The Smoke Eater For May 11, 2020
Wish lists, going back inside, and the Postal Service.
Photo by Dominic Gwinn
Good afternoon, this is The Smoke Eater for Monday, May 11, 2020, and we're living in a bubble.
Quick Hit
* Unemployment is not suicide * Toilet flushing * I'll trade you $50 for your Social Security * The world realizes it's still gross out * A pandemic hack-a-thon * Save the Postal Service *
NOTE: There's another quarantine hoto essay for Patreon subscribers, as promised. The Smoker Eater is mobile friendly, ad-free and supported by super awesome readers. If you want to be super awesome, tip me on Ko-Fi, or subscribe to my Patreon!
"Everything Is Awesome"
As the U.S. grapples with the politics and medical consequences of reopening, conservative politicians are cramming anti-quarantine messages down the throats of their constituents even as a majority of American's support state-led efforts to reduce the spread of the coronavirus. They're betting that muddled talking points about unemployment and suicide, and chanting "U.S.A.," will be enough to kick the cold economy back into gear even as the U.S. death toll nears 80,000. Margaret Sullivan opined this weekend that the administration is hoping to "normalize" the skyrocketing number of bodies through its usual mixture of gaslighting and shitposting.
This morning The Wall Street Journal reported the financial fallout from the coronavirus was only getting worse. More U.S. factories are laying off workers and closing up shops, and chances of them returning are getting smaller as the pandemic drags on. Additionally, life insurance companies are getting nervous about offering new policies to the elderly.
Roll Call reports House Democrats are grinding out another stimulus/bail-out bill, and some want to tack on their own wish list of financial and social policies. Fear over a massive federal deficit and collapsing economy has triggered Reaganites and "fiscal conservatives" into proposing some truly shocking schemes, like delaying Social Security benefits in exchange for a paltry check. Whether or not anything actually happens is still up in the air, Democrats are following quarantine guidelines while Republicans put on a show wherever there's a camera.
Meanwhile, in Not America
Multiple countries are attempting reopen their own respective economies. Each has instituted a number of restrictions in the hope of curbing the inevitable spread of the virus, but there are already fears the rush to reopen was premature.
Germany had started to ease into reopening, but several counties were placed back in lockdown over the weekend when infection rates began to rise. The move came as thousands of right-wing protesters massed in several cities to demand an end to lockdowns and restrictions. German politicos have started speaking out against the misinformation, propaganda, and conspiracy theories that encourage people to flout safety regulations and attack journalists.
South Korea, which has received praise for its robust contact tracing and quarantine efforts, has already paused reopening after someone went bar hopping and caused a spike in infections. Those contact tracing measures now face scrutiny from privacy advocates and the country's persecuted LGBTQ community.
New native-born infection clusters have begun to appear in China, which had already begun to loosen some restrictions. China's state-run news reports a Chinese health official urging people to continue protecting themselves and avoiding social gatherings. In a related story, Disneyland Shanghai has reopened with new mandatory safety measures that include physical distancing, temperature checks, wearing masks, and specific trashcans for PPE disposal.
India is attempting to reopen some businesses, but workers aren't flocking back to the cities that drive India's economy, Vrishti Beniwal writes for Bloomberg. India has been accused of dropping the ball on a number of fronts, Alex Ward detailed for Vox back in March. A month later, India halted antibody testing. In an unrelated story, China and India got into an "aggressive" pissing contest in a remote region near Tibet over the weekend that resulted in several injuries.
The AP reports rural farmers have pressured Ukraine's leaders into reopening, but Ukraine's healthcare system can't even handle the patients it has under quarantine orders. The war with Russia has drained hospitals of supplies, and medical reforms pushed by the previous presidential administration left hospitals without funding, forcing the underpaid medical staff try to secure their own protective equipment.
Russia has boasted about a curiously low infection rate, but that message seems to have been blown apart after an obscure government agency reported 1,700 deaths in the month of April. Russia claimed that only a total of 2,009 people have died, the majority being Muscovites, but independent analysts believe the true numbers are being obscured (because that's kind of what Russia does). Russophiles think an exodus from Russiain cities in March may have triggered an outbreak much larger than is being reported by official government sources.
For Your Radar
The administration plans to accuse China of attempting to steal research from U.S.-based nerds working on a coronavirus vaccine, The New York Times reports. TLDR: There's a hacking free-for-all right now and almost every country is trying to steal vaccine research -- the Vietnamese are hacking China, the South Koreans are hacking the WHO and Japan, Nigerians scammers found all our lost relatives, and the Israeli's are think Iran tried to poison a waterhole.
BONUS: In recent months, university researchers have complained about warnings from security officials that hackers were targeting their systems, but hackers and state-sponsored assholes have abused academia's gullibility since the early days of the internet. If you've got nothing better to do, dive into a rabbit hole with Cliff Stoll, an accidental pioneer of modern computer security. There's a hilarious(ly bad) TV movie from NOVA about his book, The Cuckoo's Egg, and a nutty C-SPAN clip from 1989.
A number of local governments are using the pandemic as an excuse to dodge government transparency, Jessica Priest writes in the Austin-American Statesmen. Though some local governments are struggling to accommodate public access and records requests, others seem to be purposefully skirting the edges of transparency laws.
Two men in Chicago were arrested and charged with running a prostitution ring just before the pandemic hit, Jon Seidel reports for the Chicago Sun-Times. As one of the men was cooling his heels in a local jail, he called his partner and the two proceeded to bitch and moan in Polish about a sudden drop in businesses, according to court records.
One More Thing...
I'm not stepping down from my "Save the Post Office" soap box.
OK, here's a cute critter video: BABY GOAT PJ PARTY!
Follow Dominic on Twitter and Instagram.
The Smoke Eater is mobile friendly, ad-free and relies on your tips and subscriptions. It takes a lot of time and energy to put each issue together, so consider tipping me on Ko-Fi, or subscribing to my Patreon.
Questions? Comments? Complaints? Shoot me an email or slide into my DMs!