Monthly Archives: March 2020

So what has happened? Well, several different things. From the Wuhan outbreak through somewhere in mid-February, the responses to the coronavirus did seem to correspond very roughly to theories of conservative and liberal psychology. Along with infectious-disease specialists, the people who seemed most alarmed by the virus included the inhabitants of Weird Right-Wing Twitter (a collection of mordant, mostly anonymous accounts interested in civilizational decline), various Silicon Valley eccentrics, plus original-MAGA figures like Mike Cernovich and Steve Bannon. (The radio host Michael Savage, often considered the most extreme of the rights talkers, was also an early alarmist.)

Meanwhile, liberal officialdom and its media appendages were more likely to play down the threat, out of fear of giving aid and comfort to sinophobia or populism. This period was the high-water mark of its just the flu reassurances in liberal outlets, of pious critiques of Donald Trumps travel restrictions, of deceptive public-health propaganda about how masks dont work, of lectures from the head of the World Health Organization about how the greatest enemy we face is not the virus itself; its the stigma that turns us against each other.

But then, somewhere in February, the dynamic shifted. As the disease spread and the debate went mainstream, liberal opinion mostly abandoned its anti-quarantine posture and swung toward a reasonable panic, while conservative opinion divided, with a large portion of the right following the lead of Trump himself, who spent crucial weeks trying to wish the crisis away. Where figures like Bannon and Cernovich manifested a conservatism attuned to external perils, figures like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity manifested a conservatism of tribal denial, owning the libs by minimizing the coronavirus threat.

Now we are in a third phase, where Trump is (more or less, depending on the day) on board with a robust response and most conservatives have joined most liberals in alarm. Polls show a minimal partisan divide in support for social distancing and lockdowns, and some of that minimal divide is explained by the fact that rural areas are thus far less likely to face outbreaks. (You dont need a complicated theory of the ideological mind to explain why New Yorkers are more freaked out than Nebraskans.)

But even now, there remains a current of conservative opinion that wants to believe that all of this is overblown, that the experts are wrong about the likely death toll, that Trump should reopen everything as soon as possible, that the liberal media just wants to crash the American economy to take his presidency down.

See more here:

The Coronavirus and the Conservative Mind - The New York Times

Priorities USA, the largest Democratic super PAC, is expanding an ad buy accusing President TrumpDonald John TrumpCuomo grilled by brother about running for president: 'No. no' Maxine Waters unleashes over Trump COVID-19 response: 'Stop congratulating yourself! You're a failure' Meadows resigns from Congress, heads to White House MORE of mismanaging the coronavirus crisis a day after the Trump campaign threatened legal action against TV stations airing the ad in key battleground states.

Priorities USA originally put $6 million behind the ad, which is running in Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. On Thursday, the super PAC announced the ad would begin running in Arizona with an additional $600,000 investment behind it.

"Donald Trump spent weeks downplaying the threat of the coronavirus and his inaction left the country unprepared for this crisis. Even today,his lies are putting the health of millions of Americans at risk," saidGuy Cecil, chairman of Priorities USA. "The fact that Trump is going to such great lengths to keep the American people from hearing his own words adds to the urgency of communicating them far and wide. Trump doesn't want voters to know the truth. We will not be intimidated. We'll keep telling the truth andholding Donald Trump accountable."

The ad, which istitledExponential Threat, splices together different audio clips of Trump downplaying the virus over a graphic showing the number of cases on the rise.

"The coronavirus, this is their new hoax, Trump says in the ad. We have it totally under control. It's one person coming in from China. One day it's like a miracle, it will disappear. When you have 15 people and within a couple of days is gonna be down to close to zero.

However, fact-checkers have said it is wrong to claim that Trump ever called the coronavirus a hoax. Rather, Trump has said that Democratic efforts to politicize the virus was "their new hoax.

On Wednesday, Trumps legal counsel sent a letter to television stations airing the ad demanding they cease and desist from airing the ad if they want to avoid costly and time consuming litigation.

Given the foregoing, should you fail to immediately cease broadcasting PUSAs ad Exponential Threat, Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. will have no choice but to pursue all legal remedies available to it in law and in equity, the letter states. We will not stand idly by and allow you to broadcast false, deceptive, and misleading information concerning Presidents Trumps healthcare positions without consequence.

