, Project for a New American Century, quantitative easing, RAND corporation, reserve currency, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Saturday Night Live, security theater, self-driving car, Seymour Hersh, Silicon Valley, smart cities, smart grid, smart meter, Snapchat, social distancing, Social Justice Warrior, South China Sea, stock buybacks, surveillance capitalism, too big to fail, unpaid internship, urban decay, WikiLeaks, working poor

These are just some of the conspiracy “myths” that have been proven since the onset of the Coronavirus. From mind control to population control, crowd control, and exchange control – if people do not see a pattern here, they may beyond help. But first, it is important to have a look at the Coronavirus Plandemic and the events of 2020 that made the world go boom! Virus X Pneumonia of unknown cause detected in Wuhan, China was first reported to the WHO Country Office in China on 31 December 2019. The outbreak was declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on 30 January 2020. On 11 February 2020, WHO announced a name for the new coronavirus disease: COVID-19.

…

Recently, the Center for Health Security has received questions about whether that pandemic exercise predicted the current novel coronavirus outbreak in China. To be clear, the Center for Health Security and partners did not make a prediction during our tabletop exercise. For the scenario, we modeled a fictional coronavirus pandemic, but we explicitly stated that it was not a prediction. Instead, the exercise served to highlight preparedness and response challenges that would likely arise in a very severe pandemic. We are not now predicting that the nCoV-2019 outbreak will kill 65 million people. Although our tabletop exercise included a mock novel coronavirus, the inputs we used for modeling the potential impact of that fictional virus are not similar to nCoV-2019. ”Event 201” was the fourth major pandemic exercise that the Center for Health Security has run – a mere three months before the official outbreak of…guess what…a coronavirus pandemic.

…

“It’s called the American dream – because you have to be asleep to believe it.” Bang! Because of worldwide Coronavirus lockdowns, millions of people have been forced out of their jobs and their businesses – over 40 million in the US alone! Small businesses have been buried already, large businesses are starting to stink and economies are flailing helplessly. In March 2020, the world’s seven key western economies, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK, and the US, pledged to fight off a world-wide Great Depression by standing united against the Coronavirus economic meltdown. It is a beautiful thing all this love and trust and cooperation.

Them and Us: How Immigrants and Locals Can Thrive Together by Philippe Legrain

affirmative action, Albert Einstein, AlphaGo, autonomous vehicles, Berlin Wall, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, call centre, centre right, Chelsea Manning, clean tech, coronavirus, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, data science, David Attenborough, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, demographic dividend, digital divide, discovery of DNA, Donald Trump, double helix, Edward Glaeser, en.wikipedia.org, eurozone crisis, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, future of work, illegal immigration, immigration reform, informal economy, Jane Jacobs, job automation, Jony Ive, labour market flexibility, lockdown, low cost airline, low interest rates, low skilled workers, lump of labour, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, Mary Meeker, mass immigration, moral hazard, Mustafa Suleyman, Network effects, new economy, offshore financial centre, open borders, open immigration, postnationalism / post nation state, purchasing power parity, remote working, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, Rishi Sunak, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Skype, SoftBank, Steve Jobs, tech worker, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The future is already here, The Future of Employment, Tim Cook: Apple, Tyler Cowen, urban sprawl, WeWork, Winter of Discontent, women in the workforce, working-age population

Former president Nicolas Sarkozy said, ‘the only community that matters is the French community… We will no longer settle for integration that does not work, we will require assimilation.’24 François Fillon, the eventual conservative candidate, argued that immigration should be ‘reduced to a strict minimum’.25 But Emmanuel Macron, a social liberal political newcomer, ultimately beat Le Pen to the presidency in 2017 by attacking the far-right leader’s vision of a ‘fractured, closed France’ and declaring that he was ‘for an open society’ and ‘a progressive world’, although his policies in office have not always lived up to that positive rhetoric.26 The coronavirus crisis has also highlighted the contribution that immigrants make. When he emerged from hospital after almost dying from coronavirus, Boris Johnson paid heartfelt tribute to his nurses ‘Jenny from New Zealand’ and ‘Luis from Portugal’, two of the thousands of immigrants who serve in the UK’s National Health Service (NHS).27 The lockdowns imposed in many countries to limit viral transmission have likewise underscored the essential functions performed by key workers – often immigrants previously dismissed as ‘unskilled’ – such as caring for the elderly, providing public transport and picking, packing, stacking and delivering food.

…

In every Western country surveyed by Pew except Italy and Greece, a majority of young people favour more diversity – in the UK nearly four in five do – and in every country that proportion is higher than among older people.3 Younger, more educated locals are much, much keener on admitting more migrants from poorer non-European countries than older, less educated locals.4 Sadly, the trends pushing towards closing borders and stamping on difference are powerful too. Governments around the world have shut borders to limit coronavirus transmission, and greater restrictions may remain once the pandemic passes. Economies may not bounce back quickly from their coronavirus collapse and high unemployment may endure. Public finances and public services are often strained. Housing in desirable cities remains unaffordable for most. Small towns are sometimes left behind by economic progress. Cultural fears compound economic concerns.

…

E3 visas are for Australian professionals. 35 US Department of State, ‘Report of the Visa Office 2018’, Table XVI(B). https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/Statistics/AnnualReports/FY2018AnnualReport/FY18AnnualReport%20-%20TableXVIB.pdf 36 The US offers 124,365 EB-1, EB-2 and EB-3 permanent work visas a year. 37 Jessica Kwong, ‘H-1B Visa Program and Trump: How High-Skilled Immigrants are being Threatened by President’s Administration’, Newsweek, 1 March 2018. http://www.newsweek.com/h-1b-visa-program-trump-administration-824688 38 ‘Presidential Executive Order on Buy American and Hire American’, 18 April 2017. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/presidential-executive-order-buy-american-hire-american/ 39 William Kerr, The Gift of Global Talent, 2018 40 Demetri Sevastopulo and Yuan Yang, ‘Ex-Google chief warns of need for AI co-operation with China’, Financial Times, 5 November 2019. https://www.ft.com/content/6a1de5b6-ff5f-11e9-b7bc-f3fa4e77dd47 41 ‘Relations between China and America are infected with coronavirus’, The Economist, 26 March 2020. https://www.economist.com/united-states/2020/03/26/relations-between-china-and-america-are-infected-with-coronavirus 42 Michael Savage, ‘NHS winter crisis fears grow after thousands of EU staff quit’, Guardian, 24 November 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/nov/24/nhs-winter-crisis-thousands-eu-staff-quit 43 Alan Travis, ‘UK hits visa cap on skilled workers for third month in row’, Guardian, 18 February 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/feb/18/uk-hits-skilled-worker-visa-cap-third-month-home-office-refuses-applications 44 Jack Graham, ‘The New Global Talent Race’, OPEN, 13 June 2018. http://www.opennetwork.net/the-new-global-talent-race/ 45 Hugo O’Doherty, ‘Canada Immigration Levels Plan: 2019–2021’, Moving2Canada, 31 October 2018. https://moving2canada.com/canada-immigration-levels-plan-2019-2021/ 46 Government of Canada, ‘Hire a top foreign talent through the Global Talent Stream’.

The Wires of War: Technology and the Global Struggle for Power by Jacob Helberg

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, active measures, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, air gap, Airbnb, algorithmic management, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bike sharing, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, cable laying ship, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Cass Sunstein, cloud computing, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, crisis actor, data is the new oil, data science, decentralized internet, deep learning, deepfake, deglobalization, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, deplatforming, digital nomad, disinformation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, dual-use technology, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, end-to-end encryption, fail fast, fake news, Filter Bubble, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, geopolitical risk, glass ceiling, global pandemic, global supply chain, Google bus, Google Chrome, GPT-3, green new deal, information security, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, Jeffrey Epstein, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, knowledge economy, Larry Ellison, lockdown, Loma Prieta earthquake, low earth orbit, low skilled workers, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Mary Meeker, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Mohammed Bouazizi, move fast and break things, Nate Silver, natural language processing, Network effects, new economy, one-China policy, open economy, OpenAI, Parler "social media", Peter Thiel, QAnon, QR code, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, reshoring, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Russian election interference, Salesforce, Sam Altman, satellite internet, self-driving car, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart grid, SoftBank, Solyndra, South China Sea, SpaceX Starlink, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stuxnet, supply-chain attack, Susan Wojcicki, tech worker, techlash, technoutopianism, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, trade route, TSMC, Twitter Arab Spring, uber lyft, undersea cable, Unsafe at Any Speed, Valery Gerasimov, vertical integration, Wargames Reagan, Westphalian system, white picket fence, WikiLeaks, Y Combinator, zero-sum game

Florida Politics, October 9, 2019, https://floridapolitics.com/archives/307822-senate-intelligence-committee-russian-meddling-targeted-marco-rubio-jeb-bush-in-2016/. 9 Jill Lepore, “Party Time,” New Yorker, September 10, 2007, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/09/17/party-time. 10 “About COVID-19,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, September 1, 2020, https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cdcresponse/about-COVID-19.html. 11 Finbarr Bermingham and Cissy Zhou, “Coronavirus: China and US in ‘new Cold War’ as relations hit lowest point in ‘more than 40 years,’ spurred on by pandemic,” South China Morning Post, May 5, 2020, https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3082968/coronavirus-china-us-new-cold-war-relations-hit-lowest-point. 12 Chris Buckley and Steven Lee Myers, “From ‘Respect’ to ‘Sick and Twisted’: How Coronavirus Hit U.S.-China Ties,” New York Times, May 15, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/15/world/asia/coronavirus-china-united-states-cold-war.html. 13 Hal Brands and Jake Sullivan, “China Has Two Paths to Global Domination,” Foreign Policy, May 22, 2020, https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/05/22/china-superpower-two-paths-global-domination-cold-war/. 14 David E.

…

-China Economic and Security Review Commission, June 24, 2020, https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/2020-06/Flournoy_Testimony.pdf. 51 “The Trump administration wants a US-China commercial split,” The Economist, August 13, 2020, https://www.economist.com/business/2020/08/13/the-trump-administration-wants-a-us-china-commercial-split; Apjit Walia, “The coming Tech Wall and the covid dilemma,” DB Research, https://www.dbresearch.com/PROD/RPS_EN-PROD/PROD0000000000507995/The_coming_Tech_Wall_and_the_covid_dilemma.pdf. 52 Kim Lyons, “Apple starts making first flagship iPhone in India,” The Verge, July 25, 2020, https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/25/21338436/apple-iphone11-india-foxconn-china. 53 Lauly Li and Cheng Ting-Fang, “Inside the US campaign to cut China out of the tech supply chain,” Nikkei Asia, October 7, 2020, https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/The-Big-Story/Inside-the-US-campaign-to-cut-China-out-of-the-tech-supply-chain. 54 Huileng Tan, “Coronavirus outbreak in China spurs supply chain shifts that began during trade war,” CNBC, February 20, 2020, https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/20/coronavirus-outbreak-spurs-supply-chain-shifts-started-by-us-china-trade-war.html. 55 Huileng Tan, “There will be a ‘massive’ shuffling of supply chains globally after coronavirus shutdowns,” CNBC, March 20, 2020, https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/20/coronavirus-shocks-will-lead-to-massive-global-supply-chain-shuffle.html. 56 “Attorney General William P. Barr Delivers the Keynote Address at the Department of Justice’s China Initiative Conference,” U.S.

…

A 2020 report by the State Department’s Global Engagement Center concluded that China, Russia, and Iran were coordinating their messaging on the coronavirus. Each government spread falsehoods that the virus was developed as an American bioweapon, that China had responded well, and that the U.S. economy was collapsing. The report was not released publicly, but according to Politico, it argued “that propaganda and disinformation narratives from those country’s [sic] governments have converged as coronavirus has spread.” A few months later, representatives from the Chinese and Russian foreign ministries held “consultations” on disinformation.162 The stated goal was ostensibly to “jointly combat disinformation,” but coordination was more likely on the agenda.

The Premonition: A Pandemic Story by Michael Lewis

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Airbnb, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, dark matter, data science, deep learning, Donald Davies, Donald Trump, double helix, energy security, facts on the ground, failed state, gentleman farmer, global supply chain, illegal immigration, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, out of africa, precautionary principle, QAnon, rolling blackouts, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Silicon Valley, social distancing, Social Justice Warrior, stem cell, tech bro, telemarketer, the new new thing, working poor, young professional

Joe’s team took the lung sample sent by the CDC, dissolved it, and washed the genetic material across the Virochip. Bits of it had attached to bits of three different previously identified viruses: a cow coronavirus, a bird coronavirus, and a human coronavirus. “It was like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle from three different puzzles,” says DeRisi. “They didn’t fit together. It said to us this is a novel coronavirus.” The new virus’s similarity to known viruses inside cows, birds, and people did not imply that it had come from a cow or a bird or a person. The so-called reservoir species—the animal harboring the virus before the virus jumped into humans—remained a mystery.

…

Then he went to work on the lung. Twenty-four hours later his lab had identified the pathogen that had killed its original owner: a new coronavirus. Back in March 2003, this was shocking news. No one had ever heard of a coronavirus causing severe illness in people. Coronaviruses could be deadly to animals, but in people they’d always manifested themselves as the common cold. The World Health Organization would eventually give the disease caused by this coronavirus its name: severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS. “After that I was hooked,” said Joe. “I said I want to do more of this.” Joe sensed that the CDC was stunned by what the DeRisi Lab had done, and by how quickly they’d done it.

…

“Sending tests even to the CDC was taking days, not hours,” said Joe. A test that took ten days to process was a pointless test. Absent fast tests, hospitals were being forced to treat everyone who rolled into the parking lot with coronavirus-like symptoms as if they had the virus, when more often than not they did not. Beds in the coronavirus wing were being taken by people who didn’t need them. Nurses and doctors were running through scarce protective gear they needed for actual coronavirus patients. But the biggest problem of having no tests was not knowing where the virus was and where it was not. Without fast tests, you could not isolate the people who needed to be isolated, or liberate the people who didn’t.

Forward: Notes on the Future of Our Democracy by Andrew Yang

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Amazon Web Services, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, basic income, benefit corporation, Bernie Sanders, blockchain, blue-collar work, call centre, centre right, clean water, contact tracing, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, data is the new oil, data science, deepfake, disinformation, Donald Trump, facts on the ground, fake news, forensic accounting, future of work, George Floyd, gig economy, global pandemic, income inequality, independent contractor, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Kevin Roose, labor-force participation, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, medical bankruptcy, new economy, obamacare, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, pez dispenser, QAnon, recommendation engine, risk tolerance, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Rutger Bregman, Sam Altman, Saturday Night Live, shareholder value, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, single-payer health, Snapchat, social distancing, SoftBank, surveillance capitalism, systematic bias, tech billionaire, TED Talk, The Day the Music Died, the long tail, TikTok, universal basic income, winner-take-all economy, working poor

CHAPTER 10: THE CENTERS FOR PASSING THE BUCK But the coronavirus tests David Willman, “Contamination at CDC Lab Delayed Rollout of Coronavirus Tests,” Washington Post, April 18, 2020. “It was just tragic” Sheila Kaplan, “C.D.C. Labs Were Contaminated, Delaying Coronavirus Testing, Officials Say,” New York Times, April 18, 2020. out of the nearly fifteen thousand “What Is the CDC and What Does It Do?,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He couldn’t identify Kaplan, “C.D.C. Labs Were Contaminated.” Weeks later, the director Abby Goodnough and Sheila Kaplan, “C.D.C.’s Dr. Robert Redfield Confronts Coronavirus, and Anger,” New York Times, March 13, 2020.

…

* * * — THOSE LAST WEEKS before Joe Biden effectively clinched the nomination were the final weeks in which anything felt remotely normal. By mid-March, COVID-19 (we were still simply referring to it as “the coronavirus” back then) was shutting everything down. Back then New York City was the epicenter of the virus in the United States. CNN stopped having us in the studio for safety reasons around the same time, and the streets began to empty out. It was hard to comprehend how quickly the coronavirus changed everything. It hit me what was happening when my son’s school shut down. I had a call with Zach, who had transitioned from my campaign manager to the Humanity Forward team to try to figure out an appropriate response to what I believed was going to be a social and economic catastrophe as well as a public health crisis.

…

The reports were so indicative of a screwup that Timothy Stenzel, a virologist from the Food and Drug Administration, was sent to the CDC to see why the tests were all giving false positives. He found that the CDC, in violation of its own protocols, had assembled the test kits in a room that also contained coronavirus material leading to contamination. Technicians were strolling in and out of the testing lab without even changing their lab coats. In other words, the CDC had assembled the testing kits in a lab that also housed the coronavirus. Resolving the test-manufacturing defects took one month—a lost month during one of the most crucial periods in American history. This was February 2020, when hundreds of Americans were starting to come down with COVID-19 in Washington and around the country.

How to Prevent the Next Pandemic by Bill Gates

augmented reality, call centre, computer vision, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, data science, demographic dividend, digital divide, digital map, disinformation, Edward Jenner, global pandemic, global supply chain, Hans Rosling, lockdown, Neal Stephenson, Picturephone, profit motive, QR code, remote working, social distancing, statistical model, TED Talk, women in the workforce, zero-sum game

One area in which CEPI can contribute is the creation of vaccines that would be effective against entire families of viruses, also known as universal vaccines. Today’s COVID vaccines teach your immune system to attack part of the spike protein on the surface of one specific coronavirus. But researchers are now working on vaccines that would target shapes that show up on all coronaviruses, including COVID and its cousins, and would even be likely to appear on ones that evolve in the future. With a universal coronavirus vaccine, your body would be ready to fight viruses that don’t exist yet. Coronaviruses and influenza viruses should be the targets of these vaccines, since they have been responsible for the worst outbreaks of the past twenty years.

…

New cases per day (seven-day rolling average). Source: “Emerging COVID-19 Success Story: Vietnam’s Commitment to Containment,” Exemplars in Global Health program, https://www.exemplars.health (published March 2021; accessed Jan. 2022). Using data extracted from Hannah Ritchie et al., “Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-19)” (2020), published online at OurWorldInData.org, https://ourworldindata.org/​coronavirus. GO TO FIGURE IN TEXT Its rate of excess deaths: Our World in Data, “Estimated Cumulative Excess Deaths per 100,000 People During COVID-19,” https://ourworldindata.org. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT IHME’s data also suggests: T.

…

Estimated infections are the number of people estimated to be infected with COVID-19 each day, including those not tested. COVID data available between Feb. 2020 and April 1, 2020. Source: Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington. GO TO FIGURE IN TEXT “Coronavirus May Have Spread”: Sheri Fink and Mike Baker, “Coronavirus May Have Spread in U.S. for Weeks, Gene Sequencing Suggests,” New York Times, March 1, 2020. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Oxford Nanopore is now working with: Oxford Nanopore, “Oxford Nanopore, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and Other Partners Collaborate to Transform Disease Surveillance in Africa,” https://nanoporetech.com.

Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America by Alec MacGillis

"RICO laws" OR "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations", Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, call centre, carried interest, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, company town, coronavirus, COVID-19, data science, death of newspapers, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, edge city, fulfillment center, future of work, gentrification, George Floyd, Glass-Steagall Act, global pandemic, Great Leap Forward, high net worth, housing crisis, Ida Tarbell, income inequality, information asymmetry, Jeff Bezos, Jeffrey Epstein, Jessica Bruder, jitney, Kiva Systems, lockdown, Lyft, mass incarceration, McMansion, megaproject, microapartment, military-industrial complex, new economy, Nomadland, offshore financial centre, Oklahoma City bombing, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, plutocrats, Ralph Nader, rent control, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, San Francisco homelessness, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, social distancing, strikebreaker, tech worker, Travis Kalanick, uber lyft, uranium enrichment, War on Poverty, warehouse robotics, white flight, winner-take-all economy, women in the workforce, working-age population, Works Progress Administration

., gentrification devastating to; see also Carver Road community; Central District Africatown Albuquerque, New Mexico Allen, Mike Allen, Paul: Microsoft co-established in Seattle by; Microsoft co-founded by; South Lake Union campus and All States Amazombies Amazon: annual sales growth at; antitrust law investigations involving; career day; convenience of; coronavirus pandemic and necessity of; coronavirus pandemic benefiting; coronavirus pandemic worker precautionary measures; counterfeit goods sold on; delivery and transportation expansion; drug testing at; employee nondisclosure agreements; employment growth at; on failure; financial institutions compared to; gatekeeper fees collected by; hiring events and introduction for workers; injury report rates; last leg delivery handled by; lobbying spending by; market valuation of; minimum wage announcement; office of economic development; origins of; power and influence of; PR push; public sector division; railroad giants compared to; renewable energy investments of; retail job losses due to; RFPs; Ring doorbell cameras; STAR method for decision-making; start-up ideas for; streaming media service; tax avoidance strategies of; trust and respect for; unions blocked by; wage and working condition concerns at; warehouse expansion nationwide; war zone analogy; worker discontent; as world’s highest-valued company; see also specific locations; specific topics Amazon Associate Virtual Job Tryout Amazon Day Expo: Collins involved in; Gandara, T., protesting; goal of; Grubbs attending; introductions and parameters for; Lee involved in; Marin involved in; naming of; trade-off discussion at; Westin supporting Amazon HQ2 headquarters: arguments for selecting location of; Baltimore bid for; bidding war; bidding war winners; career day for interest in new; Crystal City location; finalists for; need for; public competition for location selection of; resistance to New York City; Rubenstein interest in; secrecy around bids for; victims of selection process for; Washington, D.C., benefiting from new; see also Arlington, Virginia Amazon Web Services (AWS): Columbus, Ohio, as interest of; Columbus, Ohio, suburbs establishment of; Columbus, Ohio, suburbs selected for; community nondisclosure agreements; creation of; in Northern Virginia; Northern Virginia communities protesting; Public Sector Summit; secrecy of; at Virginia Data Center Leadership Awards; Worldwide Public Sector antitrust law hearings/investigations: activism fueling; Athena coalition on; Bezos testifying at; Cicilline speaking at; Congress presiding over; Jayapal speaking at; Khan on; Mitchell on; ruling on; Sutton testifying at; on third-party seller online sale fees antitrust prosecution Apple: antitrust law investigations involving; coronavirus pandemic benefiting Argote, Israel Espana Arlington, Virginia: as Amazon HQ2 headquarters selection; Crystal City in; donations toward housing affordability in; housing prices rising in; National Landing outside; Washington, D.C., benefiting from new site in Armitage, James Art of the Deal, The (Trump) Athena coalition Autor, David Autry, Clint AWS, see Amazon Web Services Baker, James III Ballard, Brian: Amazon hiring; Florida governor campaign work by; Trump support from Baltimore, Maryland: African American population in; Amazon arrival in; Amazon delivery van death near; Amazon employee homicides in; Amazon HQ2 headquarter bid from; Brick + Board company in; brick industry in; Bryant of; coronavirus pandemic in; corruption of city government; demolitions in; discrimination battles improving; drug overdoses in; Gray protests in; heart-pine flooring from; homicide rate in; Humanim in; income decline in; Jackson on demolition in; JLL in; Johnson, D., post-demolition work in; Package Rescue business in; Pollock of; population decline in; post-demolition work in; rail transit line proposal in; road trip from; robotic pickers in; salvage market in; tornado hitting; Washington, D.C., bricks from; Washington, D.C., compared to; see also Bodani, William Kenneth, Jr.; Sparrows Point Baltimore Brick Company bankruptcy: Bethlehem Steel filing for; the Bon-Ton filing for Baron, Marty Barry, Bill Bent, Luther Bethlehem Steel: anti-steelworker union propaganda; bankruptcy filed by; Bodani, W.

