A Few Recommended Reads
A quick roundup of smart stories to read over the weekend
Slate has taken on a viral story suggesting Covid-19 was spreading in California as early as fall 2019. “Let’s start with the facts,” writes Jane C. Hu. “I reached out to Stanford Medicine to try to understand the goals of its antibody test and how it relates to Hanson’s fall 2019 theory. The short answer on the latter is that it doesn’t. ‘Our research does not suggest that the virus was here that early,’ says Lisa Kim of Stanford’s media relations team.”
“Americans’ health varies along racial and economic lines in the best of times. That will probably make the outcomes just as uneven, if not more, in the worst of times,” writes Joe Pinsker.
There’s a reason companies like Gap, Zara, Louis Vuitton, Dior, and Chanel are all racing to crank out masks. “Most fashion companies are in the business of nonessential stuff — frocks and handbags and chinos,” writes Zara Stone. “But manufacturing face masks of all types is more likely to be viewed as essential businesses, and many of the brands and factories that produce them are getting granted ‘essential’ status and having their application fast-tracked.”
