Dispatches from the Covid-19 Crisis

The Perils of Lockdown Living

I rushed to the supermarkets and pharmacies buying dozens of the last hand-sanitizers, disinfectant sprays and wipes, even a dozen boxes of matzos—if it helped the Jewish people survive three thousand years ago, it will surely help a Palestinian family in St. Louis, Missouri.

May 7, 2020

The Covid-19 ‘Infowhelm’

Covid-19 is undoubtedly testing our public health, medical, and economic systems. But it’s also testing our ability to process so much frightening and imminently consequential data.

May 6, 2020

A Very British Debacle

As it faces the pandemic crisis, while still mired in Brexit talks, Britain today is no longer a country divided by left vs. right or new vs. trad. Instead, this is a nation split between the Won’t-Be-Tolds and the Will-Be-Tolds.

May 4, 2020

Pandemic Journal

The latest edition of our brief dispatches by New York Review writers documenting the coronavirus outbreak around the world, including Coco Fusco in Brooklyn, Lucas Adams in Brooklyn, Sara Nović in Philadelphia, Gavin Francis in Edinburgh, and more.

May 15, 2020

Essential Yet Disposable

People who have a tax ID number—so that they can work without formal authorization by paying taxes—are the only taxpayers excluded from the stimulus package, left to fend for themselves as the coronavirus engulfs their communities.

April 27, 2020

A Virus in the Neighborhood

The world is in disarray. The virus has spread to all continents. It has snuck in, even among those of us who are not directly affected. It forces our true personalities to the surface.

April 30, 2020

End Notes: Palliative Care in a Pandemic

Many, in the early days, said the virus did not stop at borders, did not respect hierarchies, that it affected all equally. Covid-19 was democratic. We were deceived.

April 24, 2020

Numbering the Dead

A hundred and fifty years ago, a strange notion: the dead could be counted. Now, we speak easily in the statistics of absence, of fifty dead in a mass shooting, of fourteen hundred missing in an earthquake, as if this has always been done.

April 21, 2020

What One Teacher Is Learning in a Pandemic

New York City’s more than one million public school students have not now sat in a classroom since Friday, March 13. As a result, memories of some of my students’ faces, voices, and mannerisms remain frozen in my mind.

April 19, 2020

‘How Can I Keep My Family Safe?’

I hear every day from the family members of incarcerated people who are asking themselves the same thing I am now: How can I keep my family safe?

April 16, 2020

The Lost Art of Phone Conversation

The old-fashioned fuddy-duddy telephone—which once seemed as dated as Dorothy Parker’s short story “The Telephone Call,” in which a young woman waits desperately for a man to call—is suddenly back in style.

April 15, 2020

The Great Pandemic Census Crisis

The entwined crises of the coronavirus and the 2020 Census are exposing a ruthless political economy in which only certain types of people count.

April 14, 2020

People Power & Pandemic Democracy

It would be foolish to understate the obstacles to democracy in America at the moment. Yet it’s also true that solidarity, the connections that are created and sustain democracy, is often a story of surprise.

April 13, 2020

Pandemic Journal, April 6–12

Brief dispatches by New York Review writers documenting the coronavirus outbreak around the world, including Verlyn Klinkenborg in East Chatham, Hugh Eakin in Minneapolis–St. Paul, Dalia Hatuqa in Amman, and more.

April 11, 2020

Running Alone Together

Wild landscape was the only thing I finally came to miss after weeks at sea. It is the only thing I miss now. I am being a good citizen, and so I must run nearby, and make do with what my city can offer me. 

April 10, 2020

A Lasting Remedy for the Economic Crisis

For the past forty years, we’ve been underfunding government—including spending that prepares us for crises and disasters—and that’s made our economy and our society less resilient.

April 8, 2020

Passover 2020: A Virtual Seder

As Covid-19 took hold in New York City, I started receiving emails from the rabbi at my local shul. The barrage of newsletters cracked open my claustrophobic anxieties.

April 7, 2020

Facing a New Sinophobia

We have no effective testing kit for this pestilence as long as it lurks among us. It doesn’t manifest until it attacks people. Anti-Asian incidents around the globe spiked after the epidemic outbreak.

April 6, 2020

Rear Window

Watching the dog across the yard has taken on new meaning, now that we aren’t supposed to leave our homes.

April 4, 2020

A Paris Clinic’s First Covid-19 Delivery

It didn’t occur to me that the virus would affect anyone my age, let alone me. I was simply focused on the baby’s arrival.

April 2, 2020

Pandemic Journal, March 30–April 5

Brief dispatches by New York Review writers documenting the coronavirus outbreak around the world, including Danny Lyon in Bernalillo, Andrew McGee in New York, Nicole Rudick in South Orange, and more.

April 5, 2020

Homeschooling in a Pandemic

How the hell would we divide the labor of home-schooling with working remotely from home—in a three-room apartment? How would I, as the mother, guard against shouldering the bulk of this labor?

March 30, 2020

Pandemic Journal, March 23–29

Brief dispatches by New York Review writers documenting the coronavirus outbreak around the world, including Michael Greenberg in Brooklyn, Raquel Salas Rivera in San Juan, Aida Alami in Paris, Rahmane Idrissa in Niamey, and more.

March 29, 2020

‘Since I Became Symptomatic’

When I wake with my heart pounding in the middle of the night, my sheets are soaked with sweat that must be full of virus. The virus is my new partner, our third companion in the apartment, wetly draped across my body in the night.

March 26, 2020

Pandemic Journal, March 17–22

Dispatches on the coronavirus outbreak from Madeleine Schwartz in Brooklyn, Anne Enright in Dublin, Joshua Hunt in Busan, Anna Badkhen in Lalibela, Lauren Groff in Gainesville, and more.

March 22, 2020