…

., presidential votes from; coronavirus pandemic in; fork incident near; Hutchison of; industries in early; Obama support from; poverty in; Rocky Shoes & Boots in; shoe industry in; state representative campaign video on; Texas Roadhouse near; Trump presidential votes from; Trump support in; William Brooks Shoe Company in; see also Sappington, Taylor New Albany, Ohio Newman, NaTasha New York City: as Amazon HQ2 headquarters selection; Amazon seizing coronavirus pandemic opportunity in; Amazon shipping congestion across; Bloomberg as former mayor of; Facebook seizing coronavirus pandemic opportunity in; Google headed to; hyper-prosperity issues in; population relocation during coronavirus pandemic; resistance to Amazon HQ2 headquarters in Nides, Tom Nixon, Richard nondisclosure agreements: Amazon employee; AWS community Northern Virginia: Arlington in; AWS in; AWS and Dominion Power protests in; Carver Road community in; Data Center Alley in; data center consolidation in; data center expansion in; Grayson of; Haymarket in; small business endeavors in; Virginia Data Center Leadership Awards in Nuti, Bill Obama, Barack: Amazon praised by; Carney working under; job loss during early presidency of; Nelsonville, Ohio, supporting; Office of Management and Budget under; Sappington endorsement from; Sappington supporting; Swallows job changes during presidency of; Wall Street unaccountable under; Washington, D.C., transformation following election of Obetz, Ohio Ocasio-Cortez, Alexandria Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA): Carlisle, Pennsylvania, Rhodes fatality reported to; Carlisle, Pennsylvania, Rhodes investigation by; Carlisle, Pennsylvania, Shoemaker fatality investigation by; citation manipulation by; forklift hazard warning from; Kilp of Odeh, Khuloud Office Depot office of economic development Office of Management and Budget office supplies: coolofficesupplies.com selling; El Paso Independent School District buying; El Paso Office Products selling; Faber-Castell selling; Pencil Cup Office Products selling; procurement as counterpart to; RFPs for; trade show; Tucker fighting Amazon over Ohio: Amazon employee injuries in; Amazon interest in; Amazon new warehouse plan in; Amazon warehouse approval in; Amazon warehouse openings in; Dublin; Etna; food-stamp recipients in; Hilliard; JobsOhio; Little Cities of Black Diamonds in; mall closures in; Monroe; New Albany; Obetz; sales tax assessment in; state representative race in; tax credits in; tax exemptions in; see also Columbus, Ohio; Dayton, Ohio; Nelsonville, Ohio Ohio Development Services Agency Olah, David Olszewski, Johnny, Jr.

…

Louis move for Dunbar, Paul Laurence Durkan, Jenny Easter Sunday e-commerce: Amazon control of; Amazon expanding sales in; the Bon-Ton trying; growth of; repercussions of expanding Economic Club economic concentration economic location Edwards, Gary Edwards, Jay Elliott Bay Book Company El Paso, Texas: Amazon Day Expo in; coronavirus pandemic in; grocery near border of; Pencil Cup Office Products in; Sturgis & Co. in; UTEP; see also Gandara, Teresa; Grodin, Sandy El Paso Independent School District El Paso Office Products energy consumption entitlement Erdoğan, Recep Tayyip Etna, Ohio Faber-Castell Facebook: antitrust law investigations involving; The Bon-Ton Family on; coronavirus pandemic benefiting; journalism takeover by; total capital spending soar for failure FBA, see Fulfillment by Amazon FDR, see Roosevelt, Franklin D.

Other Pandemic: How QAnon Contaminated the World by James Ball

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, 4chan, Abraham Wald, algorithmic bias, Bellingcat, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Boris Johnson, Charles Babbage, cognitive dissonance, Comet Ping Pong, coronavirus, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, deepfake, deplatforming, disinformation, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, fake news, false flag, Gabriella Coleman, global pandemic, green transition, housing justice, informal economy, Jeffrey Epstein, Jeremy Corbyn, John Perry Barlow, Jon Ronson, Julian Assange, lab leak, lockdown, lolcat, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, Minecraft, nuclear winter, paperclip maximiser, Peter Thiel, Piers Corbyn, post-truth, pre–internet, QAnon, real-name policy, Russell Brand, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Snapchat, social contagion, Steve Bannon, survivorship bias, TikTok, trade route, We are Anonymous. We are Legion, WikiLeaks

Rebecca Heilwell, ‘How the 5G coronavirus conspiracy theory went from fringe to mainstream’, www.vox.com, 4 April 2020. 32. ‘Clapping, the NHS and 5G. Is this the most ridiculous coronavirus conspiracy so far?’, www.thatsnonsense.com, 3 April 2020. 33. Kaitlyn Tiffany, ‘Something in the Air’, www.theatlantic.com, 14 May 2020. 34. Bruce Y. Lee, ‘5G Networks And COVID-19 Coronavirus: Here Are The Latest Conspiracy Theories’, www.forbes.com, 9 April 2020. 35. Alexander Martin,’ Coronavirus: 90 attacks on phone masts reported during UK’s lockdown’, https://news.sky.com, 25 May 2020. 36. ‘Coronavirus: ‘ “Murder threats” to telecoms engineers over 5G’, www.bbc.co.uk, 23 April 2020. 37.

…

CBS, ‘Trump says coronavirus will “miraculously” be gone by April “once the weather warms up” ’, www.youtube.com, 11 February 2020. 38. Gabriel Sherman, ‘ “This Is So Unfair to Me”: Trump Whines About His COVID-19 Victimhood as Campaign Flails’, www.vanityfair.com, 26 May 2020. 39. ‘Daily new confirmed Covid-19 deaths per million people’, https://ourworldindata.org, accessed 14 October 2022. 40. Martin Pengelly, ‘Rush Limbaugh: coronavirus a “common cold” being “weaponised” against Trump’, www.theguardian.com, 25 February 2020. 41. Ryan Broderick, ‘Trump’s Biggest Supporters Think The Coronavirus Is A Deep State Plot’, www.buzzfeednews.com, 27 February 2020. 42.

…

It was as early as 21 January 2020 that QAnon-connected accounts started joining the dots on Gates. As the New York Times catalogues,25 a YouTuber had found a patent connected to a coronavirus by the Pirbright Institute, a Surrey-based infectious disease research institute specialising in illnesses in farm animals. The Pirbright Institute had, the YouTuber correctly said, received funding from the Gates Foundation, and therefore Gates had some stake in the pandemic. In reality, the patent related to a potential vaccine for an entirely different coronavirus – coronaviruses are a family of viruses with many different varieties, including several that cause common colds – one that affects livestock.

Viruses: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) by Crawford, Dorothy H.

clean water, coronavirus, CRISPR, discovery of penicillin, Edward Jenner, Francisco Pizarro, hygiene hypothesis, Louis Pasteur, megacity, Nelson Mandela, stem cell

This rapid dissemination of the virus threatened to cause a pandemic, but surprisingly by July 2003 it was over, the final toll being around 8,000 cases and 800 deaths involving 29 countries across 5 continents. SARS coronavirus spreads through the air and causes disease in almost everyone it infects. After an incubation period of 2 to 14 days, victims develop fever, malaise, muscle aches, and a cough, sometimes progressing rapidly to viral pneumonia that requires intensive care, with mechanical ventilation in around 20% of cases. But with no known treatment or preventive vaccine, how was the epidemic conquered so effectively? Left to its own devices, SARS coronavirus would undoubtedly have continued its trail of destruction but, fortunately, many of its characteristics played into the hands of those trying to stop it, and contributed to its speedy demise.

…

Once all these factors were appreciated, old-fashioned barrier nursing and isolation of patients and their contacts were enough to interrupt virus spread and prevent a pandemic. Unlike SARS coronavirus, HIV has been spreading among humans since the early 1900s and despite drugs which control the infection, it is still on the increase in certain areas of the world. Currently, there are 33 million people living with . We now know that re0SHIV, and it has caused over 25 million deaths since the first report of AIDS in 1981. It is interesting to examine the reasons for this lack of control, and to contrast these with the success of the SARS control programme. Firstly, although SARS coronavirus had spread internationally by the time it was recognized by the World Health Organization (WHO), it had only infected humans for a few months.

…

However, on occasions viruses do enter and successfully replicate in cells of a new host species, but after a window of opportunity lasting about a week during which they can colonize the host and reproduce, their offspring must move on to another susceptible host before the developing host immunity wipes them out. SARS coronavirus and H5N1 (bird) flu have both managed to infect humans but differ in their success to date. Whereas SARS coronavirus can spread between humans, H5N1 flu, which first jumped from birds to humans in 1997, is unable to do so. This flu virus strain is still poorly adapted to its new (human) host, and we will be in danger of an H5N1 flu pandemic only once it evolves an efficient method of spreading between us.

Nothing Personal: My Secret Life in the Dating App Inferno by Nancy Jo Sales

Airbnb, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, Cambridge Analytica, conceptual framework, coronavirus, COVID-19, digital divide, Donald Trump, double helix, East Village, emotional labour, fake news, feminist movement, gamification, gender pay gap, gentrification, global pandemic, helicopter parent, Jaron Lanier, Jeffrey Epstein, labor-force participation, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, moral panic, New Urbanism, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, PalmPilot, post-work, Robert Durst, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, social distancing, surveillance capitalism, tech billionaire, tech bro, techlash, TikTok, women in the workforce, young professional

“North Carolina Lawmakers Pass Bill to Close Sexual Assault Loopholes.” New York Times, November 1, 2019. www.nytimes.com/2019/11/01/us/north-carolina-sexual-assault-loophole.html. Paul, Katie, Inti Landauro, and Ellen Francis, “Love in the Time of Coronavirus? Around the World, Dating Finds a Way.” Reuters, March 19, 2020. www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-dating-idUSKBN2161U6. Pauly, Madison, and Julia Lurie. “Domestic Violence 911 Calls Are Increasing. Coronavirus Is Likely to Blame.” Mother Jones, March 31, 2020. www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2020/03/domestic-violence-abuse-coronavrius/. Peat, Jack. “Millennials ‘Spend 10 Hours a Week on Dating Apps.’”

…

Young people are lonelier, I think, because they’re not having as many relationships—at least not ones in real life. And sadly, the isolation required to contain the coronavirus has only made young people, and all of us, lonelier, despite our ability to communicate through screens. When the virus hit, some members of the media seemed to revel in this chance to embrace screen life, as if to say, “Hey, now we can indulge our addiction without judgment or worry that it’s really bad for us!” “Coronavirus Ended the Screen-Time Debate. Screens Won,” said a headline in the New York Times. “We’ve tried all sorts of things to stop us from staring into our devices.

…

Bibliography ABC News, “Gable Tostee Found Not Guilty of Killing Warriena Wright on Tinder Date.” Last modified October 20, 2016. www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-20/gable-tostee-not-guiltyl-warriena-wright-fatal-balcony-fall/7928346. Acklin, Mary. “Unmarried Couples Are Quarantining Together Amid the Coronavirus, Having More Sex.” CivicScience, April 1, 2020. https://civicscience.com/couples-are-quarantining-together-amid-the-coronavirus-having-more-sex/. Adamy, Janet. “U.S. Marriage Rate Plunges to Lowest Level on Record.” Wall Street Journal, April 29, 2020. www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-marriage-rate-plunges-to-lowest-level-on-record-11588132860. Alexander, Reed. “Tinder Is Making More Money Than Any Other App.”

Arriving Today: From Factory to Front Door -- Why Everything Has Changed About How and What We Buy by Christopher Mims

air freight, Airbnb, Amazon Robotics, Amazon Web Services, Apollo 11, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, big-box store, blue-collar work, Boeing 747, book scanning, business logic, business process, call centre, cloud computing, company town, coronavirus, cotton gin, COVID-19, creative destruction, data science, Dava Sobel, deep learning, dematerialisation, deskilling, digital twin, Donald Trump, easy for humans, difficult for computers, electronic logging device, Elon Musk, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fulfillment center, gentrification, gig economy, global pandemic, global supply chain, guest worker program, Hans Moravec, heat death of the universe, hive mind, Hyperloop, immigration reform, income inequality, independent contractor, industrial robot, interchangeable parts, intermodal, inventory management, Jacquard loom, Jeff Bezos, Jessica Bruder, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Joseph Schumpeter, Kaizen: continuous improvement, Kanban, Kiva Systems, level 1 cache, Lewis Mumford, lockdown, lone genius, Lyft, machine readable, Malacca Straits, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, minimum wage unemployment, Nomadland, Ocado, operation paperclip, Panamax, Pearl River Delta, planetary scale, pneumatic tube, polynesian navigation, post-Panamax, random stow, ride hailing / ride sharing, robot derives from the Czech word robota Czech, meaning slave, Rodney Brooks, rubber-tired gantry crane, scientific management, self-driving car, sensor fusion, Shenzhen special economic zone , Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, six sigma, skunkworks, social distancing, South China Sea, special economic zone, spinning jenny, standardized shipping container, Steve Jobs, supply-chain management, surveillance capitalism, TED Talk, the scientific method, Tim Cook: Apple, Toyota Production System, traveling salesman, Turing test, two-sided market, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, Upton Sinclair, vertical integration, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, workplace surveillance

Notes Chapter 1: The Gathering Storm 17,600 different products: Jon Delano, “Shortage in Chinese Products Could Mean Empty Shelves in U.S,” CBS Pittsburgh, February 28, 2020, https://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2020/02/28/chinese-products-shortage-coronavirus. artificial sweeteners: Dion Rabouin, Joann Muller, Bob Herman, and Courtenay Brown, “Brace for Coronavirus Supply Shocks,” Axios, March 12, 2020, https://www.axios.com/brace-for-coronavirus-supply-shocks-d9bef456-e72f-4cdd-aa1d-4e55b87c246c.html. three in four U.S. firms: Dion Rabouin, “Coronavirus Has Disrupted Supply Chains for Nearly 75% of U.S. Companies,” Axios, March 11, 2020, https://www.axios.com/coronavirus-supply-chains-china-46d82a0f-9f52-4229-840a-936822ddef41.html. cod caught off Scotland: “Scotland to China and Back Again . . .

…

“AFE remains brutal”: Burgett, “AFE (Amazon Fulfillment Engine).” how long such orders will last: “Coronavirus Updates from March 20, 2020,” CBS News, March 21, 2020, https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/coronavirus-disease-covid-19-latest-news-2020-03-20. panic buying of necessities and staples: Corina Knoll, “Panicked Shoppers Empty Shelves as Coronavirus Anxiety Rises,” New York Times, March 13, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/13/nyregion/coronavirus-panic-buying.html. sold out of toilet paper: Anthony Cuthbertson, “Coronavirus: Amazon Sells Out of Toilet Paper and Other Essentials amid Panic Buying,” Independent (U.K.), March 16, 2020, https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/coronavirus-amazon-panic-buying-shortages-stockpile-covid-19-a9404631.html.

…

Chapter 10: Rime of the Long-Haul Trucker every year: Paul Schenck, “Top-25 Trailer Output 2019,” Trailer Body Builders, March 13, 2020, https://www.trailer-bodybuilders.com/trailer-output/article/21126082/top25-trailer-output-2019. almost all of them in China: “Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Situation Report—43,” World Health Organization, March 3, 2020, https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200303-sitrep-43-covid-19.pdf. “risk to most Americans is low”: “An Emerging Disease Threat: How the U.S. Is Responding to COVID-19, the Novel Coronavirus,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, March 3, 2020, https://www.cdc.gov/washington/testimony/2020/t20200303.htm. effective against Covid-19: “List N: Disinfectants for Coronavirus (COVID-19),” United States Environmental Protection Agency, https://www.epa.gov/pesticide-registration/list-n-disinfectants-coronavirus-covid-19.

Brexit Unfolded: How No One Got What They Want (And Why They Were Never Going To) by Chris Grey

"World Economic Forum" Davos, anti-communist, Berlin Wall, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, coronavirus, COVID-19, deindustrialization, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, first-past-the-post, game design, global pandemic, imperial preference, Jeremy Corbyn, John Bercow, lockdown, non-tariff barriers, open borders, post-truth, reserve currency, Robert Mercer

For another, it offered a shield for the effects of Brexit because the economic impacts of coronavirus were so huge. Economists could warn that the Brexit effects would be far more significant in the longer term than those of coronavirus but, in the political here-and-now, those effects would be dwarfed. That meant that the inevitably adverse consequences of a trade deal (compared with EU membership) could more easily be concealed. On the other hand, it potentially made a no-deal Brexit more politically viable. However, neither was risk-free since both meant a double hit from Brexit and from coronavirus. At all events, from March onwards the Brexit process and the coronavirus pandemic became inextricably intertwined.

…

The same was true of Cummings and, for that matter, the entire Brexit high command, which had always been characterised by protest and victimhood, not competence and responsibility. That was – literally – fatal in terms of dealing with coronavirus, as was shown during 2020 by the much higher death rate than that of most other countries. But that in turn meant that the coronavirus crisis held up a mirror to the nature and limitations of how Brexiters had approached Brexit and how the Brexit government was pursuing it. However, if a government configured solely by Brexit was ill-equipped to deal with coronavirus, the pandemic crisis offered the government a convenient cover for how it was dealing with Brexit. For one thing, it meant that Brexit was no longer in the headlines.

…

But just as they were about to begin, something entirely unexpected and unprecedented was emerging which was to push Brexit from the headlines and to colour the entire negotiating proceedings: the global pandemic of a new and deadly virus. THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC AND BREXIT There is no doubt a book to be written just on the way that the coronavirus – or Covid-19 – pandemic and Brexit intersected. For one thing, it meant that the future terms negotiations often took place by video conference, rather than face to face, which may have inflected them differently. It also meant that, at key times, members of the negotiating teams were in isolation and for a while the British Prime Minister was actually hospitalised.

Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything―Even Things That Seem Impossible Today by Jane McGonigal

2021 United States Capitol attack, Airbnb, airport security, Alvin Toffler, augmented reality, autism spectrum disorder, autonomous vehicles, availability heuristic, basic income, biodiversity loss, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, circular economy, clean water, climate change refugee, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, Community Supported Agriculture, coronavirus, COVID-19, CRISPR, cryptocurrency, data science, decarbonisation, digital divide, disinformation, Donald Trump, drone strike, Elon Musk, fake news, fiat currency, future of work, Future Shock, game design, George Floyd, global pandemic, global supply chain, Greta Thunberg, income inequality, index card, Internet of things, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, Kickstarter, labor-force participation, lockdown, longitudinal study, Mason jar, mass immigration, meta-analysis, microbiome, Minecraft, moral hazard, open borders, pattern recognition, place-making, plant based meat, post-truth, QAnon, QR code, remote working, RFID, risk tolerance, School Strike for Climate, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Snapchat, social distancing, stem cell, TED Talk, telepresence, telepresence robot, The future is already here, TikTok, traumatic brain injury, universal basic income, women in the workforce, work culture , Y Combinator

Goodman and Niraj Chokshi, “How the World Ran Out of Everything,” New York Times, June 1, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/01/business/coronavirus-global-shortages.html. 37 Diane Brady, “COVID-19 and Supply-Chain Recovery: Planning for the Future,” October 9, 2020, in The McKinsey Podcast, 29:09, https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/operations/our-insights/COVID-19-and-supply-chain-recovery-planning-for-the-future. 38 Sarah Gibbens, “These 5 Foods Show How Coronavirus Has Disrupted Supply Chains,” National Geographic, May 19, 2020, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/covid-19-disrupts-complex-food-chains-beef-milk-eggs-produce; “Food Security and COVID-19,” World Bank, August 17, 2021, https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/agriculture/brief/food-security-and-covid-19. 39 “Burn-Out an ‘Occupational Phenomenon’: International Classification of Diseases,” World Health Organization, May 28, 2019, https://www.who.int/news/item/28-05-2019-burn-out-an-occupational-phenomenon-international-classification-of-diseases. 40 Jennifer Moss, “Beyond Burned Out,” Harvard Business Review, February 10, 2021, https://hbr.org/2021/02/beyond-burned-out; Anitra Lesser, “The Impacts of COVID on Rising Burnout Rates,” Employers Council, October 23, 2020, https://blog.employerscouncil.org/2020/10/23/the-impacts-of-COVID-on-rising-burnout-rates/. 41 “Long Working Hours Increasing Deaths from Heart Disease and Stroke: WHO, ILO,” World Health Organization, May 17, 2021, https://www.who.int/news/item/17-05-2021-long-working-hours-increasing-deaths-from-heart-disease-and-stroke-who-ilo. 42 Maria Cristina Rulli et al., “Land-Use Change and the Livestock Revolution Increase the Risk of Zoonotic Coronavirus Transmission from Rhinolophid Bats,” Nature Food 2 (June 2021): 409–16, https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-021-00285-x; “Coronavirus, Climate Change, and the Environment: A Conversation on COVID-19 with Dr. Aaron Bernstein, Director of Harvard Chan C-CHANGE,” Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, accessed August 27, 2021, https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/c-change/subtopics/coronavirus-and-climate-change/. 43 Institute of Medicine and National Research Council, Potential Risks and Benefits of Gain-of-Function Research: Summary of a Workshop (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2015), https://doi.org/10.17226/21666. 44 Andrea Pozzer et al., “Regional and Global Contributions of Air Pollution to Risk of Death from COVID-19,” Cardiovascular Research 116, no. 14 (December 2020): 2247–53, https://doi.org/10.1093/cvr/cvaa288. 45 Dan Walton and Maarten van Aalst, Climate-Related Extreme Weather Events and COVID-19: A First Look at the Number of People Affected by Intersecting Disasters (Geneva, Switzerland: International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, September 2020), https://media.ifrc.org/ifrc/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Extreme-weather-events-and-COVID-19-V4.pdf. 46 James M.

