Covid Crisis Quotes

In every crisis, doubt or confusion, take the higher path - the path of compassion, courage, understanding and love.

We learn more in crisis than in comfort.

Those who are resisting quarantine are not advocating for "live free or die", they are advocating "I must have my freedom even if it means harming others." Remember, if your freedom comes at the cost of other people's lives, then that's not freedom, it's savagery.

It's literally a new world now, so either we adapt to it collectively as one species or only the privileged healthy will be left to live. And the only way to adapt to a new world is to keep working through mistakes, failures and changes, driven by a sense of community.

Crisis either causes regress or progress depending on the will of the people.

How many human beings have to die before some people understand the gravity of the situation?

Awake and Arise my sisters and brothers to slogan for all of humankind. We are the light and we are the might that's needed during this ominous tide.

The key to overcome crisis is patience, courage, self-discipline, adaptation and alertness.

In every crisis, the true heroism is self-discipline, patience and strong determination.

God is not up there - God is right here - in you, in me, in each one of us.

In every crisis, confusion and doubt, take the higher path — the path of patience, alertness, courage, understandings and love. Fears and uncertainties are temporary. In the higher path the light of happiness comes soon.

The world is going through a period of crisis, but whether we look at it as a crisis or as an opportunity to reshape our thinking, depends on us. So use this period as a lesson on how to live life with a concern for all of humankind.

World in Peril (The Sonnet) The world is in peril and security is out of the window. If now we don't be humans, what's the point of us! Humankind is in turmoil and anxiety is running amok. If now we don’t be responsible what's the point of us! Neighborhoods are wailing in fear and desperation. If now we don’t lend a hand what's the point of us! Communities are struggling in crippling uncertainty. If now we don't break narrowness what's the point of us! Nations are panting to sustain health and sanity. If now we don't rush to rescue what's the point of us! Nature is revolting to reclaim her kingdom. If now we don't make peace with her what's the point of us! Now is not the time for theorizing and criticizing. Forgetting argumentation we must stand as one people unbending.

Be a glass of water and quench the thirst of others.

Covid quackery, climate denial, and conspiracy theories are symptoms of what some are calling "an epistemological crisis" and a "post-truth" era.

A pandemic will lead to permanent social, economic, and cultural changes. The key is to create good from a bad situation.

Crisis creates corrections, adjustments, and self-evaluation.

Even the most stubborn darkness fades away in front of one tiny flame.

Every crisis demands self-discipline, patience, early adaptation and adjustment to the changing situation.

It should now be abundantly clear that the comparison between the climate crisis and Covid-19 rests on a category mistake. It's a bit like comparing a war with a bullet. Covid-19 is one manifestation of a secular trend running parallel to the climate crises, a global sickening to match the global heating.

The sobering truth is that the heroes of the immediate COVID-19 crisis, those who (at personal risk) took care of the sick and kept the economy ticking, are among the worst paid professionals – the nurses, the cleaners, the delivery drivers, the workers in food factories, care homes and warehouses, among others.

The world is mine, its problems are mine.

Things may be falling apart, but the mind that is stayed on God will cause us to stand in the midst of pressures.

One of the most important aspects of man that constantly requires attention and care in the midst of pressures is the mind.

How do we care for our mind, especially in the time of crisis, pressures, uncertainties and adversities? The answer is found in what we choose to SET OUR MIND UPON!

I pray that by the time you read this a vaccine is widely available.

The COVID-19 crisis has fueled the rise of domestic violence. The abuser and the victims of abuse are now left alone, isolated and forced to spend more time together.

I reflect that if we are going to be asked to risk our lives, the least we can expect is to be treated like people.

The COVID-19 crisis has fueled the rise of domestic violence.

At the time of crisis, when death marks every nook and hopelessness is abundant, only one act triumphs above all: HUMANITY

We cannot fix a sickness of the society merely with strategy - that strategy has to be followed by the responsibility of the citizens.

Nature is revolting to reclaim her kingdom. If now we don't make peace with her what's the point of us!

We are the source of humaneness, as well as the vessel of humaneness.

Forgetting argumentation we must stand as one people unbending.

The human race was ill-prepared for such a calamity of events to unfold.

