Newsweek 5/22/2020

1970 On May 4, 1970, four unarmed anti-war protesters at Kent State University were killed by members of the Ohio National Guard, and nine others were injured. “The bloody incident shocked and further divided a nation already riven by dissent over the war in Indochina,” said Newsweek, and because this massacre took place in small-town Ohio, it “echoed even more loudly than it might have at one of the capitals of campus protest such as Berkeley or Columbia.” Today, this event is still remembered as a turning point for national support of the Vietnam War. 1988 Newsweek reported on new findings about the ever-fascinating question of “How smart are animals?” Studies of sea lions, dolphins and chimpanzees showed that each could be taught symbolic language, long-believed to be the ability that separated humans…

AS THE FINANCIAL IMPACT OF THE CORONAVIRUS pandemic deepens, tens of millions of Americans are having trouble making ends meet and need access to cash, fast, to pay their bills. And their numbers are growing daily. By late April, half of Americans had lost a job, had their work hours reduced or were living with someone who had, up from 18 percent in March, according to an NPR/PBS/Marist poll. And 3.2 million more workers applied for unemployment benefits during the week that ended May 2, bringing the most recent seven-week total to a record 33 million. Relief efforts have helped—from stimulus checks and beefed-up unemployment insurance to breaks on student loan payments and other bills—but not nearly enough for a lot of families. Reports show that many are already behind on…

“Don’t be a knucklehead, keep a safe distance”—NEW JERSEY HIGHWAY SIGN“WE’ RE NOT GOING BACK TO NORMAL.”—CALIFORNIA GOVERNOR GAVIN NEWSOM“They’re contributing a whole lot more than some of the people that came out of the right womb, or got lucky and things, or know how to arbitrage bonds or whatever it may be.”—WARREN BUFFETT ON ESSENTIAL WORKERS“I’ve only washed my hair twice for the show: once for Elton John and once for Senator Warren.”—MILEY CYRUS ON HER INSTAGRAM LIVE INTERVIEW SHOW BRIGHT MINDED: LIVE WITH MILEY“SHAME ON US IF WE DON’T HAVE ENOUGH TESTS BY THE TIME THIS SO-CALLED RETURN MIGHT OCCUR IN THE FALL AND WINTER.”—Dr. Anthony Fauci“Of course, everybody wants to save every life they can—but the question is, towards what end, ultimately?”—FORMER NEW JERSEY GOVERNOR CHRIS CHRISTIE“I…

→ Would you let the government → TRACK YOUR → SMARTPHONE → if it meant we could reopen sooner? BEFORE THE PANDEMIC, THE PLAN would have seemed like something ripped from a distant dystopian future in which the human race fully surrenders to Big Tech. On the April 10 online document, the logos of Google and Apple sat atop a description of the companies’ joint plan to enable America’s cellphones to keep track of everyone with whom their owners come into contact. Who would sign on to such extensive surveillance? Much of the world already has. In South Korea, health officials use apps and video cameras to track down people who came into contact with COVID-19 patients before symptoms appeared. China, Singapore and Australia already have phone-based contact-tracing in place, and much…

AS STATES LOOSEN UP ON SOCIAL DIStancing rules, people aren’t the only thing that will go back to work—so will the virus. Removing restrictions will allow the pathogen to move more freely through the population, possibly causing a second wave of illness that threatens to overwhelm hospital resources and drive death rates higher. The key to avoid lurching from one lockdown to another, experts say, is contact tracing. When a patient tests positive to COVID-19, health-care workers would reach out to all the people who might have been exposed before the patient became ill and advise them to self-quarantine. The idea is to extinguish small pockets of new cases before they explode into big outbreaks like the ones that steamrolled New York City and New Orleans last month. Governors, in an effort…

IT’S BEEN A CRAZY COUPLE OF WEEKS IN THE pandemic economic prediction business. So crazy that even the White House can’t get its stories straight. In one corner President Donald Trump’s advisor/son-in-law Jared Kushner and US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told us that happy days will be here again—and the country “rocking” by July. In the other, former White House Council of Economic Advisors chair and now White House consultant Kevin Hassett called the economic situation “grave.” (Granted, he was quickly told to knock off the “gloom and doom” by his colleague, Peter Navarro.) But be wary of those rosy forecasts put out by market analysts and the White House. It’s going to take a while. Exactly how long depends on science, not politics, as Warren Buffett said on April 2 at…