David Byrne Pens Coronavirus Op-Ed: 'We're All in the Same Leaky Boat'

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

With New York and surrounding states potentially on the brink of a forced quarantine, David Byrne penned an op-ed Saturday about self-isolation and “what connects us all when physical presence can’t.” An abridged version of Byrne’s op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal, while the singer’s Reasons to Be Cheerful online magazine posted the essay in its entirety.

“It’s ironic that as the pandemic forces us into our separate corners, it’s also showing us how intricately we are all connected,” Byrne wrote. “It’s revealing the many ways that our lives intersect almost without our noticing. And it’s showing us just how tenuous our existence becomes when we try to abandon those connections and distance from one another. Health care, housing, race, inequality, the climate — we’re all in the same leaky boat.”

He continued, “Viruses don’t respect borders. They get in even with extra screening and travel restrictions. Maybe less, but some slips in. And until there is a vaccine, no one is immune.”

Byrne then focused on how some cities around the world responded to the pandemic; in Vo, Italy, site of that country’s first COVID-19 death, the city immediately went into lockdown, tested all the residents and quarantined the infected until the coronavirus patients dwindled to zero. In Taiwan, satellite-tracked GPS ensured that quarantined people remain at home. In both cases, personal freedoms were temporarily stifled for the sake of national security.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/david-byrne-pens-coronavirus-op-ed-were-all-in-the-same-leaky-boat-974756/

[Igel]

1. Details matter.

Vo had a population of under 4k. "City." But testable. 4k, 4M, meh, they're just numbers.

Taiwan could cross-reference symptoms in an up-to-the-hour database with those who passed through passport control, map their addresses, and then use their phones to track them. In the US we'd spend three months arguing about rights violations if the database is inaccurate.

S. Korea is the closest relevant example, and they acted aggressively, distributed power to companies to do some of the job, were lucky in that most cases (for all their number) came from a carefully circumscribed group. They also imposed travel restrictions to people traveling to Korea (which we finally did). And when the government said "hop!" the response was to hop.

Our first case was earlier than S. Korea's, and that week difference mattered. How? Did it mean that S. Korea had different capacities than the US had, and we should have been on the ball more and should have done what S. Korea would have done in our shoes?

No. In that one week in late January a lot more information came out. Some of it from what was happening in the US. It's far from clear that had S. Korea's first case been on 1/20 they'd have acted as quickly as they did a week later when they had their first case.

[jberryhill]

2. Getting tired of hearing wealthy people say that

Here, be equal with Madonna...

These people are faced with a problem their money and fame doesn’t erase for them, so they think that puts them in the same position as everyone else.

Getting sick of these people.