The central lesson of the COVID-19 fiscal response is that money is not scarce. Without delay, governments around the world appropriated budgets that dwarfed any other post-war crisis policy.

with the proper information and rationale, which it is my job to provide, people have a nearly limitless capacity to adapt and to rise to the occasion, whether for themselves or their family members.

The holy trinity of tackling a crisis is unity, faith and sacrifice. We must stay united as humans above all else, we must have faith in ourselves and in each other and we must sacrifice our self-obsession.

Be positive and stop negative thinking and the key to stop negative thoughts in this hour of crisis of COVID-19, is to spread your love and positive energy in every direction for the well-being of the whole humanity.

Sir Winston Churchill rightly said, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” How we work has changed forever. How we make medicines for patients is changing, and for the better. We are pushing barriers, testing conventional wisdom and the “way things have always been done.” We are adopting digital technologies and sharing data in ways never imagined to this crisis. We are finding new ways to innovate, with increased speed and efficiency.

Sacrifice is infectious - one person's sacrifice makes millions wake up from their sleep of indifference - and in a handful of brave and responsible beings it is bound to spark the urge to sacrifice their own lifeforce for the good of others.

Mad Wind (The Sonnet) Turn into a mad wind, And blow away the rigidity. Now the savagery must end, To do that we must rise as almighty. Turn into the monsoon rain, And wash away all sickness. Whenever a crisis arrives, We must step up shredding all weakness. Turn into a purifying wave, And smoothen the thorns of argument. Whenever rises differentiation, We must become the bridge without bent. The world is unstable and feeble with insecurity. We must be its strength offering our soul as stability.

The ambiguity shrouding this whole crisis makes it all the more difficult for the mind to adjust to, runners can only pace themselves if they know how far the finish line is and yet in this race our finish line is just a prediction, an educated guess.

When we think of a pandemic, we often conjure images of deadly infectious diseases that spread rapidly across countries causing unimaginable human suffering (like the Black Death, the Spanish influenza, AIDS, or the ongoing COVID-19 crisis). The West is currently suffering from such a devastating pandemic, a collective malady that destroys people’s capacity to think rationally. Unlike other pandemics where biological pathogens are to blame, the current culprit is composed of a collection of bad ideas, spawned on university campuses, that chip away at

The COVID-19 pandemic is Life's way of slowing us all down. So, let us take a reflective pause and focus on taking care of ourselves and each other! As it is with most inscrutable situations in Life, there is no other way to deal with this crisis, going with the flow is THE way...!

The current coronavirus crisis continues to have a significant impact on the economy, employment, and people’s lives in general. And, as many meetings are now conducted on Zoom, Skype, or some other cloud-based video conferencing service, it is even having a psychological impact for those fortunate enough to be employed.

As Rahm Emanuel, former Chicago mayor and chief of staff to President Barack Obama, famously said, “Never let a crisis go to waste.”8 When the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, Democrats immediately recognized that it would give them a once-in-a-generation opportunity to radically alter America’s voting laws and procedures to benefit their party.

He replied with something like, “I will keep going until we either win our freedoms back, or I am in a Gulag.” I understood. This is truly a time in history for the hammering out of heroes and heroines in the forge of crisis. And so it is also a time of cowardice, when those who choose collusion, when they know better, are allowing their souls to shrivel in that same heat.

I, Corona Speaking (The Sonnet) Nature has been crying, Yet you paid no heed. Glaciers have been frying, Yet you kept sleeping in greed. Forests kept on burning, Yet your eyes shed no tear. Hurricanes kept on brewing, Yet your luxuries didn't disappear. Hence my arrival, not to punish you, But only to give a wake up call. I haven't come to lock you up, But only to expose your downfall. Now you know the horrors you committed, I plea o wise ones live life illuminated.

If I've learned one thing in my years of studying the social impacts of disease, it's that we live in a world where we're connected, for better or worse, to the people in our human community by the microbes that we share between us. And in times of contagious disease crisis, if we fail to recognize our shared connection, we are most certainly doomed, because our fates hang together, yoked by tiny particles that threaten us all. Scores of historical figures-both famous and infamous-have taught me as much. By learning the stories of those who lived before us, by educating ourselves about the worlds they inhabited and the viruses and bacteria that lived in, with, and through them, we can learn how to emerge from the novel coronavirus pandemic stronger than ever before and well prepared for the next new disease we will inevitably face. If we don't learn from their examples, however, I foresee a world adrift, damned by alienation from its own history, a victim of self-annihilation cued, rather than caused, by the novel coronavirus.

