Visiting the USA from South Korea and let me ask you WHERE ARE YOUR MASKS? Holy moly. Death wish nation. This Tweet struck a chord. If you are interested in conversations with pandemic experts from around the world please check out my #COVIDCalls project. Covid-calls.com

How To Protect Your Population from Disaster, a brief narrative . . .
I live in South Korea. Last night at 9:50pm we got a text from my son's elementary school. A COVID case had been reported--one of the students had tested positive.
@gregggonsalves @chrislhayes 2. This morning all the kids in classes that are close to the infected child's classroom (shared classroom, bathroom, same floor) got tested. My son went to a municipal testing center for a free test.

This headline is disgusting. The story focuses on poll numbers & the unemployment rate to say a strategy of COVID denialism worked in FL. In fact, 32,597 people have died in FL, & the piece doesn't even break stats down by age/race. @alexjgoldstein
politico.com/newsletters/po… 2. I'm only posting it as a caution that horse race politics journalism is going to start declaring COVID "winners and losers" among Presidential aspirants--and that should be called out for the callous, misleading hackery it is.

Anti-Before-COVID-Nostalgia announcement: Americans love to mark time by disasters without stopping long (if at all) to ask “why did that terrible thing happen anyway?” 2. In fact if you count war as a disaster—which I definitely do—most of the US history timeline is just demarcating one disaster from another. You might think we’d be better at investigation, forensics, historical thinking.

Chip Roy embodies the American culture of disaster denialism--deeply rooted in racism and the rejection of history. He is the poster boy of a disaster nihilism that damages the possibility for disaster justice.
texastribune.org/2019/05/24/us-… 2. Look for yourself. On any disaster issue, he's there. And he's wrong.
texastribune.org/2020/05/06/tex…

The injustice & violence suffered by Asian Americans in the pandemic is a major theme of #COVIDCalls. Here are some episodes that might serve as an explainer, & will introduce you to some brilliant researchers/activists. Starting w/@vgshaw & @_sujanee
pscp.tv/USofDisaster/1… 2. Episode #167 covers ANTI-CHINESE STIGMA IN THE PANDEMIC outside the USA w/@NjokiMwarumba & @JackRozdilsky

pscp.tv/w/1OwGWVakwpmKQ

At what point in the 1918 pandemic or WWII did people say “we won’t be going back to normal”? I’m fascinated by that moment-when the disaster becomes indecipherable from daily life. We are in COVID life now, even more once the schools reopen-then-close. Few surprises left now. 2. All of my grandparents talked about the depression and the war as if it was still a sort of daily reality to the ends of their lives. Of course they did-it was not only the trauma of doing without and constant fear. That time reordered their lives entirely.

This fight between Trump and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer offers insight into how Trump uses disaster as a partisan tool, and in this case as a re-election strategy.
cnn.com/2020/03/26/pol… 2. As of now 12 states have received major disaster declarations for COVID-19 and there will be more on the way. Michigan will certainly be among them. You can follow the declarations for yourself here on the (very bad) @fema website. fema.gov/disasters

Many thousands have died worldwide from COVID-19 and many thousands more (hoping for 5, not 6 or 7 figures) over the coming months. This is a human disaster on a scale seen recently in the 2010 Haiti earthquake and the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. 2. Of course we focus on the dead, we must. But we must also listen to the survivors. Interviews with people who've survived COVID-19 reveal a surprising range of experiences.

Since Hurricane Sandy there has been a building GOP narrative that disaster aid requests are a stealth Democratic welfare state operation. They will continue to slow walk and underfund the Coronavirus response. Here are the Senators against Sandy relief, including Mitch McConnell. senate.gov/legislative/LI…

Thread on #PortNeches "an estimated 38,000 others live w/in a 3-mile radius of the plant.Three schools, two churches & a library are within a mile. Had the first blast occurred at 1 p.m. instead of 1 a.m., many more folks would have been in harm’s way."
beaumontenterprise.com/news/article/C… 2. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality has oversight of the permitting and regulation of petrochemical facilities in the state. As of now the agency believes the #PortNeches TPC "incident" is under control.

With all due respect Brock Long is wrong here. #slowdisaster

https://twitter.com/meetthepress/status/1041316382070198275

2. @MeetThePress @FEMA_Brock I understand the limits of what FEMA can do & I know what it’s legally required to do.

Aside from the obvious moral failings this tweet betrays, it's also a teachable moment. He defines disaster as an event in a specific moment. If you died later due to the long term effects of the hurricane, then your death is not part of the hurricane, in this way of thinking.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1040217897703026689

2. I'm really glad he gave an honest account of his thinking here. It will launch a discussion on the ways we count disaster deaths and economic impacts.

In case you aren't aware, the GOP has declared war on academia. Our crime? I've never really understood but it's time to PUSH BACK. Ask your university what it's doing. And, make the calls and visits, especially to GOP Senators. nytimes.com/2017/11/16/opi… 2. Maybe the idea is to punish blue states, since that's where a large number of research universities are located?

1. If you look at images from Houston & wonder how the world's wealthiest nation has trouble learning from disaster this thread is for you. 2. In 18th and 19th centuries Americans still talked about disasters as "acts of God"-pre-industrial America was fatalistic & decentralized