onfocus

"The juxtaposition of images in the news of farmers destroying crops and dumping milk with empty supermarket shelves or hungry Americans lining up for hours at food banks tells a story of economic efficiency gone mad."

Ironically, optimizing industry for efficiency has made it less resilient when faced with different market conditions.

"This, then, is the state of things: The White House does not have a plan, it does not have a framework, it does not have a philosophy, and it does not have a goal. That is not because these things are impossible. At this point, there are dozens of plans floating around and dozens of governments offering models it could choose from."

It's not going well.

"All these infection events were indoors, with people closely-spaced, with lots of talking, singing, or yelling. The main sources for infection are home, workplace, public transport, social gatherings, and restaurants. This accounts for 90% of all transmission events. In contrast, outbreaks spread from shopping appear to be responsible for a small percentage of traced infections."

Great summary of which environments pose the greatest risk as states start to open again.

"Why admit and apologize for errors? Two reasons: First, blame is a seesaw. If you blame yourself more, others blame you less; they may even tell you why it wasn’t really your fault, everybody else got it wrong too, you were misled, etc. And second, the forgiveness process starts with acknowledgment. It is vanishingly hard to forgive people who won’t admit fault."

CIDRAP—University of Minnesota illness prevention group—offers strategies for effective COVID-19 crisis communication.

"But even as the national political discourse has adopted reopening as the central debate, polls repeatedly show that Americans overwhelmingly back restrictions and do not support reopening most businesses. The consensus is especially notable in an era when nearly every poll question seems to serve as a referendum on Donald Trump, with his supporters lining up against his opponents. Here, despite Trump’s pleas for reopening, Americans are remaining united—and not heeding him. What if government reopened the country, and no one came?"

Maybe survival instinct > political affiliation?

"Through her work, she's found that those who have been through a period of isolation value the experience for what it has taught: They have a better idea of their personal values, and they're more committed to acting on them. "When people have space to sit back and think it allows them to figure out what's important to them," she said."

Lessons from others who have been isolated.

"Stated another way, the plan is to default on public problem solving, and then prevent the public from understanding the consequences of that default. To succeed this will require one of the biggest propaganda and freedom of information fights in U.S. history, the execution of which will, I think, consume the president’s re-election campaign."

Running out the clock while making people doubt the clock. We lost another month and nothing is changing to contain the virus.

Profiles of some covid-19 victims. It’s difficult to process the toll of covid-19 without taking some time to see who we’re losing. Numbers are numbers and that’s how I’m understanding covid-19 right now in charts and data. This NYT piece is a step toward a different type of understanding.

"The opposition expressed by sizable majorities of Americans reflects other cautions and concerns revealed in the survey, including continuing fears among most people that they could become infected by the coronavirus, as well as a belief that the worst of the medical crisis is not yet over."

Overwhelming majority says it’s too soon to open. Protest sentiment you see in the news is a small minority.

"Firing whistleblowers isn’t just a side-effect of macroeconomic forces, nor is it intrinsic to the function of free markets. It’s evidence of a vein of toxicity running through the company culture. I choose neither to serve nor drink that poison."

Tech pioneer Tim Bray leaves Amazon over warehouse worker firings.

The Board was presented with a unique and complex situation – impacting one of the largest registries with more than 10.5 million domain names registered. After completing its evaluation, the ICANN Board finds that the public interest is better served in withholding consent as a result of various factors that create unacceptable uncertainty over the future of the third largest gTLD registry.

This is a relief. The .org top-level domain is not being sold for parts after all.