When credit cycles reach their limit, it is the logical and classic response for central governments and their central banks to create a lot of debt and print money that will be spent on goods, services, and investment assets in order to keep the economy moving. That was done during the 2008 debt crisis, when interest rates could no longer be lowered because they had already hit 0 percent. It also happened in a big way in 2020 in response to the plunge triggered by the COVID pandemic. That was also done in response to the 1929–32 debt crisis, when interest rates had similarly been driven to 0 percent. At the time I am writing this, the creation of debt and money has been happening in amounts greater than at any time since World War II.

Since governments have the ability to both make and borrow money, why couldn’t the central bank lend money at an interest rate of about 0 percent to the central government to distribute as it likes to support the economy? Couldn’t it also lend to others at low rates and allow those debtors to never pay it back? Normally debtors have to pay back the original amount borrowed (principal) plus interest in installments over a period of time. But the central bank has the power to set the interest rate at 0 percent and keep rolling over the debt so that the debtor never has to pay it back. That would be the equivalent of giving the debtors the money, but it wouldn’t look that way because the debt would still be accounted for as an asset that the central bank owns, so the central bank could still say it is performing its normal lending functions. This is the exact thing that happened in the wake of the economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Many versions of this have happened many times in history. Who pays? It is bad for those outside the central bank who still hold the debts as assets—cash and bonds—who won’t get returns that would preserve their purchasing power. The biggest problem that we now collectively face is that for many people, companies, nonprofit organizations, and governments, their incomes are low in relation to their expenses, and their debts and other liabilities (such as those for pensions, healthcare, and insurance) are very large relative to the value of their assets.

In the introduction, I wrote that COVID had started a war, and nobody won. Let me amend that. Technology won, specifically, the makers of disruptive new technologies and all those who benefit from them. Before the pandemic, American politicians were shaking their fists at the country’s leading tech companies. Republicans insisted that new media was as hopelessly biased against them as traditional media, and they demanded action. Democrats warned that tech giants like Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Alphabet, and Netflix had amassed too much market (and therefore political) power, that citizens had lost control of how these companies use the data they generate, and that the companies should therefore be broken into smaller, less dangerous pieces. European governments led a so-called techlash against the American tech powerhouses, which they accused of violating their customers’ privacy. COVID didn’t put an end to any of these criticisms, but it reminded policymakers and citizens alike just how indispensable digital technologies have become. Companies survived the pandemic only by allowing wired workers to log in from home. Consumers avoided possible infection by shopping online. Specially made drones helped deliver lifesaving medicine in rich and poor countries alike. Advances in telemedicine helped scientists and doctors understand and fight the virus. Artificial intelligence helped hospitals predict how many beds and ventilators they would need at any one time. A spike in Google searches using phrases that included specific symptoms helped health officials detect outbreaks in places where doctors and hospitals are few and far between. AI played a crucial role in vaccine development by absorbing all available medical literature to identify links between the genetic properties of the virus and the chemical composition and effects of existing drugs.

