An important reminder that this is not 2016.
Harry Enten/CNN:
Biden is running ahead of Clinton's 2016 pace
Poll of the week: A new national Fox News poll finds former Vice President Joe Biden with a 48% to 40% lead over President Donald Trump.
What's the point: Almost any time I explain that Biden's leading Trump, someone will inevitably bring up "but what about 2016." That's why this week marks an important milestone for the Biden campaign.
It's one of the first times during the election year that Biden was clearly running ahead of Hillary Clinton's 2016 pace in the matchup against Trump.
We’ll need to go over this again and again.
What you see is the Democratic party. Biden will be the nominee. Criticize it and him all you want. And in the end, embrace it and him with all their flaws, for they alone stand between you and chaos. (Gandalf would be a Biden voter in November, whomever he supported in the primary. And don’t tell me he’s be third party… that’s Tom Bombadil).
Matthew Sittman/TNR:
Why the Pandemic Is Driving Conservative Intellectuals Mad
The lockdown has produced a disparity between the old script of grievance and a sickness that can wreak destruction on anyone.
Last week, First Things editor R.R. Reno, a prominent Catholic intellectual who backed Donald Trump for president, let the world know he’d had enough of the effete conformists following public-health guidelines in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Sharing a photo on Twitter of Trump saluting World War II veterans, none of them wearing masks, he declared, “They’re men, not cowards. Masks=enforced cowardice.”
The reaction from critics was swift and punishing, as they noted the emerging wisdom that masks may be one of the most effective measures in preventing the spread of Covid-19. But Reno decided to tweet through it in a typo-laden tirade. “The mask culture if fear driven. Masks+cowardice,” he wrote. “It’s a regime dominate by fear of infection and fear of causing of infection. Both are species of cowardice.” Other, similarly garbled tweets followed, but one of them serves as an especially telling summary of his position: “Now we know who want to cower in place. By all means rage against those who want to live.”
The outburst was no aberration….
WaPo:
One final viral infusion: Trump’s move to block travel from Europe triggered chaos and a surge of passengers from the outbreak’s center
The sequence was repeated at airports across the country that weekend. Harrowing scenes of interminable lines and unmasked faces crammed in confined spaces spread across social media.
The images showed how a policy intended to block the pathogen’s entry into the United States instead delivered one final viral infusion. As those exposed travelers fanned out into U.S. cities and suburbs, they became part of an influx from Europe that went unchecked for weeks and helped to seal the country’s coronavirus fate.
Jackie Munn/WaPo:
When I call you, it means you’ve been exposed to the coronavirus
Contact tracing is laborious and stressful — and essential to reopening safely.
As jurisdictions around the country attempt to open back up, contact tracing can help mitigate the spread of the coronavirus causing the pandemic. An NPR report this month found that states plan to put more than 66,000 workers on contact tracing duty. Public health departments like mine identify people who may have come into contact with an infected person, then notify them and tell them if they need to stay at home, or how they can continue working while reducing the spread of the disease. Otherwise, overwhelming outbreaks may force communities to adopt strict strategies — like infrastructure closures, stay-at-home orders, mandatory masks and enforced social distancing — again.
Brian Resnick/Vox:
How chaos theory helps explain the weirdness of the Covid-19 pandemic
The pandemic, chaos, and coming to terms with uncertainty.
There’s a simple mechanism that is helping me understand the many possible futures we face with the Covid-19 pandemic.
It’s the double pendulum, and as a physical object, it’s very simple: A pendulum (a string and a weight) is attached to the bottom of another. Its movement is explained by the laws of motion written by Isaac Newton hundreds of years ago.
But slight changes in the initial condition of the pendulum — say it starts its swing from a little higher up, or if the weight of the pendulum balls is a little heavier, or one of the pendulum arms is a bit longer than the other — lead to wildly different outcomes that are very hard to predict.
Clarissa-Jan Lim/Buzzfeed:
Thinking About Expanding Your Quarantine Circle? Here's What Public Health Experts Say
"There is no such thing as safe," one infectious disease professor said. But "there are some things you can do to make it safer."
If you've been trying to sort through the complications of building out your quarantine circle, you're not alone. BuzzFeed News asked five public health experts and researchers what to take into account when considering whether to see friends and family in person — or if you should even be socializing at this point. (Some comments have been edited and condensed for clarity.)