Former Vice President Joe BidenJoe BidenCuomo grilled by brother about running for president: 'No. no' Top Democratic super PACs team up to boost Biden The Hill's Campaign Report: Trump, Biden spar over coronavirus response MOREs campaign and several other Democratic groups have used the hoax remarks in their own videos questioning Trumps leadership.

The Trump campaign has asked Twitter to apply its manipulated media tag to videos claiming that Trump called the virus a hoax, but the social media giant has so far declined to intervene.

Read the rest here:

Liberal super PAC expanding ad buy after Trump campaign threatens legal action | TheHill - The Hill

This post is part of a blog series, Adventures in the New Humanities, by Judy Kutulas, the Boldt Family Distinguished Teaching Chair in the Humanities.

I cant be the only academic wide awake at 3 a.m., worrying about transitioning to distance learning. Humanists, I suspect, have it easy relative to, say, those who need to figure out nursing classes or chemistry labs or rehearsals, although I do like the idea of the St. Olaf Choir singing together apart on Google Meet.

I can offer no useful advice on teaching unfamiliar disciplines at a distance. Nor would I dare to offer any thoughts on the technology of distancing beyond Talk to the experts. My husband and I did an hour-long two-on-one with St. Olafs amazing Instructional Technologist for Digital Media Ezra Plemons and while I am sure we will forget the details of all he taught us about Google Chats and Panopto, I am unafraid to tackle some technology and I am confident that when I run into problems, there are people to help me solve it. Where I have been centering my 3 a.m. awakeness is on this question: How can I transition the humanness of my classes to distance learning?

Where I have been centering my 3 a.m. awakeness is on this question: How can I transition the humanness of my classes to distance learning?

The largest course I took at Berkeley had 700 students in it. The prof used a microphone and stood on a stage. Occasionally, in this pre-PowerPoint era, there were old-fashioned slides or a short film. Many students didnt attend class on a regular basis because they bought the lecture notes that summarized each days lecture. There were no papers, just exams graded by teaching assistants. A lot of my friends took this class during different terms and we just passed around the books and notes. One term, the instructor died unexpectedly and another stepped in and delivered more or less the same content, probably learning just as many student names in the process as the old prof knew which is to say, none. I can easily imagine this class going online and there being the same amount of engagement online as off.

To be fair to Berkeley, I feel I should add that my smallest class at Berkeley had 11 people in it and was taught by a renowned historian of Germany who went out of his way to get to know each of us, read drafts of our research papers, and really made us think about the elements of our discipline. We had deep conversations, each week led by a different class member. Transitioning this class to distance learning would be considerably more difficult and what would be lost would be that human interaction at the center, the prof getting us excited and engaged about the subject.

My small Berkeley class was the essence of the liberal arts; my large Berkeley class was its opposite. What I love about teaching at Olaf is doing what my Berkeley seminar professor did: creating a class as a community. Most days, I like to think that what happens in the classroom results in more shared understanding of a topic than anyone walked in the door with. Except now, we cant walk in the door.

Most days, I like to think that what happens in the classroom results in more shared understanding of a topic than anyone walked in the door with. Except now, we cant walk in the door.

So Ive been asking myself: What are the crucial elements that will make temporary distance learning consistent with a St. Olaf education and a positive experience, one where students dont fall by the wayside or give in to isolation, worry, and frustration?

At this point I want to pause and acknowledge that there will be cases where students might end up slipping by the wayside from our classes because their immediate realities are too dire. When such situations arise, I intend to immediately put aside all professorial thoughts and react as a fellow human being. I know youll all do the same. But for now I want to think about the non-emergency parts of this emergency, how to teach Olaf-style from a distance, how to bring our best selves to our virtual classrooms.

Studies show that distance learning can be a retention nightmare. An EdTalk by Dr. Rebecca Glazier that St. Olaf Professor of English and Director of Center for Innovation in the Liberal Arts (CILA) Mary Titus circulated last week talked about retention. The good news for us is that partially online courses have the best retention rates. Since weve already all logged half the semester together, we fall into that category. That means we have already established rapport and delivered personalized attention to our students, which Dr. Glazier suggests are crucial to successful distance learning. Now we just need to maintain it.

