Newsweek 5/8-5/15/2020

2003 Newsweek reported that a coronavirus disease was spreading—one that “begins with fever and dry cough and can end in death” and was first detected in China. But this was severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), not COVID-19. “As this strange new virus continues its spree, killing hundreds and infecting thousands more, scientists are working overtime, trying to keep people from harm,” said Newsweek. This was the “first new deadly disease in years that can easily pass from person to person.” By the end of the year, SARS had infected 8,437 people in 30 countries. 1975 Star Russian dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov joined the American Ballet Theatre, which “spotlighted the tremendous growth of dance in the US,” wrote Newsweek. In the previous decade, the American ballet audience had grown from one million focused on New…

WITH UNEMPLOYMENT CLAIMS BALLOONING TO 22 million people, the coronavirus lockdown took an uncomfortable turn for state governors in mid-April. Workers and small business owners clogged the streets of Lansing, Michigan, near the capitol, blaring car and truck horns, and waved signs calling on Governor Gretchen Whitmer to allow businesses to open up. Smaller protests took place in Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, North Carolina and Utah. The angry outburst came just as the nation teetered on what the computer models say is the “peak” of the Covid-19 outbreak. According to most calculations, the death toll, after rising with terrifying steepness for several weeks, should be flattening out and soon starting to drop. “The worst is over,” said New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. Will reality cooperate? New Jersey, supposedly on a downward slope, reported…

“I feel like I’ve been hearing the phrase ‘Now more than ever…’, now more than ever.”—CHANCE THE RAPPER“I THINK I WILL FEEL MORE ISOLATED ON EARTH THAN HERE.”—INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION ASTRONAUT JESSICA MEIR“While my new lawyers are excellent, and our legal options are many, the next act in my career will be guided by Jesus Christ, and I have placed full faith in Him.”—ROGER STONE“I’m starting to think these characters who support Trump might be suicidal. They seem to fight hardest for the things that will kill them.”—JIMMY KIMMEL“NOBODY WAKES UP AND SAYS, ‘OH, I’M GOING TO BE A REFUGEE TODAY.’ IT DOESN’T HAPPEN LIKE THAT.”—Model Adut Akech“Every judge must learn to live with the fact he or she will make some mistakes; it comes with the territory.”—JUSTICE NEIL GORSUCH,…

“It’s hard not having the support system I had. It’s a scary time.”NATASHA NIELSEN, 22 University of Michigan THE FIRST THING YOU SHOULD know about Natasha Nielsen is that she lives in a house with 11 other 20-something women. Not a sorority house—though the 21-year-old University of Michigan senior did pledge Alpha Gamma Delta freshman year, and quickly got accustomed to having a bunch of people around when she needed help with homework (she’s a public policy major) or a cheap beer down at Good Time Charley’s ($2.50 drafts on “Mug Club Mondays”). So when the coronavirus pandemic started tearing through the U.S., her little corner of the world got pretty lonely. U. of M.’s classes are all online now, and the Ann Arbor campus is deserted. Nielsen’s graduation ceremony has been…

BEEN THERE, DONE THAT. WHO BETTER to offer advice to today’s newly-minted B.A.s than career coaches and financial advisors who graduated during the last economic meltdown and emerged with strong careers, solid salaries and their sanity intact? Here are practical tips from five experts, who lived through and survived graduating into chaos. This is hard. Take care of yourself. When Lauren McGoodwin graduated in 2009, the U.S. was in the midst of shedding 8.7 million jobs within two years. “I graduated with zero prospects and had to move back home,” says the founder and CEO of Career Contessa. “I felt this extreme expectation hangover, like I’ve checked all the right boxes, done all the right things, but I wasn’t getting what I felt I was promised at the end. I was very…

“THE MAN WHO DIES RICH DIES DISGRACED.” Andrew Carnegie, The Gospel of Wealth, 1889. In 2010, Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett started the Giving Pledge, a promise by very rich people to give away half their wealth before they die. The idea was to change the world of giving by encouraging more people with outrageous amounts of money to give more sooner, and most of all to give differently—to share ideas and best practices and make their giving more effective. Instead of (or perhaps in addition to) spending their money on a new helipad for their yacht in Cap d’Antibes, 206 individuals or couples have publicly promised to give half or more of their money away to those who need it. You’d think that would be cause for…