Coronavirus Reads, Digest 30
India's cases near 80,000 while the U.S. struggles with escalating unemployment.
It’s Thursday, May 14th.
This is the 30th edition of this newsletter.
For more news and updates, follow me on Twitter @vedashastri and on Instagram @shastriveda.
PSA on Masks
Could most of America’s coronavirus cases be contained if everyone wore a mask? A new study says, yes. Vanity Fair reports that the study says if 80% of Americans wore a mask coronavirus infections would reduce to 1/12 of the number if no one wore a mask. The study also points to the contrasting success of Japan, with a low Covid-19 death rate without a severe lockdown.
The leadership in the U.S. and the UK has hesitated or outrightly declined to wear a mask in public. Yasmeen Serhan writes about the success of Slovakia, where the politicians modelled the behavior they wanted citizens to follow, and managed to flatten its curve.
Where Leaders Wear Masks, How Slovakia Contained the Coronavirus, The Atlantic
India news
India’s confirmed coronavirus cases climb towards 80,000, on day 51 of its lockdown. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has been doing a series of press conferences to announce details of the economic relief package. Today among other measures, she announced relief measures for migrant workers (to improve their access to food rations and shelter) as well as farmers and small businesses. Here’s a NYTimes backgrounder on Modi’s economic stimulus announcement and the current Indian economic crisis.
Delays are being reported not just on coronavirus testing kits, but also for PPE. Aareja Johari reports in Scroll how before protective gear can be given to hospitals, it needs to pass a quality test. In one instance, the results of the quality certification will take 5 weeks.
As the Indian government’s contact tracing app, Aaroyga Setu becomes essential despite its surveillance and privacy issues, people are looking for ways to work around it. Pranav Dixit reports in Buzzfeed on a Bangalore software engineer that rejigged the app for himself, removing the “invasive” parts like tracking Bluetooth and GPS at all times.
P Sainath, India’s preeminent rural affairs journalist and founder of People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI), has been interviewed on the migrant workers crisis. by Parth MN.
And in response to the suspension of all labor law regulation in several states, Pratap Bhanu Mehta argues in his column that while the labor laws needed reform, this action instead is a “wholesale assault on labour.”
Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: Labour law did not protect workers, Indian Express
India is the second largest consumer of alcohol, by volume, in the world. Under the first two phases of the lockdown, alcohol was not deemed an essential item, and sales were banned. Several states rely on taxes from liquor sales for close to 10% of their revenue. Soutik Biswas gives an in-depth look at this and the unadulterated alcohol market in India, and its dangers.
Dark truth behind India's post-lockdown liquor lines, BBC.
U.S. and International
3 million more people filed for unemployment benefits last week, bringing American unemployment to 36.5 million in the last two months.
Meanwhile, laid-off “foreign” workers on H-1B or other work visas, who are not eligible for unemployment benefits, risk having to leave the U.S. soon as the Trump administration is not likely to extend their visas during the pandemic, reports Miriam Jordan.
Immigrants on H-1B and Other Work Visas May Face Deportation, The New York Times
The Trump administration is also extending the land border restrictions (closing legal points of entry to tourism) between the U.S. and Mexico and Canada indefinitely.
A new UNICEF report says that 1 million preventable deaths of children 5 or under could occur every 6 months due to a lack of access to needed healthcare services (lockdowns and flooded health systems focused on Covid-19).
Surge in child mortality forecast in pandemic-hit developing countries, AFP, Rappler
Atul Gawande reflects on the rules for reentry as lockdown restrictions ease in The New Yorker, and notes that we should look to healthcare workers as a model: Amid the Coronavirus Crisis, a Regimen for Reëntry. An excerpt:
In the face of enormous risks, American hospitals have learned how to avoid becoming sites of spread. When the time is right to lighten up on the lockdown and bring people back to work, there are wider lessons to be learned from places that never locked down in the first place.
These lessons point toward an approach that we might think of as a combination therapy—like a drug cocktail. Its elements are all familiar: hygiene measures, screening, distancing, and masks. Each has flaws. Skip one, and the treatment won’t work. But, when taken together, and taken seriously, they shut down the virus. We need to understand these elements properly—what their strengths and limitations are—if we’re going to make them work outside health care.
Side Effects of the Pandemic
Obviously, this year is catastrophic for the tourism industry. Hanna Ziady reports in CNN on how it can find its way back: measures including safer airport checks, and an emphasis on domestic travel.
And a touching story about an American couple that was due to adopt their daughter in India right when travel restrictions and lockdowns started, and how they managed to move forward to create their family despite the difficulty of the pandemic restrictions.
An Adoption, a Pandemic and an Evacuation, by Maria Abi-Habib
Coping with the Pandemic
At desperate times like these, which disproportionately affect vulnerable and lower income groups, Jia Tolentino writes about a phenomenon that helps -- “mutual aid” or self-organized volunteerism, that operates through hyperlocal networks.
What Mutual Aid Can Do During a Pandemic, Jia Tolentino, The New Yorker
The NYTimes Modern Love section has been soliciting quarantine stories from those living on their own. Here’s the result of that call-out, with voices and photos.
Alone, The New York Times.
And I conclude today with a heartwarming and beautifully shot video story about ice-cream trucks operating in New York from my former colleague in the NYTimes Video Unit, Nilo Tabrizy.
Living in Brooklyn, she tweeted that she was hearing two sounds -- one of sirens and the other of ice-cream truck music. What was that about, she wondered? And then she tracked a truck down.
Are Ice Cream Trucks Essential? In These N.Y.C. Neighborhoods, They Are