As students began to scatter and then we were asked not to teach on campus, the first thing I realized that I missed were the before-class interactions. Im one of those annoying profs hovering outside your classroom door as you finish up your class, eager to get inside, ostensibly to set up my technology, but actually because I enjoy the informal chats with the others who show up. Already I miss conversations with Jazmin about what shes brought for breakfast from the Cage, comparing California stories with Carol, and talking to Luke about primary season. In a lecture hall of 700 with a mic-ed up prof on a stage, such conversations dont happen, but for us they serve as a vital time to gauge the status of our students. Are they tired? Confused? Preoccupied about room draw? Until a few weeks ago, most were talking about spring break and now their lives, like ours, have been upended.

Granted, right now I can probably guess the mood of my classes even at a distance, but that doesnt mean we cant imagine ways of creating a little before-class informality, even asynchronously. I was thinking about posing questions that invite a bit of self-reflection about students current circumstances, like asking them about how they decide what to wear for social distancing or foods they are craving trivial things that can, but dont have to, lead anywhere beyond a little shared consciousness. The point is to create a virtual world not about the class directly, but about the community of the class. Also, I want to know what Jazmin eats for breakfast now that shes at home.

I accidentally hit on another tool Im going to use to make my distance classes meaningful, something Id call Olaf-izing. During the moment when the first people were departing campus, I reimagined a class that was supposed to be about early-1960s student activism to accommodate students who were leaving as well as those who were still around. I turned my class loose on the digitized early-1960s St. Olaf yearbooks and asked students to sleuth out change and continuity on the Hill. I asked them to assess such things as what seemed to be important to the community (their answers: sports, religion, and music), what they noticed about gender and race (lots of activities designed to pair up men and women, only occasional students of color but signs, based on visitors, performance, and some extracurriculars, of attempts at diversity), and if they saw any signs of the beginning of change (more informality, more individuality, beards and folk singers).

Some of my class did the project collaboratively in class and those who couldnt come to class did it on their own. For 55 minutes my students were rowdy and engaged, shouting out observations and sharing finds. It was a great moment. I just finished reading the on-your-own worksheets and more than one came with a note attached that read, This was fun!

Digitized yearbooks have just become a thread in my class. My students will be revisiting yearbooks in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s and, yes, PDA, theyll be looking for you. I have found a way to create continuity, build skills, and help keep a group of first-year students bonded to the college and one another.

Digitized yearbooks have just become a thread in my class. My students will be revisiting yearbooks in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s and, yes, PDA, theyll be looking for you. I have found a way to create continuity, build skills, and help keep a group of first-year students bonded to the college and one another.

Consider this page from the 1962 Viking:

Engaging, is it not?

Granted, not all classes can make use of the specifically Olaf digitized resources, but there are lessons for humanists here, the same truth that I understand explains the popularity of Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, the Bachelor, and Star Wars: immersion into a new, fully-realized world. Immersion engages us. Its escapism, but, over time and with study, we come to see patterns and understand conventions, the social rules and norms. We become experts at those worlds and we like to talk to other experts about them. So much of the humanities plunges us into these fully-realized worlds, whether they be fictional, historical, philosophical, or rooted in another culture.

Im going to keep immersion as a concept in my head as I redesign my classes, adding exercises that take students into sources that let them explore those worlds, turning them into active learners, and making sure they have opportunities to talk to one another about them. Yes, I will still have to post some mini-lectures and PowerPoints, but I want my students immersed in some worlds of the past.

As it turns out, immersion into worlds of the past has been an implicit part of my classes all along. Following our transition, one class will be immersed in Tim OBriens famous novel about American soldiers in Vietnam, The Things They Carried, and the other will be reading Cheap Amusements by Kathy Peiss, which is subtitled Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York. Until this moment, I never thought of either one as an immersive experience into history rather than a text. Now, though, Im finding this realization a very reassuring connection between the classes Im letting go of and the ones Im getting ready to teach.

