Things you buy through our links may earn New York a commission.Right now, on the outskirts of a hyper modern first world megapolis, at the end of a year in , a climate disaster of unimaginable horror has been unfolding for almost two full months, and the rest of the world is hardly paying attention.The New South Wales fires have been burning , destroying and remain almost entirely uncontrolled by the volunteer firefighting forces deployed to stop them; on November 12, greater Sydney declared an unprecedented “” fire warning. That was six weeks ago, and the blazes are almost certain to...…Things you buy through our links may earn New York a commission.Right now, on the outskirts of a hyper modern first world megapolis, at the end of a year in , a climate disaster of unimaginable horror has been unfolding for almost two full months, and the rest of the world is hardly paying attention.The New South Wales fires have been burning , destroying and remain almost entirely uncontrolled by the volunteer firefighting forces deployed to stop them; on November 12, greater Sydney declared an unprecedented “” fire warning. That was six weeks ago, and the blazes are almost certain to...WW…

Things you buy through our links may earn New York a commission.Just before the holiday weekend, on the day that Donald Trump stood beneath Mount Rushmore and and the day before his Washington, D.C., fireworks display generated , the state of Arizona reached a terrible pandemic milestone. For the first time in its history, indeed for the first time in any state anywhere at any point in American medical history, the Arizona Department of Health Services , giving them more flexibility (and less liability) to triage the overwhelming number of new COVID-19 patients and ration care, presumably...…Things you buy through our links may earn New York a commission.Just before the holiday weekend, on the day that Donald Trump stood beneath Mount Rushmore and and the day before his Washington, D.C., fireworks display generated , the state of Arizona reached a terrible pandemic milestone. For the first time in its history, indeed for the first time in any state anywhere at any point in American medical history, the Arizona Department of Health Services , giving them more flexibility (and less liability) to triage the overwhelming number of new COVID-19 patients and ration care, presumably...WW…

Things you buy through our links may earn New York a commission.A bit before midnight on January 20, a Harvard epidemiologist named Eric Feigl-Ding posted a long, terrifying Twitter thread mostly summarizing, and in a few places contextualizing, a new, pre-publication paper on the infectiousness of the novel coronavirus that had, at the time, forced Wuhan into a total lockdown but had not yet been detected outside of China. The context he added was, mostly, alarmism.“Holy mother of god,” the thread began, “the new coronavirus is a 3.8!!!” That figure referred to what’s called the...…Things you buy through our links may earn New York a commission.A bit before midnight on January 20, a Harvard epidemiologist named Eric Feigl-Ding posted a long, terrifying Twitter thread mostly summarizing, and in a few places contextualizing, a new, pre-publication paper on the infectiousness of the novel coronavirus that had, at the time, forced Wuhan into a total lockdown but had not yet been detected outside of China. The context he added was, mostly, alarmism.“Holy mother of god,” the thread began, “the new coronavirus is a 3.8!!!” That figure referred to what’s called the...WW…

Things you buy through our links may earn New York a commission.We’re committed to keeping our readers informed. We’ve removed our paywall from essential coronavirus news stories. Become a subscriber to support our journalists. .There is still no plan for the end of the coronavirus crisis, for all intents and purposes.A month ago, on April 5, I that, weeks into what was initially intended to be a short lockdown, there was no clear vision of an endgame from the White House. In theory, the lockdowns were designed to slow the spread of the disease to give us time to catch up and prepare...…Things you buy through our links may earn New York a commission.We’re committed to keeping our readers informed. We’ve removed our paywall from essential coronavirus news stories. Become a subscriber to support our journalists. .There is still no plan for the end of the coronavirus crisis, for all intents and purposes.A month ago, on April 5, I that, weeks into what was initially intended to be a short lockdown, there was no clear vision of an endgame from the White House. In theory, the lockdowns were designed to slow the spread of the disease to give us time to catch up and prepare...WW…

Things you buy through our links may earn New York a commission.If Bernie Sanders is the politician Occupy Wall Street dreamed of, Thomas Piketty is the closest thing we’ve gotten to the great theoretician of our era of inequality (and the populism and political dysfunction it has produced). , which came out in France in 2013 and in the U.S. six months later, was the biggest best seller Harvard University Press had ever published (despite being nearly 700 dense pages long); it managed to smuggle an abstract equation into quasi-pop discourse (r>g, Piketty’s shorthand for the fact that the...…Things you buy through our links may earn New York a commission.If Bernie Sanders is the politician Occupy Wall Street dreamed of, Thomas Piketty is the closest thing we’ve gotten to the great theoretician of our era of inequality (and the populism and political dysfunction it has produced). , which came out in France in 2013 and in the U.S. six months later, was the biggest best seller Harvard University Press had ever published (despite being nearly 700 dense pages long); it managed to smuggle an abstract equation into quasi-pop discourse (r>g, Piketty’s shorthand for the fact that the...WW…

