blood on their hands

The more I read about the US response to covid-19, the more convinced I am that Trump and company are about to have hundreds of thousands of people's blood on their hands. Every member of the cabinet who decided not to Article 25 him out of office is in that group. We're talking mass manslaughter. For secret service agents, it's the trolley problem: do you let the train barrel forward and kill countless people? Or do you shoot the driver (and maybe the vice driver, and probably get yourself killed) so that someone who isn't utterly divorced from reality can redirect it down a track with a lot fewer people on it? Time's running out.

By nature, I am not a worrier. But I'm worried about people back home. 

suddenly worrying about work

I have been lucky to be in pretty much constant employment since I was 16, and to have had a steady and steadily increasing paycheck every two weeks from age 21 to 32. That, despite graduating from college as the global financial crisis was peaking in 2008. I gave up that stability last summer so that I could become a full-time student. But I was sanguine about the prospects of getting a job as soon as I finished. Suddenly, the economy looks headed for an even worse hit than the bankers caused 12 years ago. And suddenly, for the first time in my adult life, I'm worried about getting a job.

I've started to enter my CV into various companies' talent pools, both for consultancies and for staff positions that may open up. And I'm going to start emailing former colleagues soon to let them know that I'll be looking for consultancies from as early as June or even late May. Or maybe earlier if it's a part-time thing. Arrogantly Cockily, I had been expecting to be able to be selective in what I applied for, even to avoid applying for straight-up business development jobs. Looks like a wider net will be necessary.

(EDIT: Trying not to be so hard on myself.)

school reform

I read an article in the Post by a champion of "school reform" about why it failed. It astounds me that people can be so well-meaning, so well-educated, so evidently bright, and yet so deeply wrong about the root of problems. The failures of NCLB and the charter movement failed because they are liberal and neoliberal, with their focus on individual freedom and individual responsibility and their utterly misplaced faith in the market and the ideal of "competition." A charter advocate has a "gee golly we should have focused on the funding gap" moment at the end of the article. That is just exasperating. How did you miss the structural problem, lady?! Schools are embedded in society. They are a public good. The idea that you could fix the problems of poor and minority-majority schools by making stricter and narrower standards and then punishing poor performers is just nutty.

It reminded me of something Jonathan Kozol said when I saw him speak at Michigan in ~2005: "People say to me, 'So what are you saying, we should just throw more money at schools?' And I say, 'Yes! Yes, exactly!'" Also, bring back busing. I should ask Gabby about this, he worked in charter schools and now he's assistant principal of a public school. 

the other shoe

So far, the government here is talking basically just pleading with people to do the right thing with social distancing. But people aren't, so they finally closed pubs, restaurants, gyms, etc. on Friday. And today the mayor of London put out a message saying they might get the police to start enforcing social distancing. It feels like past time, given how things have gone elsewhere. People still aren't taking it seriously. SRB and I went to the Olympic Park today to get some sunshine and there were lots of people out and about. That would be fine, as far as I understand, if everyone stayed in little pods limited to the people they live with. And most seem to be that way: parents with kids, obvious couples, singletons. Maintaining plenty of distance. But there was a group of 15 or so doing a boot camp-type workout and they were periodically getting into little circles and doing sit ups much too close together. Separately, I saw a guy pick up an errant Frisbee that a couple were throwing back and forth. I wanted to yell at them all. Weird impulse.

A helicopter was hovering overhead for a while, I wonder if it was monitoring how much mixing was going on below.

The boot campers weren't even touching each other, as far as I saw. But still it seems really irresponsible to be gathering in a group at all, especially outside. And I wonder if SRB and I ourselves are being too blasé, even though we kept good distance when we do go outside for a walk or run and haven't had any in-person social interaction with anyone other than each other since Sunday for me, Monday for her. I was self-isolating even more strictly for the past week because of my cold. Went to the grocery store around the corner yesterday for the first time and even then I didn't interact with anyone and held my breath passing people in the aisles.

A friend from Islamabad, who's now posted in El Salvador, texted a group we're both part of that the government there just imposed a 30-day quarantine, Wuhan-style. One person at a time can leave to buy groceries, any other outside journeys severely curtailed, necessary sectors continue working under strict conditions, payment of bills suspended for three months, financial assistance for low-income families, restaurants can do deliveries. Police are patrolling and anyone caught violating quarantine will be sent to a government camp or detention center of some kind of the rest of the 30-day period. And, unbelievably, my reaction to that is, "Well, seems a bit harsh, but fair enough." Something similar going on now in Kazakhstan, another group member said.