In April, Dr. Vladimir (Zev) Zelenko, M.D., an upstate New York physician and early HCQ adopter, reproduced Dr. Didier Raoult’s “startling successes” by dramatically reducing expected mortalities among 800 patients Zelenko treated with the HCQ cocktail.29 By late April of 2020, US doctors were widely prescribing HCQ to patients and family members, reporting outstanding results, and taking it themselves prophylactically. In May 2020, Dr. Harvey Risch, M.D., Ph.D. published the most comprehensive study, to date, on HCQ’s efficacy against COVID. Risch is Yale University’s super-eminent Professor of Epidemiology, an illustrious world authority on the analysis of aggregate clinical data. Dr. Risch concluded that evidence is unequivocal for early and safe use of the HCQ cocktail. Dr. Risch published his work—a meta-analysis reviewing five outpatient studies—in affiliation with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in the American Journal of Epidemiology, under the urgent title, “Early Outpatient Treatment of Symptomatic, High-Risk COVID-19 Patients that Should be Ramped-Up Immediately as Key to Pandemic Crisis.”30 He further demonstrated, with specificity, how HCQ’s critics—largely funded by Bill Gates and Dr. Tony Fauci31—had misinterpreted, misstated, and misreported negative results by employing faulty protocols, most of which showed HCQ efficacy administered without zinc and Zithromax which were known to be helpful. But their main trick for ensuring the protocols failed was to wait until late in the disease process before administering HCQ—when it is known to be ineffective. Dr. Risch noted that evidence against HCQ used late in the course of the disease is irrelevant. While acknowledging that Dr. Didier Raoult’s powerful French studies favoring HCQ efficacy were not randomized, Risch argued that the results were, nevertheless, so stunning as to far outweigh that deficit: “The first study of HCQ + AZ [ . . . ] showed a 50-fold benefit of HCQ + AZ vs. standard of care . . . This is such an enormous difference that it cannot be ignored despite lack of randomization.”32 Risch has pointed out that the supposed need for randomized placebo-controlled trials is a shibboleth. In 2014 the Cochrane Collaboration proved in a landmark meta-analysis of 10,000 studies, that observational studies of the kind produced by Didier Raoult are equal

My life is your crutch.

Whenever there is adversity, human mind is usually vulnerable to dangerous attacks. And whatever affect the mind controls a man.

Let everything that has breath praise God. We have not only survived but strived in the COVID-19 situation.

Covid-19 has been, by anyone’s reckoning, a crisis—and it’s just getting started. Things are going to happen or change now, whether people take control of them in the broad interests of humanity or not. It may be an opportunity to achieve things we could not achieve before. The popularity of Kennedy’s statement shows we recognize this deeper truth—that crises can provide those opportunities. Or, we might just be swept along by the economic and political storms the pandemic has unleashed and never deal with any of the underlying problems that got us here.

His cruelty is also an exercise of his power, such as it is. He has always wielded it against people who are weaker than he is or who are constrained by their duty or dependence from fighting back. Employees and political appointees can’t fight back when he attacks them in his Twitter feed because to do so would risk their jobs or their reputations. Freddy couldn’t retaliate when his little brother mocked his passion for flying because of his filial responsibility and his decency, just as governors in blue states, desperate to get adequate help for their citizens during the COVID-19 crisis, are constrained from calling out Donald’s incompetence for fear he would withhold ventilators and other supplies needed in order to save lives. Donald learned a long time ago how to pick his targets.

We live in a perilous age. As I write these words, COVID-19 has become a global crisis. Autocrats, including Trump, hold power in a growing number of countries around the world. Democracy and freedom are at greater peril than at any point in decades. The earth is warming at warp speed, and the catastrophic consequences are more evident every day. Despite these warning signs, we are not dramatically changing our habits of consumption or significantly reducing our dependence on fossil fuels. Income inequality—the gap between the richest and poorest people in the world—is rising at a rate that engenders growing fury among the less privileged.

As we are beginning to restart our world after being hit by a horrific global health crisis, our actions hold the key to a fast recovery for the entire humankind - therefore, wear a mask whenever you are in public, avoid gatherings and wash your hands frequently - these are by far the most effective way to make sure we keep our friends and family as well as ourselves safe.

thoughts for the whole way. My usual running playlist

Without circumstances, there is no challenge for change.

So we shouldn’t lose too much time in New Age spiritualist meditations on how “the virus crisis will enable us to focus on what our lives are really about.” The real struggle will be over what social form will replace the liberal-capitalist New World Order. This is our true appointment in Samara.

