Will this be enough? No one knows, because even now there are still a surprisingly large number of fairly basic questions we can’t answer about the coronavirus. We don’t know for sure how transmissible it is. We don’t know how effective social distancing is. We don’t know how many people get infected and never know it. We don’t know how infectious these asymptomatic carriers are. We don’t know if recovering from COVID-19 confers immunity in the future. We don’t know for sure how deadly it is in the absence of any underlying conditions. Even basic statistics on the spread of the virus are pretty questionable—and torturing the data won’t change that. Because of this we should all be fairly humble about how much we think we know and how confident we can be in our prescriptions. We should also strive on both sides not to dismiss hypotheses just because someone on the other side has proposed them.

However, masks and testing—for now, at least—seem to be almost unanimously agreed upon by epidemiologists as ways to rein in the coronavirus after lockdowns have reduced the spread of the virus to small numbers. And they’re both doable: mask wearing requires a PR campaign, and God knows that’s one thing that Donald Trump is good at. Testing is harder, but if Trump appointed a genuinely competent test czar with essentially unlimited power and funding, we could probably do it. It would certainly be a good national goal, even if we didn’t make it.

I’m sort of intrigued by the idea of increasing test throughput by testing groups of people. It’s a simple idea: you take swabs from, say, 10 people, mix them all together, and then run them through the PCR machine. If it comes back negative, the entire group is cleared. Only if you get a positive result do you go back and do individual tests to see who’s infected. On average, about three out of four tests would come back negative, which means you’d run 14 tests for 40 people rather than 40 tests. That triples your throughput even with no increase in testing capacity.

I haven’t heard anyone explain why this wouldn’t work, but there might be a catch. If I hear of one, I’ll let you know.

In the meantime, wash your hands, stay home as much as possible, and try to keep your distance from other people. And pray that Trump is somehow shaken into sanity and finally decides to take concrete action instead of fomenting red-state rebellion because he’s mad that the virus isn’t doing what he tells it.

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

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