Systemic racism: Is it real
***A horrifying video of George
Floyd’s death has proven to most Americans that police racism is real. But we
have no video showing us the structural racism that has left African-Americans
still living in a separate country from whites. Generations of systemic
discrimination and oppression have left an enduring mark: The net worth of the
average black household is just 10 percent that of whites’—an even greater gulf
than in 1968. Today, a black newborn is twice as likely to die in infancy, and
those born in poor Southern states have a shorter life expectancy than children
born in Bangladesh. Though the Jim Crow era is supposedly over, black children
are systematically shunted to largely segregated schools that receive a
fraction of the funding enjoyed by schools in wealthy white suburbs.
--Nicholas Kristof, New York
Times
***Systemic racism is a canard.
Liberals love to cherry-pick statistics to support their tunnel vision about
race, but many of the institutions deemed irredeemably racist, such as academia
and journalism, overflow with political progressives. Many African-Americans do
succeed in our supposedly racist society; for those who still struggle, it’s the
paternalistic progressive agenda, not racism, that keeps them trapped in
victimhood and dependency.
--Andrew McCarthy, NationalReview.com
***Leftist radicals use the term
systemic racism to justify overthrowing our institutions and remaking society. Capitalism
is white supremacy, they insist. Immigration enforcement is “racist,” and so is
patriotism. In short, the entire Republican agenda is a species of racism.
--John Hirschauer, NationalReview.com
***Republicans, meanwhile, barely
concede that racism exists. One of the modern GOP’s core convictions is that
widespread racism is no longer a problem. Indeed, support for Donald Trump is
highly correlated with the belief that it’s whites who suffer from racial
prejudice. But Floyd’s death has triggered a sea change in public attitudes.
The coalition of people who see racism as real and requiring major structural
change is strikingly broad and diverse. As Trump attacks protesters as radicals
and thugs, he is betting his presidency that most Americans agree that systemic
racism is a myth.
--Ronald Brownstein, CNN.com
Workers face a cruel ultimatum
Employers
are forcing a terrible choice on thousands of workers who are fearful of
contracting the coronavirus: Return to work or lose both your job and your
unemployment benefits. As more businesses reopen and try to recoup losses after
weeks of lockdown, employers are firing workers who stay home—and reporting
them to unemployment authorities. Workers at one tea shop in Fort Collins,
Colo., asked the shop’s owner to delay reopening and meet with them to discuss
safety measures. In response, the owner fired six of them and asked the state
to revoke their benefits. “They wanted to wait a little bit longer till the
danger passed,” the owner said, “but for us as a small business, the danger is
imminent.”
Some states are pushing hard to make workers return. Tennessee, for
example, sent out a press release cautioning reluctant employees that “the fear
of contracting the coronavirus was not a good enough excuse not to go back.”
One 71-year-old car salesman returned to work in suburban Detroit even though a
co-worker had already died of Covid-19. Unable to get through to the
unemployment office to see if his benefits would be cut off, he reluctantly
went back and now sits in a dealership that’s still almost empty of customers.
--Jack Healy, New York Times
Forecasts:
Decade needed for pandemic recovery
***The Congressional Budget Office
warned this week that it could take a decade for the economy to fully recover
from the pandemic. The nonpartisan agency marked down its 2020–30 forecast for
U.S. economic output by $7.9 trillion, or 3 percent of gross domestic product.
By the last quarter of 2020, the CBO expects the economy to shrink 5.6 percent.
The economy should resume growing after this year, but the pace of growth won’t
be fast enough to quickly make up lost ground. While the drop in global factory
activity is starting to bottom out, productivity and consumer spending remain
weak.
--Paul Hannon and Paul Kiernan,
Wall Street Journal
***There isn’t much to cheer here, though
much uncertainty still remains. Employment, car sales and housing starts could
all take a hit. Globally, we’re moving into a new era when the competition for
scarce economic resources promises to become ever more intense. There will be
less trade, immigration, and foreign investment, but different industries are
still going to be fighting for bigger pieces of the slow-growing national
economic pie. Some economists think even this projection may be too optimistic and
anticipate the numbers will get adjusted even further down.
--Robert Samuelson, Washington Post
Covid-19: When the illness doesn’t go away
***For an overlooked group of
patients, Covid-19 doesn’t end after a few weeks of illness. Months into the
pandemic, reports are emerging of thousands of patients who have been wrestling
with serious Covid-19 symptoms for
months. These people—most of them under 50 and previously fit and healthy—have
had their lives upended by relentless and rolling waves of symptoms that make
it hard to concentrate, exercise, or perform simple physical tasks. Their
fluctuating symptoms subside for brief spells and then come crashing back, and
include breathlessness, racing heartbeat and neurological problems such as
“brain fog” and short-term memory loss. Among the so-called long-haulers is
Vonny LeClerc, a formerly fit 32-year-old who, 66 days after falling ill, can’t
“stand up in the shower without feeling fatigued.” The virus, she said, “has
ruined my life.” Unsure what’s happening to them, long-haulers are navigating a
landscape of uncertainty and fear.
--Ed Yong, TheAtlantic.com
***Why these patients aren’t
improving is one of the ongoing mysteries of Covid-19. One theory is that the
virus might be reactivating, a syndrome seen in illnesses such as herpes, which
remains dormant between outbreaks. It may just be the normal course of Covid-19,
consistent with milder viral illnesses that can return or worsen after seeming
recovery. More worrisome, it may be a chronic postviral condition that lasts
even after the virus is no longer detectable. While some doctors are confident
these patients will recover, others have doubts—as does Susan Nagle of
Massachusetts, who is on her third month of symptoms. “My fear is that
‘relapses’ are my new normal,” she said.