My Greatest lesson has been the ART OF SELF~CONTROL! I had to learn to maintain my composure in times of crisis of all sorts! Once I removed myself from the situation either physically and or mentally I was able to clear my mind! Thereafter, I could see the bigger picture and objectively determine how to remedy the situation! Therefore, I say CALM YOUR EMOTIONS, WHEN EMOTIONS ARE HIGH INTELLIGENCE IS LOW

We must come to the table knowing that there is no barangay, city, province, government, or country that can solve the COVID-19 crisis alone. More than ever, human collectivism is key. We have prepared for wars even before they happened. Maybe this time, we ought to work together, collectively and purposively, regardless of race, ethnicity, political affiliation, and religion, in finding a solution to a threat that has shaken our very definition of civilization.” - Anna Mae Yu Lamentillo , Night Owl: A Nationbuilder’s Manual 2nd Edition (p. 313, Physical (not social) Distancing)

covid-19 and lockdowns, the entire world is facing a global health crisis.

Report published : #Globalization of #disease has led the world to be only as resilient as the least resilient country and person , especially for highly contagious COVID-19 which has spread with scale and severity not seen since #Spanishflu . The variants of the virus (such as B.1.617.2 Delta , #DeltaPlus, Epsilon, #Gamma ) continue to threaten even those vaccinated. Secondary diseases such as black fungus are targeting #COVID patients and killing almost one in two persons in such cases. Human life is more precious and important than all economic principles or systems in totality because all these concepts are legitimate only because of their utility value which is to fundamentally make human life better. At least until this ongoing crisis ends, all economic policies (related to money, banking, fixing prices of commodities, etc.) need to be revised to make sure no human being suffers from hunger or the absence of required medical care. For this purpose KAILASA has presented a detailed report on effective solution for

The explosion of the Black Lives Matter movement didn’t take place in a vacuum. It materialized in the midst of the greatest health crisis of the century—the COVID-19 pandemic. And in the United States, the pandemic was being handled with all the proficiency that one might expect to find in a corrupt and dysfunctional regime led by a superstitious, science-defying authoritarian leader of a banana republic who had decided to let the people fend for themselves—and die accordingly. Notices about COVID-19 had appeared in the president’s daily briefings (PDB) as early as January 2020, but, as was usually the case with PDBs, Trump didn’t bother to read them.

The Love of Money It is not money in itself but the “love of money” that is the root of all evil. When the threat of Climate Change became a national crisis, the families of noted politicians began investing their money in “new green technology,” including solar panels, wind turbines, and electric cars, as informed investors invest where future money is to be made. When COVID hit, there were already certain pharmaceuticals that were used to treat the virus, including one I took that helped me within 48 hours. However, these pills have been available for many years to help prevent malaria but were ignored or not permitted to be sold, as the companies creating the vaccines and various doctors put the word out that these pills were not effective, and only the vaccine would work. According to whistleblower-doctors, the underlying reason for rejecting a cheaper pill is because vaccines would create more money.

Las secuelas desastrosas de la política económica del gobierno han sido ampliamente documentadas, pero no siempre son claramente visibles, pues se ocultan detrás de los efectos catastróficos de la pandemia del covid-19. La masa de ayudas económicas que fluye bajo diversas formas hacia la población pobre, que obviamente es muy bien recibida, dificulta ver la dirección que está tomando la política económica. Hay quienes creen que hay un proyecto comunista oculto encaminado a revolucionar la economía, a la manera cubana o venezolana. Otros sospechan que se busca instaurar una economía mixta como la que preconizaban los gobiernos priistas de los años sesenta y setenta, de Díaz Ordaz a López Portillo. Algunos temen que el proyecto económico esté en manos del exjefe de gabinete, Alfonso Romo, un empresario muy reaccionario que quisiera simplemente modificar la composición de la élite empresarial para convertirla en un grupo de fieles y estimular un capitalismo de amigos y compadres. En todo caso, este empresario sólo aguantó como jefe de gabinete dos años. Poco antes de dejar el puesto, Romo había exaltado la inversión privada como la esperanza para superar la crisis, una idea que aparentemente contradice el discurso del presidente. Aun alguien tan obtuso como Romo se daba cuenta del desastre: “No podemos manejar un país que está decreciendo cercano al 9% […] como si estuviéramos creciendo al 9%”, declaró en obvia crítica a las ideas de López Obrador pocos días antes de separarse del cargo.

