The Coronavirus Pandemic Won’t Change Anything Forever

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I keep seeing articles about how the coronavirus pandemic is going to change things forever. Dating will be changed forever. Book publishing will be changed forever. Comic books will be changed forever. Bars and restaurants will be changed forever. Hollywood will be changed forever. Conventions will be changed forever. Remote work will be changed forever. Journalism will be changed forever. Vacations will be changed forever.

I’m going to go out on a limb here: I don’t think much of anything will be changed forever and I wish people would stop saying so based on two whole weeks of practicing isolation and social distancing.¹ All it does is scare people even more just for the sake of being able to write a provocative op-ed. If this is the best you can do, maybe you should just stop writing for the duration.

¹Actually, one week, and that’s only in California, which started on March 21. For most of the rest of you, it’s only been four or five days.

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DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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