How racism in the US became institutionalized after slavery ended

Although I was generally aware of the terrible history of racism against blacks in the US, I have to admit that I was horrified at the degree to which they were systematically institutionalized after slavery was abolished by the 13th Amendment passed in 1865 in the wake of the Civil War. The states in the South quickly set about putting into law many of the awful conditions that slaves had suffered under and had looked forward to being released from. In his book Reconstruction; America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (1988, 2014), historian Eric Foner describes what happened.
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Coronavirus news has swamped even mass shootings

It is a measure of how much the news media in the US has been dominated by the pandemic that a horrific shooting during a 12-hour rampage in Nova Scotia, Canada yesterday that resulted in 18 deaths including the gunman, was relegated to the kind of coverage given to minor stories.

The initial details of this story are a little puzzling. The 52-year old gunman’s profession was described as a ‘denturist’, someone who makes and installs dentures and other oral devices.

Wortman, who is believed to have known several of the victims, appears to have acted in alone, said police. Authorities have not yet determined a motivation for the attacks, but the fact that Wortman had created a replica RCMP vehicle and police uniform suggested his early actions were deliberate.

“The fact that this individual had a uniform and a police car at his disposal certainly speaks to it not being a random act,” said Chris Leather, RCMP chief superintendent.

The fact that he prepared quite extensively for the shooting, equipping himself with a replica of a police car and obtaining a police uniform, would suggest someone who picked his targets randomly for who knows what reason. But the news report suggests that he knew at least some of the victims. Why go to all that trouble if you wanted to kill specific people who would have recognized you anyway and would know that you were not a police officer?

How nations and US states are faring in combating the pandemic

In the US, different states have had different levels of success with limiting the growth of Covid-19 cases. California, the state I live in, has been better than most in the number of cases per capita and this is being credited to early and vigorous action by the governor in issuing social distancing rules and shutting down parks and beaches, since even a couple of days delay can make a big difference in outcomes

After a resident of California died of coronavirus on 4 March, Governor Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency. It was the first Covid-19 related death in the US outside of Washington state.

More than 24,424 people have tested positive for coronavirus in California and 821 people have died. Yet the losses, while tragic, are a fraction of what experts predicted the state’s 40 million people would face.

The virus is spreading fast in southern California and the state’s Central Valley – so it’s not out of trouble yet.

But considering the dire prediction made by Governor Gavin Newsom in March that up to 25 million Californians could be infected with coronavirus, the situation in California has been surprisingly well controlled.
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California was the first place in the United States to issue shelter in place orders. Gov Newsom ordered California to shelter in place on 19 March – three days before New York.
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But can a day or two really make that much difference? “Oh yes,” said Dr Neha Nanda, the medical director of infection prevention and antimicrobial stewardship at Keck Medicine, University of Southern California.

“Even being one day ahead can have a huge impact,” she told the BBC. “The morbidity we will be able to avert, the mortality we will be able to avert – it’s huge.”

Because so little is known about the virus or how it can be treated, it makes prevention “more important than anything else,” she said. “The most potent tool that you have in tool kit is social distancing.”

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What we can learn from the great flu pandemic of 1918

The current Covid-19 pandemic has drawn many references to the great flu pandemic of 1918. One of the natural experiments that emerged from that event is how different measures adopted by different cities led to significantly different outcomes, with those taking action more quickly effectively flattening the curve and having better outcomes than those that delayed doing so. While multiple non-pharmaceutical interventions such as reducing contacts among people were effective in reducing transmission of the virus, relaxation of those restrictions also resulted in renewing the spread of the virus.
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Is it time to openly suggest that Donald Trump is insane?

That Donald Trump in incompetent and ignorant and his behavior is erratic goes without saying. The only consistent theme in is his self-centeredness and his willingness to be vindictive towards anyone whom he sees as not sufficiently fawning over him. And yet there seems to be hard core of his supporters, including pretty much the entire Republican party establishment, that is willing to follow him into whatever swamp he chooses to wade into. It is tempting to think that he is just a shrewd judge of certain kinds of people and that he behaves in this way because he knows that is what they want.

But David Masciotra argues that we may be giving him too much credit and that the evidence that Trump is suffering from serious mental degeneration is so clear that it is obvious even to lay people and that it is only our reticence to level such a charge at a president that enables society to pretend otherwise. It is always dangerous for even mental health professionals to diagnose insanity without closely examining the patient but Masciotra thinks that in Trump’s case, the indicators are so obvious that that caution can be dispensed with.
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The story behind a viral photograph

I am not a fan of the horror film genre and so give a wide berth to those that feature zombies or vampires or otherwise promise gruesome scenes of blood, death, and dismemberment. But I am a fan of comedies and this poses a dilemma for me about whether to watch comedies that are based on the zombie and vampire genre. So far I have seen just three such comedies: Shaun of the Dead, What We Do In The Shadows, and the much older Love at First Bite.

When I first saw this now viral photograph of people, responding to Trump’s instigations, protesting against state governments and demanding that the social distancing rules that have crippled businesses be relaxed, it immediately reminded me of the scene from Shaun of the Dead where people have barricaded themselves inside a pub and the zombies are at the window demanding to be let in. I am not the only one to see such a similarity.
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The rich are different from you and me

The title of this post is a commonly used paraphrase of what F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in his 1926 short story Rich Boy.

“Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different.”

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Sri Lanka goes back to the future

I have been getting occasional reports from friends and family about how Sri Lanka is dealing with Covid-19. In their efforts to stop the spread of the coronavirus caused to some extent by some people irresponsibly flouting the self-quarantine and social distancing rules, the government had instituted a strict curfew and people who are found violating it in those areas where it is in force are promptly taken into custody. But that policy meant that people were without access to food and other basic items. When the government tried lifting the curfew for a few hours to allow them to shop, that had the predictable result of huge crowds trying to buy things and many of them being turned away empty handed.
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False negatives in coronavirus testing

When I last checked the Covid-19 trend line, it showed an encouraging flattening in the rate of growth of new cases in the US. China and South Korea had brought things under control much earlier and it looks like Hong Kong and Australia are also doing well. France, Italy, and Germany are definitely showing signs that they have passed the peak and slowing down the rate of growth.

But one of the concerns with the US data is that due to the massive incompetence of the Trump administration in rolling out testing and collecting data, testing is nowhere near a widespread as it should be.
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