Such comparisons with the mid-century heyday of Keynesianism no doubt help to capture the drama of the moment. They express the wish of many, on the left as well as the right, to return to that moment when the national economy was first constituted as an integrated and governable entity. As the interconnected implosion of demand and supply demonstrated, macroeconomic connections are very real. But as a frame for reading the crisis response in 2020, this retrofitting risks anachronism. The fiscal-monetary synthesis of 2020 was a synthesis for the twenty-first century.5 While it overturned the nostrums of neoliberalism, notably with regard to the scale of government interventions, it was framed by neoliberalism’s legacies, in the form of hyperglobalization, fragile and attenuated welfare states, profound social and economic inequality, and the overweening size and influence of private finance.

His historical cultivation of relationships with gay leaders was one of the factors that made Dr. Fauci a darling of liberals during the early COVID crisis.

Same premise holds for the liberal critique of “American hegemony” (a term from the 1990s and early 2000s that is very rarely used anymore, but the premise still holds); from the position that America will hold a permanent hegemonic position. This cynical disbelief in the *end* of the Empire’s hegemony is what sustains the decadence that accelerates its precipitous decline. Same thing with global warming or any other exigencies. The denial of the “end” is what accelerates the end. The admission of the crisis is what accelerates the action necessary to negate the crisis and, therefore, turn the cynic into someone who can justify non-belief in the crisis because in the evaporation of the emergency, the proof that the emergency existed is removed, and, therefore, the cynic becomes even more assured that their cynicism is justified. If you do not believe in global warming and policies change to the point where carbon emissions are reduced and global warming is averted, the first thing a cynic will say is, “See! I told you global warming was nothing to worry about!” Same thing with the COVID quarantine and vaccine measures. If they did not work to evade the virus the cynic would cry that the measures were not effective and therefore nobody should trust the government. If the measure did work and the virus was evaded, the cynic would cling to the cynicism and say, “See! The crisis of the virus would have been averted! What is all the fuss? Why did everyone worry?” An ideology succeeds when the facts that at first appearance should serve to contradict it start to serve as arguments in its favor. There is a sense that “enjoyment itself, which we experience as ‘transgression’, is in its innermost status something imposed, ordered—when we enjoy… this obscene call ‘Enjoy!’, is the superego.” Cultural downfall is pressed into action—by the decadent attitudes of those who suspend disbelief even as the demise of hegemonic power is unfolding before their eyes. The same holds true for those who disbelieve that the Other can actually overtake them, and the downplaying of cunning tendencies in the Neighbors. There is an infantilizing process that misunderestimated the possibility that the Other can mobilize itself into a force that can become a “master”-signifier where you are the “subject” to the Other, the condescension that “their” power will remain virtual and never become fully realized as an actual force enacting violence upon you, this is the condescension of liberal compassion towards the “Neighbors.

That left one last task before they could tell the world about their deal. Manchin, who now had his own case of COVID, needed Biden’s formal endorsement of their agreement. All along, Manchin was convinced that the White House was going to hate provisions in the deal expanding oil and gas leases. But many in the White House, like Brian Deese, were perfectly comfortable with what Manchin wanted. Given the conflict in Ukraine and the spike in energy prices, they were happy to expand domestic production of energy. It was politically expedient, at the very least—and might help lower prices in the middle of a crisis. When Biden came on the line and greeted Manchin, he purred, “Joe-Joe!” After nine months of emotionally exhausting back-and-forth, they were done.

Con tutto il paese blindato in casa per fermare l'epidemia, quelle tre ridevano mentre aspettavano di fare la spesa. Una addirittura a un certo punto ha tirato fuori il telefonino e ha detto: "Facciamoci un selfie". Non so come siano riuscite a stare nella foto senza violare il distanziamento, ma era comunque una cosa fastidiosa, al punto che si è avvicinato un carabiniere, uno di quegli appuntati giovanissimi al primo anno di servizio, e ha chiesto loro cosa stessero facendo. Mi aspettavo che smettessero e si scusassero, per rispetto della divisa e della circostanza, invece una ha risposto: "Ci facciamo una foto rispettando il distanziamento, c'è qualcosa che lo vieta?". L'arroganza di quella risposta non me la dimenticherò mai. Il carabiniere, per quanto giovanissimo, si è comportato da signore e non ha perso le staffe. "Non c'è un divieto, ma vi sembra il caso di farvi i selfie, con i camion che portano via i morti." [...] "Cosa c'entrano i morti con la nostra foto? Le norme sono contro il contagio, non contro il buon umore.