…

Wittmann, “Reward and Novelty Enhance Imagination of Future Events in a Motivational-Episodic Network,” PLoS ONE 10, no. 11 (November 2015): e0143477, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0143477. 13 Pema Chödrön, “Smile at Fear,” The Best Buddhist Writing 2012 (Boulder, Colorado: Shambhala, 2012). 14 Ibid. 15 National Intelligence Council, Global Trends 2040: A More Contested World, March 2021, https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/GlobalTrends_2040.pdf. 16 Recommendations for learning more about these future forces: Antonio Regalado, “The Next Act for Messenger RNA Could Be Bigger Than COVID Vaccines,” MIT Technology Review, February 5, 2021, https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/02/05/1017366/messenger-rna-vaccines-COVID-hiv/; Bill McKibben, “Renewable Energy Is Suddenly Startlingly Cheap,” New Yorker, April 28, 2021, https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-a-warming-planet/renewable-energy-is-suddenly-startlingly-cheap; Kaitlin Love, “Majority Favors Social Progress over Economic Growth in the Wake of the Coronavirus Pandemic,” Ipsos, September 10, 2020, https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/news-polls/Majority-Favors-Social-Progress-over-Economic-Growth-in-the-Wake-of-the-Coronavirus-Pandemic; Matthew Shaer, “Soon, Your Doctor Could Print a Human Organ on Demand,” Smithsonian Magazine, May 2015, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/soon-doctor-print-human-organ-on-demand-180954951/; Amos Zeeberg, “Bricks Alive!

…

., “The Origins and Consequences of Affective Polarization in the United States,” Annual Review of Political Science 22 (2019): 129–46, https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-polisci-051117-073034; Shanto Iyengar, Gaurav Sood, and Yphtach Lelkes, “Affect, Not Ideology: A Social Identity Perspective on Polarization,” Public Opinion Quarterly 76, no. 3 (September 2012): 405–31, https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfs038. 7 Levi Boxell et al., “Affective Polarization Did Not Increase during the Coronavirus Pandemic,” working paper no. 28036 (October 2020), National Bureau of Economic Research, https://doi.org/10.3386/w28036. 8 Sebastian Jungkunz, “Political Polarization During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” Frontiers in Political Science 3 (March 2021): 622512, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpos.2021.622512; Hunt Allcott et al., “Polarization and Public Health: Partisan Differences in Social Distancing During the Coronavirus Pandemic,” Journal of Public Economics 191 (November 2020): 104254, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2020.104254; Christos Makridis and Jonathan T.

The London Problem: What Britain Gets Wrong About Its Capital City by Jack Brown

Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, coronavirus, COVID-19, Crossrail, deindustrialization, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, Edward Glaeser, Etonian, gentrification, gig economy, Gordon Gekko, knowledge economy, lockdown, New Urbanism, Northern Rock, post-war consensus, quantitative easing, remote working, Richard Florida, sceptred isle, superstar cities, working-age population, zero-sum game

This book attempts to untangle some of these strands, however briefly, to try to better understand them. It begins with an overview of the facts, before undertaking a historical review of past attempts to address London’s perceived dominance within the UK. Next, it explores public perceptions and the relationship between rhetoric and reality. In closing, it considers the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, which arrived between this book’s conception and its delivery, and some possibilities for the future. This book This addition to Haus’s Curiosities series draws heavily on my research for a report entitled London, UK, conducted in 2018 for Centre for London. I am extremely grateful to Centre for London for the opportunity to spend time getting to know this subject and for its support – particularly that of Richard Brown (no relation).

…

While the reality is of course complex and multifaceted, a little more understanding about the capital itself – from its historical origins to its place in the UK economy today – is important. So, too, is an understanding of the much-maligned people who live there. Londoners At the start of 2020, before the coronavirus pandemic, London was home to nine million people, and this figure was expected only to increase. London’s growth has been driven primarily by ‘natural change’ (births exceeding deaths), but also by new arrivals from overseas. In terms of domestic migration (that is, movement within the UK), more people tend to leave London for elsewhere in the country than arrive each year, with over half moving to the neighbouring southeast or east of England regions, often when reaching their thirties, perhaps to start families outside the city.1 Somewhat relatedly, the average Londoner today is almost five years younger than the UK average, although the number of Londoners over the age of sixty-five is also increasing.2 Today’s Londoners are also incredibly diverse, in every sense of the word.

…

Equally, major protests see citizens travel from across the country to converge on the capital’s public spaces, often in Trafalgar Square, Hyde Park, or Parliament Square. Here they gather to express opposition to issues as diverse as the Iraq War or the ban on foxhunting in the early 2000s or, more recently, to structural racism or the coronavirus lockdowns in 2020. Political power lies in the capital’s streets as well as its historic buildings. Regional imbalances? With so much going on in one place, it is unsurprising that London has such a dominant role within its nation. The Institute for Fiscal Studies recently ranked the UK as one of the most geographically unequal nations in the developed world,43 a notion that is often repeated.44 London’s dominance is far from ideal, for capital or country.

Fed Up!: Success, Excess and Crisis Through the Eyes of a Hedge Fund Macro Trader by Colin Lancaster

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Adam Neumann (WeWork), Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, always be closing, asset-backed security, beat the dealer, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, bond market vigilante , Bonfire of the Vanities, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, business cycle, buy the rumour, sell the news, Carmen Reinhart, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, collateralized debt obligation, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, credit crunch, currency manipulation / currency intervention, deal flow, Donald Trump, Edward Thorp, family office, fear index, fiat currency, fixed income, Flash crash, George Floyd, global macro, global pandemic, global supply chain, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Growth in a Time of Debt, housing crisis, index arbitrage, inverted yield curve, Jeff Bezos, Jim Simons, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, liquidity trap, lockdown, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, low skilled workers, margin call, market bubble, Masayoshi Son, Michael Milken, Mikhail Gorbachev, Minsky moment, Modern Monetary Theory, moral hazard, National Debt Clock, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, Northern Rock, oil shock, pets.com, Ponzi scheme, price stability, proprietary trading, quantitative easing, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, Sharpe ratio, short selling, short squeeze, social distancing, SoftBank, statistical arbitrage, stock buybacks, The Great Moderation, TikTok, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, two and twenty, value at risk, Vision Fund, WeWork, yield curve, zero-sum game

There are reports of blood clotting disorders and bleeding in the brain. The Big D appointed VP Pence to lead a coronavirus task force. Right before putting Pence in charge, Trump downplayed the severity of the situation, claiming the number of US coronavirus cases “within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.” Today’s COVID-19 headlines: California is monitoring 8,400; twenty-eight cases in the state. Dozens of hospital staffers who treated a US patient with a coronavirus of unknown origin are being monitored. 700 in New York are asked to self-isolate. Northern Ireland confirms first case.

…

Part 2: The Crash Chapter 4 The Virus Spreads January 2020 1/1/20—Huanan Seafood Market closed by local authorities in response to illness outbreak. 1/3/20—ISM manufacturing declines to 47.2, its lowest print in a decade. 1/7/20—At a closed politburo meeting, Xi Jinping requests prevention and control work to address the new coronavirus. 1/8/20—South Korea announces its first case of coronavirus from China: a woman who had recently traveled to Wuhan. 1/10/20—Payrolls miss at 145K; unemployment steady at 3.5%; average hourly earnings at 2.9%, first time -3% since July 2018. 1/11/20— China reports its first COVID-19 death. 1/11/20—WHO announces: “The Chinese government reports that there is no clear evidence that the virus passes easily from person to person.” 1/15/20—Phase 1 of US/China trade deal signed. 1/16/20—Trump impeachment trial begins in the Senate. 1/16/20—Japan announces first COVID-19 case. 1/20/20—First reported case of COVID-19 in the USA. 1/23/20—Wuhan goes into lockdown. 1/30/20—FOMC leaves rates unchanged, downgrades household spending description to “moderate” from “strong.” 1/30/20—WHO declares “global health emergency.” 1/31/20—President Trump bans Chinese travelers from entering the USA.

…

In the deck of materials used for the earnings call, one slide shows white unicorns running up a mountain, implying performance. But there’s a ditch, or some sort of valley, that two of the unicorns have fallen into. This is labelled “The Valley of Coronavirus.” Only one unicorn looks as if it has made it out of the valley and back up the mountain. “If I were to describe it,” Masa Son tells his online audience, “unicorns that had been climbing uphill hard are suddenly faced with a coronavirus valley, and they are falling into that valley.” “Vision Fund’s results are not something to be proud of,” he says. “If the results are bad, you can’t raise money from investors.

The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics by Tim Harford

Abraham Wald, access to a mobile phone, Ada Lovelace, affirmative action, algorithmic bias, Automated Insights, banking crisis, basic income, behavioural economics, Black Lives Matter, Black Swan, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, Cambridge Analytica, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Cass Sunstein, Charles Babbage, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, contact tracing, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, David Attenborough, Diane Coyle, disinformation, Donald Trump, Estimating the Reproducibility of Psychological Science, experimental subject, fake news, financial innovation, Florence Nightingale: pie chart, Gini coefficient, Great Leap Forward, Hans Rosling, high-speed rail, income inequality, Isaac Newton, Jeremy Corbyn, job automation, Kickstarter, life extension, meta-analysis, microcredit, Milgram experiment, moral panic, Netflix Prize, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Paul Samuelson, Phillips curve, publication bias, publish or perish, random walk, randomized controlled trial, recommendation engine, replication crisis, Richard Feynman, Richard Thaler, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, selection bias, sentiment analysis, Silicon Valley, sorting algorithm, sparse data, statistical model, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Bannon, Steven Pinker, survivorship bias, systematic bias, TED Talk, universal basic income, W. E. B. Du Bois, When a measure becomes a target

John P. A. Ioannidis, “A Fiasco in the Making?,” Stat, March 17, 2020, https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fiasco-in-the-making-as-the-coronavirus-pandemic-takes-hold-we-are-making-decisions-without-reliable-data/. 8. “Taiwan Says WHO Failed to Act on Coronavirus Transmission Warning,” Financial Times, March 20, 2020, https://www.ft.com/content/2a70a02a-644a-11ea-a6cd-df28cc3c6a68. 9. Demetri Sevastopulo and Hannah Kuchler, “Donald Trump’s Chaotic Coronavirus Crisis,” Financial Times, March 27, 2020, https://www.ft.com/content/80aa0b58-7010-11ea-9bca-bf503995cd6f. 10. David Card, “Origins of the Unemployment Rate: The Lasting Legacy of Measurement without Theory,” UC Berkeley and National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper, February 2011, http://davidcard.berkeley.edu/papers/origins-of-unemployment.pdf. 11.

…

The statistics for a huge range of important issues that predate the coronavirus have been painstakingly assembled over the years by diligent statisticians, and often made available to download, free of charge, anywhere in the world. Yet we are spoiled by such luxury, casually dismissing “lies, damned lies, and statistics.” The case of COVID-19 reminds us how desperate the situation can become when the statistics simply aren’t there. * * * — Darrell Huff made statistics seem like a stage magician’s trick: all good fun but never to be taken seriously. Long before the coronavirus, I’d started to worry that this isn’t an attitude that helps us today.

…

Whether we were evaluating the prevalence of strokes, the evidence that debt damages economic growth, or even the number of times in The Hobbit that the word “she” is used, the numbers could illuminate the world as well as obscure it. As the coronavirus pandemic has so starkly illustrated, we depend on reliable numbers to shape our decisions—as individuals, as organizations, and as a society. And just as with coronavirus, the statistics have often been gathered only when we’ve been faced with a crisis. Consider the unemployment rate—a measure of how many people want jobs but do not have them. It’s now a basic piece of information for any government wanting to understand the state of the economy, but back in 1920, nobody could have told you how many people were searching for work.10 Only when severe recessions made the question more politically pertinent did governments begin to collect the data that could answer it.

The Hype Machine: How Social Media Disrupts Our Elections, Our Economy, and Our Health--And How We Must Adapt by Sinan Aral

Airbnb, Albert Einstein, algorithmic bias, AlphaGo, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, AOL-Time Warner, augmented reality, behavioural economics, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Cambridge Analytica, carbon footprint, Cass Sunstein, computer vision, contact tracing, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, death of newspapers, deep learning, deepfake, digital divide, digital nomad, disinformation, disintermediation, Donald Trump, Drosophila, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, end-to-end encryption, Erik Brynjolfsson, experimental subject, facts on the ground, fake news, Filter Bubble, George Floyd, global pandemic, hive mind, illegal immigration, income inequality, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, lockdown, longitudinal study, low skilled workers, Lyft, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, Metcalfe’s law, mobile money, move fast and break things, multi-sided market, Nate Silver, natural language processing, Neal Stephenson, Network effects, performance metric, phenotype, recommendation engine, Robert Bork, Robert Shiller, Russian election interference, Second Machine Age, seminal paper, sentiment analysis, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, skunkworks, Snapchat, social contagion, social distancing, social graph, social intelligence, social software, social web, statistical model, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steve Jurvetson, surveillance capitalism, Susan Wojcicki, Telecommunications Act of 1996, The Chicago School, the strength of weak ties, The Wisdom of Crowds, theory of mind, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, WikiLeaks, work culture , Yogi Berra

Fake News as Public Health Crisis In March 2020, a deliberate misinformation campaign spread fear among the American public by propagating the false story that a nationwide quarantine to contain the coronavirus pandemic was imminent. The National Security Council had to publicly disavow the story. And that wasn’t the only fake news spreading about the virus. The Chinese government spread false conspiracy theories blaming the U.S. military for starting the pandemic. Several false coronavirus “cures” killed hundreds of people who drank chlorine or excessive alcohol to rid themselves of the virus. There was, of course, no cure or vaccine at the time. International groups, like the World Health Organization (WHO), fought coronavirus misinformation on the Hype Machine as part of their global pandemic response.

…

International groups, like the World Health Organization (WHO), fought coronavirus misinformation on the Hype Machine as part of their global pandemic response. My group at MIT supported the COVIDConnect fact-checking apparatus, the official WhatsApp coronavirus channel of the WHO, and studied the spread and impact of coronavirus misinformation worldwide. But we first glimpsed the destructive power of health misinformation on the Hype Machine the year before the coronavirus pandemic hit, during the measles resurgence of 2019. Measles was declared eliminated in the United States in 2000. But while only 63 cases were reported in 2010, over 1,100 cases were reported in the first seven months of 2019, a nearly 1,800 percent increase.

…

As we’ve seen, this is the signature of a fake news crisis: it spreads faster than it can be corrected, so it’s hard to clean up, even with a healthy dose of the truth. The threat of election manipulation in 2020 is even higher due to the chaos caused by the coronavirus pandemic. With uncertainty around the viability of in-person voting, questions about voting by mail, and calls to delay the election, there can be no doubt that foreign actors will look to leverage the confusion caused by the coronavirus to disrupt our democratic process. While some claim fake news is benign, during protests and confusion, amid the smoke, fire, and foreign interference, months from the most consequential election of our time, it is a real threat—not only to the election, but to the sanctity and peace of the election process.

Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain by Sathnam Sanghera

Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, British Empire, Cape to Cairo, cognitive dissonance, Corn Laws, coronavirus, COVID-19, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, Etonian, European colonialism, food miles, ghettoisation, global pandemic, Jeremy Corbyn, Khartoum Gordon, lockdown, Mahatma Gandhi, mass immigration, Neil Armstrong, period drama, phenotype, Rishi Sunak, school choice, Scientific racism, Scramble for Africa, Shamima Begum, social distancing, South Sea Bubble, spice trade, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, women in the workforce

Davis, Naples and Napoleon: Southern Italy and the European Revolutions, 1780–1860, Oxford University Press, 2006, p. 326. 6 George Curzon, The Place of India in the Empire: Being an Address Delivered before the Philosophical Institute of Edinburgh, John Murray, 1909. 7 Boris Johnson speech, Conservative Party Conference, 2/10/2016, https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/full-text-boris-johnson-s-conference-speech. 8 Robert Tombs, The English and their History, Penguin, 2015, p. 535. 9 A comment placed on the FT website, under the article ‘Johnson under fire as coronavirus enters dangerous phase’, 12/03/2020, https://www.ft.com/content/c43b9c3e-6470-11ea-a6cd-df28cc3c6a68. 10 International opinion was neatly summarized in one article: ‘UK’s coronavirus death toll is met with global disbelief’, The Times, 7/05/2020, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/uks-coronavirus-death-toll-is-met-with-global-disbelief-t70clv9kq. Chapter 8: Dirty Money 1 Elisabeth Lenckos, ‘Daylesford’, UCL Blogs, 20/08/2014, https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/eicah/daylesford-case-study/; Jan Sibthorpe, ‘East India Company at Home, 1757–1857: Sezincote Case Study’, UCL Blog, 2020, https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/eicah/sezincote-gloucestershire/sezincote-case-study-sezincote-a-brief-description/. 2 Lenckos, ‘Daylesford’. 3 Sanchez Manning, ‘Britain’s colonial shame: Slave-owners given huge payouts after abolition’, Independent, 24/02/2013, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/britains-colonial-shame-slave-owners-given-huge-payouts-after-abolition-8508358.html. 4 ‘UK economic history: slavery’, Financial Times, 13/06/2020, https://www.ft.com/content/99e4053d-ed8c-40d0-b5c5-745a1393e596; Jonathan Guthrie, ‘Lex in-depth: Examining the slave trade – “Britain has a debt to repay”’, Financial Times, 26/06/2020, https://www.ft.com/content/945c6136-0b92-41bf-bd80-a80d944bb0b8?

…

., Orientalism, Penguin, 2003 Saini, Angela, Superior: The Return of Race Science, Fourth Estate, 2019 Sandbrook, Dominic, ‘How one corporation conquered an entire continent’, review of William Dalrymple, The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company, The Times, 8/09/2019, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-relentless-rise-of-the-east-india-company-by-william-dalrymple-review-how-one-corporation-conquered-an-entire-continent-t3d7fx7tr Sanderson, David, ‘Beware colonial guilt, Neil MacGregor warns museums’, The Times, 12/09/2019, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/beware-colonial-guilt-neil-macgregor-warns-museums-3f7mmfrp6 Sandhu, Serina, ‘No Thanks, We’re British: Survey Reveals UK Tourists are Offended by Thongs and Topless Sunbathing’, Independent, 19/06/2015, https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/no-thanks-were-british-survey-reveals-uk-tourists-are-offended-by-thongs-and-topless-sunbathing-10331457.html Sanghera, Sathnam, ‘Coronavirus and ethnicity: black and Asian NHS medics on the front line’, The Times, 24/04/2020, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/coronavirus-and-ethnicity-black-and-asian-nhs-medics-on-the-front-line-dhznrc3kc Sarr, Felwine, and Savoy, Bénédicte, The Restitution of African Cultural Heritage: Toward a New Relational Ethics, 2018, http://restitutionreport2018.com/sarr_savoy_en.pdf Saunders, Robert, ‘The myth of Brexit as imperial nostalgia’, Prospect, 7/01/2019, https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/world/the-myth-of-brexit-as-imperial-nostalgia Saunders, Robert, ‘Myths from a small island: the dangers of a buccaneering view of British history’, 9/10/2019, New Statesman, https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2019/10/myths-small-island-dangers-buccaneering-view-british-history Saunders, Robert, Yes to Europe!

…

The Impact of Imperialism on Britain from the Mid-Nineteenth Century, Pearson Education, 2005 Thrush, Coll, Indigenous London: Native Travelers at the Heart of Empire, Yale University Press, 2016 ‘Tiger Hunting in India 1924’, National Geographic, 2/08/2014, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/8/140803-tiger-hunt-1924-india-maharaja-safari/ Tillotson, Michael, ‘Recollections of the Indian Mutiny’, The Times, 18/08/2007, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/recollections-of-the-indian-mutiny-22mbvzvdz89 Tindall, Gillian, The House by the Thames, Pimlico, 2007 Tolhurst, Alain, ‘Coronavirus: UK’s testing chief says track and trace was ditched in March due to forecast of one million cases’, Politics Home, 22/05/2020, https://www.politicshome.com/news/article/coronavirus-uks-testing-chief-says-track-and-trace-was-abandoned-in-march-due-to-forecast-of-a-million-cases Tombs, Robert, The English and their History, Penguin, 2015 Tosh, John, ‘“A Fresh Access of Dignity”: Masculinity and Imperial Commitment in Britain, 1815–1914’, University of North London, http://www.kznhass-history.net/files/seminars/Tosh.pdf Tosh, John, ‘Home and Away: The Flight from Domesticity in Late-Nineteenth-Century England Re-visited’, Gender and History 2015, 27:3, 561–75, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-0424.12150 ‘Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade – Estimates’, Slave Voyages, https://www.slavevoyages.org/assessment/estimates Travis, Alan, ‘Virginity tests for immigrants “reflected dark age prejudices” of 1970s Britain’, Guardian, 8/05/2020, https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/may/08/virginity-tests-immigrants-prejudices-britain Trigger, Bruce G., ‘Alternative Archaeologies: Nationalist, Colonialist, Imperialist’, Man 1984, 19:3, 355–70, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2802176?

Dangerous Ideas: A Brief History of Censorship in the West, From the Ancients to Fake News by Eric Berkowitz

Albert Einstein, algorithmic management, anti-communist, Ayatollah Khomeini, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, Bonfire of the Vanities, borderless world, Brexit referendum, British Empire, Charlie Hebdo massacre, Chelsea Manning, colonial rule, coronavirus, COVID-19, deplatforming, disinformation, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, Evgeny Morozov, fake news, Filter Bubble, high-speed rail, Index librorum prohibitorum, Jeff Bezos, Julian Assange, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, microaggression, Mikhail Gorbachev, Minecraft, New Urbanism, post-truth, pre–internet, QAnon, Ralph Nader, Saturday Night Live, Silicon Valley, source of truth, Steve Bannon, surveillance capitalism, undersea cable, W. E. B. Du Bois, WikiLeaks

“Singapore Fake News Law a ‘Disaster’ for Freedom of Speech, Says Rights Group,” Guardian, May 9, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/09/singapore-fake-news-law-a-disaster-for-freedom-of-speech-says-rights-group. 91. Paul Mozur, “Coronavirus Outrage Spurs China’s Internet Police to Action,” New York Times, March 16, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/business/china-coronavirus-internet-police.html?searchResultPosition=1. 92. Jane Li, “A Keyboard Encryption App Used to Skirt Coronavirus Censorship Was Removed by Apple in China,” Quartz, March 20, 2020, https://qz.com/1822127/encryption-app-to-avoid-coronavirus-censorship-removed-by-apple-in-china/; Alex Hern, “Apple Removes two podcasts from China store after censorship demands,” Guardian, June 12, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jun/12/apple-removes-two-podcast-apps-from-china-store-after-censorship-demands. 93.

…

Zeynep Tufecki, “Wikileaks Isn’t Whistleblowing,” New York Times, November 4, 2016, https://www.nytimes.corn/2016/11/05/opinion/what-were-missing-while-we-obsess-over-john-podestas-email.html. 102. Bobby Allyn, “Researchers: Nearly Half of Accounts Tweeting About Coronavirus Are Likely Bots,” NPR, May 20, 2020, https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/05/20/859814085/researchers-nearly-half-of-accounts-tweeting-about-coronavirus-are-likely-bots; Thor Benson, “Trolls and Bots Are Flooding Social Media with Disinformation Encouraging States to End Quarantine,” Business Insider, April 20, 2020, https://www.businessinsider.com/trolls-bots-flooding-social-media-with-anti-quarantine-disinformation-2020-4. 103.

