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Of all the arguments the history of slavery and racism has provoked, the spats about the comedy shows of the 2000s appear the least significant. Given the severity of the crisis that is upon us, surely its a distraction to worry away about the decision by the BBC and Netflix to pull Little Britain because its stars blacked up. Yet as we enter a global depression that the World Bank predicts will push 100 million people into extreme poverty, as unemployment in our corner of the globe heads towards 4 million, as food banks creak and charities collapse, the petty censorship raises a question of the utmost urgency: how will western societies respond to mass poverty?

After the crash of 2008, they punished the victims. Britain under David Cameron and Nick Clegg slashed benefits, targeting children who had shown their unworthiness when they failed to find rich parents who could raise them in comfort. The northern states of the EU justified leaving Spaniards, Italians and Greeks to suffer by characterising them as lazy southerners who had to learn that hard work comes before the siesta.

Even third-rate art can anticipate the future. In Little Britain and shows like it, you could sense the coming vindictiveness. They werent encouraging racial hatred but class hatred. What was meant to titillate viewers about Desiree DeVere, played by David Walliams with blackface and a fat suit, wasnt just that she was black, but that she was obese and as common as muck.

Television was reflecting the belief of millions that their money was going to scroungers

The idea that this grotesque figure thought herself a beauty was laughable. Another character pretended to be disabled to get sympathy, but jumped out of his wheelchair when no one was looking. A third ran a fat-fighters group while showing no awareness of how ugly her own greed was. After years of a Labour government redistributing wealth, television was reflecting the belief of millions that their money was going to scroungers, who faked disabilities and grabbed benefits so they could buy junk food and stuff it into their foul, fat faces.

Critics said as much at the time, thus passing a test that everyone caught up in our culture wars ought to set themselves. The cry from the right that were judging the past by the standards of the present can be as historically illiterate as the cry from the left that Britains history is irredeemably racist. Contemporaries we can admire and learn from contested the East India Company, slavery and empire. And in its small way the punitive turn in comedy of the 2000s was contested as it happened too.

Whereas wealthy media executives once sought to investigate poverty or arouse anger against it in documentaries and dramas such as Cathy Come Home or Boys from the Blackstuff, I wrote in 2008, now they commission programmes that laugh at it.

Thats not to excuse todays censorship. Comedians, like everyone else, have the right to punch up, punch down or punch themselves in the face (an option a few of them should exercise more often). Broadcasters are hiding an uncomfortable truth about Britain as they purge their archives. They and the talent they commissioned didnt mock the grasping poor because they were lying to viewers there are benefits cheats, after all, and, from Falstaff on, the fit have always found the fat risible. Nor were they trying to brainwash the audience with rightwing propaganda. The broadcasters of the day were merely operating in the entertainment market and giving a large section of the audience what it wanted. The BBC and Netflix now think that expunging the past will please the market of the 2020s. Puritans are only happy when someone is being silenced and doubtless they will be pleased. I suspect serious people will not be as happy. They will understand that the censorship of light entertainment trivialises their cause and allows their opponents to paint them as enemies of freedom.

The worst of it is that we ought to be thinking about why the response to the 2008 crash turned into a catastrophe. Sweetening history, tidying it up as if broadcasters are schoolteachers and we are vulnerable children, is not only repellent in itself, it stops us understanding the folly that led to a disaster.

Any account of what needs to be done to avoid the destitution of large parts of society must begin with confronting the prejudice that poverty is the fault of the undeserving poor. The young need to go to and stay in universities and further education colleges until the storm passes or find work on local authority job creation schemes. Higher education and councils will need to be seen as deserving of public money, if they are to help them. The Resolution Foundation and other leftish thinktanks are telling the government that the private sector on its own will not be able to revive the economy fast enough. They are proposing that the state should bail out depressed regions in their entirety and that the emergency increases in universal credit benefits, introduced in April, should become permanent. Readers who believe the Tories are evil disaster capitalists will be surprised to hear that they are getting a fair hearing, although whether this government has the competence to act on what ministers are hearing is another matter. Meanwhile, readers who believe the electorate will not cheer on a government if it turns on the victims forget the lessons of the recent past and the unshakable prejudices the 2000s displayed.

In Europe, recessions have been mean times. Voters have elected leaders who have held the poor responsible for their poverty and encouraged the hatred of foreigners for stealing jobs and sponging off welfare states. I dont think it will happen this time, but I wont pretend to be certain. If the idea of blaming a slump caused by a virus on its victims sounds absurd, it was equally absurd to blame a slump caused by the financial system on benefit claimants. But the right managed it after 2008 and can manage it again.