Things you buy through our links may earn New York a commission.Whenever you start to think that the federal government under Donald Trump has hit a moral bottom, it finds a new way to shock and horrify.Over the last few weeks, it has started to appear as though, in addition to to their own devices in , the federal government has effectively erected a blockade — like that which the Union used to choke off the supply chains of the Confederacy during the Civil War — to prevent delivery of critical medical equipment to states desperately in need. At the very least, federal authorities have...…Things you buy through our links may earn New York a commission.Whenever you start to think that the federal government under Donald Trump has hit a moral bottom, it finds a new way to shock and horrify.Over the last few weeks, it has started to appear as though, in addition to to their own devices in , the federal government has effectively erected a blockade — like that which the Union used to choke off the supply chains of the Confederacy during the Civil War — to prevent delivery of critical medical equipment to states desperately in need. At the very least, federal authorities have...WW…

Things you buy through our links may earn New York a commission.What we are seeing right now is the collapse of civic authority and public trust at what is only the beginning of a protracted crisis. In the face of an onrushing pandemic, the United States has exhibited a near-total evacuation of responsibility and political leadership — a sociopathic disinterest in performing the basic function of government, which is to protect its citizens.Things will get worse from here. According to a survey of epidemiologists released yesterday, the . That doesn’t mean it will be over by May, of course,...…Things you buy through our links may earn New York a commission.What we are seeing right now is the collapse of civic authority and public trust at what is only the beginning of a protracted crisis. In the face of an onrushing pandemic, the United States has exhibited a near-total evacuation of responsibility and political leadership — a sociopathic disinterest in performing the basic function of government, which is to protect its citizens.Things will get worse from here. According to a survey of epidemiologists released yesterday, the . That doesn’t mean it will be over by May, of course,...WW…

Things you buy through our links may earn New York a commission.Almost as soon as the first marches to began, in Minneapolis on May 26, conservatives and COVID contrarians seized on the rallies as a case study of liberal coronavirus hypocrisy. If the disease spread rapidly through the assembled protesters, they felt, it would show that those who’d spent the spring scolding Americans for resisting lockdowns didn’t care as much about public health as they did about advancing their own set of political values. (Liberals, of course, would put it differently: that the cause was worth the risk.)...…Things you buy through our links may earn New York a commission.Almost as soon as the first marches to began, in Minneapolis on May 26, conservatives and COVID contrarians seized on the rallies as a case study of liberal coronavirus hypocrisy. If the disease spread rapidly through the assembled protesters, they felt, it would show that those who’d spent the spring scolding Americans for resisting lockdowns didn’t care as much about public health as they did about advancing their own set of political values. (Liberals, of course, would put it differently: that the cause was worth the risk.)...WW…

Things you buy through our links may earn New York a commission.This article was featured in , New York’s reading recommendation newsletter. to get it nightly.I.I’m bashing my head as well,” says Devi Sridhar.It is January 2021, and the Florida-born, Edinburgh-based professor of global public health is looking back on the pandemic year, marveling and despairing at opportunities lost. From early last winter, Sridhar has been among the most vocal critics of the shambolic U.K. response — urging categorically more pandemic vigilance, which she believed might have yielded a total triumph over...…Things you buy through our links may earn New York a commission.This article was featured in , New York’s reading recommendation newsletter. to get it nightly.I.I’m bashing my head as well,” says Devi Sridhar.It is January 2021, and the Florida-born, Edinburgh-based professor of global public health is looking back on the pandemic year, marveling and despairing at opportunities lost. From early last winter, Sridhar has been among the most vocal critics of the shambolic U.K. response — urging categorically more pandemic vigilance, which she believed might have yielded a total triumph over...WW…

Things you buy through our links may earn New York a commission.As debilitating power outages stretch on in Texas, I spoke with New York editor-at-large David Wallace-Wells about what the dire situation signifies about our extreme-weather future — political point-scoring aside.Ben Hart: As Texas experiences extremely this week, the state’s electrical grid is straining. Millions have been without power, and some power companies have ordered rolling blackouts to manage demand. Public officials don’t seem to have a good handle on when the lights will go back on. To your eye, does what’s...…Things you buy through our links may earn New York a commission.As debilitating power outages stretch on in Texas, I spoke with New York editor-at-large David Wallace-Wells about what the dire situation signifies about our extreme-weather future — political point-scoring aside.Ben Hart: As Texas experiences extremely this week, the state’s electrical grid is straining. Millions have been without power, and some power companies have ordered rolling blackouts to manage demand. Public officials don’t seem to have a good handle on when the lights will go back on. To your eye, does what’s...WW…