…

Steve Stecklow, “Why Facebook Is Losing the War on Hate Speech in Myanmar,” Reuters, August 15, 2018, https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/myanmar-facebook-hate. 67. Tech Transparency Project, “Extremists Are Using Facebook to Organize for Civil War amid Coronavirus,” Campaign for Accountability, April 22, 2020, https://www.techtransparencyproject.org/articles/extremists-are-using-facebook-to-organize-for-civil-war-amid-coronavirus. 68. Chris Rodrigo, “Critics Fear Facebook Fact-Checkers Losing Misinformation Fight,” Hill, January 20, 2020, https://thehill.com/policy/technology/478896-critics-fear-facebook-fact-checkers-losing-misinformation-fight. 69.

News and How to Use It: What to Believe in a Fake News World by Alan Rusbridger

airport security, basic income, Bellingcat, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, Bletchley Park, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Chelsea Manning, citizen journalism, Climategate, cognitive dissonance, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, Credit Default Swap, crisis actor, cross-subsidies, crowdsourcing, disinformation, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, end-to-end encryption, fake news, Filter Bubble, future of journalism, George Floyd, ghettoisation, global pandemic, Google Earth, green new deal, hive mind, housing crisis, Howard Rheingold, illegal immigration, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jeff Bezos, Jeffrey Epstein, Jeremy Corbyn, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Julian Assange, Kickstarter, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, Murray Gell-Mann, Narrative Science, Neil Kinnock, Nelson Mandela, New Journalism, Nicholas Carr, ocean acidification, offshore financial centre, post-truth, profit motive, public intellectual, publication bias, Seymour Hersh, Snapchat, social distancing, Social Justice Warrior, Steve Bannon, tech baron, the scientific method, TikTok, universal basic income, WikiLeaks, yellow journalism

‘Duncan Campbell and David Hencke among those leaving Guardian’. The Guardian, 19 June 2009. <https://www.theguardian.com/media/2009/jun/19/duncan-campell-david-hencke-guardian> Burchard, Hans von der, and Cornelius Hirsch. ‘Europe’s citizens back their leaders’ coronavirus response, say polls’. Politico, 20 March 2020. <https://www.politico.eu/article/europes-citizens-back-their-leaders-coronavirus-response-say-polls/> Byers, Dylan. ‘The New Yorker passed on Seymour Hersh’s Bin Laden story’. Politico, 11 May 2015. <https://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2015/05/the-new-yorker-passed-on-seymour-hershs-bin-laden-206933.html> Cagé, Julia.

…

<https://www.monbiot.com/registry-of-interests/> Monck, Adrian with Mike Hanley. Can You Trust the Media? London: Icon Books, 2008. Montanaro, Domenico. ‘Poll: Americans Don’t Trust What They’re Hearing From Trump On Coronavirus’. NPR Special Series: The Coronvirus Crisis, 17 March 2020. <https://www.npr.org/2020/03/17/816680033/poll-americans-dont-trust-what-they-re-hearing-from-trump-on-coronavirus> Morello, Lauren. ‘“Climategate” Scientist Admits “Awful E-Mails,” but Peers Say IPCC Conclusions Remain Sound’. The New York Times, 2 March 2010. <https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/cwire/2010/03/02/02climatewire-climategate-scientist-admits-awful-e-mails-b-66224.html?

…

<https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/our-research/journalists-uk> Tiku, Nitasha. ‘Julian Assange Picks a Media Fight With the Guardian’. New York Magazine, 21 December 2010. <https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2010/12/julian_assange_picks_a_media.html> The Times. ‘The Times view on the press under coronavirus’. 4 April 2020. <https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-times-view-on-the-press-under-coronavirus-7cvfk36vl> Timm, Trevor. ‘The media’s reaction to Seymour Hersh’s bin Laden scoop has been disgraceful’. Columbia Journalism Review, 15 May 2015. <https://www.cjr.org/analysis/seymour_hersh_osama_bin_laden.php> Tobitt, Charlotte. ‘“Cancer battle freed me up to work on Oxfam scoop and stumble into NHS drugs story”, says Times reporter Sean O’Neill’.

The Pandemic Century: One Hundred Years of Panic, Hysteria, and Hubris by Mark Honigsbaum

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Asian financial crisis, biofilm, Black Swan, Boeing 747, clean water, coronavirus, disinformation, Donald Trump, Easter island, en.wikipedia.org, germ theory of disease, global pandemic, indoor plumbing, Louis Pasteur, Mark Zuckerberg, megacity, moral panic, Pearl River Delta, Ronald Reagan, Skype, the built environment, the long tail, trade route, urban renewal, urban sprawl, zoonotic diseases

However, the patients with SARS that Peiris had investigated showed no evidence of metapneumovirus, only the coronavirus. Nor were the coronavirus or antibodies to the coronavirus found in other patients who did not have SARS. Peiris was therefore sure that the new coronavirus was the cause of SARS and that it had been newly introduced to humans, and he submitted a paper to this effect to the British medical journal The Lancet. Researchers at Erasmus University in Rotterdam eventually resolved the dispute by performing an experiment on macaques, one group of which was infected with the coronavirus, a second with the human metapneumovirus, and a third with both viruses.

…

To be sure there had not been an error, Peiris also spun the fluid containing the virus in a high-speed centrifuge and asked Lim to look at the concentrated virus particles under an electron microscope. Each virus particle was ringed by a halo of tiny spikes as if it were wearing a crown—that too, strongly suggested a coronavirus. Peiris was now confident that SARS was a coronavirus. He speculated that the reason the homology was not perfect was that it was very likely a new type of coronavirus that had emerged recently from an animal reservoir and therefore had yet to be typed by GenBank. Using the partial genetic sequence of the virus, Peiris and his colleagues set up a PCR test to detect the virus, and on March 28 made the test available to hospitals in Hong Kong and to the WHO.

…

Events now moved rapidly. Within three days of the WHO’s receiving this information, two other laboratories also reported finding the coronavirus, and by March 25 the CDC had uploaded images of the virus to a secure WHO website, prompting Peiris’s group to do the same. Nonetheless, some researchers continued to insist that SARS was caused by a paramyxovirus or perhaps the human metapneumovirus. This prompted speculation that the viruses worked synergistically, with the coronavirus weakening the immune system to the point where the other viruses colonized the respiratory tract, triggering SARS’s distinctive pathology.

Chaos Kings: How Wall Street Traders Make Billions in the New Age of Crisis by Scott Patterson

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, 4chan, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, asset allocation, backtesting, Bear Stearns, beat the dealer, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, Bitcoin "FTX", Black Lives Matter, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black Swan, Black Swan Protection Protocol, Black-Scholes formula, blockchain, Bob Litterman, Boris Johnson, Brownian motion, butterfly effect, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Carl Icahn, centre right, clean tech, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, Colonization of Mars, commodity super cycle, complexity theory, contact tracing, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, Credit Default Swap, cryptocurrency, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, decarbonisation, disinformation, diversification, Donald Trump, Doomsday Clock, Edward Lloyd's coffeehouse, effective altruism, Elliott wave, Elon Musk, energy transition, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, Extinction Rebellion, fear index, financial engineering, fixed income, Flash crash, Gail Bradbrook, George Floyd, global pandemic, global supply chain, Gordon Gekko, Greenspan put, Greta Thunberg, hindsight bias, index fund, interest rate derivative, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jeff Bezos, Jeffrey Epstein, Joan Didion, John von Neumann, junk bonds, Just-in-time delivery, lockdown, Long Term Capital Management, Louis Bachelier, mandelbrot fractal, Mark Spitznagel, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, mass immigration, megacity, Mikhail Gorbachev, Mohammed Bouazizi, money market fund, moral hazard, Murray Gell-Mann, Nick Bostrom, off-the-grid, panic early, Pershing Square Capital Management, Peter Singer: altruism, Ponzi scheme, power law, precautionary principle, prediction markets, proprietary trading, public intellectual, QAnon, quantitative easing, quantitative hedge fund, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, Ralph Nader, Ralph Nelson Elliott, random walk, Renaissance Technologies, rewilding, Richard Thaler, risk/return, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, Rory Sutherland, Rupert Read, Sam Bankman-Fried, Silicon Valley, six sigma, smart contracts, social distancing, sovereign wealth fund, statistical arbitrage, statistical model, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, systematic trading, tail risk, technoutopianism, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, the scientific method, too big to fail, transaction costs, University of East Anglia, value at risk, Vanguard fund, We are as Gods, Whole Earth Catalog

“The 2008 financial crisis was a car crash” Justin Baer, “The Day Coronavirus Nearly Broke the Financial Markets,” Wall Street Journal, May 20, 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-day-coronavirus-nearly-broke-the-financial-markets-11589982288?mod=e2tw. In 2010, he predicted in the Economist “Nassim Taleb Looks at What Will Break and What Won’t,” Economist, November 22, 2010, https://www.economist.com/news/2010/11/22/nassim-taleb-looks-at-what-will-break-and-what-wont. “The Precautionary Principle” https://arxiv.org/pdf/1410.5787.pdf. CHAPTER 2: RUIN PROBLEMS “Systemic Risk of Pandemic via Novel Pathogens—Coronavirus: A Note” https://necsi.edu/systemic-risk-of-pandemic-via-novel-pathogens-coronavirus-a-note.

…

It was simple math. On January 30, the World Health Organization declared that the outbreak of the deadly novel coronavirus constituted a global health emergency. Despite the mounting alarm, WHO urged countries to avoid travel restrictions. “This is the time for science, not rumors,” WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. Ackman was incredulous as people continued to travel blithely across borders. The final straw was Milan Fashion Week, which took place in February despite a severe outbreak of coronavirus in northern Italy. All those fucking fashionistas were going to jet back to their densely populated cities all around the world and spread the virus everywhere.

…

When they first burst upon the world, no one knows what they do to the human body, how to cure them, how contagious they are, if people can spread the deadly bug without knowing they’re infected, or how leaders will respond to the outbreak. Taleb feared this new coronavirus might have several such unknown properties. Taleb, Bar-Yam, and another researcher at NECSI, Joe Norman, quickly drafted a memo outlining the existential risks of the virus and the steps needed to address them. Then Taleb sent it to the White House. Days later, January 26, a time when most Americans were barely aware of the coming plague, they made it public. “Systemic Risk of Pandemic via Novel Pathogens—Coronavirus: A Note” was a single-page, screeching alarm bell that urged swift, sweeping action to halt the disease in its tracks.

Cabin Fever: The Harrowing Journey of a Cruise Ship at the Dawn of a Pandemic by Michael Smith, Jonathan Franklin

airport security, Boeing 747, call centre, coronavirus, COVID-19, data science, Donald Trump, global pandemic, lockdown, offshore financial centre, Panamax, Port of Oakland, Snapchat, social distancing, Suez canal 1869

Since May 2018, Olivia had worked as a homeland security and counterterrorism adviser to Vice President Mike Pence, briefing him about bombings, natural disasters, and school shootings. Beginning in January 2020, COVID-19 outbreaks on cruise ships began to show up on her radar. And since early February, when President Trump placed Pence in charge of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, cruise ship outbreaks and how to deal with them became a growing part of Olivia’s day-to-day work. So many ships kept reporting cases that the White House needed a spreadsheet to keep track of them all. Olivia, a forty-three-year-old brunette with intense brown eyes and a passion for government service, felt overwhelmed with the logistics of bringing each and every one of these massive ships to port.

…

But for the mayor, this port of call felt different. At 5:45 a.m., as a pair of tugboats finished easing the Zaandam against the Mardones Pier, a frigid gray pall hung over the city. A brisk late-summer wind whipped across the Strait of Magellan, rain seemed certain, and Mayor Radonich imagined an army of tourists infected with the dreaded coronavirus assaulting his city. Punta Arenas is a remote outpost, even in the southern hemisphere, and it was about as far as possible from the plague erupting in China. The city is closer to Antarctica than Santiago, and the desolate expanses of Tierra del Fuego are visible from the promenade along the strait.

…

He also needed to empty the nearly full garbage and wastewater holds. Smit hinted that time was running out for the Zaandam. Would the authorities allow them to do these essentials? Could they at least get water? There was no answer, and then the agent, Victor Oelckers, broke the news. Chile had declared a maximum health alert due to the coronavirus outbreak. All borders—sea, land, and air—would shut in forty-eight hours. In Punta Arenas, the port was closed immediately because of the dock protests. The government gave them one option: The Zaandam might be permitted to unload passengers, but only after it lay at anchor for a minimum of two weeks, under an enforced quarantine.

Stakeholder Capitalism: A Global Economy That Works for Progress, People and Planet by Klaus Schwab, Peter Vanham

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, additive manufacturing, agricultural Revolution, air traffic controllers' union, Anthropocene, Apple II, Asian financial crisis, Asperger Syndrome, basic income, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, biodiversity loss, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, blue-collar work, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business process, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, car-free, carbon footprint, carbon tax, centre right, clean tech, clean water, cloud computing, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, colonial rule, company town, contact tracing, contact tracing app, Cornelius Vanderbilt, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, currency peg, cyber-physical system, decarbonisation, demographic dividend, Deng Xiaoping, Diane Coyle, digital divide, don't be evil, European colonialism, Fall of the Berlin Wall, family office, financial innovation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, gender pay gap, general purpose technology, George Floyd, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global supply chain, global value chain, global village, Google bus, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, high net worth, hiring and firing, housing crisis, income inequality, income per capita, independent contractor, industrial robot, intangible asset, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invisible hand, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, job automation, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, labor-force participation, lockdown, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, Marshall McLuhan, Martin Wolf, means of production, megacity, microplastics / micro fibres, Mikhail Gorbachev, mini-job, mittelstand, move fast and break things, neoliberal agenda, Network effects, new economy, open economy, Peace of Westphalia, Peter Thiel, precariat, Productivity paradox, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, reserve currency, reshoring, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, San Francisco homelessness, School Strike for Climate, self-driving car, seminal paper, shareholder value, Shenzhen special economic zone , Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, social distancing, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, special economic zone, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, synthetic biology, TaskRabbit, The Chicago School, The Future of Employment, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, the scientific method, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, trade route, transfer pricing, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, union organizing, universal basic income, War on Poverty, We are the 99%, women in the workforce, working poor, working-age population, Yom Kippur War, young professional, zero-sum game

Notes 1 “Why New Zealand Decided to Go for Full Elimination of the Coronavirus,” Alice Klein, New Scientist, June 2020, https://www.newscientist.com/article/2246858-why-new-zealand-decided-to-go-for-full-elimination-of-the-coronavirus/#ixzz6T1rYuK5U. 2 “New Zealand Isn't Just Flattening the Curve. It's Squashing It,” Anna Fifield, The Washington Post, April 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/new-zealand-isnt-just-flattening-the-curve-its-squashing-it/2020/04/07/6cab3a4a-7822-11ea-a311-adb1344719a9_story.html. 3 “Why New Zealand Decided to Go for Full Elimination of the Coronavirus,” Alice Klein, New Scientist, June 2020, https://www.newscientist.com/article/2246858-why-new-zealand-decided-to-go-for-full-elimination-of-the-coronavirus/#ixzz6T1rYuK5U. 4 PM Jacinda Ardern's full lockdown speech, Newsroom, March 2020, https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2020/03/23/1096999/pm-jacinda-arderns-full-lockdown-speech. 5 “The World's Youngest Female Leader Takes Over in New Zealand,” The Economist, October 2017, https://www.economist.com/asia/2017/10/26/the-worlds-youngest-female-leader-takes-over-in-new-zealand. 6 “New Zealand Isn't Just Flattening the Curve.

…

The director had called to update me on the epidemic that had hit China hard earlier that winter: COVID-19. Initially confined to the city of Wuhan, this novel coronavirus, which often causes a severe respiratory disease, was rapidly becoming a primary public health concern across the country. Our colleague explained that much of Beijing’s population had travelled beyond the city to attend Lunar New Year celebrations and, as they returned, they carried the novel coronavirus with them, causing an outbreak and subsequent lockdown in the capital. My colleague kept his cool, providing objective facts on what the lockdown meant for our employees and operations.

…

la=en. 14 This concerns GDP growth based on market exchange rates (see corresponding row on table cited in footnotes 11 and 12). 15 “World Bank Country and Lending Groups,” World Bank, https://datahelpdesk.worldbank.org/knowledgebase/articles/906519-world-bank-country-and-lending-groups. 16 “The Great Emerging-Market Growth Story is Unravelling,” The Financial Times, June 2019, https://www.ft.com/content/ad11f624-8b8c-11e9-a1c1-51bf8f989972. 17 See the IMF estimate of 2019 above. For the IIF estimate of Q1 2020, see https://www.iif.com/Portals/0/Files/content/Research/Global%20Debt%20Monitor_July2020.pdf. 18 “Coronavirus Lifts Government Debt to WWII Levels—Cutting It Won't Be Easy,” The Wall Street Journal, August 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-lifts-government-debt-to-wwii-levelscutting-it-wont-be-easy-11598191201. 19 “Resolving Global Debt: An Urgent Collective Action Cause,” Geoffrey Okamoto, IMF First Deputy Managing Director, October 2020, https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2020/10/01/sp100120-resolving-global-debt-an-urgent-collective-action-cause. 20 “Gross Debt Position, % of GDP,” Fiscal Monitor, International Monetary Fund, April 2020, https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/G_XWDG_G01_GDP_PT@FM/ADVEC/FM_EMG/FM_LIDC. 21 “Inflation Rate, Average Consumer Prices, Annual Percent Change, Advanced Economies,” World Economic Outlook, International Monetary Fund, April 2020, https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/PCPIPCH@WEO/ADVEC/OEMDC. 22 International Monetary Fund, DataMapper, https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/GGXWDG_NGDP@WEO/OEMDC/ADVEC/WEOWORLD. 23 “Youth Dividend or Ticking Time Bomb?”

Stakeholder Capitalism: A Global Economy That Works for Progress, People and Planet by Klaus Schwab

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, additive manufacturing, agricultural Revolution, air traffic controllers' union, Anthropocene, Apple II, Asian financial crisis, Asperger Syndrome, basic income, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, biodiversity loss, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, blue-collar work, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business process, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, car-free, carbon footprint, carbon tax, centre right, clean tech, clean water, cloud computing, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, colonial rule, company town, contact tracing, contact tracing app, Cornelius Vanderbilt, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, currency peg, cyber-physical system, decarbonisation, demographic dividend, Deng Xiaoping, Diane Coyle, digital divide, don't be evil, European colonialism, Fall of the Berlin Wall, family office, financial innovation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, gender pay gap, general purpose technology, George Floyd, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global supply chain, global value chain, global village, Google bus, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, high net worth, hiring and firing, housing crisis, income inequality, income per capita, independent contractor, industrial robot, intangible asset, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invisible hand, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, job automation, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, labor-force participation, lockdown, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, Marshall McLuhan, Martin Wolf, means of production, megacity, microplastics / micro fibres, Mikhail Gorbachev, mini-job, mittelstand, move fast and break things, neoliberal agenda, Network effects, new economy, open economy, Peace of Westphalia, Peter Thiel, precariat, Productivity paradox, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, reserve currency, reshoring, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, San Francisco homelessness, School Strike for Climate, self-driving car, seminal paper, shareholder value, Shenzhen special economic zone , Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, social distancing, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, special economic zone, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, synthetic biology, TaskRabbit, The Chicago School, The Future of Employment, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, the scientific method, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, trade route, transfer pricing, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, union organizing, universal basic income, War on Poverty, We are the 99%, women in the workforce, working poor, working-age population, Yom Kippur War, young professional, zero-sum game

Notes 1 “Why New Zealand Decided to Go for Full Elimination of the Coronavirus,” Alice Klein, New Scientist, June 2020, https://www.newscientist.com/article/2246858-why-new-zealand-decided-to-go-for-full-elimination-of-the-coronavirus/#ixzz6T1rYuK5U. 2 “New Zealand Isn't Just Flattening the Curve. It's Squashing It,” Anna Fifield, The Washington Post, April 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/new-zealand-isnt-just-flattening-the-curve-its-squashing-it/2020/04/07/6cab3a4a-7822-11ea-a311-adb1344719a9_story.html. 3 “Why New Zealand Decided to Go for Full Elimination of the Coronavirus,” Alice Klein, New Scientist, June 2020, https://www.newscientist.com/article/2246858-why-new-zealand-decided-to-go-for-full-elimination-of-the-coronavirus/#ixzz6T1rYuK5U. 4 PM Jacinda Ardern's full lockdown speech, Newsroom, March 2020, https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2020/03/23/1096999/pm-jacinda-arderns-full-lockdown-speech. 5 “The World's Youngest Female Leader Takes Over in New Zealand,” The Economist, October 2017, https://www.economist.com/asia/2017/10/26/the-worlds-youngest-female-leader-takes-over-in-new-zealand. 6 “New Zealand Isn't Just Flattening the Curve.

…

The director had called to update me on the epidemic that had hit China hard earlier that winter: COVID-19. Initially confined to the city of Wuhan, this novel coronavirus, which often causes a severe respiratory disease, was rapidly becoming a primary public health concern across the country. Our colleague explained that much of Beijing’s population had travelled beyond the city to attend Lunar New Year celebrations and, as they returned, they carried the novel coronavirus with them, causing an outbreak and subsequent lockdown in the capital. My colleague kept his cool, providing objective facts on what the lockdown meant for our employees and operations.

…

la=en. 14 This concerns GDP growth based on market exchange rates (see corresponding row on table cited in footnotes 11 and 12). 15 “World Bank Country and Lending Groups,” World Bank, https://datahelpdesk.worldbank.org/knowledgebase/articles/906519-world-bank-country-and-lending-groups. 16 “The Great Emerging-Market Growth Story is Unravelling,” The Financial Times, June 2019, https://www.ft.com/content/ad11f624-8b8c-11e9-a1c1-51bf8f989972. 17 See the IMF estimate of 2019 above. For the IIF estimate of Q1 2020, see https://www.iif.com/Portals/0/Files/content/Research/Global%20Debt%20Monitor_July2020.pdf. 18 “Coronavirus Lifts Government Debt to WWII Levels—Cutting It Won't Be Easy,” The Wall Street Journal, August 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-lifts-government-debt-to-wwii-levelscutting-it-wont-be-easy-11598191201. 19 “Resolving Global Debt: An Urgent Collective Action Cause,” Geoffrey Okamoto, IMF First Deputy Managing Director, October 2020, https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2020/10/01/sp100120-resolving-global-debt-an-urgent-collective-action-cause. 20 “Gross Debt Position, % of GDP,” Fiscal Monitor, International Monetary Fund, April 2020, https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/G_XWDG_G01_GDP_PT@FM/ADVEC/FM_EMG/FM_LIDC. 21 “Inflation Rate, Average Consumer Prices, Annual Percent Change, Advanced Economies,” World Economic Outlook, International Monetary Fund, April 2020, https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/PCPIPCH@WEO/ADVEC/OEMDC. 22 International Monetary Fund, DataMapper, https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/GGXWDG_NGDP@WEO/OEMDC/ADVEC/WEOWORLD. 23 “Youth Dividend or Ticking Time Bomb?”

Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic by David Quammen

Alfred Russel Wallace, British Empire, Buckminster Fuller, conceptual framework, coronavirus, dark matter, digital map, double helix, experimental subject, facts on the ground, Fellow of the Royal Society, germ theory of disease, global pandemic, Google Earth, invention of agriculture, Isaac Newton, John Snow's cholera map, Louis Pasteur, out of africa, Pearl River Delta, South China Sea, the long tail, urban sprawl, zoonotic diseases

Just after the epidemic ended, his HKU team started trapping animals out there to look for evidence of coronavirus. They focused first on civets, capturing and sampling almost two dozen. From each animal they took a respiratory swab and a fecal swab—zip zap, thank you very much—and then released the civet back to the Hong Kong wilds. Each sample was screened by PCR methodology using what the technical lingo calls “consensus primers,” meaning generalized molecular jump-starters that would amplify RNA fragments shared commonly among coronaviruses, not just those unique to the SARS-like coronavirus that Guan Yi had found in his civets. So how much coronavirus did Poon find? I asked.

…

So the culturing work had established that an unknown coronavirus was present in SARS patients—some of them, anyway—but that didn’t necessarily mean it had caused the disease. To establish causality, Peiris’s team tested blood serum from SARS patients (because it would contain antibodies) against the newfound virus in culture. This was like splashing holy water at a witch. The antibodies recognized the virus and reacted strongly. Less than a month later, based on that evidence plus other confirming tests, Malik Peiris and his colleagues published a paper cautiously announcing this new coronavirus as “a possible cause” of SARS.

…

Less than a month later, based on that evidence plus other confirming tests, Malik Peiris and his colleagues published a paper cautiously announcing this new coronavirus as “a possible cause” of SARS. They were right, and the virus became known as SARS coronavirus, inelegantly abbreviated as SARS-CoV. It was the first coronavirus ever found to inflict serious illness upon humans. (Several other coronaviruses are among the many viral strains responsible for common colds. Still others cause hepatitis in mice, gastroenteritis in pigs, and respiratory infection in turkeys.) SARS-CoV has no ominous ring. In older days, the new agent would have received a more vivid, geographical moniker such as Foshan virus or Guangzhou virus, and people would have run around saying: Watch out, he’s got Guangzhou!

Work Won't Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone by Sarah Jaffe

Ada Lovelace, air traffic controllers' union, Amazon Mechanical Turk, antiwork, barriers to entry, basic income, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, big-box store, Black Lives Matter, blue-collar work, Boris Johnson, call centre, capitalist realism, Charles Babbage, collective bargaining, coronavirus, COVID-19, deindustrialization, delayed gratification, dematerialisation, desegregation, deskilling, do what you love, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, emotional labour, feminist movement, Ferguson, Missouri, financial independence, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fulfillment center, future of work, gamification, gender pay gap, gentrification, George Floyd, gig economy, global pandemic, Grace Hopper, green new deal, hiring and firing, illegal immigration, immigration reform, informal economy, job automation, job satisfaction, job-hopping, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, late capitalism, lockdown, lone genius, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, mass incarceration, means of production, mini-job, minimum wage unemployment, move fast and break things, Naomi Klein, new economy, oil shock, Peter Thiel, post-Fordism, post-work, precariat, profit motive, Rana Plaza, Richard Florida, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, school choice, Silicon Valley, social distancing, Steve Jobs, TaskRabbit, tech billionaire, tech worker, traumatic brain injury, uber lyft, union organizing, universal basic income, unpaid internship, W. E. B. Du Bois, wages for housework, War on Poverty, WeWork, women in the workforce, work culture , workplace surveillance , Works Progress Administration

The popularity of the concept of “burnout”—for what is burnout but the feeling experienced when one’s labor of love is anything but—reminds us of this. Repeated cycles of layoffs, steady low wages, and cutbacks to the private sector have made jobs harder and harder to love. The conditions under which “essential” workers had to report to the job during the coronavirus pandemic revealed the coercion at the heart of the labor relation. We are being punished for all the choices we have made even as we have continued to do what we are told—racking up student debt, working longer hours, answering work emails on our phones from parties, funerals, and bed, and doing more, always, with less. 24 Neoliberalism relies on the labor of love ideology to cover up the coercion that was in fact required to push people into the workplace at the origin of capitalism.

…

In Part One, we will follow the labor of love as it moves from women’s unpaid work in the home through paid domestic work, teaching, retail work, and the nonprofit sector. Other forms of work that could just as easily have gone into this section include nursing, grocery store work, restaurant work, and call center jobs. It is worth noting that much of this work is the “essential” or “key” work of the coronavirus pandemic: these workers are the people expected to risk their lives to keep going to work in order for the rest of us to survive. In these jobs workers are expected to provide service with a smile or genuine, heartfelt care; they are expected to put themselves second to the feelings and needs of their customers or charges.

…

US-based research showed that mothers working outside the home these days spend just as much time caring for children as mothers did in the 1970s, when their only job was in the home. Others have estimated that “the size of the paid labor force would double if all unpaid caregivers were paid for their work.” During the coronavirus lockdown, one survey found that nearly half of men with young children reported splitting domestic duties equally—but their wives disagreed. Only 2 percent of women agreed that men were responsible for most of the housework during lockdown. Globally, United Nations researchers estimated in 1999 that all unpaid reproductive labor, if paid, would cost $16 trillion, a third of the world’s total economic activity—$11 trillion of which would be women’s share. 63 For the working class, it’s the impossibility of paying for help that forces the squeeze.

The Atlas of Disease by Sandra Hempel

clean water, coronavirus, Easter island, Edward Jenner, global pandemic, John Snow's cholera map, Louis Pasteur, out of africa, trade route, wikimedia commons

By the end of April tourism in Thailand was down by 70 per cent and Singapore by 60 per cent. The British Foreign Office meanwhile was advising against travel to Hong Kong, parts of China and Toronto. A new — and fatal — coronavirus In April 2003, researchers in Hong Kong published a paper identifying a new type of what is known as a coronavirus as a likely cause of SARS. The term ‘coronavirus’ comes from the Latin for ‘crown’ or ‘halo’ and refers to the crown-like spikes on the pathogen’s surface. This particular coronavirus, SARS-CoV, does not appear to have been seen before in humans or in animals. Coronaviruses are common and most, like the common cold, are not dangerous.

…

In 2012, however, the United States declared the SARS virus a ‘select agent’, meaning that it had the potential to pose a severe threat to public health and safety. That same year another new coronavirus emerged in Saudi Arabia. A patient died in a hospital in Jeddah from acute pneumonia and organ failure. Doctors were unable to identify the pathogen involved and sent sputum samples to a laboratory in Holland, where the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) was identified as the cause of what is known as Middle East respiratory syndrome, or MERS. The illness is similar to SARS and carries a mortality rate of around 40 per cent.

…

In February 2018, doctors in England were once more alerted to an ‘exceptional increase’ in scarlet fever. The reasons for these upsurges are not understood, although a decrease in immunity in the general population, a stronger strain of bacteria and a combination of both have been suggested as possible causes. SARS Causal agent Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus or SARS-CoV Transmission Not completely understood but thought to be through close contact with an infected person, mainly through the respiratory route, and also through contact with infected surfaces Symptoms Influenza-like, including fever, malaise, myalgia, headache, diarrhoea and shivering Incidence No reports of SARS since 2004, as of mid-2018 Prevalence Currently no cases reported but potential to break out and spread worldwide Prevention Fast reporting of new outbreaks, isolation of infected individuals and contacts Treatment No specific treatment but general antiviral drugs and treatment to support breathing, prevent or treat pneumonia and reduce swelling in the lungs Global strategy Worldwide surveillance to detect new outbreaks, fast reporting of cases and containment Microscopic image of the coronavirus that causes SARS.

The Stolen Year by Anya Kamenetz

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, 2021 United States Capitol attack, Anthropocene, basic income, Black Lives Matter, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, Day of the Dead, desegregation, disinformation, Donald Trump, East Village, emotional labour, ending welfare as we know it, epigenetics, food desert, George Floyd, glass ceiling, global pandemic, helicopter parent, informal economy, inventory management, invisible hand, Kintsugi, labor-force participation, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, Maui Hawaii, medical residency, Minecraft, moral panic, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Ponzi scheme, QAnon, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, randomized controlled trial, rent stabilization, risk tolerance, school choice, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, social distancing, Thorstein Veblen, TikTok, traveling salesman, trickle-down economics, universal basic income, upwardly mobile, wages for housework, War on Poverty, white flight, women in the workforce, working poor, Works Progress Administration

“We know this isn’t easy to hear,” Dara and her coauthor wrote. “This is yet another loss in the coronavirus era. As parents and doctors we understand this deeply.” About two out of three camps, particularly overnight camps, stayed closed for the summer of 2020. And those that opened had outbreaks, including one at a maskless camp in Georgia where more than four in ten staff and campers got the virus. Dara made the call in the name of equity and priorities. Testing capacity still wasn’t where it needed to be, and rather than use coronavirus tests for camps, she thought authorities should focus on schools. “We had to invest in schools if we ever wanted them open,” she told me.

…

“Sammy talks about his mortality—not all the time, but he does understand that his life is, in some way, precious,” his mother says. Dara had started to see her emergency room fill up with patients with cough, fever, and shortness of breath. She’d also seen the preliminary data from China, showing how easily the novel coronavirus spread within households. Dark-haired, short, and straight to the point, Dara chose other people’s worst-case scenarios to be her everyday routine. She doesn’t find it “helpful” to dwell on feelings. She’s a problem solver. She has the knowledge and research skills to fuel endless cycles of anxiety and planning, so she tries to avoid spiraling.

…

Closing school buildings en masse increases inequality and destroys individual hopes and dreams. And the impact can be measured for a generation. That is the disaster on top of the disaster. BACK TO THE BEGINNING March 13. It was the vertiginous beginning. The stock market crashed, the NBA canceled its season, Tom Hanks and his wife were diagnosed with coronavirus in Australia. When Dara, the ER doctor in New York City, was at the nation’s epicenter in mid-March, she got a COVID test and it came back positive. Telling her three kids, who were staying with her parents in New Jersey, was the hardest part. She didn’t want them to be afraid. She missed them so much already.

There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century by Fiona Hill

2021 United States Capitol attack, active measures, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, algorithmic bias, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, blue-collar work, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, business climate, call centre, collective bargaining, company town, coronavirus, COVID-19, crony capitalism, cuban missile crisis, David Brooks, deindustrialization, desegregation, digital divide, disinformation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial independence, first-past-the-post, food desert, gender pay gap, gentrification, George Floyd, glass ceiling, global pandemic, Great Leap Forward, housing crisis, illegal immigration, imposter syndrome, income inequality, indoor plumbing, industrial cluster, industrial research laboratory, informal economy, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, lockdown, low skilled workers, Lyft, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, meme stock, Mikhail Gorbachev, new economy, oil shock, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Own Your Own Home, Paris climate accords, pension reform, QAnon, ransomware, restrictive zoning, ride hailing / ride sharing, Right to Buy, Ronald Reagan, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, single-payer health, statistical model, Steve Bannon, The Chicago School, TikTok, transatlantic slave trade, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, University of East Anglia, urban decay, urban planning, Washington Consensus, WikiLeaks, Winter of Discontent, women in the workforce, working poor, Yom Kippur War, young professional

ad hoc manner: Julian Borger, “ ‘Trump thought I was a secretary’: Fiona Hill on the president, Putin and populism,” Guardian, June 12, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/12/fiona-hill-trump-putin-populism-interview. four hundred thousand Americans: “COVID-19 United States Cases by County,” Johns Hopkins University and Medicine Coronavirus Resource Center, accessed April 29, 2021, https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/us-map. close to two hundred thousand: “Coronavirus in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count,” New York Times, updated April 29, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html. Urgent action: Joe Davidson, “GAO report slams Trump administration response to the coronavirus pandemic,” Washington Post, February 3, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/gao-trump-covid-biden/2021/02/02/38f0a0a8-65a4-11eb-bf81-c618c88ed605_story.html.

…

The United Kingdom was also swept up in the Black Lives Matter protests, as a younger generation of Brits contemplated the integral role the UK had played in the Atlantic slave trade and its own history of racism and heavy-handed policing. Again I was struck by how inadequate the government-level responses were to address this painful and complex issue, especially against the backdrop of the coronavirus, which hit Black and other minority communities hard in both countries. In Russia, Vladimir Putin—faced with his own domestic problems, including the rampaging coronavirus and a growing opposition movement—did not waste an opportunity to comment on the situation and to criticize the United States for mishandling race relations. He was clearly only too happy to be able to divert the Russian public’s attention away from deficiencies at home to debacles abroad.

…

It has to plan ahead, let seasoned experts take the lead, and pull people together around a clear set of goals and messages. Combating the coronavirus could not be done in an ad hoc manner, relying on a loose coalition of friends, family, and loyalists and pitting people against each other. It would take real leadership, and that was one thing that populists seemed wholly uninterested in providing. Against the backdrop of high political drama, the United States hit a grim set of milestones over the course of the year. By Inauguration Day in January 2021, four hundred thousand Americans had died of COVID-19. Almost twenty-five million people had contracted the coronavirus, and close to two hundred thousand more were infected daily.

Life on the Rocks: Building a Future for Coral Reefs by Juli Berwald

23andMe, 3D printing, Alfred Russel Wallace, Anthropocene, Black Lives Matter, carbon footprint, Charles Lindbergh, circular economy, clean water, coronavirus, COVID-19, en.wikipedia.org, Fellow of the Royal Society, financial innovation, Garrett Hardin, George Floyd, Google Earth, Gregor Mendel, Greta Thunberg, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), lateral thinking, Maui Hawaii, microbiome, mouse model, ocean acidification, Panamax, Paris climate accords, Skype, social distancing, sovereign wealth fund, stem cell, TED Talk, the scientific method, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons

* * * — When we arrived at the facility, Isy’s temperature was taken. It was the first time we were asked the battery of questions that would soon become so familiar: Had we had a cough in the last forty-eight hours? Did we have a fever? Had we been around anyone exposed to the coronavirus? Had we been knowingly exposed to coronavirus? No. No. No. No. We met various staff in a large room, couches situated well over six feet apart from each other. We retold psychological and medical histories. We signed paperwork. Finally, the nurse said, “It’s the moment that you didn’t want to come.” She moved toward the door.

…

Coral restorations will be the lifeboats sheltering the coral until we get control of our carbon emissions. In addition to the science and funding opportunities for coral, the Global Fund for Coral Reef announcement included a new, unavoidable theme: the coronavirus and its lessons. This was best articulated by the UK minister for Pacific and the Environment, who said, “This pandemic has exposed our vulnerability, economically of course, but it is also a wake-up call to profoundly reset our relationship with the natural world. Coronavirus is almost certainly the consequence of our abuse of nature. The scientific evidence is very clear that the current crisis will be dwarfed by others, by climate change and environmental degradation.

…

Lawrence, “Mycosporine-Like Amino Acids for Skin Photoprotection,” Current Medicinal Chemistry 25, no. 40 (December 2018): 5512–27, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28554325/. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT CARES Act: Genevieve M. Razick, “It Is Not All about the Coronavirus: The CARES Act Brings Long-Awaited Over-the-Counter (OTC) Monograph Reform,” Arnall Golden Gregory LLP, April 10, 2020, https://www.agg.com/news-insights/publications/it-is-not-all-about-the-coronavirus-the-cares-act-brings-long-awaited-over-the-counter-otc-monograph-reform/. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT ban the sale of sunscreens: Shannon McMahon, “6 Destinations with Sunscreen Bans, and What You Need to Know,” Smarter Travel, August 20, 2019, https://www.smartertravel.com/sunscreen-ban-destinations/.

Hype: How Scammers, Grifters, and Con Artists Are Taking Over the Internet―and Why We're Following by Gabrielle Bluestone

Adam Neumann (WeWork), Airbnb, Bellingcat, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Burning Man, cashless society, coronavirus, COVID-19, Donald Trump, driverless car, Elon Musk, fake it until you make it, financial thriller, forensic accounting, gig economy, global pandemic, growth hacking, high net worth, hockey-stick growth, hype cycle, Hyperloop, Kevin Roose, lock screen, lockdown, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, Masayoshi Son, Mason jar, Menlo Park, Multics, Naomi Klein, Netflix Prize, NetJets, Peter Thiel, placebo effect, post-truth, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Russell Brand, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, social distancing, SoftBank, Steve Jobs, tech billionaire, tech bro, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, unpaid internship, upwardly mobile, Vision Fund, WeWork

It was never going to work.” The coronavirus ultimately gave Son a chance to claw back some of Neumann’s parachute. But it also revealed the weaknesses in his portfolio, which had become worth less than the cost of its investments in early May 2020. According to the New York Times, Son held an earnings call where he compared himself to Jesus and the Beatles and spoke of a brighter future by referencing a graphic of two unicorns falling into a hole in the ground. “Our unicorns are facing serious challenges against the background of the coronavirus outbreak, but I believe that some of them will fly over the Valley of Coronavirus and go beyond and fly high,” he said.

…

Julia Alexander, "Creators Finally Know How Much Money YouTube Makes, and They Want More of It," The Verge, February 4, 2020, https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/4/21121370/youtube-advertising-revenue-creators-demonetization-earnings-google. 14. Taylor Lorenz, "Welcome to the Era of Branded Engagements," The Atlantic, June 20, 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/06/was-viral-proposal-staged/592141/. 15. Koh Ewe, "Influencer Licks Toilet Seat for TikTok Fame in ‘Coronavirus Challenge,’" VICE News, March 18, 2020, https://www.vice.com/en/article/5dm43a/coronavirus-influencer-lick-toilet-seat-tiktok. 16. Dee LaVigne, "I Buy the Cheapest Thing on Hermes!!!," YouTube video, April 2, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1b7j4XnMfc. 17. Sophie Shohet | Fashion Beauty Lifestyle, "I Looked for the Cheapest Thing Cartier Sold... 6 *Insane* Luxury Items Under £495 | Selfridges AD," YouTube video, June 17, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?

…

What was, in 2009, intentionally surreal, now seems almost banal, what with the former Goop employee who staged a sponsored multi-city engagement extravaganza for a live audience of about 5,000 emotionally invested strangers (and lost her day job not long after it went viral for all the wrong reasons),14 or the TikTok users who caught coronavirus after participating in a viral toilet-seat-licking challenge for clout.15 “I think now, with influencer marketing, what was covert has now become overt,” Borte said. For one thing, Audi’s costarring role opposite Duchovny in The Joneses turned out to be a precipitating event in the car company’s rather clichéd move into the arena of life imitating art.

Binge Times: Inside Hollywood's Furious Billion-Dollar Battle to Take Down Netflix by Dade Hayes, Dawn Chmielewski

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Amazon Web Services, AOL-Time Warner, Apollo 13, augmented reality, barriers to entry, Big Tech, borderless world, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, content marketing, coronavirus, corporate raider, COVID-19, data science, digital rights, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, Elon Musk, George Floyd, global pandemic, Golden age of television, haute cuisine, hockey-stick growth, invention of the telephone, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, Jony Ive, late fees, lockdown, loose coupling, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Mitch Kapor, Netflix Prize, Osborne effect, performance metric, period drama, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, QR code, reality distortion field, recommendation engine, remote working, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Saturday Night Live, Silicon Valley, skunkworks, Skype, Snapchat, social distancing, Steve Jobs, subscription business, tech bro, the long tail, the medium is the message, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, vertical integration, WeWork

Here’s Why He’s Worried,” New York Times, December 30, 2019; Tim Cook remarks, Apple Keynote Event, March 25, 2019; Mark Lawson, “Apple TV+: Less a Rival to Netflix, More a Smug Religious Cult,” Guardian, March 25, 2019; Josef Adalian, “We Learned a Lot About Apple TV+ Today, but Not How Much It’ll Cost,” New York, March 25, 2019; Elahe Izadi, “Bono Is Sorry U2’s Album Automatically Showed Up on Your iTunes,” Washington Post, October 15, 2014. CHAPTER 7: COOKING UP “QUICK BITES” Jeffrey Katzenberg interview with Dawn Chmielewski, “Coronavirus Lockdown Will Boost Meg Whitman’s and Jeff Katzenberg’s New Mobile Streaming Service Quibi,” Forbes, April 3, 2020; Katzenberg interview with Andrew Wallenstein, “Inside Jeffrey Katzenberg’s Plan to Revolutionize Media on Mobile Screens,” Variety, July 19, 2017; Dawn Chmielewski interview with Meg Whitman, “Coronavirus Lockdown Will Boost Meg Whitman’s and Jeff Katzenberg’s New Mobile Streaming Service Quibi”; Meg Whitman with Joan O’C. Hamilton, The Power of Many (New York: Crown Publishers, 2010), 22; Jason Blum interview with authors, October 16, 2020; Cody Heller interview with authors, July 8, 2020; Tegan Jones, “Dummy Is the Hilariously Filthy and Raw Show We Need Right Now,” Gizmodo, April 21, 2020; Jeffrey Katzenberg interview with Bill Snyder, “Jeffrey Katzenberg: How Failure Makes a Better Leader,” Stanford Business, March 13, 2018; Benjamin Mullin, “Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman Struggle with Their Startup—and Each Other,” Wall Street Journal, June 14, 2020; Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman keynote, Consumer Electronics Show, January 8, 2020; Dawn Chmielewski interview with Zach Wechter, “Meg Whitman, Jeffrey Katzenberg Raise $400 Million Second Funding Round as Quibi Prepares to Launch,” Forbes, January 8, 2020; Van Toffler interview with the authors, March 12, 2020.

…

Michael Eisner, former chairman and CEO Bob Iger, former CEO and executive chairman Bob Chapek, CEO Kareem Daniel, chairman, media and entertainment distribution Tom Staggs, former chief operating officer Kevin Mayer, former chairman, direct-to-consumer and international Jimmy Pitaro, chairman, ESPN and sports content John Skipper, former president, ESPN Ricky Strauss, former president, content and marketing for Disney+ Albert Cheng, former chief product officer, digital media, Disney ABC Television Group Anne Sweeney, former cochair, Disney Media Networks; former president, Disney ABC Television Group Preface Variations on a single question pinged across social media, bobbing in a digital sea just as messages in physical bottles once were set adrift. What are we supposed to do now?! Society and popular culture were imitating a scene from the film Inception, folding inward on themselves, piece by piece, as fear of the spreading coronavirus reached its peak. Schools, courthouses, museums, sports venues, movie theaters, concert halls, restaurants, and bars all closed their doors. Travel bans and border shutdowns took effect. “Social distancing” prevailed, with hugs and high fives shunned and everyone instructed to stand six feet apart.