China’s crude oil imports now average more than thirteen million barrels a day. That’s up from just five hundred thousand in 1997 and substantially more than the U.S oil purchases from abroad, which have leveled off at six million barrels a day, mostly from Canada and Mexico. U.S. crude oil imports were offset on a trade basis by exports of about three million barrels a day of U.S. domestically produced crude oil to Asia and Europe prior to the COVID crisis.

Despite the successful suppression campaign in February, the coronavirus crisis of 2020 could easily have been a major liability for Xi's regime. Instead, it became an occasion for what has been aptly termed "disaster nationalism," an opportunity to demonstrate collective resilience under the leadership of the party.

What has made central bankers into the exemplar of modern crisis-fighting is the vacuum created by the evisceration of organized labor, the absence of inflationary pressure, and more broadly, the lack of antisystemic challenge.

furious growth of Covid- 19 cases in those parts of the US where many people regarded masking as an infringement of their individual liberties suggests that it is morbid individualism that turns crises into tragedies.

Inevitably, at the outset of a crisis, you may be accused either of overreacting, if your worst projections don’t materialize, or of underreacting if the situation spirals out of control.

In a crisis like COVID, information is not foresight. It takes exceptionally brave leadership to act decisively, before the full scale of a threat becomes obvious. By the time the situation is evident, it can be too late to avoid a catastrophic outcome.

Antiglobalization was strong in the run-up to 1914 and up to 1918, then less so during the 1920s, but it reignited in the 1930s as a result of the Great Depression, triggering an increase in tariff and non-tariff barriers that destroyed many businesses and inflicted much pain on the largest economies of that time. The same could happen again, with a strong impulse to reshore that spreads beyond healthcare and agriculture to include large categories of non-strategic products. Both the far right and the far left will take advantage of the crisis to promote a protectionist agenda with higher barriers to the free flow of capital goods and people.

Data showed that over 60% of business closures during the COVID-19 crisis were permanent, amounting to more than 97,000 businesses lost in the U.S. alone.[552] Half of Black-owned small businesses in the U.S. were wiped out.

Some have called for “degrowth”, a movement that embraces zero or even negative GDP growth that is gaining some traction (at least in the richest countries). As the critique of economic growth moves to centre stage, consumerism’s financial and cultural dominance in public and private life will be overhauled.[42] This is made obvious in consumer-driven degrowth activism in some niche segments – like advocating for less meat or fewer flights. By triggering a period of enforced degrowth, the pandemic has spurred renewed interest in this movement that wants to reverse the pace of economic growth, leading more than 1,100 experts from around the world to release a manifesto in May 2020 putting forward a degrowth strategy to tackle the economic and human crisis caused by COVID-19.[43] Their open letter calls for the adoption of a democratically “planned yet adaptive, sustainable, and equitable downscaling of the economy, leading to a future where we can live better with less”. However, beware of the pursuit of degrowth proving as directionless as the pursuit of growth! The most forward-looking countries and their governments will instead prioritize a more inclusive and sustainable approach to managing and measuring their economies, one that also drives job growth, improvements in living standards and safeguards the planet. The technology to do more with less already exists.[44] There is no fundamental trade-off between economic, social and environmental factors if we adopt this more holistic and longer-term approach to defining progress and incentivizing investment in green and social frontier markets.

As it happens, he and Raphael are both very much focused on the future. Raphael recently created a nonprofit network of successful Black men and women—some white, too—that he named the Lantern Network, after the lanterns people once used to indicate safe houses along the Underground Railroad. His goal is to provide a resource for talented Black professionals who lack the high-powered social networks white men take for granted—the family friends and relatives and neighbors one can turn to for mentorship, financial counsel, introductions, and access to capital. As of summer 2020, the future looked more promising. The COVID crisis had left economic inequality nowhere to hide. Then came the police lynching that broke the camel’s back. An exceedingly bitter election season contributed a third element to what was shaping up to be a perfect storm. The pandemic and “the high-resolution video of the George Floyd murder by someone who was confident that he would NOT be brought to justice” were the catalysts we needed, Raphael said in an email. Overt racism has crawled out of its hole these past four years, but “there are even more nonracists and a growing number of anti-racists who will actively engage in the fight.

