Saturday Morning Coffee

A few links to things I read while having my Saturday morning coffee today:

One of the many things I’ve thought about since COVID-19 forced us into severe social distancing is the effect it must be having on military units. It has to have limiting effects on recruiting and basic training, and I”m not sure how tank platoons keep training and operating effectively unless medics can test and track the spread of the virus within the ranks. This story about the outbreak on the Theodore Roosevelt brings that worry home.

If you’re looking for a good Twitter “List of epidemiologists, researchers, public health experts & journalists tracking COVID-19” you could do worse than this one from @Joshtpm.

Not sure what Jerry Falwell, Jr. is thinking here, but this ProPublica article neatly outlines the “odd dissonance between earnestly worded safety signs and notices on campus and Falwell’s ongoing ridiculing of coronavirus worries as alarmist, which make it hard for students to take the safety exhortations seriously.” Liberty University’s neighbors are not happy.

The Atlantic magazine has a paywall but like other web publications (e.g, Talking Points Memo, mentioned above) have made their COVID-19 coverage available for free, and this it’s a great resource. “How the Pandemic Will End” by Ed Yong lays out how we got here and some possible scenarios for the next few months. It’s a good place to start.

“Say ‘No’ to Death’s Dominion,” by R. R. Reno at First Things, got a lot of attention this week. It’s a bit hard to parse (“finitude?” Really?) but seems to boil down to “saving lives isn’t the only important thing to think about.” Quoting:

“Only an irresponsible sentimentalist imagines we can live in a world without triage. We must never do evil that good might come. On this point St. Paul is clear. But we often must decide which good we can and should do, a decision that nearly always requires not doing another good, not binding a different wound, not saving a different life.”

Since this is a Catholic publication, I wonder how this informs Mr. Reno’s view on reproductive rights. In the article he talks a lot about triage and why we have to accept the fact that humans must at times intervene in ways that privilege some lives over others. Why doesn’t this apply to the Catholic hospital when it’s risking the health of pregnant women to uphold doctrine on abortion?

On a (somewhat) lighter note, Vaccumslayer posted a “what are you cooking” during the COVID-19 lockdown” thread at Lawyers, Guns, and Money. For the record, we made pulled pork with green mole at our house. Anyway, some good ideas for “eating your pantry” in the comments. If you don’t read LGM you should – lots of good stuff there. Might be the best comments section on the internet.

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