My role model has become my high school physics teacher, Mr. MacRae. Anybody who knows me might be a little surprised to discover I loved high school physics and briefly entertained majoring in it until I realized what I actually loved was less physics than Mr. MacRaes teaching style. He gave us challenges and sent us out to solve them, which, having logged a lot of Big Bang Theory episodes now, I realize is probably the way experimental physics works, designing experiments to answer challenges or questions. Problem-solving, I believe, ought to pair well with immersion into sources because its early questions, at least in my field, are what sources will I use and how will I read the data? Applied critical thinking. Its exactly what my class did with the yearbooks: use their familiarity with a type of source and then read them from a different cultural perspective. The last question on my yearbook worksheet read What surprised you the most about these yearbooks? and the answers ranged from how much was familiar to how different the world was then, because the answer always is, both familiar and different. We walk that line now, between familiar and different.

When I think about walking the line between familiarity and difference, I realize that my classes need my essential Kutulas-ness for continuity and I need to find ways of converting that essence to changed circumstances. I want my strengths and my quirks to carry through to my students, to reassure them and throw them no curveballs at a stressful time for us all. So, professor, know thyself. I know my students expect a lot of pop cultural content (I already sent them lists of relevant feature films they might watch over break), they have learned to tolerate my propensity for weird assignments and my family stories, and they know Im likely to include a deep dose of college history moving forward. Indeed, on that latter point, my U.S. womens history class just completed posters on aspects of college history relevant for Womens History Month. We were going to display them in the Crossroads, but couldnt, so Im working on a virtual display to share. They are the outcome of the summer sprint I wrote about last fall. Stay tuned.

When I think about walking the line between familiarity and difference, I realize that my classes need my essential Kutulas-ness for continuity and I need to find ways of converting that essence to changed circumstances. I want my strengths and my quirks to carry through to my students, to reassure them and throw them no curveballs at a stressful time for us all.

Before I head out to take a socially distanced walk with my family, I want to end with one thought about our teaching process: its going to change. Ordinarily, my teaching is divided into distinctive elements. There is the prep work that comes before stepping into a classroom, whether its doing the reading for the day, preparing some images or finding maps or imagining a collaborative exercise. There is the fixed time in the classroom two or three times a week, along with weekly office hours showtime, so to speak. Then there is the time devoted to evaluation, assessment, and feedback, aka grading. And, speaking of walking, I suppose there is also the mulling-over time, those free-form thinking moments when I am doing something else and have a brainstorm about something classroom-related.

As we step into our new phase, there is going to be much less classroom in the sense that we have known it because some will be synchronous and some wont. The traditional categories of prep and class and even class and feedback are going to blur. This is going to be hard for us. It is going to be even harder for students. Some of that is distance, some of that is newness, some of that is because we are preoccupied by a lot of other weighty things. We should all cut ourselves some slack. I was once a virtual guest on a mom-centric radio program and voiced the opinion that it was OK to be a good-enough mom rather than supermom. The hosts shocked silence was palpable and I was never invited back, but right now it is OK to be a good-enough professor and we should adjust our expectations of our students as well.

To me the more crucial variable is that we preserve the essence of community, collaboration, and the liberal arts. Like Rosie the Riveter, we can do it.

Judy Kutulas is a professor of history at St. Olaf College, where she teaches in the History Department and the American Studies program, along with American Conversations. She is the Boldt Family Distinguished Teaching Chair in the Humanities, charged with helping to revitalize humanities teaching and learning at the college. Read her inaugural Adventures in the New Humanities blog post here.

Read the rest here:

Adventures in the New Humanities: Transitioning the liberal arts - St. Olaf College News

Pandemics dont need passports. They travel at will and no one can stop their journey. With globalisation, the reach of pandemics has become wider and wider. History has many examples. The Black Death, arguably the most calamitous pandemic in history with a fatality count of over 200 million, took years to spread across the globe. The plague, which reached western Europe in 1347, took nearly a year to reach nearby England. Such was the case with most pandemics in the pre-globalisation days.

But when air travel became popular and with the advent of rapid globalisation of trade and culture, more people started criss-crossing the globe. The International Civil Aviation Organization tells us that the aviation industry has seen dramatic growth over the past 20 years, with the number of passengers rising from 1.5 billion in 1998 to nearly four billion in 2017, and the number is only going up. By 2037, estimates the International Air Transport Association, some 8.2 billion people will travel by air.

A joint estimate by the Brookings Institution and the United Nations says that as people continue to migrate to cities for economic opportunity, the middle class will expand and most of them will travel, particularly within the developing bloc of Brazil, Russia, India, and China (BRIC).