Nick Cohen is an Observer columnist

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Blacking up was of a piece with 'comedy' that dealt in contempt - The Guardian

The state of American debate is not strong.

James Joyner Saturday, June 13, 2020 88 comments

Two interesting pieces today argue that American liberals have become significantly less liberalespecially in the case of the elite media.

Rolling Stones Matt Taibbi, whose writing style and topical choices make him hard to pigeonhole but is certainly well to my left politically, has an incredibly long and hard-to-excerpt essay at his personal website titled The American Press Is Destroying Itself. After two paragraphs bemoaning how awful things have gotten under President Trump, he gets to his argument-in-chief:

On the other side of the political aisle, among self-described liberals, were watching an intellectual revolution. It feels liberating to say after years of tiptoeing around the fact, but the American left has lost its mind. Its become a cowardly mob of upper-class social media addicts, Twitter Robespierres who move from discipline to discipline torching reputations and jobs with breathtaking casualness.

The leaders of this new movement are replacing traditional liberal beliefs about tolerance, free inquiry, and even racial harmony with ideas so toxic and unattractive that they eschew debate, moving straight to shaming, threats, and intimidation. They are counting on the guilt-ridden, self-flagellating nature of traditional American progressives, who will not stand up for themselves, and will walk to the Razor voluntarily.Theyve conned organization after organization into empowering panels to search out thoughtcrime, and its established now that anything can be an offense, from a UCLA professor placed under investigation forreading Martin Luther Kings Letter from a Birmingham Jail out loudto a data scientistfired* from a research firmfor get this retweetingan academic studysuggesting nonviolent protests may be more politically effectivethan violent ones!

Now, this madness is coming for journalism. Beginning on Friday, June 5th, a series of controversies rocked the media. By my count, at least eight news organizations dealt with internal uprisings (it was likely more). Most involved groups of reporters and staffers demanding the firing or reprimand of colleagues whod made politically problematic editorial or social media decisions.

The examples are far-ranging, with some more egregious than others. But Taibbi makes a good case that theres a heavy price to be paid for daring to deviate from the party line being set by young journalists and that its clouding and distorting news judgments. Indeed, he argues, its actually led to partisan, activist coverage:

The media in the last four years has devolved into a succession of moral manias. We are told the Most Important Thing Ever is happening for days or weeks at a time, until subjects are abruptly dropped and forgotten, but the tone of warlike emergency remains: from James Comeys firing, to the deification of Robert Mueller, to the Brett Kavanaugh nomination, to the democracy-imperiling threat to intelligence whistleblowers, all those interminable months of Ukrainegate hearings (while Covid-19 advanced), to fury at the death wish of lockdown violators, to the sudden reversal on that same issue, etc.

Its been learned in these episodes we may freely misreport reality, so long as the political goal is righteous. It was okay to publish the now-discredited Steele dossier, because Trump is scum. MSNBC could put Michael Avenattion live TVto air a gang rape allegation without vetting, because who cared about Brett Kavanaugh except press airing of that wild story ended up being a crucial factor in convincing key swing voter Maine Senator Susan Collins the anti-Kavanaugh campaign was a political hit job (the allegation illustrated, why the presumption of innocence is so important,she said). Reporters who were anxious to prevent Kavanaughs appointment, in other words, ended up helping it happen through overzealousness.

There were no press calls for self-audits after those episodes, just as there wont be a few weeks from now if Covid-19 cases spike, or a few months from now if Donald Trump wins re-election successfully painting the Democrats as supporters of violent protest who want to abolish police. No: press activism is limited to denouncing and shaming colleagues for insufficient fealty to the cheap knockoff of bullying campus Marxism that passes for leftist thought these days.

Now, I think Taibbi oversells this part of the argument a wee bit. In particular, Collins was almost certainly going find some excuse to toe the party line on Kavanaugh.

Taibbi also suggests that the desire to be politically correct meant there was insufficient coverage of the rioting and mayhem associated with the recent protests. Having written that the violence was threatening to take the focus off of the cause at hand (ultimately, it did not), Id have to disagree.

Coming from the other end of the spectrum, Andrew Sullivan asks a similar question: Is There Still Room for Debate? Maybe precisely because hes not of the left, his take is less persuasive than Taibbis.