--Fiona Lowenstein, Vox.com
***Long-term illnesses sparked by
viral infections are devastatingly common. The biggest is myalgic
encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), a disease that’s often
triggered by infection and may affect up to 2.5 million Americans. Its
symptoms—fatigue, muscle pain, cognitive problems—mirror those of Covid
long-haulers.
--Brian Vastag and Beth
Mazur, Washington Post
Will Trump find a way to win?
Many
Republicans think that President Trump will find a way out of his current
troubles and win November’s election. After shocking the pundits and pollsters
in 2016 by defeating the heavily favored Hillary Clinton, Trump carries an aura
of invincibility among the approximately 43 percent of Americans who’ve
steadily supported him since he took office. But Trump’s incredible run of good
fortune has run out, and polls show him losing to Joe Biden by 5 to 10 points
and trailing in swing states. The coronavirus has ruined Trump’s signature
issue, the economy.
Not since 1940 has a president been
re-elected with a double-digit unemployment rate, and joblessness is now at 15
percent and heading into the 20s. Even in the best of times, Trump has never
reached 50 percent approval—unlike every other president in 85 years of polling
history. Could Trump pull a rabbit out of his hat and win in the Electoral
College despite losing the popular vote—again?
--Matthew Continetti,
National Review.com
Self-driving
cars still in the slow lane
***It’s 2020, so where are our
driverless cars? This was the year they were supposed to go mainstream,” but
instead the technology is still far from ready, and many investors are wary of
dumping more money into it. The Covid-19 pandemic has presented additional
roadblocks. Autonomous vehicle (AV) companies need at least two people in the
car to avoid accidents as they test their tech on the street, but
social-distancing rules prohibit that. The pandemic has also hastened an
industry shakeout that was already starting to happen. The typical AV startup spends
four times as much as a typical startup in fintech or health care—and has zero
revenue.
--Cade Metz and Erin Griffith, New
York Times
***It’s not just the pandemic. A
fatal accident involving a self-driving Uber in 2018 prompted some companies to
be “increasingly honest about the challenges. Nissan, for instance, has admitted
that it’s unlikely to produce self-driving cars before the end of the decade,\
while Toyota shifted into a more research-oriented strategy that focuses on
accident prevention. The rush to be first has apparently been replaced with
business plans adjusted for profit and long-term development and testing.
Companies are now asking, “How safe is safe enough?”
--Roberto Baldwin, Car and Driver
***Much of the business case for
self-driving vehicles also depended on a vision of fleets of shared cars that’s
now in question. The pandemic is making passengers think about the last person
to ride in any ride-share vehicle. That’s wiping away dreams of robo-taxi
fleets or picking up cars conveniently left on the road parked and ready for
the next driver. Self-driving cars will remain very unaffordable for a long
time, and if people insist on owning their own vehicles, the financial equation
becomes very difficult.
--Jim Motavalli, New York Times
***Covid-19 may have upset some
milestones for passenger cars, said but there’s never been a better time for
groceries or medicines delivered by an algorithm on wheels. In Texas, we’re
already seeing robots from Nuro ferrying groceries from Kroger. The case for
cheaper shipping is stronger than ever; ubiquitous self-driving trucks could
cut at least half the costs from trucking freight.
--Kyle Stock, Bloomberg.com
The skinny gene
We all know the type: those annoying people who can seemingly
eat whatever they want without putting on any pounds. New research suggests
these folks can scarf without worrying about their waistline thanks to a
“skinny” gene that keeps them slim, Researchers examined the DNA samples and
clinical data of more than 47,000 healthy people, ages 20 to 44, from Estonia.
They found that the thinnest people by body mass index typically had a specific
genetic variant in the ALK gene. Mutations in this gene, which is involved in
cell growth, have previously been connected to the formation of cancerous
tumors.
To see if the ALK gene could also play a part in diet-induced obesity,
the researchers deleted it in mice and fed them a fatty diet. The result: The
genetically altered mice remained skinny, whereas the control group became fat.
The researchers now hope to see whether inhibiting these genes in humans could
reduce obesity. “ALK inhibitors are used in cancer treatments already,” says
senior author Josef Penninger, from the University of British Columbia. “It’s targetable.”
--ScienceDaily.com
Mass extinction accelerating
The sixth mass extinction of wildlife on
Earth is already underway, scientists say—and it’s happening much faster than
previously thought. Researchers analyzed data on more than 29,400 endangered
land vertebrates. They found that about 500 critically endangered species—those
with 1,000 or fewer individuals left, including the Sumatran rhino, the
harlequin frog and the Española giant tortoise—were likely to become extinct
within the next 20 years. In comparison, 543 species are known to have gone
extinct over the past century, a level of loss that would normally take 10,000
years. Another 388 species currently have populations between 5,000 and 1,000.
Scientists say the loss of some of these
animals—most of which live in the tropics—could trigger a domino effect, in
which the extinction of one species causes the decline of another that is
dependent on it, eventually threatening the entire ecosystem. While previous
mass extinctions were the result of natural causes—the most recent being the
asteroid strike that wiped out the dinosaurs—this one is being driven by
humans, with habitat destruction and the wildlife trade the main factors.
Co-author Paul Ehrlich, from Stanford University, tells The Guardian (U.K.)
that humanity is sawing off the limb on which it is sitting, destroying working
parts of our own life-support system.
--The Week
