Science & Society

Collective layoffs of large groups of workers have been common during the Coronavirus Pandemic of 2020. A new paper might inform possible impacts because it analyzed 556 collective layoffs announced between December 2018 and November 2019 across different industries that involved more than 250,000 employees. They wanted to see what collective layoff decisions had on the firms that initiated them. The termination of employment, particularly of large numbers of people, typically evokes negative connotations. While the effect on individuals is obvious they found that layoff announcements…

You may have heard of the Freshman 15; the weight gain some college students experience their first year, when they have unlimited dining at the university cafeteria. Coronavirus may leave behind a new pandemic when people emerge from their homes and discover their work clothes are tighter. The developed world was already undergoing an obesity crisis thanks to affordable food. Agricultural science, which used to struggle with environmental doomsday narratives that farmers were too incompetent, now have to defend against New York Times and Guardian editorials claiming farming is too successful…

Many people have recently discovered that the U.S. CDC is actually not that useful. For some, it came when CDC refused to send hospitals coronavirus tests until they proved to CDC their patients had coronavirus. Then, when the Trump administration forced them to send tests nationwide the career employees at CDC showed they were so clueless they hadn't even checked to see if the tests only they were allowed to send had the correct reagents (they didn't.) Then the public started to wonder if CDC could do anything more than reformat and reprint statistics they got from states using money they…

The American Physical Society’s April 2020 meeting is being held as an online event this year due to concerns over Covid-19. This is also true for school and for many people work. Many workers do work which is essential and which cannot be done remotely, and they are very important to the rest of us surviving this situation right now. That said, in 1990  stating that by 2020 a large percentage of the population could work from home, and a majority would have at least a basic ability to communicate face to face while holding productive meetings by computer, you would’ve been writing…

It's long been hiding in plain sight that Russia funnels money to activist groups in the U.S. that will help their causes. Russia's top two exports are food and energy so it was no surprise when activists began to claim that hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") would lead to earthquakes and cause the earth to deflate, or that 400 miles of Keystone XL pipeline in addition to 20,000 miles of pipeline already on top of an aquifier would be risky too environmentally hazardous.  When James Clapper, the Obama administration's Director of National Intelligence, finally wrote the report showing…

My tiny mostly Black suburb of Chicago has 446.7 cases of Covid-19 per hundred thousand.  A very disproportionate number of Covid-19 deaths have been of Black people.  Deeply ingrained structural and cultural anti-Blackness has meant that Black people often suffer racial disparities.  The Covid-19 hotspot of Bellwood, Illinois, my hometown shows how complex these issues are.  The Black community of Bellwood IL breaks many of the stereotypes and which has overcome…days ago.  That said the history of racism is a factor but no one White made any choices that directly…

Being shut in can drive people crazy.  Much of the world is or will be under some degree of quarantine, lockdown, shelter in place or social distancing.  Communicating only remotely and in ways that are often sterile and without interaction. In places like Wuhan China, where the various undoubtedly originated, to Italy people sing out the windows as a community.  In the US, and likely other places,  singing out the window in New York only gets you a F bomb . Like something out of an 80’s Eddie Murphy movie.   Watching Netflix, YouTube or other services can get…

Donald Trump has been roundly criticized for calling the virus that causes Covid-19 a "Chinese virus" it has been said that using a term invented by Chinese state media the "Wuhan Virus" is also racist.   He is trying to rebut the propaganda and lies of the Chinese government, the Chinese Communist Party which has said via official channels that they think it came from an American serviceman who visited Wuhan China.  That it was developed by the US Army to use against China.  That is a lie on the order of stating that the Great Leap Forward was a huge success and the…

Stock markets are rebounding on the back of the newly agreed US$2 trillion American fiscal stimulus plan. It comes after a week that was the worst in history for the Dow and many others around the world. My impression is that the unfolding global recession has now been fully priced into stocks by investors. That recession looks all but guaranteed, of course: Chinese GDP is estimated to have dropped 12% in the first two months of the year – a harbinger of what is coming everywhere. One useful guide is the market for corporate default swaps, which are financial instruments that investors use…

Covid-19 kills young people at a lower rate they are not immune.  The people who run the college, your professors, deans, staff, secretaries, police, range in age from as young as you up to elderly.  If nothing at all is done, then your school would experience casualties and infections like a cruise ship.   That would be due to the close quarters that prevail on a college campus.  If your school is trying to stay open and framing it in terms of student service that is at this point incredibly dishonest.  They are not doing it to make sure you graduate on time,…