Flattening the Curve
We’ve moved on from the innumeracy edition to the “spot the inflection” phase as bureaucrats everywhere try to solve for the flattening and claim success.
PPE Shortages
Now it looks like a bustling brokered market in N95 masks is seeing bureaucrats getting outbid by foreign buyers. Peter Navarro could have done one thing right and score points for his ideology: ban exports of PPE. He didn’t.
Cringe Cultural Product
There’s the cringe And The People Stayed Home. There’s the uber-cringe Letter to Humanity from COVID-19. There’s this Christian Curse sermon. This could get really bad.
go brr
On the bright side, we now have the best meme since Harambe. Go brr go brr. The inaugural paywalled Breaking Smart newsletter analyzes that. Subscribe!
Unanticipated Consequences
Weather forecasting accuracy down 15% because not enough planes are in the air gathering meteorological data to drive the forecast models!
Beyond Fat and Lean
Breweries being converted to hand sanitizer manufacturing is an example of fat via adjacent possible production serendipity. Not wartime production enforcement. Gotta explore this more.
Virtual Culture
Downgrading this from green to yellow. Problems are becoming evident. From bandwidth effects to naive porting of physical behaviors. I think people are tiring of Zoom life.
About Venkatesh Rao
Thank you for bringing out attention to the Christian Curse Sermon
The Director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy doesn’t have the power to ban exports of PPE?
An antidote to the deluge of cringey content here:
https://lundi.am/What-the-virus-said