it is simple. our leaders are more than willing to sacrifice our lives to maintain their control over society. they would rather we die, than contemplate other solutions to society's organization & running. i mean, that is all there is to it. that is who and what we are as a society. it is completely morally indefensible, and both parties are 'party' to it. republicans more than democrats, but did you see jay inslee's comments on re-opening boeing? some other solution is incomprehensible to him.

It’s only poor and middle class white men that scream “socialism” at every proposed effort to improve people’s lives and society, since they enjoy abusing tax and spending policies sadistically to immiserate everyone that they hate.

The rich white men are the first in line demanding their bailouts and golden parachutes.

@1 now the troll is pretending to be me? bitch please. i did not post that drivel,

You know what kills more kids every year than COVID ever could?

Live-in boyfriends.

I think it's only a pandemic because we lack the leadership and the data to understand it better. As more and more information comes out, it's becoming clear that orders of magnitude more people have or have had this virus, have not had symptoms or required hospitalization and that the death rate is much, much lower than is being reported. We need testing, and lots of it.

It is clearly exposing the fault lines of our economy and society. Rather than take the 'it's someone else's fault' approach that the author is putting forward, I hope people realize it's up to the individual to save money, avoid debt and consumerism in order to be able to ride out these black swan events that have happened before and will happen again in the future.

2 great comments tempur_tempur; wouldn't it be nice if covid Were on it's way out; they're seeing some bizarre, inexplicable shit like people with a fever too high to function, yet appearing normal; weird blood shit, and heart attacks that come out of nowhere -- if ya don't yet know the bug, or if it's related to it . . . but yeah so much to learn.

We couldda learned, from other countries who've kept their death toll low -- and, in purely Republican terms, just think how much MONEY we couldda SAVED if we'd had a non-nincompoop in the Driver's Seat... cadet Bone Spurs's Stupidity is Mind Boggling and the hole he's plunging US into is gonna take some Genuis to get us out of it. But, we got a LOTTA Smart People in this USofA.

If we could only just Rid ourselves
of the Deadwood at the top.

Yeah, short-bus trolling trolley's
Jealous no Doubt about it.

Awesome pic, btw xina.
Whatta tease...

@10 ha thanks. it's me (unlike 404 troll @1 using my name). not teasing, just trying to avoid facial recognition software.

I contribute to Earthjustice, which means I get their quarterly magazine. The latest issue seems suddenly out of date, with stories about Amazon (the company) that don't mention the virus. Interestingly enough, though, there is this story, where the activist uses the phrase "necro-politics": https://earthjustice.org/blog/2019-august/francia-m-rquez-renowned-afro-colombian-activist-what-environmental-racism-means-to-me. That is only the second time I've heard the phrase (with a slight variation). The virus has simply unearthed an attitude that is quite common in much (if not most) of the world.

Charles, you MUST STOP turning our attention to economics in this dismal time. Necro-economics is a clever bon mot, but duh, there aren't economic ideas that are relevant now. We aren't living in a model, this experiment is going to run in real time, clever labels or not.

PLEASE turn your attention to literature. It's time for looking at the heart and the soul not at r>g. Very few of us have your unique colonial/post-colonial education--tell us about the ideas of poets and authors. The economic modelers are all about to die in a fire, they are not interesting.