The Banter Brief: A Most Shocking Dereliction Of Duty
America could have been an example for the world on how to deal with the Coronavirus Pandemic. Instead, it is going to be a virtually unprecedented disaster.
Welcome to this week’s edition of The Banter Brief — the best weekly round up on the interwebs!
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1. Most Important Story Of The Week
No Preparation Spells Disaster
According to various predictive models, America is about to witness more deaths in the coming months than it did during the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam. Top government scientists now believe they have enough data to make accurate predictions, and say that the virus could kill between 100,000 and 240,000 Americans — and that’s if the country continues taking extreme social distancing measures.
“The 15 days that we’ve had of mitigation clearly are having an effect,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “In the next several days to a week or so we are going to continue to see things go up.”
The reality finally seems to be setting in for millions of Americans who haven’t been paying attention or have been watching a relentless stream of misinformation coming out of the White House and Fox News. The virus is sweeping rapidly through the country, and the national health care system (or lack thereof) is about to get pushed to the absolute limit. Governors (even Republican ones) are finally responding and ordering lockdowns and mandatory social distancing, but a huge amount of damage has already been done and Americans are going to pay the price for their government’s shocking complacency.
Had the country followed advice from scientists and medical experts begging them to take the Coronavirus seriously, America could have been an example for the world on how to deal with it. Instead, it is going to be a virtually unprecedented disaster.
Go deeper with Banter Members: The Most Shameful Tweet Of Trump's Entire, Sordid Career
As the nation faces the most serious pandemic in over 100 years, Donald Trump is tweeting about his television ratings, says Ben Cohen.
2. Poll Analysis
Trump: Not good for the president this week as his handling of the Coronavirus pandemic is coming into sharper focus:
An ABC News/Ipsos poll released Friday reports that 52 percent of respondents disapprove of his management of the deadly outbreak, while only 47 percent approve.
2020 election: Some good news for Biden, who is rebounding after a surge from the president in the wake of the Coronavirus (via Real Clear Politics):
And this from Michigan, a key state for Biden in 2020:
3. Quote Of The Week
“It’s a shit sandwich, and it was designed that way by Scott. It wasn’t about saving money. It was about making it harder for people to get benefits or keep benefits so that the unemployment numbers were low to give the governor something to brag about.”
- An unknown advisor to Florida Governor Ron Desantis Senator discussing Florida Senator Rick Scott’s hugely inefficient, $77.9 million unemployment system. Florida’s unemployment numbers are growing at an exponential rate due to Coronavirus, and the system cannot process all the applications.
4. What to Watch
‘Unorthodox’
Unorthodox is a superb, emotionally impacting German-American drama currently playing on Netflix. The series is based on Deborah Feldman's 2012 autobiography Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots.
The four part series follows Esty Shapiro (Shira Haas), who leaves her Hasidic community in New York to escape an arranged marriage. Having previously received a German passport from her estranged mother, Esty escapes to ultra liberal Berlin. In her new home, she makes friends with a multi-ethnic group of student musicians and begins a process of sometimes painful, but ultimately healing self discovery.
Haas’s performance alone is worth the price of admission, but the coming of age story is powerful on a number of levels. Perhaps most notable is the series setting in Germany and the ever present reminders of the Holocaust. Esty’s Hasidic community in New York is portrayed as a product of Holocaust — a deeply insular, fearful community bound together by strict adherence to religious doctrine. The liberal city she finds in Berlin is also a product of horrific suffering, but it has transformed and renewed itself, as Esty must now do.
‘Unorthodox’ is ultimately a story about hope, courage, and the capacity to heal from past wounds. It reminds us that new beginnings are always possible as long as we are able to confront our deepest fears — a message that could not be more timely.
5. Good News
Yes, Coronavirus sucks. But having breathable, clean air in some of the world’s most polluted hotspots is one of the few upsides of the global pandemic. Via the BBC:
London views, once covered in smog, are clearer. Certainly at night you can see far more stars and satellites and asthma sufferers say they are breathing more easily.
Air pollution in London has fallen so dramatically since the capital's Covid-19 lockdown, monitors used to measure toxicity are alerting the data collectors to possible faults with the readings.
As a result of the coronavirus restrictions on movement, average air pollution levels have fallen to their lowest since recordings began in 2000, according to the London Air Quality Network.
Interestingly, the cleaner air we are experiencing due to Coronavirus has almost certainly saved lives — about 50,000 of them by conservative estimates in China alone.
Do we really want to go back to our environmentally destructive ways after this pandemic is over? Can we face watching the blue skies turn grey, the birds disappearing, and the rivers clog up with chemicals?
The earth’s timeout session for humans is giving us an opportunity to change, and we’re catching a glimpse of what that could look like.
See you next week everyone!
I would like to recommend, for your viewing pleasure during this time, the DC Universe streaming animated series Harley Quinn, whose second season begins now. It looks at Harley Quinn breaking away from the Joker to start her own criminal gang. It's gratuitously violent, quite vulgar and foul mouthed, and very very hilarious. Most of the DC characters here get something of a comedic makeover, some you may never look at the same way again. And the humor here is gut busting. Try and destroy Wonder Woman if you can, but God forbid you get caught calling her the c-word (something the late great Chez could appreciate).
Harley Quinn is the show we all need right now in these difficult times.