. . . Americans have always been good at policing uniformity by and among themselves. The puritanical streak of shaming and stigmatizing and threatening runs deep. This is the country of extraordinary political and cultural freedom, but it is also the country of religious fanaticism, moral panics, and crusades against vice. Its the country ofThe Scarlet Letterand Prohibition and the Hollywood blacklist and the Lavender Scare. The kind of stifling, suffocating, and nerve-racking atmosphere that Havel evokes is chillingly recognizable in American history and increasingly in the American present.

The new orthodoxy what the writer Wesley Yang has described as the successor ideology to liberalism seems to be rooted in what journalist Wesley Lowerycallsmoral clarity. He toldTimesmedia columnist Ben Smith this week that journalism needs to be rebuilt around that moral clarity, which means ending its attempt to see all sides of a story, when there is only one, and dropping even an attempt at objectivity (however unattainable that ideal might be). And what is the foundational belief of such moral clarity? That America is systemically racist, and a white-supremacist project from the start, that, as Loweryput it inThe Atlantic,the justice system in fact, the entire American experiment was from its inception designed to perpetuate racial inequality.

He spends several paragraphs challenging this argument as insufficiently nuanced on the website of the prestigious New York magazine, which would suggest that there is indeed room for debate. And, indeed, he not-so-subtly alludes to the race/IQ debate for which he has regularly been excoriated for being on the wrong side of for the last quarter-century.

So whats the problem?

In this manic, Manichean world youre not even given the space to say nothing. White Silence = Violence is a slogan chanted and displayed in every one of these marches. Its very reminiscent of totalitarian states where you have to compete to broadcast your fealty to the cause. In these past two weeks, if you didnt put up on Instagram or Facebook some kind of slogan or symbol displaying your wokeness, you were instantly suspect. The cultishness of this can be seen in the way people are actually cutting off contact with their own families if they dont awaken and see the truth and repeat its formulae. Ibram X. Kendi insists that there is no room in our society for neutrality or reticence. If you are not doing antiracist work youareipso factoa racist. By antiracist work he means fully accepting his version of human society and American history, integrating it into your own life, confessing your own racism, and publicly voicing your continued support.

That belief is indeed out there. And we have indeed seen a lot of celebrities flagellate themselves on the altar of white guilt. But Ive neither replaced my social media avatars with #BlackLivesMatter symbology nor defriended those who are less than woke and, thus far at least, I have not been drubbed out of polite society.

Thats why this past week has seen so many individuals issue public apologies as to their previous life and resolutions to do the work to more actively dismantle structures of oppression. Its why corporate America has rushed to adopt every plank of this ideology and display its allegiance publicly. If you do this, and do it emphatically, you can display your virtue to your customers and clients, and you might even be left alone. Or not. There is no one this movement suspects more than the insincere individual, the person who it deems is merely performing these public oaths and doesnt follow through. Every single aspect of life, every word you speak or write, every tweet you might send, every private conversation you may have had, any email you might have sent, every friend you love is either a function of your racism or anti-racism. And this is why flawed human beings are now subjected to such brutal public shamings, outings, and inquisitions in order to root out the structural evil they represent.

If you argue that you believe that much of this ideology is postmodern gobbledygook, you are guilty of white fragility. If you say you are not fragile, and merely disagree, this isproofyou are fragile. It is the same circular argument that was once used to burn witches. And it has the samereligious undertones. To be woke is to wake up to the truth the blinding truth that liberal society doesnt exist, that everything is a form of oppression or resistance, and that there is no third option. You are either with us or you are to be cast into darkness.

Im closer to Sullivans views on this than Lowerys. I fundamentally believe that civil discourse and persuasion are the only way democracy works. So, I simultaneously support radical reform of policing such that the black community doesnt see law enforcement as a threat to their lives and condemn rioting and looting associated with the protests seeking that end. I simultaneously think we should remove monuments that were specifically put up to signal to black citizens that they were lesser beings and that we should do so according to the rule of law, not the actions of the mob. I simultaneously think we should rename Army bases named after Confederate generals and not inflame matters further by naming them after William Tecumseh Sherman.

But I also think Lowery and others have a point, even if they go too far. The nature of institutional racism is that a level playing field isnt truly level.

