Cartoon – Leadership is More Than
Monthly Archives: November 2020
Cartoon – Sign of the Times
Cartoon – Unexpected Option
Cartoon – Remember This
Cartoon – Mark of True Leadership
Economists nervously watching pandemic for signs of further financial impacts
BLINKING RED: This is a critical week in the coronavirus pandemic. Economists are nervously watching as much of the nation experiences a worsening fall wave, with U.S. case counts near 200,000 a day and record hospitalizations in many parts of the country, my colleagues Paulina Firozi, Lena H. Sun and Hannah Knowles report.
Whether a crest arrives soon could largely be determined by the Thanksgiving holiday, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and health experts warn against traveling and many of the once commonplace rituals of family gatherings.
- Early data doesn’t look great: More than 1 million people went through Transportation Security Administration checkpoints in the nation’s airports on Friday — that’s the second-highest single-day rush since March 16. Meanwhile, nearly 80 percent of epidemiologists surveyed recently by the New York Times said they were having Thanksgiving celebrations with people only in their households or not at all.
- One bright spot: A third vaccine, made by AstraZeneca, is 90 percent effective if administered in two doses (a half-dose followed by a full-dose booster) and is easier to store than vaccines by Pfizer and Moderna, my colleagues reported this morning.
- “The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine is likely to be cheaper than those made by Pfizer and Moderna, and it does not need to be stored at subzero temperatures but can be kept in ordinary refrigerators in pharmacies and doctor’s offices,” they wrote.
A Season of COVID uncertainty
https://www.axios.com/season-covid-uncertainty-7558f740-88f8-4934-8686-2e799811a36d.html
The frightening, post-election COVID surge is making everything feel strange, different and unsettled all over again.
Why it matters: With Thanksgiving canceled, doctors quitting their practices and grocers limiting purchase quantities (again), Americans have the ambient sense that our safety net is unraveling. Not only are things not returning to normal, they may not return to normal for a long time.
The people and institutions we look toward for guidance and leadership — like elected officials and medical authorities — seem as flummoxed by the pandemic as we are. They issue new rules day by day (closing schools, restricting shopping, issuing curfews), yet look helpless and flailing as infections rise.
- Our comforting touch points, like family get-togethers and holiday rituals, are suddenly off-limits.
- There are fewer entertainments and distractions, with movie theaters closed and our appetites for TV bingeing satiated a long time ago.
- For those who derive comfort from their faith, remote worship offers less fulfillment.
Strangely, CEOs and corporate America have been serving as a rare anchor in this unmoored reality, attempting to provide some moral suasion and fueling the engine behind the stock market’s rally.
- Companies like Pfizer and Moderna are looking like the heroes of the day — though their vaccines can’t come soon enough to allay our worst fears.
- Meanwhile, the restaurateurs and merchants who form the pillars of our communities are suffering with growing intensity before our eyes.
Economically, the nation is heading into uncharted territory, with COVID-related uncertainty obliterating all forecast attempts.
- While many Americans are doing fine financially, it’s hard not to think that a lot of people’s personal finances may be poised to head off a cliff — and the promise of federal help is looking questionable.
Politically, the standoff between President Trump and the rightfully elected new administration has left a vacuum.
- By all accounts, the situation is thwarting efforts to attack the coronavirus.
Socially, we feel isolated and trapped in our pandemic ruts, not even permitted to savor the promise of holidays we’ve been looking forward to.
- Doctors say pandemic-induced loneliness will shorten life expectancies.
Culturally and intellectually, the arts, concerts, films and literary output that we rely on to enhance our lives are dampened or depressed by pandemic strictures.
Emotionally, we worry about ourselves, our loved ones and all of our futures. How will the pandemic stunt my child’s education, my career trajectory, my experience of the world? And what if I get sick and there’s no hospital bed available?
- “Thousands of medical practices have closed during the pandemic,” per the NYT.
What’s next: “Next Thanksgiving will be different,” Anthony Fauci of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases told CNN’s Chris Cuomo on Thursday.
- Americans who persevere through 2021 will, we can all hope, weather this turmoil and see flourishing times ahead.
Over 1 million U.S. travelers flew on Friday, despite calls to avoid holiday travel
More than 1 million people flew through U.S. airports on Friday, according to TSA data, the second highest number since the coronavirus pandemic began hit the U.S. in mid-March.
Why it matters: As coronavirus cases and hospitalizations continued to soar this week, the CDC issued new guidance on Thursday advising Americans not to travel for Thanksgiving, warning doing so may increase the chance of getting and spreading COVID-19.
By the numbers: The 1,019,836 people TSA screened at U.S. airports on Friday is still less than half the number (2,550,459) that passed through screenings on the same weekday a year ago.
- TSA screened 1,031,505 passengers on Oct. 18, the highest number since March 17.