This means the trend of people travelling across the globe is here to stay. However, globalisation, as we know it today, has exposed people to dangers its proponents never warned, or even worried, about.

In his 1989 essay, The End of History?, political thinker Francis Fukuyama famously predicted the triumph of liberalism, which became a catalyst for globalisation and the associated liberalisation of economy. The fall of the Soviet Union, which many happily attributed to as the fall of the socialist order, and the downfall of states that leaned towards the left spectrum of ideologies, gave way to internal tumult signalling that the juggernaut of neo-liberalism was unstoppable.

This prompted policymakers across the globe to blindly embrace market-driven, private-capital oriented economic policies. Income inequalities skyrocketed in most geographies, especially in the emerging markets and the least developed bloc. In 2018, a working paper by the OECD Inequalities in emerging economies: Informing the policy dialogue on inclusive growth observed that income inequality was generally higher in emerging economies than in the most unequal OECD countries, even though there was a general reduction in poverty rates.

But even this reduction is minuscule if compared with the pace with which wealth has been accumulated by private individuals. In 2018, the number of millionaires stood at more than 22 million, according to Boston Consulting Group, and the number is expected to reach 27.6 million by 2023.

The 2009 global financial meltdown, like the 1997 East Asian crisis before it, sowed seeds of doubt in the minds of those believed that capitalism and its globalisation were flawless. The rise of inequality also translated into a mistrust for mainstream politicians and the rise of a populist anti-globalisation discourse in the US, targeted against China. The context here, of course, is of China wiping out jobs and industry in the US with unfair trade practices such as currency manipulation. This political wave is, however, Right-wing and authoritarian.

The arrival of Donald Trump and his ilk at power centres in critical geographies and their protectionist policies confirmed that globalisation was on life-support. Just a few months ago, economist Joseph Stiglitz declared that the credibility of neo-liberalisms faith in unfettered markets as the surest road to shared prosperity is on life-support these days. His essay The End of Neo-liberalism and the Rebirth of History reads like a tongue-in-cheek reply to Fukuyamas End of History. Interestingly, Stiglitzs views appeared in the same month China reported its first case of what would later be called the coronavirus.

It is even more interesting that the virus broke out in a country that is billed by many as the poster boy of reverse globalisation. In 2017, a paper called Chinas Role in the Next Phase of Globalization informed the world that with some advanced economies turning inward, a successful reset of globalisation may depend on whether China throws its considerable weight behind a new approach.

However, Covid-19, which spread across the world from China, claiming over 20,000 lives (so far) and infecting nearly five lakh people, has initiated a rethink not only on globalisation but the very foundation of the neo-liberal order. It has exposed the inability of capitalism in safeguarding public interests, especially general healthcare requirements in countries such as Italy, Spain and the US, where the coronavirus has killed thousands.

The fear and panic triggered by the virus has wreaked havoc in global financial markets. Financial Times says there is a potential warning signal of global recession. The newspapers editorial is, interestingly, titled Coronavirus has put globalisation into reverse...The spread of the epidemic amounts to an experiment in deglobalisation. The global public response towards the coronavirus pandemic reaffirms such concerns.

There is now general consensus among the liberal intelligentsia that Covid-19 has given rise to four crucial learnings. The first is the failure of private capital and privatised medical care in ensuring proper healthcare for the public at large. Second, companies cannot take comfort in the fact that poverty, unhygienic conditions or precarious health infrastructure in one remote country is none of their business. A virus in China, thanks to an intricately globalised world, can hit plants and supply chains in next to no time; so, it is in the best interest of corporates everywhere that the host country has basic healthcare facilities to test and tackle such diseases. This, in fact, is the globalisation of responsibility, and not globalisation for the sake of profits alone.

The third factor is that socialist regimes are better positioned to respond to emergencies. Their ability to channelise massive resources for fighting a pandemic is something capitalist regimes cannot easily match.

The fourth and most crucial insight is that public problems require public solutions. By default, neo-liberalism (a crony capitalist state allowing unregulated private enterprise) simply cannot offer answers. The future, especially considering the collapse of globalisation, lies in ensuring a world order where resources are distributed in a much more egalitarian way and are controlled by the public.