…

Its fundamental consumer premise—“quick-bite,” short-form video on the go—suddenly seemed less viable with shelter-in-place orders in effect, though TikTok’s weedlike surge proved that people stuck at home still want to watch videos on their phones. Traditional media companies faced a more vexing conundrum. Their streaming services would still require intensive capital investments, in terms of both hiring and digital infrastructure, as well as a willingness to forgo millions in licensing revenue. Now, with the coronavirus established as a long-term challenge, they would have to remain committed to disrupting themselves despite the devastating loss of revenue from movie box offices, TV advertising, sports, and theme parks. Would streaming be their route to redemption or just a mirage given the high bar set by Netflix and Amazon?

Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires by Douglas Rushkoff

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 4chan, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, agricultural Revolution, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, Andrew Keen, AOL-Time Warner, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, basic income, behavioural economics, Big Tech, biodiversity loss, Biosphere 2, bitcoin, blockchain, Boston Dynamics, Burning Man, buy low sell high, Californian Ideology, carbon credits, carbon footprint, circular economy, clean water, cognitive dissonance, Colonization of Mars, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, CRISPR, data science, David Graeber, DeepMind, degrowth, Demis Hassabis, deplatforming, digital capitalism, digital map, disinformation, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, energy transition, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, European colonialism, Evgeny Morozov, Extinction Rebellion, Fairphone, fake news, Filter Bubble, game design, gamification, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, Google bus, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, Haight Ashbury, hockey-stick growth, Howard Rheingold, if you build it, they will come, impact investing, income inequality, independent contractor, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, Jeffrey Epstein, job automation, John Nash: game theory, John Perry Barlow, Joseph Schumpeter, Just-in-time delivery, liberal capitalism, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, mass immigration, megaproject, meme stock, mental accounting, Michael Milken, microplastics / micro fibres, military-industrial complex, Minecraft, mirror neurons, move fast and break things, Naomi Klein, New Urbanism, Norbert Wiener, Oculus Rift, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), operational security, Patri Friedman, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, planetary scale, Plato's cave, Ponzi scheme, profit motive, QAnon, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, rent-seeking, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, Sam Altman, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, SimCity, Singularitarianism, Skinner box, Snapchat, sovereign wealth fund, Stephen Hawking, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, surveillance capitalism, tech billionaire, tech bro, technological solutionism, technoutopianism, Ted Nelson, TED Talk, the medium is the message, theory of mind, TikTok, Torches of Freedom, Tragedy of the Commons, universal basic income, urban renewal, warehouse robotics, We are as Gods, WeWork, Whole Earth Catalog, work culture , working poor

(New York: Viking Penguin, 1987), 251.   38   “we’re way closer … people’s brains” : Matthew Gault, “Billionaires See VR as a Way to Avoid Radical Social Change,” Wired , February 15, 2021, https:// www .wired .com /story /billionaires -use -vr -avoid -social -change /.   38   “It is not possible … you wanted” : Gault, “Billionaires See VR as a Way to Avoid Radical Social Change.”   39   “Yes, we are in a pandemic” : David Zweig, “$25,000 Pod Schools: How Well-to-Do Children Will Weather the Pandemic,” New York Times , July 30, 2020, https:// www .nytimes .com /2020 /07 /30 /nyregion /pod -schools -hastings -on -hudson .html.   41   legions of Amazon workers : Joey Hadden, “Amazon Delivery Drivers Share What It’s Like to Be on the Front Lines of the Coronavirus Pandemic, Including Not Having Time to Wash Their Hands and Uncleaned Vans,” Business Insider , April 2, 2020, https:// www .businessinsider .com /why -amazon -delivery -workers -feel -exposed -and -vulnerable -to -coronavirus -2020 -3.   41   Amazon avoids taxes : Matthew Gardner, “Amazon Has Record-Breaking Profits in 2020, Avoids $2.3 Billion in Federal Income Taxes,” Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, February 3, 2021, https:// itep .org /amazon -has -record -breaking -profits -in -2020 -avoids -2 -3 -billion -in -federal -income -taxes /.   41   anti-competitive practices : Mark Chandler, “Amazon Accused of Anti-Competitive Practices by US Subcommittee,” Bookseller , October 8, 2020, https:// www .thebookseller .com /news /amazon -accused -anti -competitive -practices -us -subcommittee -1222115.   41   abuses labor : Jodi Kantor, Karen Weise, and Grace Ashford, “Power and Peril: 5 Takeaways on Amazon’s Employment Machine,” New York Times , June 15, 2021, https:// www .nytimes .com /2021 /06 /15 /us /politics /amazon -warehouse -workers .html; Casey Newton, “Amazon’s Poor Treatment of Workers Is Catching up to It during the Coronavirus Crisis,” Verge , April 1, 2020, https:// www .theverge .com /interface /2020 /4 /1 /21201162 /amazon -delivery -delays -coronavirus -worker -strikes.   42   more people opened online trading : Annie Massa, “Pandemic-Fueled Day Trading Is Overwhelming Online Brokers—and the Traders Are Fuming,” Fortune , December 9, 2020, https:// fortune .com /2020 /12 /08 /day -trading -online -brokers -tech -failure -crashes -outages /.   42   Shares of Zoom went up : Shanhong Liu, “Price of Zoom shares traded on Nasdaq Stock Market in 2020 and 2021,” Statista , August 9, 2021, https:// www .statista .com /statistics /1106104 /stock -price -zoom /.   42   Jeff Bezos’s fortune rose : Chase Peterson-Withorn, “How Much Money America’s Billionaires Have Made During the Covid-19 Pandemic,” Forbes , April 30, 2021, https:// www .forbes .com /sites /chasewithorn /2021 /04 /30 /american -billionaires -have -gotten -12 -trillion -richer -during -the -pandemic.   42   five biggest U.S. tech companies : The staff of the Wall Street Journal , “How Big Tech Got Even Bigger,” Wall Street Journal , February 6, 2021, https:// www .wsj .com /articles /how -big -tech -got -even -bigger -11612587632.   42   Netflix’s share price : Jonathan Ponciano, “5 Big Numbers That Show Netflix’s Massive Growth Continues during the Coronavirus Pandemic,” Forbes , October 20, 2020, https:// www .forbes .com /sites /jonathanponciano /2020 /10 /19 /netflix -earnings -5 -numbers -growth -continues -during -the -coronavirus -pandemic /.   43   “Many creatives, startups, and techies” : Jen Murphy, “Remote Workers Flee to $70,000-a-Month Resorts While Awaiting Vaccines,” Bloomberg , February 15, 2021, https:// www .bloomberg .com /news /articles /2021 -02 -15 /remote -workers -flee -to -luxury -beach -resorts -while -awaiting -vaccines.   43   “It’s been great here” : Julie Satow, “Turning a Second Home into a Primary Home,” New York Times , July 24, 2020, https:// www .nytimes .com /2020 /07 /24 /realestate /coronavirus -second -homes - .html.   43   Each 1 percent increase : Mary Van Beusekom, “Race, Income Inequality Fuel COVID Disparities in US Counties,” Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, University of Minnesota, January 20, 2021, https:// www .cidrap .umn .edu /news -perspective /2021 /01 /race -income -inequality -fuel -covid -disparities -us -counties; Tim F.

…

(New York: Viking Penguin, 1987), 251.   38   “we’re way closer … people’s brains” : Matthew Gault, “Billionaires See VR as a Way to Avoid Radical Social Change,” Wired , February 15, 2021, https:// www .wired .com /story /billionaires -use -vr -avoid -social -change /.   38   “It is not possible … you wanted” : Gault, “Billionaires See VR as a Way to Avoid Radical Social Change.”   39   “Yes, we are in a pandemic” : David Zweig, “$25,000 Pod Schools: How Well-to-Do Children Will Weather the Pandemic,” New York Times , July 30, 2020, https:// www .nytimes .com /2020 /07 /30 /nyregion /pod -schools -hastings -on -hudson .html.   41   legions of Amazon workers : Joey Hadden, “Amazon Delivery Drivers Share What It’s Like to Be on the Front Lines of the Coronavirus Pandemic, Including Not Having Time to Wash Their Hands and Uncleaned Vans,” Business Insider , April 2, 2020, https:// www .businessinsider .com /why -amazon -delivery -workers -feel -exposed -and -vulnerable -to -coronavirus -2020 -3.   41   Amazon avoids taxes : Matthew Gardner, “Amazon Has Record-Breaking Profits in 2020, Avoids $2.3 Billion in Federal Income Taxes,” Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, February 3, 2021, https:// itep .org /amazon -has -record -breaking -profits -in -2020 -avoids -2 -3 -billion -in -federal -income -taxes /.   41   anti-competitive practices : Mark Chandler, “Amazon Accused of Anti-Competitive Practices by US Subcommittee,” Bookseller , October 8, 2020, https:// www .thebookseller .com /news /amazon -accused -anti -competitive -practices -us -subcommittee -1222115.   41   abuses labor : Jodi Kantor, Karen Weise, and Grace Ashford, “Power and Peril: 5 Takeaways on Amazon’s Employment Machine,” New York Times , June 15, 2021, https:// www .nytimes .com /2021 /06 /15 /us /politics /amazon -warehouse -workers .html; Casey Newton, “Amazon’s Poor Treatment of Workers Is Catching up to It during the Coronavirus Crisis,” Verge , April 1, 2020, https:// www .theverge .com /interface /2020 /4 /1 /21201162 /amazon -delivery -delays -coronavirus -worker -strikes.   42   more people opened online trading : Annie Massa, “Pandemic-Fueled Day Trading Is Overwhelming Online Brokers—and the Traders Are Fuming,” Fortune , December 9, 2020, https:// fortune .com /2020 /12 /08 /day -trading -online -brokers -tech -failure -crashes -outages /.   42   Shares of Zoom went up : Shanhong Liu, “Price of Zoom shares traded on Nasdaq Stock Market in 2020 and 2021,” Statista , August 9, 2021, https:// www .statista .com /statistics /1106104 /stock -price -zoom /.   42   Jeff Bezos’s fortune rose : Chase Peterson-Withorn, “How Much Money America’s Billionaires Have Made During the Covid-19 Pandemic,” Forbes , April 30, 2021, https:// www .forbes .com /sites /chasewithorn /2021 /04 /30 /american -billionaires -have -gotten -12 -trillion -richer -during -the -pandemic.   42   five biggest U.S. tech companies : The staff of the Wall Street Journal , “How Big Tech Got Even Bigger,” Wall Street Journal , February 6, 2021, https:// www .wsj .com /articles /how -big -tech -got -even -bigger -11612587632.   42   Netflix’s share price : Jonathan Ponciano, “5 Big Numbers That Show Netflix’s Massive Growth Continues during the Coronavirus Pandemic,” Forbes , October 20, 2020, https:// www .forbes .com /sites /jonathanponciano /2020 /10 /19 /netflix -earnings -5 -numbers -growth -continues -during -the -coronavirus -pandemic /.   43   “Many creatives, startups, and techies” : Jen Murphy, “Remote Workers Flee to $70,000-a-Month Resorts While Awaiting Vaccines,” Bloomberg , February 15, 2021, https:// www .bloomberg .com /news /articles /2021 -02 -15 /remote -workers -flee -to -luxury -beach -resorts -while -awaiting -vaccines.   43   “It’s been great here” : Julie Satow, “Turning a Second Home into a Primary Home,” New York Times , July 24, 2020, https:// www .nytimes .com /2020 /07 /24 /realestate /coronavirus -second -homes - .html.   43   Each 1 percent increase : Mary Van Beusekom, “Race, Income Inequality Fuel COVID Disparities in US Counties,” Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, University of Minnesota, January 20, 2021, https:// www .cidrap .umn .edu /news -perspective /2021 /01 /race -income -inequality -fuel -covid -disparities -us -counties; Tim F.

…

(New York: Viking Penguin, 1987), 251.   38   “we’re way closer … people’s brains” : Matthew Gault, “Billionaires See VR as a Way to Avoid Radical Social Change,” Wired , February 15, 2021, https:// www .wired .com /story /billionaires -use -vr -avoid -social -change /.   38   “It is not possible … you wanted” : Gault, “Billionaires See VR as a Way to Avoid Radical Social Change.”   39   “Yes, we are in a pandemic” : David Zweig, “$25,000 Pod Schools: How Well-to-Do Children Will Weather the Pandemic,” New York Times , July 30, 2020, https:// www .nytimes .com /2020 /07 /30 /nyregion /pod -schools -hastings -on -hudson .html.   41   legions of Amazon workers : Joey Hadden, “Amazon Delivery Drivers Share What It’s Like to Be on the Front Lines of the Coronavirus Pandemic, Including Not Having Time to Wash Their Hands and Uncleaned Vans,” Business Insider , April 2, 2020, https:// www .businessinsider .com /why -amazon -delivery -workers -feel -exposed -and -vulnerable -to -coronavirus -2020 -3.   41   Amazon avoids taxes : Matthew Gardner, “Amazon Has Record-Breaking Profits in 2020, Avoids $2.3 Billion in Federal Income Taxes,” Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, February 3, 2021, https:// itep .org /amazon -has -record -breaking -profits -in -2020 -avoids -2 -3 -billion -in -federal -income -taxes /.   41   anti-competitive practices : Mark Chandler, “Amazon Accused of Anti-Competitive Practices by US Subcommittee,” Bookseller , October 8, 2020, https:// www .thebookseller .com /news /amazon -accused -anti -competitive -practices -us -subcommittee -1222115.   41   abuses labor : Jodi Kantor, Karen Weise, and Grace Ashford, “Power and Peril: 5 Takeaways on Amazon’s Employment Machine,” New York Times , June 15, 2021, https:// www .nytimes .com /2021 /06 /15 /us /politics /amazon -warehouse -workers .html; Casey Newton, “Amazon’s Poor Treatment of Workers Is Catching up to It during the Coronavirus Crisis,” Verge , April 1, 2020, https:// www .theverge .com /interface /2020 /4 /1 /21201162 /amazon -delivery -delays -coronavirus -worker -strikes.   42   more people opened online trading : Annie Massa, “Pandemic-Fueled Day Trading Is Overwhelming Online Brokers—and the Traders Are Fuming,” Fortune , December 9, 2020, https:// fortune .com /2020 /12 /08 /day -trading -online -brokers -tech -failure -crashes -outages /.   42   Shares of Zoom went up : Shanhong Liu, “Price of Zoom shares traded on Nasdaq Stock Market in 2020 and 2021,” Statista , August 9, 2021, https:// www .statista .com /statistics /1106104 /stock -price -zoom /.   42   Jeff Bezos’s fortune rose : Chase Peterson-Withorn, “How Much Money America’s Billionaires Have Made During the Covid-19 Pandemic,” Forbes , April 30, 2021, https:// www .forbes .com /sites /chasewithorn /2021 /04 /30 /american -billionaires -have -gotten -12 -trillion -richer -during -the -pandemic.   42   five biggest U.S. tech companies : The staff of the Wall Street Journal , “How Big Tech Got Even Bigger,” Wall Street Journal , February 6, 2021, https:// www .wsj .com /articles /how -big -tech -got -even -bigger -11612587632.   42   Netflix’s share price : Jonathan Ponciano, “5 Big Numbers That Show Netflix’s Massive Growth Continues during the Coronavirus Pandemic,” Forbes , October 20, 2020, https:// www .forbes .com /sites /jonathanponciano /2020 /10 /19 /netflix -earnings -5 -numbers -growth -continues -during -the -coronavirus -pandemic /.   43   “Many creatives, startups, and techies” : Jen Murphy, “Remote Workers Flee to $70,000-a-Month Resorts While Awaiting Vaccines,” Bloomberg , February 15, 2021, https:// www .bloomberg .com /news /articles /2021 -02 -15 /remote -workers -flee -to -luxury -beach -resorts -while -awaiting -vaccines.   43   “It’s been great here” : Julie Satow, “Turning a Second Home into a Primary Home,” New York Times , July 24, 2020, https:// www .nytimes .com /2020 /07 /24 /realestate /coronavirus -second -homes - .html.   43   Each 1 percent increase : Mary Van Beusekom, “Race, Income Inequality Fuel COVID Disparities in US Counties,” Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, University of Minnesota, January 20, 2021, https:// www .cidrap .umn .edu /news -perspective /2021 /01 /race -income -inequality -fuel -covid -disparities -us -counties; Tim F.

Sunbelt Blues: The Failure of American Housing by Andrew Ross

8-hour work day, Airbnb, barriers to entry, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, carbon footprint, Celebration, Florida, clean water, climate change refugee, company town, coronavirus, corporate raider, COVID-19, do what you love, Donald Trump, drive until you qualify, edge city, El Camino Real, emotional labour, financial innovation, fixed income, gentrification, gig economy, global supply chain, green new deal, Hernando de Soto, Home mortgage interest deduction, housing crisis, Housing First, housing justice, industrial cluster, informal economy, Jeff Bezos, land bank, late fees, lockdown, Lyft, megaproject, military-industrial complex, minimum wage unemployment, mortgage tax deduction, New Urbanism, open immigration, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Peter Calthorpe, pill mill, rent control, rent gap, rent stabilization, restrictive zoning, Richard Florida, San Francisco homelessness, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, smart cities, social distancing, starchitect, tech bro, the built environment, traffic fines, uber lyft, urban planning, urban renewal, urban sprawl, working poor

Richard Bilbao, “Breaking: Disney to Furlough Workers at Walt Disney World, Disneyland Resort,” Orlando Business Journal, April 2, 2020, https://www.bizjournals.com/orlando/news/2020/04/02/breaking-disney-to-furlough-workers-at-walt-disney.html. 25.  Caroline Glenn, “Unemployment in Metro Orlando Jumps to 22.6% in May,” Orlando Sentinel, June 19, 2020, https://www.orlandosentinel.com/coronavirus/jobs-economy/os-bz-coronavirus-florida-orlando-may-unemployment-20200619-2eseklimmjatrcjtiflli34yl4-story.html. 26.  Patricia Mazzei and Sabrina Tavernise, “‘Florida Is a Terrible State to Be an Unemployed Person,’” New York Times, April 23, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/23/us/florida-coronavirus-unemployment.html; and Jim De Fede, “Gov. Ron DeSantis Acknowledges State’s Unemployment System Was Built with ‘Pointless Roadblocks’ to Pay Out ‘Least Number of Claims,’” CBS Miami, August 4, 2020, https://miami.cbslocal.com/2020/08/04/exclusive-governor-ron-desantis-acknowledges-florida-unemployment-system-designed-frustrate/. 27.  

…

She hopes it will be saved because the ground is prone to flooding, and so any developer would be required to “fill and build”—a costly prospect. “If you dig a firepit,” Louise points out, “you’ll hit water pretty quickly here.” By the end of the pandemic summer of 2020, the camps were filling out again with returnees, new arrivals from a wave of motel evictions, and a sprinkling of COVID refugees. During the coronavirus crisis, concentrations of unhoused people in cities around the country were seen as public health threats, and some widely ridiculed alternatives to shelters were introduced by authorities. As most hotel rooms nearby lay empty, San Francisco opened a “safe sleeping village” for socially distanced homeless in the Civic Center Plaza, just yards from City Hall.

…

Almost every LHT business in the region is parasitical on the Mouse, vying for a bite of the spending budget that visitors bring with them. Many other sectors—retail, construction, professional and business services, and the convention business—are indirectly dependent on it. A single-industry economy is highly vulnerable to a downturn. And this is exactly what happened when the coronavirus struck, forcing families to sacrifice Florida vacations and decimating the industry workforce. Disney’s career in Central Florida is a well-known case study in how a private corporation managed to seize for itself expansive governmental powers. After buying up forty-three square miles of land through multiple shell companies, Disney petitioned Florida’s legislature for the creation of a “special district,” a governmental entity that can issue its own tax-exempt bonds instead of drawing on the local county budget.

The New Nomads: How the Migration Revolution Is Making the World a Better Place by Felix Marquardt

"World Economic Forum" Davos, agricultural Revolution, Anthropocene, Black Lives Matter, Black Swan, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, British Empire, carbon footprint, carbon tax, coronavirus, COVID-19, dark matter, digital nomad, Donald Trump, George Floyd, ghettoisation, glass ceiling, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Joi Ito, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, labour market flexibility, Les Trente Glorieuses, out of africa, phenotype, place-making, Ponzi scheme, pre–internet, QAnon, Ray Kurzweil, remote working, Richard Feynman, road to serfdom, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, social distancing, sustainable-tourism, technological solutionism, technoutopianism, Yogi Berra, young professional

We would not have developed farms, cities, nation states, multinational companies, without this ability to define and maintain a group. Self-realisation, the scientific revolution and indeed modernity are all premised on it. But it has served its purpose and now become a problem. The time has come to leave it behind. How? Just as it has brought the world to a halt, the coronavirus pandemic is an opportunity to pause and take stock of the complexities of our present and the causal link between phenomena – specifically economic growth, energy consumption, (im)mobility, (in)equality, environmental degradation, the rise of religious extremism, nationalism and populism. And to recognise that the prosperity and open-minded, pro-immigration stance of the relatively mobile few is predicated on the relative lack of prosperity and mobility of the many,8 rather than on moral virtue.

…

The result was that a record low of 6,300 individuals stayed in the country after their studies. Boris Johnson’s administration reversed the policy in 2019, and so we may see greater numbers of young people staying in Britain after their studies. However, the first intake that this will affect is the coronavirus intake. It is a cliché, but the youth are the future. Any sane country should be at pains to attract young, dynamic people – not create a ‘hostile environment’ that pushes them away. Both the Barrez-vous! movement and the Youthonomics Global Index were driven in part by good intentions: to help young people to flourish in what seemed like a world where the odds were stacking up against them.

…

It should also be remembered that the majority of terrorist attacks conducted in the name of an insane interpretation of Islam in Europe have been perpetrated by those radicalised in Europe, not foreigners coming to Europe. What holds for refugees holds for them, too – societies without alienated, desperate people do not produce terrorists. The same can be said of health concerns, which are largely overblown to start with. TB and coronavirus are a danger if they go undetected. Having a system in place that allows people to seek asylum easily means that illnesses can be screened for. The real danger occurs when, due to the difficulty posed by crossing borders, refugees sneak in with health problems, work in undocumented positions and are, by and large, invisible to health professionals and epidemiologists.