Unlike previous pandemics, it is far from certain that the COVID-19 crisis will tip the balance in favour of labour and against capital. For political and social reasons, it could, but technology changes the mix.

South Korea reformed its CDC after MERS and gave it responsibility for creating a testing market in a crisis. In the US, HHS turned to the CDC, and the CDC didn’t have the policy orientation, operational experience, or industrial expertise to pull off an effort on this scale. As a consequence, we never had enough testing to keep up with the initial spread, and we lost control of the pandemic at its very outset.

The possibility of a seamless network of electrified robo-taxis, self-driving delivery vehicles, and public transit linked to smartphone applications might seem like science fiction, but the COVID-19 pandemic crisis in 2020 gave a flavor of what is to come. In China’s pandemic epicenter of Wuhan, unmanned, autonomous electric vehicles, monitored remotely from a computer screen in a different location, were used to deliver hospital supplies, to disinfect isolation areas, and to deliver meals to quarantined people.

The Covid-19 pandemic, in fact, was likely the first time that many of us felt our forgotten stresses and realized that humans can still be powerless against the natural world.

recent Gallup poll, only 12 percent of Americans actually want to live in a city (and that poll was taken before Covid-19).

Conspiracies have always swirled in times of crisis—but never before have they been a booming industry in their own right. Covid was a “capitalizable conspiracy,” as William Callison and Quinn Slobodian put it.

investigators compared cardiac adverse events from the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine to those from influenza vaccines using the WHO VigiBase for adverse events. Overall, individuals receiving COVID-19 mRNA vaccines showed a 12.72 times higher incidence of cardiac hypertensive crisis (95% CI of 2.47 to 65.54) and a 7.94 times higher incidence of supraventricular tachycardia (95% CI of 2.62 to 24.00) than those receiving the influenza vaccine.

In the absence of an outbreak like Covid-19, where even Schnorr had no choice but to be belligerent with the Purell, she generally doesn’t disinfect her home or hands. “I abhor sanitizer,” she said. “And, trust me, you’re going to survive if you don’t shower. In fact, it can be beneficial.

Lung disease gets 5.3 percent of us. Fitter people have lungs that are 2.8 times less at risk of disease, say scientists at Northwestern University. The recent pandemic Covid-19 attacked the lungs and could cause pneumonia and, in turn, death. A study in Annals of Epidemiology found that fitter people face a smaller risk of developing pneumonia compared to the unfit. And the CDC found that people infected with Covid-19 who also suffered from preventable lifestyle diseases driven by a lack of fitness were six times more likely to be hospitalized.

I am often called a “conspiracy theorist.” The reason is simple. Unlike all but a very few other journalists or nonfiction writers, I’ve been a political consultant to a presidential campaign and advisor to a vice president. And as a result of those experiences, I know how the powerful react in a crisis — especially when their self-interest is involved.

But my husband and I were not reassured by the Nurse Ratched–type comforting language, and we were astonished at Governor Cuomo’s dicta. Since we had both lived in war zones and conflict areas, we knew that commerce was never closed, even in the worst crises. People needed to keep making their livings in order to survive the crisis, and the economy needed to be sustained in order for the community to survive the crisis.

unimaginable can happen.” The outbreak of a global pandemic would seem to bear that out. But even before the Covid-19 crisis, anti-Semitism in Europe had risen to a level not seen since the middle of the last century. To their credit, Western European political leaders have roundly condemned the resurgence of anti-Semitism. So, too, has Pope Francis. He has also questioned the morality of unfettered capitalism, called for action on climate change, defended the rights of immigrants, and warned of the dangers posed by the rise of the European far right, which regards him as a mortal enemy. If only a prelate like Francis had been wearing the Ring of the Fisherman in 1939. The history of the Jews, and the Roman Catholic Church, might well have been written differently.

And our hearts cry, “How long? How far? How much more?

The most melodious music to our ears is a whisper suggesting ways to save the emptying cash reserves.