Paul Krugman:
You might think, then, that doing something about the employment situation would be a top policy priority. But now that total financial collapse has been averted, all the urgency seems to have vanished from policy discussion, replaced by a strange passivity. There’s a pervasive sense in Washington that nothing more can or should be done, that we should just wait for the economic recovery to trickle down to workers.
This is wrong and unacceptable.
Ross Douthat:
But the study shouldn’t make liberals too cocky. The authors find that growing up in a recession can encourage conservative instincts as well. Downturns make young voters distrustful of unfettered capitalism, yes. But they also make them less confident in the federal government.
So far, it's also making people distrust Republicans. But the biggest hit is going to be on incumbents.
WaPo:
In a new Washington Post poll, Palin beats other GOP leaders on two questions: who best represents the party's core values, and who Republicans would vote for if the presidential nomination battle were held today. But she has particular appeal to the loyal followers of Limbaugh and Beck, two of the most popular conservative talk show hosts in the country.
As if there's any doubt...
WaPo:
Opposition to President Obama and his policy initiatives is strong, but Republicans are split on GOP's direction, leaders.
The argument: "Go right. No, go more right." Only Republicans can save Democrats from being Democrats.
Robert J. Samuelson: Leave the Fed alone. And while you're at it, get the government out of regulation. Nothing's changed, now go away.
NEJM:
Six months have passed. Flu season is now here. After repeated delays, H1N1 vaccine finally arrived in our clinic earlier this month to the uniform relief of the medical staff. But my formerly desperate patients were now leery. "It's not tested," they said. "Everyone knows there are problems with the vaccine." "I'm not putting that in my body."
I was unprepared for this response, but maybe I shouldn't have been. For weeks now, in the schoolyard of my children's elementary school, other parents had been sidling up to me, seemingly in need of validation. "You're not giving your kids that swine flu shot, are you?" they'd say, their tone nervous, if a bit derisive.
How to explain this dramatic shift in 6 short months? It certainly isn't related to logic or facts, since few new medical data became available during this period. It seems to reflect a sort of psychological contagion of myth and suspicion.
Just as there are patterns of infection, there seem to be patterns of emotional reaction ("emotional epidemiology") associated with new illnesses. When 2009 H1N1 influenza was first detected, it fit a classic pattern that Priscilla Wald recently outlined in her book Contagious [1]: It was novel and mysterious; it emerged from a teeming third-world city, and it was now making its insidious — and seemingly unstoppable — way toward the "civilized" world.