And, in fairness, Sullivan seems to agree:

Mercifully, we are far freer than Havel was under Communism. We have no secret police. The state is not requiring adherence to this doctrine. And it is not a lie that this country has some deep reckoning to do on the legacy of slavery and segregation.In so far as this movement has made us more aware and cognizantof the darkness of the past, it is a very good thing, and overdue. But in so far as it has insisted we are defined entirely by that darkness, it has the crudeness of a kind of evangelist doctrine with the similar penalties for waywardness. We have co-workers eager to weaponize their ideology to purge the workforce. We have employers demanding our attendance at seminars and workshops to teach this ideology. We have journalists (of all people) poring through other writers work or records to get them in trouble, demoted, or fired. We have faculty members at colleges signing petitions to rid their departments of those few left not fully onboard. We have human-resources departments that have adopted this ideology whole and are imposing it as a condition for employment. And, critically, we have a Twitter mob to hound people into submission.

Too many in journalism and the academymyself includeddraw conclusions from Twitter that are too broad. Twitter, as has been frequently noted, is not real life. But, increasingly, for those of us who make our living in the intellectual space, it seems that way.

Still, I agree with Sullivan here:

Liberalism is not just a set of rules. Theres a spirit to it. A spirit that believes that there are whole spheres of human life that lie beyond ideology friendship, art, love, sex, scholarship, family. A spirit that seeks not to impose orthodoxy but to open up the possibilities of the human mind and soul. A spirit that seeks moral clarity but understands that this is very hard, that life and history are complex, and it is this complexity that a truly liberal society seeks to understand if it wants to advance. It is a spirit that deals with an argument and not a person and that counters that argument with logic, not abuse. Its a spirit that allows for various ideas to clash and evolve, and treats citizens as equal, regardless of their race, rather than insisting on equity for designated racial groups. Its a spirit that delights sometimes in being wrong because it offers an opportunity to figure out whats right. And its generous, humorous, and graceful in its love of argument and debate. It gives you space to think and reflect and deliberate. Twitter, of course, is the antithesis of all this and its mercy-free, moblike qualities when combined with a moral panic are, quite frankly, terrifying.

Heres a caveat, though: the fight for black Americans to be treated as full and equal citizens has been ongoing for at least 155 years. And, while were undeniably a lot closer than we were 50, even 25, years ago its understandable that people have simply run out of patience.

I dont like that people who dare to offer counterarguments are shouted down. And I positively loathe when ordinary people are suddenly turned into public figures and have their lives ruined for a single, thoughtless act.

Sullivan closes:

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values, President Kennedy once said. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people. Lets keep that market open. Lets not be intimidated by those who want it closed.

I long for that ideal to be realized but despair that its impossible.

And, as much as cancel culture is making it harder, the main culprit right now is coming from the right. Whatever pressures are being placed on the editors of the New York Times and Washington Postor even Vox and New Yorkto take sides in the culture wars, I get a reasonable sense of the debate from reading those sources. Fox News, the Daily Caller, Breitbart, and the like dont even pretend anymore to show both sides of the story.

Still, while I dont operate from fear of being cancelled online, I do find myself self-censoring more often. Even though my views on race, gender, and LGBTQ issues are likely somewhat left-of-center at this point, certainly in my age cohort, its just not worth the aggravation to respond to the Twitter mob. Presumably, those with views further out of favor with the woke left that dominates the medium do so more often.

To that extent, the mob has won. And thats not good for the country or our state of discourse.

Now, again, this threat pales in comparison to a President that fans the flames of racial outrage and threatens the rule of law and the freedom of expression. But I do fear that the backlash against cancel culture will alienate people who might otherwise be inclined to vote for Joe Biden to stay home or even vote to re-elect Trump.

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Cancel Cancel Culture - Outside The Beltway - Mobile Edition

The New York Times doesnt much like the United Kingdom. By that, I mean the dystopian fantasy United Kingdom the Gray Lady has confected to explain Brexit and Boris Johnsons electoral triumph in December. Objectively observed, Britain today is further to the left on public spending, equalities legislation and social attitudes than just a decade ago. Not if you scan the pages of the Times, however, where the Britain that glowers back at you is a grey and unpleasant land, a grim shudder of cruelty,racismandimperial nostalgia buffering about in its late dotage after renouncing civilized Europe. A dull, foreigner-free retirement community with nothing but Spam, Union Jack tea towels and global obsolescence to look forward to.

