10 Things About This Mess

1. This is a multi-level crisis which means you've got multiple potential points for successes and failures and depending on where you live, you're mileage may vary when it comes to finger pointing/grading. In general, I find it helps my overall anxiety level to think of it this from a local, then state, then regional, then Federal and then Global perspective. It's way too early to lock in 'final grades' on this mess yet, so whatever you do: grade on a curve.

2. Read this.  Insert [Surprised Blink Gif] and then lean back and really think about it...  I'm not sure he's entirely wrong, but it's an insight which I don't think has really occurred to anyone yet- because we're all sheltering in place and slowly going stir crazy being locked inside our houses.

3. The nature of 'work' has changed, probably forever and that's a good thing.

4. Once the dust settles, I'd be interested to see how urban planning reacts to this. The overall trend has been higher density housing and less sprawl and mass transit, but if you throw a pandemic into the mix, suddenly big cities and mass transit lose their appeal.

5. Once the National Shouting Match resumes, I think it's important to note that there's a little something for everyone at the Hot Take Buffet (when social distancing restrictions are lifted and we're allowed to go to Buffets again.) If you're Conservative, you're probably looking at all the regulations that are being eased and wondering why any of them are there in the first place. You're looking at the Public/Private partnership in all of this and you're probably pretty happy. If you're Liberal, then suddenly the cost of wealth inequality is very clear. There's a large segment of the country that is staggering vulnerable to disruptions like this. I don't know if you're going to win the argument on health care yet-- but paid family leave? Paid sick leave? Childcare? You could get some big wins if you make pushes on those three issues alone that would improve life for a lot of people in this country.

6. There's a sub-genre of Tweets that talks a lot about World War II in reference to this crisis... I think as a nation we're slow and rather ponderous- and I feel like maybe we're getting the national engine revved up and moving with increasing speed to tackle this-- I feel like the next two weeks will give us an answer on this, but for right now, I believe it can be done. Not as quickly as we could have done it. Not as quickly as we should have done it, perhaps. But I believe it can be done.

7.
Both of these points I heartily endorse. Burr should resign. Loeffler probably should as well. The rest... eh, I've seen conflicting evidence about the rest- but for sure the rest need to be investigated and thoroughly- shit like this is why point 2 is a good idea

8. @COVID19Tracking is an excellent Twitter follow. Their website has solidish data on testing which is increasing, though not as fast as anyone I think likes or hopes. This also seemed like a spot of potentially optimistic news.

9. There is a mountain of data out there about this and it's changing and mutating on a daily basis- but it's also fascinating to dig into some of these data arguments that are out there. One strand that I've seen out there: the case fatality rate might be lower than we think, therefore, there's a high percentage of infected folks that are totally asymptomatic... (it sort of seemed to be based off of data from South Korea/one of the cruise ships, but I'm not sure if it's managed to land on anything definitive  yet.)

10. Grocery store shelves being empty is kind of a shock to the system. At this point, finding Clorox wipes would be like finding a live unicorn- but it's the random things that jump out at you. Flour was gone on our last grocery trip. Another time it was tortilla chips. And then tomato paste. Right now, I still believe in the supply chain, but I've honestly had to remind myself to shop normally and I put shit back. I think so much of this panic buying is psychological: just take a breath, and shop like you normally do. It's a work in progress, obviously, given the unprecedented times we live in.

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