[Tyler Cowen] Entertainment partial solution of COVID-19

First the NBA postponed its season, with no immediate resumption in sight, and then March Madness was canceled. Broadway has been shuttered, along with other public entertainments across the country, Disneyland included. These are prudent if belated steps. Nonetheless a question arises: If every empire needs bread and circuses, where will Americans turn for the latter? Which public spectacles will keep us all distracted? One obvious response is the internet. For younger generations especially,

March 17, 2020

[Kim Seong-kon] Lesson from Academy Award-winning Parasite

Ostensibly, the 2020 Academy Award-winning South Korean film “Parasite” seems to depict the problems of a polarized society here, sharply divided between the rich and the poor. That was why Korean left-wing politicians hailed the movie as a victory of socialism over capitalism and tried to use the movie’s international recognition for political gain so that they can win the upcoming election in April. After watching the movie, however, viewers realize that such a view is only

March 17, 2020

[Stephen Mihm] Why the US doesn’t have enough hospital beds

Hospitals often speak of what’s called “surge capacity” -- the ability to absorb a sudden influx of patients because of a terrorist attack, a natural disaster, or even, yes, a pandemic. Given the possible influx of patients sickened by the new coronavirus, how much of a surge can U.S. hospitals accommodate? Not as much as you might think. For years, cost-conscious hospitals have emulated the lean, just-in-time principles that have revolutionized manufacturing. The result has b

March 15, 2020

[Martin Schram] Can we cure pandemic politics?

It is a cliche of our times to hail something as a tipping point -- a happening that will change something forever. And what Americans experienced throughout Wednesday really didn’t happen in a way that felt like we’d been through a suddenly sensational tipping point. What it felt like, at day’s end, was a more subtle sensation of change that built slowly throughout the day. By nighttime, we began to individually sense that what we had just seen and sensed was a day in which w

March 15, 2020

[Serendipity] Love, kindness will see us through

The novel coronavirus has landed at my doorsteps. Literally. Almost 60 days into the COVID-19 outbreak, my mobile phone screeched an alert with a message that two people in my neighborhood were confirmed with the respiratory illness. My mind raced, trying to retrace my steps over the past several days hoping that our paths did not cross. Following the patients’ movements posted on my district’s website, I let out a sigh of relief. It was a close call. This has become the new norm

March 12, 2020

[Barry Ritholtz] Rules for coping with market panic

People don’t like being told what to do, and when agitated they really dislike being told to be less agitated. So rather than just tell you not to panic (seriously, DON‘T PANIC), I will offer some thoughts about what is going on today, this week and perhaps the next quarter or two. But here’s what to keep in mind: Much of this is just guesswork, and it‘s worth being skeptical of anyone who says they know how this will turn out. Let’s start with what we know so far:

March 12, 2020

[Francis Wilkinson] How Sanders saved the Democratic Party

With his string of primary losses today to former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders has revitalized the institution that he most loves to hate: the Democratic Party. Sanders had hoped to overrun the party. Instead, he inspired resistance among older blacks, suburban white moderates, feminists, pragmatists, patriots -- all those loosely affiliated voters whose priorities may vary but who share the paramount goal of removing Donald Trump from the White House. “Voters are making

March 12, 2020

[Noah Smith] Taxing bad things isn't always good

The idea of taxing things that are bad for society has a powerful allure. It offers the possibility of a double benefit -- discouraging harmful activities, while also providing the government with revenue. Take sin taxes. Taxes on alcohol make it more expensive to get drunk, which reduces binge drinking and impaired driving. At the same time, they provide state and local governments with billions of dollars of revenue. Tobacco taxes, which generate more than twice as much, have proven instrumen

March 11, 2020

[Kim Myong-sik] Park stirs up politics in epidemic-stricken nation

Three years after her impeachment and subsequent imprisonment, former president Park Geun-hye revealed her intent to play a part in Korean politics and she proved she still could. Her letter from prison publicized by her defense lawyer called for unity of her supporters and other anti-government forces, alarming both ruling and opposition camps ahead of the general election about a month away. In the handwritten letter of some 250 words, she expressed her deep concerns for the people of Daegu

March 11, 2020

[Robert J. Fouser] Lessons from the Spanish flu

Since March began, the new coronavirus that causes COVID-19, has spread rapidly around the world, causing broad disruption in its wake. The speed of the spread has caught leaders and public health officials off guard and has forced them to scramble to contain the spread of the disease. Fear has set in as the public search for answers amid conflicting messages from leaders and the media. The world has been through global pandemics before. The worst on record remains the Spanish flu from early 19

