Look around, not ahead: Will we even recognize the new normal?

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April 14, 2020 — Good Tuesday morning, CurveFlatteners. It’s Cory Perla here, reporting from Chronicle's news bureau in Buffalo, N.Y., where it's starting to become clear that whatever "normal" we return to after this crisis will not be a normal we recognize. 

An article published on the Vox.com commentary site titled “I’ve read the plans to reopen the economy. They’re scary,” outlines several intriguing plans to reset things to "normal." One proposal includes mass-testing for the U.S.A. on the order of 22 million tests a day... which might be the key to a quick economic recovery, but could also prove to be an impossible undertaking. 

Another plan may involve “digital pandemic surveillance.” Imagine a smartphone app that notifies you when you’ve been within coughing distance of a person with active Covid-19. And then imagine that your phone directs you to quarantine, and reports you to health authorities.

An article on the Medium.com opinion site succinctly foretells a coming digital messaging strategy by public- and private-sector advertisers, aimed at convincing the public everything is going to be just fine. Predicts Julio Vincent Gambuto: “[E]very brand... will come to your rescue, dear consumer, to help take away that darkness and get life back to the way it was before the crisis."

COVID CHRONICLE 04/14/2020

• The Canadian Press put together a handy guide to some of the recent research on Covd-19 being conducted around on the world. Highlights include insights into the side effects that certain antimalarial drugs used to treat Covid-19 are having on patients; how increasing environmental temperatures may affect the virus, and; whether or not animals can contract it.

• A study published online in the New England Journal of Medicine (April 10, 2020) looked at the effectiveness of remdesivir, an antiviral nucleotide analog, as a compassionate treatment for a small group of patients with severe Covid-19. Researchers found that 68% of patients showed improvement on remdesivir, meaning patients on ventilators needed less oxygen.  

• Journalists have uncovered some evidence that China is implementing restrictions on the publication of research that has looked into the origin of Covid-19. This evidence includes a website that indicated that studies on the origin of the virus will face increased scrutiny, which was briefly published and then removed by two Chinese universities, according to a report by CNN television.

STORIES CHRONICLE IS WORKING ON TODAY

At least one dermatologist is worried that medications such as spironolactone, used to treat acne, and the steroid, prednisone, may make it easier to contract the coronavirus. I  spoke recently with Vancouver dermatologist Dr. Chih-ho Hong to clear up some misconceptions. 

RIGHT NOW WE’RE LISTENING TO…

Nicolas Jaar’s Cenizas. The Chilean-American artist, Nicolas Jaar, was ahead of the curve.

He was self-isolating before it was cool, or mandatory, he says in a press release about his latest album. He actually wrote his latest album, Cenizas—Spanish for "ashes"—in isolation over the last few years, and it sounds like quarantine feels: eerie, uncertain, sparse, and grim. 

Maybe that's not what you want right now, but it may be what you need as he achieves these complex moods with highly textured musical strokes, commingling massive ambient atmospherics, jazzy maneuvers, electronic grids, and haunting voices making for an album that will have you precisely identifying the feelings that your own personal quarantine is evoking. Much of his creative process revolved around dealing with negativity, he said. "The shards [of negativity] kept piling up and I had to accept the fact that the darkness that I was trying to get away from would always rear its head," he said. “Look around, not ahead,” he advises in the closing track, the Radiohead-like “Faith Made of Silk.”

LATER WE’RE READING...

Buckminster Fuller’s Critical Path. You’ve probably stumbled across a few Buckminster Fuller quotes since this societal crisis began. Quotes such as: “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” His 1981 book, Critical Path, is a guide to doing just that. According to the author, it’s an “operating manual for Spaceship Earth,” and suggests that we actually have had the technology since the 1970s to work less and provide for more and that it is moments like these that offer opportunities to implement such strategies.

TONIGHT WE’RE COOKING...

Stir fry with beef, not pork, since the United States’ largest pork processing plant just closed due to 300 of their employees contracting coronavirus.

That's it. Stay in touch and stay safe. My colleague Dhiren Mahiban will be here tomorrow.