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- Panic over food supplies only refers us back to the stupidity with which we use the land; millions of suburban Americans, over Americans with rooftops, can’t raise beef or grow soy, but they could keep keep chickens, grow greens, berries, medicinal herbs.
- To the hundreds of thousands? millions? of younger people who have no savings and refused solid jobs because they dreamed of fame in the entertainment industry (and wanted to have fun in the meantime): joke’s on you.
- By ‘Pandemic Notes’, I realize, I really mean something closer to: notes on a culture unprepared for — blind to — shock.
- Centralized medicine is fragile. Why are there no neighborhood healing centers?
- The curve will fall relatively fast if strict measures are temporarily kept in place, but the panic will outlast the curve. We under-reacted early, and will over-react late.
- Rich countries will test; poor countries will suffer.
- Boredom is not a real problem — just your problem.
- If you limited your reading to just the news, it would seem like Death was invented around March 2020. Corollary: those who always think existentially, don’t have to panic existentially.
- Think of quarantine as a pollution holiday.
- Small countries are doing better than big countries — wonder why?
- Tension between ideologies isn’t a bad thing — technocratic alarmism, rational risk aversion, Trumpian denial, libertarian indifference, survivalism— if it creates a layered, multi-faceted response. Don’t praise China’s response: you wouldn’t want to live in China; you couldn’t even read this measly Medium post.
- Politicians are still politicians in a crisis — especially in a crisis. Don’t forget. A crisis isn’t political fairy dust.