Eighth Avenue is especially thrilled by scenes of race riots in Britains streets. You might think the Times would better serve its readers by focusing on the much more violent unrest in its own country but, even allowing that the Times considers America its country, you underestimate its readers appetite for the trashy, implausible and yet utterly compelling Brexitland soap opera that Times editors have turned Britain into. Like all soap operas, escapism and miserabilism are in competition and Brexitland offers American progressives a break from their daily tyranny under the Orange Mussolini; serving up a British farce starring the Blond Nero and familiar storylines of populist excess, pervasive racism and democracy under assault, with the odd Russian spy plot twist thrown in.

The latest installment of Brexitland comes in an article from the Times headlined: Prime Minister Boris Johnson Stirs Culture War Over Churchill Statue. This was anews report, not an op-ed, so right from the get-go, you know where this is headed. The reporter explained that the British Prime Minister had been on the defensive since the killing by the police of George Floyd in Minneapolis. He has? I like to think I keep abreast of the news but this was the first time I encountered the notion that Boris Johnson had been put on the back foot by an event 4,000 miles away and entirely out of his control.

There was more, however. The Prime Minister had stirred a fraught debate over symbols of his countrys past. This is a mercurial interpretation of the facts in which the fraught debate over historical symbols was stirred, not by rioterstearing downone such symbol, but by the Prime Minister commenting on that act. Its like blaming a terrible play on the critic who pans it.

The report goes on to describe Johnson claiming that the largely peaceful protests have been hijacked by extremists intent on violence. Between the New York Times and theBBC, anyone with the foresight to have trademarked the phrase largely peaceful protests must be coining it in right now.

Generously allowing that Johnson uses Twitter sparingly (compared with President Trump) to communicate government policy rather than personal views, the Times fretted that he seemed to make an exceptionto defend the legacy of his political idol, Churchill. What was this fiery apologia for his hero?

Johnson said: We cannot try to edit or censor our past. We cannot pretend to have a different history. The statues in our cities and towns were put up by previous generations. They had different perspectives, different understandings of right and wrong. But those statues teach us about our past, with all its faults.

Is that you, Enoch?

The Times averred that the comments were likely to prove popular within Mr Johnsons Conservative party, noting growing discontent over the governments handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Tories were more united in their reaction to the protests and the culture wars that broke out following Mr Floyds killing. Just in case anyone missed these signals, the Times introduced analysis from Prof Steven Fielding, a respected historian who sometimes writes for Coffee House. In addition to quoting Fielding on the historical and political contexts of Churchill criticism, the Times paraphrases him as saying the wartime leader is such a popular and prominent figure in Britain that Mr Johnson stands to gain politically from defending him.

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This is what bothers the Times. In Johnsons mere noting of Churchills contributions to pummeling the Nazi war machine, the Gray Lady sees sinister politicking off the back of a culture war it has convinced itself Boris Johnson initiated. This is a kind of inverted fan fiction, which reimagines run-of-the-mill political cynics as malefic shape-shifters and restive electorates as incipient goose-steppers.

The irony in all this is that Johnson has been strikingly restrained over the riots. He does not want scenes of police officers thumping young black men and appears to believe that allowing lockdown-defying protests, rather than overpolicing them, is the best way to prevent a full-scale street war between protesters and the law. In following his liberal instincts, he also follows the example of his monstrous hero. As Home Secretary, Churchill was scoldedby right-wingers for his cautious handling of the Tonypandy riots, delaying the deployment of soldiers to allow the local constabulary to bring looting under control.

Those of us who dont like Boris Johnson or his politics resent being put in the position of having to defend the man simply because his critics have lost all sense of perspective about politics in our country and their own. The New York Timess fanciful Brexitland scripting confirms that it understands Britain as well as it does the United States.

This article was originally published on The Spectators UK website.

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The Brexitland soap opera of the New York Times - The Spectator USA

TOKYO When the coronavirus arrived in Japan, people did what they normally do: They put on masks.

Face coverings are nothing new here. During flu and hay fever seasons, trains are crowded with commuters half-hidden behind white surgical masks. Employees with colds, worried about the stigma of missing work, throw one on and soldier into the office. Masks are even used, my hairdresser once told me, by women who dont want to bother putting on makeup.

In the United States, where masks only recently arrived on the scene, they have been a less comfortable fit becoming an emblem in the culture wars. A vocal minority asserts that nobody can force anyone to put a mask on. Protesters have harassed mask-wearing reporters. The president himself has tried to avoid being seen in one.