Any demand for more state-control of resources and their equitable distribution by controlling the unbridled growth of private capital may still invite a cluster of frowns from the fans of neo-liberalism and capitalism. But as we have been learning the hard way, we are not left with too many options. Spains nationalised private hospitals are just one of the many starting points in this change.

Read the original post:

Covid-19: Is this the end of neo-liberalism? - BusinessLine

In response to a reporter's question on Monday, Ontario Premier Doug Ford passed on a chance to take a shot at the federal government over the carbon tax and instead thankedPrime Minister Justin Trudeau for his pandemic measuresand called Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland "an absolute champion."

Physical distancing may be keeping people apart to keep the novel coronavirus at bay, but in Canadasomepartisan divisions seem to be eroding as politicians of all stripes work together to fight the pandemic.

Those divisionshaven't gone away entirely, of course. Polls suggestthat Liberal voters are much more likely than Conservative votersto approve of how Trudeau has handled the pandemic.

But the splitisn't as stark as it has been on other issues in less challenging times. And the split is also significantly smaller here than it is between ideological opponents in the United States.

On average, Trudeau and his government received 63 per cent public approval of their handling of the health emergency in three recent surveys by EKOS Research, the Angus Reid Institute (ARI) and the Innovative Research Group (IRG).

Among people who voted Liberal in the last election, or would vote for the party today, Trudeau and his government stood at 88 per cent approval. That's not an unusual level of approvalfor a political leader among supporters of his or her own party.

Much less typical is the amount of support the federal government is getting for its management of the novelcoronavirus outbreak among its political opponents. That supportaveraged 69 per cent among New Democrats, 45 per cent among Conservatives and 33 per cent among Bloc Qubcois voters.

So support for the federal government's performance is an average of 43 percentage points higher among Liberals than it is among Conservatives. The differenceis 19 points for New Democrat supporters and 55 points forBloc supporters.

That margin between Liberals and Conservatives seems rather wide until youput it in context.ARI's final pre-election poll last October found Liberals were more likely than Conservatives to say they had a favourable opinion of Trudeauby an 81-point margin.

By comparison, partisanship is a far more significant source of divisionin the United States.

Trump's job approval rating on thepandemic averaged 46 per cent in two recent polls by Pew Research and YouGov. Among Republicans, he averaged 83.5 per cent approval. Among Democrats, it was just 17.5 per cent.

That puts the partisan division between Republicans and Democrats in the United States at 66 percentage points greater than any partisan split in Canada.

The size of that splitstands out not only in comparison with Canada, but with other countries as well. In the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Boris Johnson's job rating on the pandemic averaged 68.5 per cent in two recent polls by Opinium and Number Cruncher/Bloomberg.

Among his own Conservative supporters, Johnson averaged 88.5 per cent. Among people who said they would vote Labour, the main opposition party in the U.K., his approval averaged 47.5 per cent.The margin between Conservative and Labour voters was 41 points similar in size to the partisan divisionin Canada.

With all three countries imposing restrictions on their citizens in order to stem the spread of the novelcoronavirus, these partisan divisions could affect how seriously people takethese measures.

The messaging coming from U.S. President Donald Trumpon the outbreak has been inconsistent. He has tweeted that the country couldn't let "the cure be worse than the problem itself" and voiced the hope that life and commerce could return to normal by Easter. He reversed course over the weekend, leaving the physical distancing guidelines in place until the end of April.

But the YouGov poll shows that Republicans had heard the earlier message loud and clear. They were nearly three times as likely as Democrats to say the threat posed by COVID-19 was being exaggerated and were half as likely to say they were "very worried."

Just 16 per cent of Democrats said COVID-19 was as dangerous as, or less dangerous than,the seasonal flu. That number was 43 per cent among Republicans.

By double-digit margins, Americans who voted for Trump in the 2016 presidential election were less likely than those who voted for Hillary Clinton to say they were washing their hands more frequently or avoiding crowded public places.

While this kind of partisan division is present in Canada, it does not appear to pose the same potential health risk.

ARI found that Conservatives made up a disproportionate number of those who think the COVID-19 threat is overblownbut polling over time shows that those holding that opinion are makingup less and less of the population. Overall, ARI found that Conservatives were just as likely as Liberals to say they were washing their hands more frequently, whilethe vast majority of them said they believethe outbreak poses a serious threat.

