Weekend Reads 4/11/20

Stephen King Is Sorry You Feel Like You're Stuck In A Stephen King Novel

A pandemic like COVID-19 was "bound to happen," King says. "There was never any question that in our society, where travel is a staple of daily life, that sooner or later, there was going to be a virus that was going to communicate to the public at large."

CDC releases first US data on COVID-19 cases in children

But again, the youngest appeared the most at risk of severe disease. In the 2,143 pediatric cases, infants under one and those one to five accounted for 60 percent of severe cases. And those youngest age groups accounted for nearly 70 percent of critical cases, with under one-year-olds making up 54 percent of all pediatric critical cases.

This Is Trump’s Fault

That the pandemic occurred is not Trump’s fault. The utter unpreparedness of the United States for a pandemic is Trump’s fault. The loss of stockpiled respirators to breakage because the federal government let maintenance contracts lapse in 2018 is Trump’s fault. The failure to store sufficient protective medical gear in the national arsenal is Trump’s fault. That states are bidding against other states for equipment, paying many multiples of the precrisis price for ventilators, is Trump’s fault. Air travelers summoned home and forced to stand for hours in dense airport crowds alongside infected people? That was Trump’s fault too. Ten weeks of insisting that the coronavirus is a harmless flu that would miraculously go away on its own? Trump’s fault again.

While You Were Quarantined, National Parks' Air Was Getting Cleaner

It's instinctual for us to assume that national parks and other natural spaces are cleaner than the places we live. In reality, they suffer from the same air pollution issues that major metropolitan areas do. In a study, the NPCA found that 85% of parks occasionally had air that was unhealthy to breathe, while in 88% of parks, air pollution was "damaging sensitive species and habitats."