As Japan has confounded the world by avoiding the sort of mass death from coronavirus seen in the United States, I began to wonder whether the cultural affinity for masks helped explain some of this success. It also got me thinking about the evolution in my own feelings about face coverings.

A decade ago, before we moved to Tokyo when I became The New York Times bureau chief, my husband, two children and I visited Japan to see family and friends. I had picked up a cough on the plane, and my Japanese godfather pointedly dropped into a convenience store to buy me a packet of masks.

Shame on me, but I declined to wear one they seemed unsightly and uncomfortable.

Fast forward to early this year, when news of a strange virus started emerging from China, and Japan soon reported its first case.

Advice on masks that I was reading from international experts was mixed, if not outright skeptical. The surgeon general of the United States implored the public in a tweet to STOP BUYING MASKS! The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention initially said it was not necessary to wear one if I wasnt sick.

Still, living in Tokyo, I had grown accustomed to seeing them everywhere. I decided it was better to buy some for me and my family. By then, masks were sold out in most Japanese drugstores, but the Tokyo bureau of The Times managed to procure a small supply that we had to ration.

I was sometimes confused about when to wear one, though I did so when reporting near the Diamond Princess, the cruise ship that was the site of a large coronavirus outbreak, or when I attended crowded news conferences in unventilated rooms.

It took some getting used to. The mask made my glasses fog. I didnt like the feeling of my own breath on my face.

But Im now a convert, especially since Tokyo was placed under a state of emergency in mid-April. I bought handmade cloth face coverings from a Facebook friend in Okinawa. We wash them daily and line them with coffee filters. Even though the emergency declaration was lifted in late May, I still wont let anyone in my family leave our apartment without putting on a mask.

With paper masks sold out everywhere, the Japanese government sent cloth masks in the mail in April. The initiative, which cost about $400 million, became the butt of jokes, when people discovered the masks were too small to cover most adults mouths and noses.

The masks became a symbol of failings in the governments coronavirus response. In the early months of the pandemic, Japan seemed not to follow much of the conventional epidemiological wisdom, deliberately restricting testing and not ordering a lockdown.

Yet a feared spike in cases and deaths has not materialized. Japan has reported more than 17,000 infections and just over 900 deaths, while the United States, with a population roughly two and a half times as large, is approaching 1.9 million cases and 110,000 deaths.

Japan, I think a lot of people agree, kind of did everything wrong, with poor social distancing, karaoke bars still open and public transit packed near the zone where the worst outbreaks were happening, Jeremy Howard, a researcher at the University of San Francisco who has studied the use of masks, said of the countrys early response. But the one thing that Japan did right was masks.

But one of Japans most visible responses has been near-universal mask wearing, seen here as a responsible thing to do to protect oneself and others, and as a small price to pay to be able to resume some semblance of normalcy.

Japans experience with masks goes back hundreds of years. Mining workers started using them during the Edo period, between the 17th and 19th centuries, to prevent inhalation of dust. The masks were often made from the pulp of plums, said Kazunari Onishi, author of The Dignity of Masks and an associate professor at St. Lukes International University in Tokyo.

Dr. Onishi said that early in the 20th century, the Japanese viewed masks as unattractive, but were persuaded to wear them during the 1918 flu pandemic. More recently, the Japanese public has used masks during the SARS and MERS outbreaks which also left Japan relatively unscathed as well as to protect against pollution and pollen.

During the current pandemic, scientists have found a correlation between high levels of mask-wearing whether as a matter of culture or policy and success in containing the virus.

Updated June 5, 2020

The unemployment rate fell to 13.3 percent in May, the Labor Department said on June 5, an unexpected improvement in the nations job market as hiring rebounded faster than economists expected. Economists had forecast the unemployment rate to increase to as much as 20 percent, after it hit 14.7 percent in April, which was the highest since the government began keeping official statistics after World War II. But the unemployment rate dipped instead, with employers adding 2.5 million jobs, after more than 20 million jobs were lost in April.

Mass protests against police brutality that have brought thousands of people onto the streets in cities across America are raising the specter of new coronavirus outbreaks, prompting political leaders, physicians and public health experts to warn that the crowds could cause a surge in cases. While many political leaders affirmed the right of protesters to express themselves, they urged the demonstrators to wear face masks and maintain social distancing, both to protect themselves and to prevent further community spread of the virus. Some infectious disease experts were reassured by the fact that the protests were held outdoors, saying the open air settings could mitigate the risk of transmission.

