In the first employment report after social distancing measures had taken hold in many US states, the Department of Labor announced that 3.3 million people had filed jobless claims. A week later, in the first week in April, an additional 6.6 million claims came in—almost unfathomable compared with the previous record of 695,000, which was…

Ten years ago, I ran away to sea. My stepfather, who had aggressive dementia, had been sent to a secure unit. I had a book to write. So once I felt sure enough about my mother’s safety, I departed for 9,288 nautical miles on a container ship, the Maersk Kendal. Its journey from Europe to Asia would take five weeks, and I would be the only passenger. This was no cruise ship: there would...

In this episode of Radio Corona, on April 9 at 4 pm ET, Gideon Lichfield, editor in chief of MIT Technology Review, speaks with Craig Spencer, director of global health in emergency medicine at Columbia University’s Irving Medical Center. They will be discussing what it’s like to treat patients with covid-19 in New York City, hospital preparedness, and pandemic response.  Spencer is an...

The news: Facebook has launched a new app called Tuned, which lets couples message each other, swap music, share their mood, keep a daily shared diary, and send photos and voice memos. It can be used without a Facebook profile and is pitched as a “private space” for couples to connect. However, it isn’t end-to-end encrypted and has the same privacy police as Facebook, so the company can...

In one of the first such efforts in the country, San Francisco is assembling a task force to interview and trace the interactions of every person who tests positive for covid-19. The goal is to find who gave it to them and whom they may have given it to, in the hopes of isolating infected patients, alerting those potentially exposed and ultimately halting transmissions. The Department of Public...