It's amazing to me how quickly my brain adapted to the idea that what is essentially martial law could be sensible, how quickly I've accepted that people need to be protected from themselves and their own stupid behavior in such an extreme way. It is hard to imagine that ordinary social interaction with apparently healthy people could be harmful, even with the media telling a consistent and alarming story about it. It is hard to change behavior so fast. Coming back to SRB and me: I don't want to believe that my being outside in public, alone, is too dangerous for society at large, regardless of whether or not it is. But I don't really know. So I'm sympathetic to people who draw the line a bit more self-servingly than I do.

I suppose the quarantines are a bit like a temporary and very extreme form of seatbelt laws or drunk driving checkpoints. Especially in countries where the health system is really not prepared for a heavy onslaught, even more so than places like the UK or US. But then again, detention centers? Charging people with a crime? I still don't like that. Plus detention centers seem like they'd be incubators. 

elinor ostrom

I'm only a chapter in but I think Elinor Ostrom's book Governing the Commons is going to be one of the best things I read this year. (I'm saving The Mirror and the Light for the weekend and glorious guilt-free uninterrupted pleasure reading hours; I started it last week but it's unsatisfying to take sips.) The tragedy of the commons always struck me as an overly pessimistic assumption, and I'm sad that it took so long for me to come across such a trenchant and concerted attack on the idea that it's an inevitable outcome of leaving people to manage resources without imposing private property rights or central planning. 

how to survive a plague

Current circumstances bring that title to mind, if not the content of the movie. Good documentary, very illuminating for me as a person who was generally aware of the early history of the AIDS crisis but didn't have a real appreciation for the intensity of it.

It's a bit odd to be in the UK at this point in the covid-19 pandemic when other countries in Europe are declaring states of emergency and schools are closing for weeks. The government here is urging much less stringent measures than in other countries, declining to close schools or issuing any social distancing recommendations beyond "stay inside for seven days if you have a severe cough or fever." People should always do that, in fact it drives me nuts when they don't. The tube has been a little less crowded than usual but not too much. We did have class remotely this morning, as a Zoom meeting, which worked better than I thought it would. And UCL, along with many other universities, decided to have all classes be remote for the rest of the term (only one more week in my case).

But SRB and I are still planning to head to Dover this evening for a long-planned weekend getaway. We are both feeling fine; I'm a little congested at the moment but doesn't seem like anything out of the ordinary for the wintertime: not even sniffling. Just more attuned to it than usual. Still, I packed my thermometer.

I'm looking forward to seeing the white cliffs of Dover and eating at a restaurant up the coast from where we're staying, which a reviewer in the Guardian called "heroically wondrous." And to getting a change of scenery with SRB. It's been a tough few weeks and even months for us. We had some intense conversations last weekend that seem to have helped. And having a break from our routine, our shared space, our everyday food and furniture and views, should be nice.

In unrelated news, I have some kind of bizarre plantar fasciitis that's entirely in the arch of my foot, not at all in the ball or heel. It's fine -- no pain or even discomfort -- 90% of the time but on some runs starts to bug me a little in the first couple of kilometers and on other runs bugs me for a little while afterward. I tried to ignore it for a while because it's never severe enough to hobble me and it's usually not there at all. But it's also not going away, so finally had to concede that the only solution is to rest and to stretch feet and calves. Vexing.

piano and guitar

SRB bought a piano the other day after talking about it for years. While she was in Pakistan recently I also finally started learning guitar and have now stuck with it long enough (a week and a half) to have passed the "fingers hurt to much to keep going" stage and am moving toward the "can almost play along with 'Born in the USA'" stage. She passed out early tonight and so I plugged my headphones into the piano, loaded up a YouTube lesson on Für Elise for rank beginners, and played the melody of that piece all the way through for the first time in at least 15 years. It ruled.

I've been piddling away at card tricks, too, and even learned a couple of really basic ones. But the truth is magic is no fun to share with anyone until you're great at it and music can be fun even if you're mediocre. Now I just need to start learning how to sing a little.