The World for Sale: Money, Power and the Traders Who Barter the Earth’s Resources by Javier Blas, Jack Farchy

accounting loophole / creative accounting, airport security, algorithmic trading, Asian financial crisis, Ayatollah Khomeini, banking crisis, book value, BRICs, business climate, business cycle, collapse of Lehman Brothers, commodity super cycle, coronavirus, corporate raider, COVID-19, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, electricity market, energy security, European colonialism, failed state, financial innovation, Ford Model T, foreign exchange controls, Great Grain Robbery, invisible hand, John Deuss, junk bonds, Kickstarter, light touch regulation, lockdown, low interest rates, margin call, new economy, North Sea oil, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, oil-for-food scandal, Oscar Wyatt, price anchoring, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, Ronald Reagan, Scramble for Africa, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, stakhanovite, Suez crisis 1956, trade route, vertical integration, WikiLeaks, Yom Kippur War, éminence grise

For the 2019 sanctions, see: ‘The United States to Impose Sanctions On Chinese Firm Zhuhai Zhenrong Company Limited for Purchasing Oil From Iran’, US State Department, 22 July 2019, accessed: https://www.state.gov/the-united-states-to-impose-sanctions-on-chinese-firm-zhuhai-zhenrong-company-limited-for-purchasing-oil-from-iran/ . 45 Ian Taylor, interview with the authors, London, February 2019. 46 This account of Glencore’s trading in 2020 is based on an interview with a senior executive, who declined to be named, as well as the company’s statements, and publicly-available information on ship movements. 47 ‘Texas Regulators Weigh Historic Oil Cuts as Coronavirus Pandemic Saps Demand’, Wall Street Journal , 14 April 2020, accessed: https://www.wsj.com/articles/texas-regulators-weigh-historic-oil-cuts-after-coronavirus-11586886293 . 48 Steve Kalmin, Glencore’s chief financial officer, told journalists in August 2020 that the return on equity on the company’s contango deals was as much as 100% ‘in some cases’. 4 9 According to the estimates of several leading oil traders.

…

What’s more, much of the time, commodity markets are either over- or under-supplied. The traders, ever nimble and flexible, are always ready to take a commodity off a producer’s hands as long as the price is right, or to supply it if a consumer is willing to pay. For an example of how that works in practice, look no further than the oil price crash of 2020. As the coronavirus pandemic spread across the world, grounding flights and forcing people to stay at home, the price of oil spiralled lower and lower, briefly trading below zero for the first time ever. And so the traders stepped in, buying oil at dirt-cheap prices, and then storing it until demand recovered. Some even bought a few barrels at negative prices, meaning that producers had to pay them to take it off their hands.

…

As commodity demand tumbled in the wake of the financial crisis, oil traders like Vitol made a killing buying up unwanted oil and storing it – doing a version of the deals that Andy Hall had done nearly twenty years earlier. It was a trade they would repeat to great profit every time the market was oversupplied – not least in 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic struck. Aluminium traders were also cashing in enormous profits by funnelling surplus metal into warehouses. ‘We milked the cow every day,’ recalls one top aluminium trader of his profits in that period. 20 The commodity traders were enjoying a bounty, but for a world that was suffering from hunger and recession, their success was an affront.

Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire by Brad Stone

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, air freight, Airbnb, Amazon Picking Challenge, Amazon Robotics, Amazon Web Services, autonomous vehicles, Bernie Sanders, big data - Walmart - Pop Tarts, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, business climate, call centre, carbon footprint, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, Colonization of Mars, commoditize, company town, computer vision, contact tracing, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, data science, deep learning, disinformation, disintermediation, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, Elon Musk, fake news, fulfillment center, future of work, gentrification, George Floyd, gigafactory, global pandemic, Greta Thunberg, income inequality, independent contractor, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, Kiva Systems, Larry Ellison, lockdown, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, Masayoshi Son, mass immigration, minimum viable product, move fast and break things, Neal Stephenson, NSO Group, Paris climate accords, Peter Thiel, Ponzi scheme, Potemkin village, private spaceflight, quantitative hedge fund, remote working, rent stabilization, RFID, Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan, search inside the book, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Snapchat, social distancing, SoftBank, SpaceX Starlink, speech recognition, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, tech billionaire, tech bro, techlash, TED Talk, Tim Cook: Apple, Tony Hsieh, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, two-pizza team, Uber for X, union organizing, warehouse robotics, WeWork

at least five Amazon workers in Italy and Spain: Matt Day, Daniele Lepido, Helen Fouquet, and Macarena Munoz Montijano, “Coronavirus Strikes at Amazon’s Operational Heart: Its Delivery Machine,” Bloomberg, March 16, 2020, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-16/coronavirus-strikes-at-amazon-s-operational-heart-its-delivery-machine?sref=dJuchiL5 (January 26, 2021). French FCs would stay closed for a month: Matthew Dalton, “Amazon Shuts French Warehouses After Court Orders Coronavirus Restrictions,” Wall Street Journal, April 16, 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-shuts-warehouses-in-france-11587036614 (January 26, 2021); Mathieu Rosemain, “Amazon’s French Warehouses to Reopen with 30% Staff—Unions,” Reuters, May 18, 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-amazon-france/amazons-french-warehouses-to-reopen-with-30-staff-unions-idINKBN22U27G?

…

Jumpp gave an interview to CBS’s 60 Minutes: “Amazon worker: At least 600 Amazon employees stricken by coronavirus,” CBS, May 10, 2020, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/amazon-workers-with-coronavirus-60-minutes-2020-05-10/ (February 16, 2021). around twenty thousand: Amazon’s “Update on COVID-19 Testing.” Amazon also dismissed Katie Doan, a Whole Foods employee: Lauren Kaori Gurley, “Whole Foods Just Fired an Employee Who Kept Track of Corona Virus Cases,” Motherboard, March 29, 2020, https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3zd9g/whole-foods-just-fired-an-employee-who-kept-track-of-coronavirus-cases (February 28, 2021). Bashir Mohamed, a Somali FC worker: Sarah Ashley O’Brien, “Fear and a firing inside an Amazon warehouse,” CNN, April 22, 2020, https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/22/tech/amazon-warehouse-bashir-mohamed/index.html (February 28, 2021).

…

Amazon stopped all nonessential employee travel: Jeffrey Dastin, “Amazon Defers ‘Non-essential’ Moves Even in U.S. as Corporate Travel Bans Spread,” Reuters, February 28, 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-health-amazon-com/amazon-defers-non-essential-moves-even-in-u-s-as-corporate-travel-bans-spread-idUSKCN20M2TZ (January 26, 2021). work from home for two weeks: Taylor Soper, “Amazon Changes Coronavirus Plan, Tells Seattle Area Employees to Work from Home until March 31,” GeekWire, March 4, 2020, https://www.geekwire.com/2020/amazon-changes-coronavirus-plan-tells-seattle-area-employees-work-home-march-31/ (January 26, 2021). for the rest of the year: Monica Nickelsburg, “Amazon Extends Work from Home Policy to January 2021, Opens Offices with New Safety Measures,” GeekWire, July 15, 2020, https://www.geekwire.com/2020/amazon-extends-work-home-policy-january-2021-opens-offices-new-safety-measures/ (January 26, 2021).

The Perfect Police State: An Undercover Odyssey Into China's Terrifying Surveillance Dystopia of the Future by Geoffrey Cain

airport security, Alan Greenspan, AlphaGo, anti-communist, Bellingcat, Berlin Wall, Black Lives Matter, Citizen Lab, cloud computing, commoditize, computer vision, coronavirus, COVID-19, deep learning, DeepMind, Deng Xiaoping, Edward Snowden, European colonialism, fake news, Geoffrey Hinton, George Floyd, ghettoisation, global supply chain, Kickstarter, land reform, lockdown, mass immigration, military-industrial complex, Nelson Mandela, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, pattern recognition, phenotype, pirate software, post-truth, purchasing power parity, QR code, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, ride hailing / ride sharing, Right to Buy, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart cities, South China Sea, speech recognition, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, trade liberalization, trade route, undersea cable, WikiLeaks

Jeff Kao, Raymond Zhong, Paul Mozur and Aaron Krolik, “Leaked Documents Show How China’s Army of Paid Internet Trolls Helped Censor the Coronavirus,” ProPublica and New York Times, December 19, 2020, https://www.propublica.org/article/leaked-documents-show-how-chinas-army-of-paid-internet-trolls-helped-censor-the-coronavirus. 11. Associated Press, “China Delayed Releasing Coronavirus Info, Frustrating WHO,” June 3, 2020, https://apnews.com/article/3c061794970661042b18d5aeaaed9fae. 12. Steven Erlanger, “Global Backlash Builds against China over Coronavirus,” New York Times, May 3, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/03/world/europe/backlash-china-coronavirus.html. 13. US Consulate General in Guangzhou, People’s Republic of China, “Event: Discrimination against African-Americans in Guangzhou,” April 13, 2020, https://china.usembassy-china.org.cn/health-alert-u-s-consulate-general-guangzhou-peoples-republic-of-china/. 14.

…

World Health Organization, “Pneumonia of Unknown Cause—China,” January 5, 2020, https://www.who.int/csr/don/05-january-2020-pneumonia-of-unkown-cause-china/en/. 8. “The Coronavirus Didn’t Really Start at the Wuhan ‘Wet Market’,” Live Science, May 28, 2020, https://www.livescience.com/covid-19-did-not-start-at-wuhan-wet-market.html. 9. Aylin Woodward, “At Least 5 People in China Have Disappeared, Gotten Arrested, or Been Silenced after Speaking Out about the Coronavirus—Here’s What We Know About Them,” Business Insider, February 20, 2020, https://www.businessinsider.com/china-coronavirus-whistleblowers-speak-out-vanish-2020-2. 10. Jeff Kao, Raymond Zhong, Paul Mozur and Aaron Krolik, “Leaked Documents Show How China’s Army of Paid Internet Trolls Helped Censor the Coronavirus,” ProPublica and New York Times, December 19, 2020, https://www.propublica.org/article/leaked-documents-show-how-chinas-army-of-paid-internet-trolls-helped-censor-the-coronavirus. 11.

…

Lijian Zhao, Twitter post, March 12, 2020, 10:37 p.m. Beijing time, https://twitter.com/zlj517/status/1238111898828066823. 15. Selam Gebredikan, “For Autocrats, and Others, Coronavirus Is a Chance to Grab Even More Power,” New York Times, March 30, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/30/world/europe/coronavirus-governments-power.html. 16. Krystal Hu, “Exclusive: Amazon Turns to Chinese Firms on U.S. Blacklist to Meet Thermal Camera Needs,” Reuters, April 29, 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-amazon-com-cameras-idUSKBN22B1AL. 17. Sam Biddle, “Police Surveilled George Floyd Protests with Help from Twitter-Affiliated Startup Dataminr,” Intercept, July 9, 2020, https://theintercept.com/2020/07/09/twitter-dataminr-police-spy-surveillance-black-lives-matter-protests/. 18.

Exponential: How Accelerating Technology Is Leaving Us Behind and What to Do About It by Azeem Azhar

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, 3D printing, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Ada Lovelace, additive manufacturing, air traffic controllers' union, Airbnb, algorithmic management, algorithmic trading, Amazon Mechanical Turk, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Bletchley Park, Blitzscaling, Boeing 737 MAX, book value, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, carbon footprint, Chris Urmson, Citizen Lab, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, collective bargaining, computer age, computer vision, contact tracing, contact tracing app, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, decarbonisation, deep learning, deglobalization, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, Demis Hassabis, Diane Coyle, digital map, digital rights, disinformation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, drone strike, Elon Musk, emotional labour, energy security, Fairchild Semiconductor, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Firefox, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fulfillment center, future of work, Garrett Hardin, gender pay gap, general purpose technology, Geoffrey Hinton, gig economy, global macro, global pandemic, global supply chain, global value chain, global village, GPT-3, Hans Moravec, happiness index / gross national happiness, hiring and firing, hockey-stick growth, ImageNet competition, income inequality, independent contractor, industrial robot, intangible asset, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John Perry Barlow, Just-in-time delivery, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, knowledge worker, Kodak vs Instagram, Law of Accelerating Returns, lockdown, low skilled workers, lump of labour, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, megacity, Mitch Kapor, Mustafa Suleyman, Network effects, new economy, NSO Group, Ocado, offshore financial centre, OpenAI, PalmPilot, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Peter Thiel, Planet Labs, price anchoring, RAND corporation, ransomware, Ray Kurzweil, remote working, RFC: Request For Comment, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Bork, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Sam Altman, scientific management, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, software as a service, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Stuxnet, subscription business, synthetic biology, tacit knowledge, TaskRabbit, tech worker, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Future of Employment, The Nature of the Firm, Thomas Malthus, TikTok, Tragedy of the Commons, Turing machine, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, universal basic income, uranium enrichment, vertical integration, warehouse automation, winner-take-all economy, workplace surveillance , Yom Kippur War

v=2HMPRXstSvQ> [accessed 24 February 2021]. 6 Paul Daugherty, H. James Wilson and Paul Michelman, ‘Revisiting the Jobs That Artificial Intelligence Will Create’, MIT Sloan Management Review (Summer 2017). 7 Lana Bandoim, ‘Robots Are Cleaning Grocery Store Floors During the Coronavirus Outbreak’, Forbes, 8 April 2020 <https://www.forbes.com/sites/lanabandoim/2020/04/08/robots-are-cleaning-grocery-store-floors-during-the-coronavirus-outbreak/> [accessed 24 February 2021]. 8 Jame DiBiasio, ‘A.I. Drives China Techfins into Car Insurance – and Beyond’, Digital Finance, 3 June 2020 <https://www.digfingroup.com/insurtech-ai/> [accessed 24 February 2021]. 9 Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne, ‘The Future of Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerisation?’

…

I use the term in a slightly different context, referring to the overall breakdown of the thesis that technology necessarily enables single large global markets, mediated by a set of common rules. 4 Philip Garnett, Bob Doherty, and Tony Heron, ‘Vulnerability of the United Kingdom’s Food Supply Chains Exposed by COVID-19’, Nature Food, 1(6), 2020, pp. 315–318 <https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-020-0097-7>. 5 Alex Lee, ‘How the UK’s Just-in-Time Delivery Model Crumbled under Coronavirus’, Wired, 30 March 2020 <https://www.wired.co.uk/article/stockpiling-supermarkets-coronavirus> [accessed 11 September 2020]. 6 UBS, The Food Revolution, July 2019 <https://www.ubs.com/global/en/ubs-society/our-stories/2019/future-of-food/_jcr_content/mainpar/toplevelgrid_1749059381/col1/linklist/link.1695495471.file/bGluay9wYXRoPS9jb250ZW50L2RhbS91YnMvZ2xvYmFsL3Vicy1zb2NpZXR5LzIwMTkvZm9vZC1yZXZvbHV0aW9uLWp1bHkucGRm/food-revolution-july.pdf>. 7 ‘Growing Higher – New Ways to Make Vertical Farming Stack up’, The Economist, 31 August 2019 <https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2019/08/31/new-ways-to-make-vertical-farming-stack-up> [accessed 4 August 2020]. 8 ‘World’s Biggest Rooftop Greenhouse Opens in Montreal’, Phys.org, 26 August 2020 <https://phys.org/news/2020-08-world-biggest-rooftop-greenhouse-montreal.html> [accessed 5 September 2020]. 9 Elizabeth Curmi et al., ‘Feeding the Future’, Citi Global Perspectives and Solutions, November 2018 <https://www.citivelocity.com/citigps/feeding-the-future/> [accessed 18 March 2021]. 10 Joel Jean, Patrick Richard Brown and Institute of Physics (Great Britain), Emerging Photovoltaic Technologies (Bristol, UK: IOP Publishing, 2020), pp. 1–5 <https://iopscience.iop.org/book/978-0-7503-2152-5> [accessed 12 October 2020]. 11 Brendan Coyne, ‘Vehicle-to-Grid: Are We Nearly There Yet?’

…

It creeps up on you and then explodes – one moment everything seems fine, the next your health service is on the verge of being overwhelmed by a new disease. And humans struggle to conceptualise the speed of that shift, as shown by the lackadaisical responses of many governments to the spread of coronavirus, particularly in Europe and America. At the same time, the pandemic revealed the full power of recent inventions. In most of the developed world, lockdowns were only possible due to widespread access to fast internet. Those of us locked at home spent much of the pandemic glued to our phones. And, most strikingly of all, within a year scientists had developed dozens of new vaccines – which, as we’ll see, were made possible by new innovations like machine learning.

How Boards Work: And How They Can Work Better in a Chaotic World by Dambisa Moyo

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, algorithmic trading, Amazon Web Services, AOL-Time Warner, asset allocation, barriers to entry, Ben Horowitz, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Boeing 737 MAX, Bretton Woods, business cycle, business process, buy and hold, call centre, capital controls, carbon footprint, collapse of Lehman Brothers, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, creative destruction, cryptocurrency, deglobalization, don't be evil, Donald Trump, fake news, financial engineering, gender pay gap, geopolitical risk, George Floyd, gig economy, glass ceiling, global pandemic, global supply chain, hiring and firing, income inequality, index fund, intangible asset, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jeff Bezos, knowledge economy, labor-force participation, long term incentive plan, low interest rates, Lyft, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, multilevel marketing, Network effects, new economy, old-boy network, Pareto efficiency, passive investing, Pershing Square Capital Management, proprietary trading, remote working, Ronald Coase, Savings and loan crisis, search costs, shareholder value, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, social distancing, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, SoftBank, sovereign wealth fund, surveillance capitalism, The Nature of the Firm, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, trade route, Travis Kalanick, uber lyft, Vanguard fund, Washington Consensus, WeWork, women in the workforce, work culture

To reframe this in a crude way, someone interested in gaining a place on a corporate board must ask themselves: Who from the management team would call me for advice, and when and why? Diversity is just one of the many major issues facing boards today. I conceived this book, and wrote most of it, well before the coronavirus pandemic of 2020. But the first months of the pandemic only reinforced my conclusions about the importance of functional, decisive, and wisely run boards. The coronavirus may have amplified the challenges facing today’s global companies, but I believe now more than ever in the positive role these corporations—and their boards—can play in society. Businesses are reckoning with a period of shocks, tremendous uncertainty, and heightened complexity that is testing whether corporations, and indeed capitalism itself, will survive.

…

They are increasingly serving as agents of change, pushing for reforms and innovation in areas previously thought to be solely the purview of government—from environmental change to diversity and inclusion across the workforce. Finally, corporations make invaluable contributions to human progress, joining with government to respond to global crises like the 2020 pandemic. Leading pharmaceutical companies were at the forefront of the development of a vaccine and treatments against the coronavirus, producers and suppliers mobilized to keep essential goods moving toward society’s most vulnerable, and formerly obscure industrial companies took center stage as providers of necessary equipment such as face masks, respirators, and ventilators. So the fates of corporations and society as a whole are closely linked.

…

Leaving a good legacy is becoming harder, however, as the corporate board’s oversight role becomes ever more challenging and baseline notions about shareholder value and social responsibility shift with the changing times. Twenty-first-century companies are buffeted by unprecedented economic headwinds. Particularly after the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, the global economy is facing a deep and protracted recession, adding to already slowing long-term economic growth trends. Furthermore, de-globalization—in the form of new trade tariffs, capital controls, and increased barriers to immigration—threatens to harm global commerce and limit investment flows and the movement of labor, thereby worsening an already dire economic outlook.

Tomorrow's Capitalist: My Search for the Soul of Business by Alan Murray

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Toffler, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Boris Johnson, call centre, carbon footprint, commoditize, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate raider, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, decarbonisation, digital divide, disinformation, disruptive innovation, do well by doing good, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Ferguson, Missouri, financial innovation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Frederick Winslow Taylor, future of work, gentrification, George Floyd, global pandemic, Greta Thunberg, gun show loophole, impact investing, income inequality, intangible asset, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, job automation, knowledge worker, lockdown, London Whale, low interest rates, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, means of production, minimum wage unemployment, natural language processing, new economy, old-boy network, price mechanism, profit maximization, remote working, risk-adjusted returns, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, scientific management, shareholder value, side hustle, Silicon Valley, social distancing, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, The Future of Employment, the payments system, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tim Cook: Apple, Washington Consensus, women in the workforce, work culture , working poor, zero-sum game

In the early months of the pandemic, my email box was flooded with press releases from companies touting their coronavirus good works. The serious contenders, in my view, were the companies who were actually trying to make a measurable difference, either for their employees or in the COVID-19 fight. Target announced an investment of more than $300 million in added wages, paid leave, and backup childcare. Allstate offered free coverage to those who were using their vehicles to deliver food and medicine. MassMutual offered free life insurance to frontline health care workers. Jack Dorsey dedicated $1 billion in Square stock for coronavirus relief. The list went on. COVID-19 has presented an opportunity for CEOs to do more than pay lip service to change.

…

The “global society,” long heralded as a supreme advance of the modern era, aided the spread of the disease. In the coming weeks travel bans were announced, and when the spread continued, lockdowns began. California was the first with a statewide stay-at-home order. On the East Coast, New York state became the epicenter of the coronavirus, with Governor Andrew Cuomo ordering all nonessential businesses closed. The blow to the economy was immense. Without customers, the airline industry was effectively shuttered. Restaurants closed. Theaters shut down and Broadway went dark. Businesses sent workers home. Schools closed. The streets of Manhattan, the global heartbeat of finance, were empty.

…

It’s literally like a snowball going downhill, picking up momentum.”2 When I first began speaking with business leaders to hear their thinking about the crisis and its effects, I lamented that it was coming just as the dramatic movement for change was gathering momentum across the business community. Since that auspicious gathering in Rome, much had happened to cement a commitment to increasing the positive social impact of corporations. ENTERING THE FRAY When I spoke with JUST Capital CEO Martin Whittaker in early April 2020, he had just been exposed to the coronavirus and was experiencing symptoms. He’d later call it the biggest test of his career. Whittaker is a thoughtful guy, who once told an interviewer that he derived strength from the words of Theodore Roosevelt in his famous speech about courage, delivered in Paris in 1910. Roosevelt discounts the critics and praises the person who is “actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good? by Michael J. Sandel

affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, anti-communist, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, centre right, coronavirus, COVID-19, Credit Default Swap, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, ending welfare as we know it, facts on the ground, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, global supply chain, helicopter parent, High speed trading, immigration reform, income inequality, Khan Academy, laissez-faire capitalism, meritocracy, meta-analysis, Nate Silver, new economy, obamacare, Occupy movement, open immigration, Paris climate accords, plutocrats, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, Rishi Sunak, Ronald Reagan, smart grid, social distancing, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, the market place, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, W. E. B. Du Bois, Washington Consensus, Yochai Benkler

Remarks by President Trump Before Marine One Departure, February 23, 2020, whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-marine-one-departure-83/ ; Remarks by President Trump in Meeting with African American Leaders, February 27, 2020, whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-meeting-african-american-leaders/ . 2. Farhad Manjoo, “How the World’s Richest Country Ran Out of a 75-Cent Face Mask,” The New York Times , March 25, 2020, nytimes.com/2020/03/25/opinion/coronavirus-face-mask.html . 3. Margot Sanger-Katz, “On Coronavirus, Americans Still Trust the Experts,” The New York Times , June 27, 2020, nytimes.com/2020/06/27/upshot/coronavirus-americans-trust-experts.html . INTRODUCTION: GETTING IN 1. Jennifer Medina, Katie Benner, and Kate Taylor, “Actresses, Business Leaders and Other Wealthy Parents Charged in U.S. College Entry Fraud,” The New York Times , March 12, 2019, nytimes.com/2019/03/12/us/college-admissions-cheating-scandal.html . 2.