EKOS found Conservatives were more likely than Liberals to say the federal government's measures haven't gone far enough and were just as likely to say they had gone too far (for both Liberal and Conservative supporters, the percentage of those polled saying pandemic measures had overreached was less than six per cent).

The widest partisan divisionin Canada between Liberal and Bloc voters has even fewer health implications. ARI found no difference at all between how seriously Liberal and Bloc voters are taking the threat or how they'rechanging their behaviour and EKOS found Bloc supporters to be even less likely than Liberals to argue that the measures have gone too far.

For the most part (and particularly when comparedto our neighbours to the south)it seems that Canadians are not letting politics get much in the way of efforts to slow the spread of COVID-19. The fact that formerly implacable foes like Doug Ford and Justin Trudeau can put their differences aside is perhaps the clearest sign of all.

Read the original here:

Partisan divisions on COVID-19 exist in Canada but they're deeper and more dangerous in the U.S. - CBC.ca

PUBLISHED: 10:36 28 March 2020 | UPDATED: 10:39 28 March 2020

Matt Withers

Mark Pack is co-leader of the Liberal Democrats following Jo Swinson's departure from parliament. Picture: markpack.org.uk

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Heres one for an episode of Pointless in 10 years time: name any leader of the Liberal Democrats, permanent or acting.

No-one, I suggest to him politely, is likely to name Mark Pack. But the Lib Dems constitution says that, upon a leader losing their Commons seat, the job of acting co-leader is shared between the deputy and party president meaning that Pack assumed the co-leadership with Ed Davey when taking over the latter role at the start of January, Jo Swinson having been ejected from parliament.

Absolutely, yeah, he says of being a star answer. I think me and Sal Brinton [his predecessor as president who briefly held the co-leadership] will be the two obscure answers.

Pack won the presidency by beating MP Christine Jardine in a poll of members. Swinson losing her seat was a shock, he says.

We meet in a Westminster pub. This was before the enormity of the coronavirus had hit, and a day after the party should have just finished their now-cancelled spring conference (in a very Lib Dem way, such a decision required a two-and-a-half hour conference call).

The pandemic has thrown the partys leadership election plans up in the air. A race should be under way now, concluding in early summer. But if nothing else, it has given it longer to review its poor general election result last year. A formal independent review is under way.

Pack, as president, is careful not to give too many personal views in the interim but he clearly does not want the result to be attributed, as many have, to the controversial policy of unilaterally revoking Article 50.

I think quite rightly weve taken the decision, pre-coronavirus, that we need to do things like review the election and the lessons from last year properly before we get stuck into a leadership election campaign, he says.

There were certain decisions that were made and certain things that happened that were very specific to that election.

So there are some broader questions. If you look at the trajectory of the partys opinion poll ratings last year, there wasnt a sudden downturn at the point which the party adopted the policy of revoking Article 50.

Even though that was at the party conference, it got widespread media coverage and, if anything, you could argue theres a bit of an uptick in the partys poll ratings around that conference.

So whilst its undoubtedly the case that there was a lot of negative feedback on the doorstep, given it wasnt the one dramatic turning point in the partys opinion poll ratings in the past year, its very unlikely, really, that you could fully explain what happened to the party simply on well, lets blame that.

And therefore what we need to understand is what else happened, because what else happened may well be things that are very applicable to future elections.

Another factor may well be a very strong traditional two-party squeeze on the Lib Dems, he says. We cant simply say, OK, it was all to do with one policy decision we made in the past, lets not do that again.

If theres a two-party squeeze problem we need to come up with better ways of overcoming that in future contests.

So where now for the Liberal Democrats? Where now for a party that has defined itself, at least in the public eye, in its opposition to Brexit a Brexit the public appear to believe has been got done?

Send your letters for publication to The New European by emailing letters@theneweuropean.co.uk and pick up an edition each Thursday for more comment and analysis. Find your nearest stockist here or subscribe for just 20. You can also join our readers' Facebook group to keep the discussion and debate going with thousands of fellow pro-Europeans.

Politically how Brexit will play out is a very big unknown, still, says Pack.

And it may be therefore an issue that, yes, is a long-run issue that the Lib Dems will return to at some point in the future as a major plank of our platform, or it might be that its an issue that becomes politically salient much more quickly.