Exercise researchers and physicians have some blunt advice for those of us aiming to return to regular exercise now: Start slowly and then rev up your workouts, also slowly. American adults tended to be about 12 percent less active after the stay-at-home mandates began in March than they were in January. But there are steps you can take to ease your way back into regular exercise safely. First, start at no more than 50 percent of the exercise you were doing before Covid, says Dr. Monica Rho, the chief of musculoskeletal medicine at the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab in Chicago. Thread in some preparatory squats, too, she advises. When you havent been exercising, you lose muscle mass. Expect some muscle twinges after these preliminary, post-lockdown sessions, especially a day or two later. But sudden or increasing pain during exercise is a clarion call to stop and return home.

States are reopening bit by bit. This means that more public spaces are available for use and more and more businesses are being allowed to open again. The federal government is largely leaving the decision up to states, and some state leaders are leaving the decision up to local authorities. Even if you arent being told to stay at home, its still a good idea to limit trips outside and your interaction with other people.

Touching contaminated objects and then infecting ourselves with the germs is not typically how the virus spreads. But it can happen. A number of studies of flu, rhinovirus, coronavirus and other microbes have shown that respiratory illnesses, including the new coronavirus, can spread by touching contaminated surfaces, particularly in places like day care centers, offices and hospitals. But a long chain of events has to happen for the disease to spread that way. The best way to protect yourself from coronavirus whether its surface transmission or close human contact is still social distancing, washing your hands, not touching your face and wearing masks.

Common symptoms include fever, a dry cough, fatigue and difficulty breathing or shortness of breath. Some of these symptoms overlap with those of the flu, making detection difficult, but runny noses and stuffy sinuses are less common. The C.D.C. has also added chills, muscle pain, sore throat, headache and a new loss of the sense of taste or smell as symptoms to look out for. Most people fall ill five to seven days after exposure, but symptoms may appear in as few as two days or as many as 14 days.

If air travel is unavoidable, there are some steps you can take to protect yourself. Most important: Wash your hands often, and stop touching your face. If possible, choose a window seat. A study from Emory University found that during flu season, the safest place to sit on a plane is by a window, as people sitting in window seats had less contact with potentially sick people. Disinfect hard surfaces. When you get to your seat and your hands are clean, use disinfecting wipes to clean the hard surfaces at your seat like the head and arm rest, the seatbelt buckle, the remote, screen, seat back pocket and the tray table. If the seat is hard and nonporous or leather or pleather, you can wipe that down, too. (Using wipes on upholstered seats could lead to a wet seat and spreading of germs rather than killing them.)

The C.D.C. has recommended that all Americans wear cloth masks if they go out in public. This is a shift in federal guidance reflecting new concerns that the coronavirus is being spread by infected people who have no symptoms. Until now, the C.D.C., like the W.H.O., has advised that ordinary people dont need to wear masks unless they are sick and coughing. Part of the reason was to preserve medical-grade masks for health care workers who desperately need them at a time when they are in continuously short supply. Masks dont replace hand washing and social distancing.

If youve been exposed to the coronavirus or think you have, and have a fever or symptoms like a cough or difficulty breathing, call a doctor. They should give you advice on whether you should be tested, how to get tested, and how to seek medical treatment without potentially infecting or exposing others.

I think there is definitely evidence coming out of Covid that Japan, as well as other countries which practice mask-wearing, tend to do much better in flattening the curve, said Akiko Iwasaki, a professor of immunobiology at Yale.

The scientific evidence on whether a mask protects the wearer from infection is mixed. But experiments show that masks can be effective in blocking the emission of respiratory droplets that may contain the virus, even when someone has no symptoms of illness. And there is some evidence that infected people with no symptoms can still transmit the coronavirus.

A study published last month suggested that just talking can launch thousands of small droplets.

Wearing a simple cloth mask could significantly block speech droplets from being released, two of the studys authors, Philip Anfinrud and Adriaan Bax of the National Institutes of Health, wrote in an email.

Dekai Wu, a professor of computer science and engineering at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, has modeled the potential for mass mask-wearing to significantly reduce infections.

While it may be possible to establish only correlation, not causation, he said, if the downside is nothing, and the upside is huge, then you take the bet.

Still, most scientists say, masks alone are not enough; social distancing is also needed.

Many people think that just covering their mouth and nose is enough, Dr. Onishi said. If they wear a mask, they think they can go to crowded areas, but that is still very dangerous.