…

Goodman, “The Nordic Way to Economic Rescue,” The New York Times , March 28, 2020, nytimes.com/2020/03/28/business/nordic-way-economic-rescue-virus.html ; Richard Partington, “UK Government to Pay 80% of Wages for Those Not Working in Coronavirus Crisis,” The Guardian , March 20, 2020, theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/mar/20/government-pay-wages-jobs-coronavirus-rishi-sunak ; Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, “Jobs Aren’t Being Destroyed This Fast Elsewhere. Why Is That?,” The New York Times , March 30, 2020, nytimes.com/2020/03/30/opinion/coronavirus-economy-saez-zucman.html . 53. Oren Cass, The Once and Future Worker , pp. 79–99. 54. Ibid., pp. 115–39. 55. Ibid., pp. 25–28, 210–12. 56.

…

SANDEL Liberalism and the Limits of Justice Liberalism and Its Critics (editor) Democracy’s Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy Public Philosophy: Essays on Morality in Politics The Case Against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering Justice: A Reader (editor) Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets Encountering China: Michael Sandel and Chinese Philosophy (co-editor) For Kiku, with love Prologue When the coronavirus pandemic hit in 2020, the United States, like many other countries, was unprepared. Despite warnings the previous year from public health experts about the risk of a global viral contagion, and even as China contended with its outbreak in January, the United States lacked the ability to conduct the widespread testing that might have contained the disease.

The Future of Money: How the Digital Revolution Is Transforming Currencies and Finance by Eswar S. Prasad

access to a mobile phone, Adam Neumann (WeWork), Airbnb, algorithmic trading, altcoin, bank run, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Bernie Madoff, Big Tech, bitcoin, Bitcoin Ponzi scheme, Bletchley Park, blockchain, Bretton Woods, business intelligence, buy and hold, capital controls, carbon footprint, cashless society, central bank independence, cloud computing, coronavirus, COVID-19, Credit Default Swap, cross-border payments, cryptocurrency, deglobalization, democratizing finance, disintermediation, distributed ledger, diversified portfolio, Dogecoin, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, eurozone crisis, fault tolerance, fiat currency, financial engineering, financial independence, financial innovation, financial intermediation, Flash crash, floating exchange rates, full employment, gamification, gig economy, Glass-Steagall Act, global reserve currency, index fund, inflation targeting, informal economy, information asymmetry, initial coin offering, Internet Archive, Jeff Bezos, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, light touch regulation, liquidity trap, litecoin, lockdown, loose coupling, low interest rates, Lyft, M-Pesa, machine readable, Mark Zuckerberg, Masayoshi Son, mobile money, Money creation, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, Network effects, new economy, offshore financial centre, open economy, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, PalmPilot, passive investing, payday loans, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer lending, Peter Thiel, Ponzi scheme, price anchoring, profit motive, QR code, quantitative easing, quantum cryptography, RAND corporation, random walk, Real Time Gross Settlement, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, reserve currency, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, risk/return, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, robo advisor, Ross Ulbricht, Salesforce, Satoshi Nakamoto, seigniorage, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, smart contracts, SoftBank, special drawing rights, the payments system, too big to fail, transaction costs, uber lyft, unbanked and underbanked, underbanked, Vision Fund, Vitalik Buterin, Wayback Machine, WeWork, wikimedia commons, Y Combinator, zero-sum game

Part 3: Helicopter Money,” Brookings Institution (blog), April 11, 2016, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/ben-bernanke/2016/04/11/what-tools-does-the-fed-have-left-part-3-helicopter-money/; and Jordi Galí, “Helicopter Money: The Time Is Now,” VoxEU, CEPR (blog), March 17, 2020, https://voxeu.org/article/helicopter-money-time-now. The March 2020 coronavirus stimulus bill is described in this article: Emily Cochrane and Sheryl Gay Stolberg, “$2 Trillion Coronavirus Stimulus Bill Is Signed into Law,” New York Times, March 27, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/27/us/politics/coronavirus-house-voting.html. The Economic Impact Payments are described at https://www.irs.gov/coronavirus/economic-impact-payments. The status of the payments as of June 2020 is summarized at “Economic Impact Payments Issued to Date,” US House of Representatives, Committee on Ways and Means, June 2020, https://waysandmeans.house.gov/sites/democrats.waysandmeans.house.gov/files/documents/2020.06.04%20EIPs%20Issued%20as%20of%20June%204%20FINAL.pdf.

…

Dollars Repatriated from Asia on Coronavirus Caution,” Reuters, March 6, 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-fed-dollars/fed-quarantines-us-dollars-repatriated-from-asia-on-coronavirus-caution-idUSKBN20T1YT; and Kate Davidson and Tom Fairless, “Fed Stores Dollars Arriving from Asia as Coronavirus Precaution,” Wall Street Journal, March 6, 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/fed-delays-processing-dollar-bills-from-asia-amid-coronavirus-fears-11583512719. The New York University research is summarized here: Michaeleen Doucleff, “Dirty Money: A Microbial Jungle Thrives in Your Wallet,” NPR, April 23, 2014, https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2014/04/23/305890574/dirty-money-a-microbial-jungle-thrives-in-your-wallet.

…

Cash Is Not Clean The allocation of new banknotes to Wuhan and the requirement that banknotes be disinfected were reported in Chinese official media: Wang Tianyu, “Central Bank Allocates 4 Billion Yuan in New Banknotes to Wuhan,” China Global Television Network, February 15, 2020, https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-02-15/Central-bank-allocates-4-billion-yuan-in-new-banknotes-to-Wuhan-O69Pj35nNu/index.html; and “China Ensures Timely Money Transfer, Disinfects Banknotes amid Fight against Coronavirus,” Xinhuanet, February 15, 2020, http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-02/15/c_138786757.htm. The Guangzhou branch’s actions to destroy banknotes is described here: Karen Yeung, “China Central Bank Branch to Destroy Banknotes from Coronavirus-Hit Sectors,” South China Morning Post, February 16, 2020, https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3050868/fresh-cash-old-china-central-bank-branch-destroy-banknotes. The Fed’s actions are reported in Pete Schroeder and Anna Irrera, “Fed Quarantines U.S. Dollars Repatriated from Asia on Coronavirus Caution,” Reuters, March 6, 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-fed-dollars/fed-quarantines-us-dollars-repatriated-from-asia-on-coronavirus-caution-idUSKBN20T1YT; and Kate Davidson and Tom Fairless, “Fed Stores Dollars Arriving from Asia as Coronavirus Precaution,” Wall Street Journal, March 6, 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/fed-delays-processing-dollar-bills-from-asia-amid-coronavirus-fears-11583512719.

This Book Could Fix Your Life: The Science of Self Help by New Scientist, Helen Thomson

Abraham Wald, Black Lives Matter, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, classic study, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, David Attenborough, delayed gratification, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, fake it until you make it, Flynn Effect, George Floyd, global pandemic, hedonic treadmill, job satisfaction, Kickstarter, lock screen, lockdown, meta-analysis, microbiome, nocebo, placebo effect, publication bias, randomized controlled trial, risk tolerance, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), Sheryl Sandberg, social distancing, Steve Jobs, sugar pill, sunk-cost fallacy, survivorship bias, TED Talk, TikTok, ultra-processed food, Walter Mischel

So if you do decide to have that extra pint of lager, with its two units of alcohol, think about whether it’s worth the effort of working out for an extra twenty minutes to balance the books. HOW TO STOP OVEREATING If you feel like your diet has completely gone to pot during a year of coronavirus lockdowns in which you’ve struggled to find your regular food, and been stressed and bored – known risk factors for overeating – then you’re not alone. Emerging evidence suggests that many people, in the UK at least, are struggling to resist the comforts of food more than ever. Weight gain and its negative impact on our health might be an unforeseen consequence of the coronavirus pandemic. An unhealthy diet is often blamed on poor choices and a lack of willpower. We’ve already looked in Chapter 6 at some ways you can train your brain into choosing healthier foods.

…

You should also consult a medical practitioner before making changes to your diet or exercise regime, especially if you have pre-existing health conditions. 1 HOW NOT TO WORRY IT IS A HOT and sticky June 2020 as I write this, and I am sitting in my tiny box room. It is a nursery masquerading as an office as my family enters month four of lockdown, amid the worldwide coronavirus pandemic. Starting at 6.30 a.m., my husband and I split each day in half – one of us cares for our daughter while the other goes to work upstairs. At 1 p.m., we swap shifts. At 6.30 p.m. we share an evening routine of bath, stories and bed. A quick dinner, half an hour of TV, and then bed for me, too.

…

On repeat. Like many others, we’ve not seen our family or friends since Christmas. We spend only an hour or so a day in a nearby park, and mostly get our food via deliveries. Oh, and I’m also eight months pregnant. To say that this is a challenging time is an understatement. Like most people during the coronavirus crisis, the worry has at times got to me. I worry about my daughter and how she’s missing her pals at nursery, and fear I am only inadequately fulfilling her needs. I worry about whether I’m going to get this book finished on time, or whether I’ll end up doing less than the perfect job I want to.

The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power by Max Chafkin

3D printing, affirmative action, Airbnb, anti-communist, bank run, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Blitzscaling, Boeing 747, borderless world, Cambridge Analytica, charter city, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, Cornelius Vanderbilt, coronavirus, COVID-19, Credit Default Swap, cryptocurrency, David Brooks, David Graeber, DeepMind, digital capitalism, disinformation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, driverless car, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Elon Musk, Ethereum, Extropian, facts on the ground, Fairchild Semiconductor, fake news, Ferguson, Missouri, Frank Gehry, Gavin Belson, global macro, Gordon Gekko, Greyball, growth hacking, guest worker program, Hacker News, Haight Ashbury, helicopter parent, hockey-stick growth, illegal immigration, immigration reform, Internet Archive, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, Kevin Roose, Kickstarter, Larry Ellison, life extension, lockdown, low interest rates, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Maui Hawaii, Max Levchin, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, moral panic, move fast and break things, Neal Stephenson, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, off grid, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, open borders, operational security, PalmPilot, Paris climate accords, Patri Friedman, paypal mafia, Peter Gregory, Peter Thiel, pets.com, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, public intellectual, QAnon, quantitative hedge fund, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, randomized controlled trial, regulatory arbitrage, Renaissance Technologies, reserve currency, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, Ronald Reagan, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, skunkworks, social distancing, software is eating the world, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, surveillance capitalism, TaskRabbit, tech billionaire, tech worker, TechCrunch disrupt, techlash, technology bubble, technoutopianism, Ted Kaczynski, TED Talk, the new new thing, the scientific method, Tim Cook: Apple, transaction costs, Travis Kalanick, Tyler Cowen, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, Upton Sinclair, Vitalik Buterin, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks, William Shockley: the traitorous eight, Y Combinator, Y2K, yellow journalism, Zenefits

a record price: “Peter Thiel Buys Maui Home for a Record $27 Million,” The Wall Street Journal, July 15, 2011, https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304911104576444362936635124. and ultimately flawed: Riley Beggin, “Report: The CDC Contaminated Its First Coronavirus Tests, Setting US Back,” Vox, April, 18, 2020, https://www.vox.com/2020/4/18/21226372/coronavirus-tests-cdc-contaminated-delay-testing. “Software is eating the world”: Marc Andreessen, “Why Software Is Eating the World,” Andreessen Horowitz, August 20, 2011, https://a16z.com/2011/08/20/why-software-is-eating-the-world/. two more contracts, worth $25 million: Dave Nyczepir, “HHS Cites Coronavirus ‘Urgency’ in Speedy Palantir Contract Awards,” FedScoop, May 8, 2020, https://www.fedscoop.com/hha-covid-funds-palantir/.

…

“numbers are being cooked”: Graig Graziosi, “Republican Senate Hopeful Says Coronavirus Numbers Being ‘Cooked’ to Hurt Trump,” The Independent, July 28, 2020, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/coronavirus-deaths-trump-republican-senate-kris-kobach-a9642731.html. Tesla workers in Fremont: Neal E. Boudette, “Hundreds of Tesla Workers Tested Positive for the Virus after Elon Musk Reopened a Plant, Data Shows,” The New York Times, March 13, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/13/world/tesla-elon-musk-coronavirus-outbreak.html. virus as the “sniffles”: “Trump Says Son Barron’s Covid Illness ‘‘Just Went Away,’ ” NBC News, October 22, 2020, https://www.nbcnews.com/video/trump-says-son-barron-s-covid-illness-just-went-away-94447173800.

…

It was all working. 20 BACK TO THE FUTURE Just as the American public was coming to the realization that the coronavirus was spreading rapidly and that life was going to be profoundly different for some indeterminate amount of time, Peter Thiel left Los Angeles. Conventional wisdom had it that he’d gone to New Zealand—to the Plasma House and its panic room or perhaps to a bunker on the South Island farm he’d bought. New Zealand was living up to its reputation as an ideal apocalypse destination. The country had locked down early and closed its borders to noncitizens. It would suffer only twenty-five deaths from coronavirus through the end of 2020. But Thiel never made it to New Zealand—and, in fact, he’d essentially ignored his newly adopted homeland since the end of 2017, when he’d attended Simon Denny’s art exhibit The Founder’s Paradox, which explored the mythology of tech founders as the godlike figures that Silicon Valley, and especially Thiel, had promoted.

The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World by Max Fisher

2021 United States Capitol attack, 4chan, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Airbnb, Bellingcat, Ben Horowitz, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Bill Gates: Altair 8800, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, call centre, centre right, cloud computing, Comet Ping Pong, Computer Lib, coronavirus, COVID-19, crisis actor, crowdsourcing, dark pattern, data science, deep learning, deliberate practice, desegregation, disinformation, domesticated silver fox, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, end-to-end encryption, fake news, Filter Bubble, Future Shock, game design, gamification, George Floyd, growth hacking, Hacker Conference 1984, Hacker News, hive mind, illegal immigration, Jeff Bezos, John Perry Barlow, Jon Ronson, Joseph Schumpeter, Julian Assange, Kevin Roose, lockdown, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Max Levchin, military-industrial complex, Oklahoma City bombing, Parler "social media", pattern recognition, Paul Graham, Peter Thiel, profit maximization, public intellectual, QAnon, recommendation engine, ride hailing / ride sharing, Rutger Bregman, Saturday Night Live, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, Snapchat, social distancing, Social Justice Warrior, social web, Startup school, Stephen Hawking, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, Susan Wojcicki, tech billionaire, tech worker, Ted Nelson, TED Talk, TikTok, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks, Y Combinator

Fights a Pandemic Besides Coronavirus: An ‘Infodemic,’” Matt Richtel, New York Times, February 6, 2020. 2 “The interest that I got:” “Q&A: Solidifying Social Media Platforms’ Role in Global Health,” Devex Partnerships, Devex.com, November 29, 2021. 3 “I made this pitch on a human”: “How WHO Is Engaging Big Tech to Fight Covid-19,” Catherine Cheney, Devex.com, August 14, 2020. 4 an “infodemic”: “Facebook, Amazon, Google and More Met with WHO to Figure Out How to Stop Coronavirus Misinformation,” Christina Farr and Salvador Rodriguez, CNBC, February 14, 2020. 5 Facebook posts were already winning: “Coronavirus Cannot be Cured by Drinking Bleach or Snorting Cocaine, despite Social Media Rumors,” Christina Capatides, CBS News, March 9, 2020. 6 Instagram influencers explained: “Coronavirus Conspiracy Video Spreads on Instagram among Black Celebrities,” Brandy Zadrozny, NBC News, March 13, 2020. 7 the CIA was hoarding: Tweet by Brody Logan (@BrodyLogan), March 16, 2020. twitter.com/BrodyLogan/status/1239406460188020736 8 blaming the disease on 5G cell towers: “Why Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories Flourish.

…

It was as if the entire world became a Zika-afflicted village whose mothers turned in desperation to online rumors, or a collective of lonely young men escalating one another’s disillusionment and anomie into a shared struggle against some fabricated enemy. Coronavirus conspiracies, promising access to forbidden truths others did not hold, let believers feel certainty and autonomy amid a crisis that had taken away both. By pinning it all on some villain or plot, they gave a senseless tragedy some degree of meaning, however dark. And they offered users a way to take action, first by sharing their secret knowledge with others, then by telling one another that they would band together against whatever culprit the conspiracy blamed. The overarching narrative—coronavirus is a plot by Them to control Us—was everywhere by April.

…

The overarching narrative—coronavirus is a plot by Them to control Us—was everywhere by April. Often, the conspiracies originated with everyday users with tiny followings. A small-town missionary’s Facebook post accusing Bill Gates and China of spreading coronavirus to undermine Trump. A Houston beautician’s tweet listing past epidemics alongside corresponding election years (the dates were wrong) with the message “Coronavirus is a government made disease.” A video, on YouTube, of two doctors presenting phony claims that Covid was mostly harmless and that masks could be forgone. Each reached audiences numbering in the millions, all thanks to the platforms’ promotional systems.

We're Not Broken: Changing the Autism Conversation by Eric Garcia

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Albert Einstein, Asperger Syndrome, autism spectrum disorder, barriers to entry, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, coronavirus, COVID-19, defund the police, Donald Trump, epigenetics, fake news, Ferguson, Missouri, full employment, George Floyd, Greta Thunberg, intentional community, Internet Archive, Joi Ito, Lyft, meta-analysis, neurotypical, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, pattern recognition, phenotype, Salesforce, San Francisco homelessness, short selling, Silicon Valley, TED Talk

In July of the campaign, he released a plan that would eliminate the waitlist for home- and community-based services through increasing money for Medicaid and supported creating a “innovation fund” to find alternatives to institutional care. For the most part, though, Biden’s campaign (somewhat understandably) focused on other topics, such as the coronavirus pandemic and protests against racial injustice. But in both cases, disabled people faced the brunt of the pandemic. NPR reported at the time that people with intellectual disabilities and autism who contracted coronavirus died at a higher rate than the rest of the population in New York and Pennsylvania. Biden also hired Molly Doris-Pierce, who was disability outreach coordinator for Elizabeth Warren and whose disability plan was widely praised by the disability community.

…

Maggie Astor: Maggie Astor, “Elizabeth Warren Opens a New Front in Disability Policy,” New York Times, January 10, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/10/us/politics/elizabeth-warren-disability-plan.html. a disabled father: David M. Perry, “My Coronavirus Prep Includes Protecting My Disabled Child,” Washington Post, March 4, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/03/04/coronavirus-prep-disabled-children/. when I saw a tweet from right-wing provocateur Ryan Saavedra: Ryan Saavedra, Twitter, September, 6, 2019, https://twitter.com/RealSaavedra/status/1170082834377105410. “I hope @KamalaHarris enjoys losing the disability vote”: Julia Bascom, Twitter, September, 7, 2019, https://twitter.com/JustStimming/status/1170392597178789889.

…

Public policy has also begun to move in favor of parent advocates like Lutz and Solotaroff. In 2017, CMS under the Trump administration gave states until 2022 to show they are complying with the new rule when they were initially meant to comply in 2019. In 2020, CMS again extended the compliance deadline until March 17, 2023, amid the coronavirus pandemic. Then in 2019, CMS released new guidance on the settings rule. While it kept the rule in place, it changed the criteria—which it claimed it streamlined—for settings that isolate and removed the list of specific settings that isolate. Most notably, it also said, “Settings located in rural areas are not automatically presumed to have qualities of an institution, and more specifically, are not considered by CMS as automatically isolating to HCBS beneficiaries.”

How to Work Without Losing Your Mind by Cate Sevilla

Big Tech, BIPOC, Black Lives Matter, coronavirus, COVID-19, data science, Desert Island Discs, Donald Trump, emotional labour, gender pay gap, Girl Boss, global pandemic, Google Hangouts, imposter syndrome, job satisfaction, lockdown, microaggression, period drama, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, remote working, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Skype, tech bro, TED Talk, women in the workforce, work culture

But it would be naive and, quite frankly, silly of us to give a celebratory Mary Tyler Moore beret-toss when we know that, actually, things are still unequal. We shouldn’t exactly be grateful that we’re no longer only relegated to secretary or assistant positions, or thrilled that we’re even ‘allowed’ to be at work. In fact, during the coronavirus pandemic, it became alarmingly clear that women are indeed the backbone of our economy and what keeps our societies functioning. The New York Times reported in April 2020 that while normally men make up the majority of the American workforce, during the pandemic when everything was stripped back to the bare necessities – one in three jobs held by a woman was designated as essential.6 From nurses and pharmacy technicians to supermarket cashiers, the New York Times wrote that this ‘unseen labor force’ whose work is often ‘underpaid and undervalued’ is actually what ‘keeps the country running and takes care of those most in need, whether or not there is a pandemic’.

…

What I’m trying to say is that none of that is authentic – it’s performative and even reductive. Because at the heart of the troubles many of us have with ‘adulting’ is a real, generational issue. It’s not laziness, sensitivity or a deficiency – it’s a symptom of a wider cultural problem. Our culture of burnout and over-productivity was laid bare as the coronavirus pandemic progressed. ‘We’re not working from home in a pandemic,’ we were told by different people in various ways, ‘You’re at home, in a pandemic, trying to work.’ Instead of hustling, the popular thing to do was to encourage others to look after themselves, to remind us all that self-care mattered more than ever, and that rest was important too.

…

The complicated etiquette of virtual meetings and video calls Whether it’s Zoom or Google Meetup, Skype or Microsoft Teams – taking part in a video call or ‘virtual meeting’ is more complicated than you might expect. If you work at a tech company or an international firm with remote workers, you were probably already very familiar with video meetings before coronavirus happened. However, the pandemic saw more of us using these apps for virtual meetings than ever before, and it became quite clear that the etiquette of how they should run was as fuzzy as the resolution of your colleagues’ webcams. To clear a few things up, here are some best practices: Have a dedicated moderator For meetings with more than two people, whoever is owning the meeting needs to set up the call, and everyone on it.

Please Don't Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes: Essays by Phoebe Robinson

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, An Inconvenient Truth, anti-bias training, Black Lives Matter, butterfly effect, coronavirus, COVID-19, David Attenborough, defund the police, desegregation, different worldview, disinformation, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, emotional labour, financial independence, gentrification, George Floyd, gig economy, global pandemic, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, hiring and firing, imposter syndrome, independent contractor, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Joan Didion, Lyft, mass incarceration, microaggression, off-the-grid, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Ralph Waldo Emerson, rolodex, Rosa Parks, Sheryl Sandberg, social distancing, Social Justice Warrior, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, TED Talk, too big to fail, uber lyft, unpaid internship, W. E. B. Du Bois