March 10, 2020

[Kim Seong-kon] Korea’s image battered by coronavirus outbreak

Until the recent outbreak of the new coronavirus, South Korea’s reputation in the international community could not have been better. For the past few decades, Samsung, LG, and Hyundai have significantly upgraded the image of South Korea. So have BTS and, more recently, the Academy Award-winning film “Parasite.” In addition to Hallyu that has enchanted young people on foreign soils, many countries have watched the spectacular economic success of South Korea with admiration and

March 10, 2020

[Nisha Gopalan] SARS lessons inoculate HK against epidemic

Hong Kong has fewer coronavirus cases than the US, Singapore or Italy. That might seem surprising for a city that sits on the doorstep of mainland China and has intertwining business, tourism and personal connections with the source of the epidemic. The reason can be summed up in one word: SARS. The outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome in 2003 sowed extreme caution in Hong Kong, a former British colony that had returned to Chinese sovereignty six years earlier. The city, which maintain

March 9, 2020

[Kevin Rudd] COVID-19 trumps nationalism

I was recently walking along East 29th Street in Manhattan, after visiting a friend at Bellevue Hospital, when I was roused from my thoughts by a middle-aged white male screaming at an old Chinese man, “Get the fuck out of my country, you piece of Chinese shit!” The old man was stunned. So was I, before I bellowed back (deploying the full range of my native Australian vocabulary), “Fuck off and leave him alone, you white racist piece of shit!” The pedestrian traffic sto

March 9, 2020

[Clara Ferreira Marques] Coronavirus is human credit crunch

It is the flow of people, as much as money, that keeps the global economy ticking over. It follows that a sudden halt to the movement of workers, shoppers and tourists should worry us just as much as the drying up of credit during the global financial crisis in 2008. With fewer obvious quick fixes, the virus outbreak should perhaps concern us even more. A little over a decade ago, it was the US housing market that soured. Investors lost confidence after years of unbridled lending and poor regul

March 8, 2020

[Gregory A. Maniatis, Monette Zard] COVID-19 blame game threatens us all

As the new coronavirus, COVID-19, nears pandemic status, a second scourge has followed in its path: a virulent racism that scapegoats refugees, asylum-seekers and foreigners more generally as the cause of the outbreak. This is not only false and cruel, but also dangerous. Politicizing the crisis and stigmatizing whole populations risks turning fiction into fact by stoking fear and driving the disease underground, making it more difficult to manage. Have we forgotten the central lesson of the HIV

March 8, 2020

[Digital Simplicity] Working from home brings its own challenges

As the novel coronavirus spreads, a growing number of office workers in South Korea and elsewhere are being pushed out of their cozy cubicles and forced to work remotely. However, if you’re working remotely, your humble abode is not always home sweet home. My general perception of working from home is mixed. As a journalist, I have spent most of my career working remotely. I usually commuted to and from the government agencies or companies that I covered, and returned to the newsroom o

March 6, 2020

[Andy Mukherjee] Hong Kong’s helicopter money struggles for lift

If you’re raining cash on people and want them to spend it, you have to convince them that the benevolence is being financed by printing money. Nobody wants to worry about being taxed more in the future. These things are going to be problematic for Hong Kong Financial Secretary Paul Chan. He plans to give away 10,000 Hong Kong dollars ($1,285) to every adult permanent resident to blunt the economic impact of the coronavirus, but since he can’t conjure money at will, he’s bein

March 5, 2020

[Faye Flam] How to prepare (rationally) for coronavirus

About a month ago, I prepared for COVID-19, then just known as the coronavirus, by refilling some essential heart medications I was worried might run out if there were serious supply chain disruptions. The pills were for my cat -- I figured it was better to be safe than sorry. And now that coronavirus has spread to well over 50 countries, more and more people are confronting the question of how much preparation is enough, whether for themselves or those people and pets relying on them. Experts

March 5, 2020

[Anjani Trivedi] We need to prepare for pandemics. They’ll keep coming

When it comes to infectious disease outbreaks, we just haven’t learned. It’s not as if we weren’t warned. Last year, a report by the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board, a body put together by the World Health Organization and the World Bank Group, said that there was “a very real threat of a rapidly moving, highly lethal pandemic of a respiratory pathogen killing 50 to 80 million people and wiping out nearly 5 percent of the world’s economy.” A pandemic on

March 4, 2020