Go deeper: Americans line up for coronavirus testing ahead of Thanksgiving
Why we’re numb to 250,000 coronavirus deaths
The U.S. passed 250,000 confirmed deaths from COVID-19 this week, a figure that is truly vast — too vast, perhaps, for us to comprehend.
Why it matters: The psychic numbing that sets in around mass death saps us of our empathy for victims and discourages us from making the sacrifices needed to control the pandemic, whileit hampers our ability to prepare for other rare but potentially catastrophic risks down the road.
By the numbers: The sheer scale of the U.S. death toll from COVID-19 can be felt in the lengths media organizations have gone to try to put the numbers in perspective. 250,000 deaths is:
- Ten times the number of American drivers and passengers who die in car crashes each year, according to CNN.
- More than twice the number of American soldiers who died in World War I, according to NPR.
- Enough to draw a vast hole in America’s heartland, if the deaths had all been concentrated in one area, according to the Washington Post.
Even if we try our best to grasp mass death, we inevitably come up against cognitive biases, says Paul Slovic, a psychologist at the University of Oregon who studies human judgment and decision-making.
- The biggest bias is scope neglect: as the scale of deaths and tragedy grows, our own compassion and concern fail to keep pace. As the title of one of Slovic’s papers on the subject goes: “The more who die, the less we care.”
This is, of course, not rational — by any reasonable, moral calculation, we should find 250,000 deaths commensurately more horrifying than a smaller number. But in practice we don’t, almost as if we had a set capacity for empathy and concern that tops out well below the scale of a pandemic.
- It doesn’t help that for most of us — save bereaved family members and health care workers on the front line — those deaths go unseen, hidden behind the walls of hospitals and funeral homes.
- In a news culture driven by the visual — and equipped with a psychology moved by identifiable victims over mere numbers — that makes these deaths feel that much more unreal, and for some, that much easier to deny altogether.
- Combined with the habituation to trauma that has set in after months of the pandemic, it shouldn’t be surprising that most of us are doing much less to fight the spread of COVID-19 now than we were in the spring, when the number of sick and dead were far lower.
How it works: In a study following the 1994 Rwandan genocide, in which 800,000 people were killed in a matter of months, Slovic and his colleagues asked a group of volunteers to imagine they were in charge of a refugee camp.
- They had to decide whether or not to help 4,500 refugees get access to clean water. Half were told the camp held 250,000 refugees, and half were told it held 11,000.
- The study subjects were much more willing to help if they thought they were assisting 4,500 people out of 11,000, and less willing if it was 4,500 out of 250,000 people. They were reacting to the proportion of those who would be helped, while neglecting the scope of the raw number.
- Relatedly,in a 2014 study, Slovic found a decrease in empathy and a consequent drop in donations to save sick children as the number of victims rose, with effects being seen as soon as one child became two.
What to watch: These same cognitive biases make it difficult for us to fully appreciate chronic threats like climate change, or to prepare for rare but catastrophic risks in the future — like a pandemic.
- Given how hardwired these biases are, our best bet is to try to steer into them, and keep in mind that each of these 250,000 deaths tells an individual story.
- As the survivor Abel Herzberg said of the Holocaust: “There were not six million Jews murdered; there was one murder, six million times.”
The bottom line: As the death toll rises, it will take willful effort not to become numb to what’s happening. But it is an effort that must be made.
U.S. coronavirus hotspots far outpacing Europe’s
America’s coronavirus outbreak has surpassed Europe’s.
Why it matters: It wasn’t long ago that public health experts were pointing to Europe as a warning sign for the U.S. But the U.S. now has a higher per capita caseload than the EU ever has during its recent surge.
By the numbers: As of Saturday, 15 states had higher per capita caseloads, averaged over seven days, than the European country with the highest caseload — Luxembourg.
- The U.S. overall saw 52.4 cases per 100,000 people. The EU saw 37.6 per 100,000 on Saturday, and peaked at 46.7 cases per 100,000 on Nov. 8.
The big picture: Europe’s steady rise in coronavirus cases over the last couple of months prompted many countries to bring back lockdowns or other strict behavioral restrictions.
- Meanwhile, in the U.S., some of the hardest-hit states — like Iowa — are just now adopting mask mandates, and airports over the weekend were packed with people traveling for Thanksgiving.
Yes, but: Cases in the hardest-hit states are starting to trend down, a sign that people are modifying their behavior on their own.
What we’re watching: There’s no sign that the number of U.S. cases nationally is going to stop rising anytime soon, especially in the absence of strong federal or state restrictions.
- Hospitalizations and deaths lag behind cases by a few weeks. That means that Europe likely has easier days ahead, while America’s dark days are just getting started.
- In the U.S., today’s overwhelmed hospitals will continue to keep getting hit with ever-growing caseloads for awhile.
Go deeper: See all U.S. states’ and EU countries’ per capita caseloads.
HENRY KOTULA 