My family and I have seen that kind of thinking in action. On a recent weekend, we masked up and went for a bicycle ride in Tokyo. After miles of coasting down quiet residential streets and along a flower-lined path, we took a turn into a surprisingly crowded shopping arcade.

As we wove through the crowds, I spotted a long, tightly packed line for coffee at a cafe. Inside a grocery store, nobody was paying much attention to the distance between customers. At a food stand, a huddle formed around the servers window.

But nearly everyone was wearing a mask.

Hikari Hida contributed reporting.

Read more:
Japan's Coronavirus Numbers Are Low. Are Masks the Reason? - The New York Times

The British left seems almost jealous of Americas bitter racial divides.

As the United States contends with serious civil unrest in major cities across the country, protests have also been taking place in London over the homicide of George Floyd.

Here was the radical British left in all its mindless and contradictory glory. Breaching lockdown restrictions by congregating in large numbers, they protested outside 10 Downing Street over an event which took place thousands of miles away in the US state of Minnesota. No doubt, these lockdown rule-breakers are also the very same activists who would describe Covid-19s disproportionate impact on the UKs black population as a national scandal.

The left in the UK, desperate to be a part of the anger and frustration felt by its counterparts abroad, has sought to frame police brutality and police-led racial abuse as a common UK-US problem. They have sought to strike parallels between the deaths of George Floyd and Mark Duggan in 2011. The comparison is insulting. Duggan was a hardened gang member who was once accused of shooting a man in a nightclub. And while policing in the UK needs a great deal of improvement, comparisons with the US are unwise. (It is also worth noting that significant numbers of white Americans have also been victims of law enforcement aggression.)

Ethnic minorities in Britain are broadly trusting of the police. According to the most recent Crime Survey for England and Wales, seven in 10 black people in the UK had confidence in their local police force, which is not far below the corresponding figure for white people (75 per cent). This is an inconvenient truth for those leftists shouting fuck the police, apparently on behalf of ethnic minorities.

According to the 2010 EMBES survey one of the largest surveys of minority attitudes available the vast majority of ethnic-minority Brits say they are satisfied with British democracy more broadly. Indeed, more BAME Brits are very satisfied with UK democracy than white Brits.

The US is in a perilous state. It has been afflicted badly by hyper-materialism and rampant individualism as well as deeply bitter race relations and industrial-scale problems over police brutality. While the UK has its flaws, it is not close to being in a similarly precarious condition. To suggest otherwise is to be completely divorced from reality. Indeed, it provides the impression that certain elements of the British left are eager for a more racially divided, structurally unjust Britain, in order to have the ammunition to press ahead with their moral crusade, inspired by US culture wars.

A particularly chilling aspect of the US culture wars is left-wing anti-whiteness, which is finding a home within the contemporary British left. Despite telling us they are keen to create a racism-free society, anti-white sentiment is now being normalised among radical left activists in the UK. This is true not only of activists of an ethnic-minority background, but also of middle-class Guardianistas who feel white guilt. Such circles are ironically guilty of acts of racism, such as ordering white people not to participate in race-related debates. While portraying themselves as social-justice warriors fighting institutional racism, few have much to say on the mismanagement of large-scale cases of child sexual abuse across much of England which has strained race relations.

The death of George Floyd is undoubtedly a tragedy which strikes at the heart over the USs ongoing problems with police brutality. But this tragedy is now being weaponised by a British left intent on fuelling racial division and mass hysteria by caricaturing Britain as a place which is full to the brim with white racists and bigoted anti-BAME police officers. The UK should view the aggressive tactics of so-called antifa activists and their hijacking of peaceful protests in the US as a warning sign of the potentially destructive effects of extremism.

Despite its new moderate leader, the Labour Party continues to run the risk of being dragged down by racial identity politics. Labour needs to win back lost voters in predominantly white working-class constituencies in the regions. However, radical elements of the British left believe these communities are filled with reactionary bigoted throwbacks. Calling out the aggressive identitarian tendencies of leftist activists will be a serious test of Keir Starmers leadership. Failure to do so will do further damage to Labours future electoral prospects.

Most of the country does not wish to see the divisive US culture wars being imported into the UK by radical left activists. Nor does it share their warped interpretation of British life and politics.

Dr Rakib Ehsan is a research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society. Follow him on Twitter: @rakibehsan.

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Please dont import the US culture war to Britain - Spiked