But one thing, actually, that coronavirus illustrates, is questions about how best to cooperate internationally and how best to provide high-quality public services and which, in a way, are part of what underpinned the Brexit debate those are still very relevant issues. But an immediate Rejoin position, one suspects, is not on the agenda.

Currently standing to replace Pack are Davey, who lost out to Swinson last time, and Layla Moran. Daisy Cooper, a new MP but widely known in the party, may throw her hat in the ring.

With the greatest of respect to their entire parliamentary party (there are now 11 MPs), I suggest, there is no Macron among them.

Obviously I think that there are several Macrons that the party members will have to choose from, says Pack.

Our number of votes went up by half. So there is some good news in there, and some really good individual constituency results.

That said, our overall level of support is still at half of where it used to be. And obviously the number of MPs massively smaller. So although first-past-the-post played us a tough hand, it would be foolish for us to simply blame the outside world, in that sense.

You know, theres clearly a lot that we didnt get right and we need to figure out what went wrong, why it went wrong and how to get more of it right in the future.

One relative triumph is the size of the partys membership which, with its unambiguous stance on Brexit, has all but trebled since its low point in 2014. But more than one Lib Dem has said to me that the large new influx joined on a single issue and most have not got involved. Pack differs.

I think I would politely disagree with my colleagues there, he says.

The two things that have struck me about the influx of members into the party... the first is that, attitudinally, the people who have joined are very similar to those of longer-standing members. The views on things like public service, the economy, where people place themselves on the left-right spectrum etc the huge influx of people are very much in tune with longer-standing members like myself. And thats very different from the Labour Partys experience. Its also very different from the Iraq War, he says, where we did pick up a whole load of anti-Labour, anti-Iraq War, but not very liberal members.

The other is and this is particularly from my experience of going round a lot of local party events and regional events and so on in the last year, especially in the run-up to the presidential election is just how many of them have got involved in the party. If three out of 10 members get involved, thats probably little different to 20 years ago, he says.

He has a book out, Bad News: What The Headlines Dont Tell Us, in which Pack, not a journalist, attempts to walk the layman through understanding the way news is written. Its very readable, admirably unpreachy and a rarity, a book by somebody in (relatively) frontline British politics.

Pack agrees (on the last point). If we were in US politics, there would currently be a whole batch of Liberal Democrat MPs who would just have had books out setting out their stall, he says.

And I think thats a real shame. There is a real virtue in writing in terms of actually helping coalesce your own thoughts, even if no-one else reads the book.

One of the things that really strikes me very often when reading news stories is theres a whole load of semi-code in a story which once you know how to decode can make it much easier to figure out what the truth is, and whether you know whether to trust the story or not.

To give you an example: quote marks. So normally a quote mark around some words in a news story is a sign of quality. It means that youre directly quoting the words that somebody has said. And that feels like, a) youre directly quotingthem and b) it means youve actually spoken to them. So quote marks are a good sign.

Except in headlines. Because in headlines they mean the exact opposite. In headlines they mean that the news outlet has decided its not quite willing to stand by the words in the headline. So the quote marks are basically there as shorthand for somebody has said, but were not quite sure if were going to say if thats quite true or not. And so they mean diametrically opposite things.

A communications consultant by profession with a PhD in 19th century elections (which, given the way election law still operates in this country turned out to be a surprisingly vocational PhD), the 49-year-old Londoner is well-known in the party as both a blogger and for running the partys digital and data operations in two elections.

But unusually, apart from two long-shots at York Council many years ago, hes never sought to stand for office outside the party.

Being elected to public office has never particularly appealed to me, he admits.

And part of that was my experience once, while campaigning with Shirley Williams many, many years ago it was actually when I was in York and she was travelling between different target seats and so she had about half an hour between changing trains.

And so she agreed to a little bit of walking up to members of the public, which she was really good about. And I remember being struck by her enthusiasm for bounding up to complete strangers and talking to them about their medical ailments. And I think the very best of public office holders have a little bit of that about them. And thats just not me. Im more interested in the backroom side of things.

Remember the name. For Pointless, at least.

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Liberal Democrat co-leader Mark Pack on the party's future, Brexit and coronavirus | Latest Brexit news and top stories - The New European