I doubt anyone will be surprised to hear that.

Right now I am a little bit.

I worry, as you have put it eloquently is omnidirectional.

But there are also pieces of this that I do find encouraging, so I feel like it's probably more productive to talk about that stuff right now.

There are five things that I'm finding encouraging right now.

One.

If there is ever a time in which we in America will recognize that having most people get their health care through their employer is arbitrary and cruel and ludicrous, this is the moment.

Second, maybe we are realizing how much work goes into making the world function.

Oh, maybe after we're done with this that we will appreciate the work done by other people, Maur.

Whether we are currently being asked to live without it.

Like, as is the case with many teachers and child care workers, or if we have been asked to imagine what the world would be like without their work and how much we very much do not want to live in that world heard thing.

We're currently, at least for now, listening toe expertise.

A lot of people who found it like good marketing or politically useful Thio say that like a gut feeling of a regular person is equal to or superior two decades worth of expertise are now suddenly very glad that the expertise exist.

Number four among the underappreciated institutions that are feeling really necessary right now is just government.

And I'm not saying that like all governments have done this well.

I'm saying that government is very necessary in this moment and there are a lot of people who spend a lot of time trying to cut and cut and cut government who are suddenly very, very quiet.

Government responses.

Being bad isn't because government is bad.

It's because government has been hobbled by years and years of people saying that it's not necessary and attacking it and also having this war on expertise that has forced people who are experts out of positions in public service and last.

Right now we are acting as a society.

We tell a really individualist story about how things get done in America.

Individualism is a good story, it's empowering and I think that it does a lot of good.

It's not really a true story As the saying goes, we live in a society, and right now we know it kind of just realized this wall is making this video.

But I think we're in the middle off the largest collective intentional action that has ever been taken.

I am not saying this is good.

This is bad not just the illness and the loss of life, but the inequity of how it is hitting and will hit us, not just the economic fallout, but again that's gonna hit very unevenly.

And I'm worried that in a moment that calls for maybe even requires a lot of international cooperation, this is gonna make us even more nationalistic.

And again, I'm worried that we're trusting experts right now, but a little bit down the road when we're dealing with the repercussions of this and people might be saying like, Oh, it wasn't as bad as they said it was gonna be.

Those messages will work even if right now these experts and their policies are saving thousands of lives a day because here's the thing about having strong opinions and no expertise, you always get to pretend that you're right, because your advice never gets taken And so you can say that you were right.

You were right.

You were right because there's no one running the simulation where we did it your way and thank the Lord.

My worries are in every direction, but I do not have less faith in humanity now than I did three months ago.

And that's something with that in mind, like with the knowledge of my own need for it.

I've decided to do a little project.

It's a weekly, I think, 20 minute podcast called Cove.

It sucks.

People don't where I talked to some people who are trying to make this better.

The first interview, for example, is with a guy who just this week got his first injection of on Experimental Cove it 19 vaccine.

He's one of 45 people in the world in that trial, and he is surprisingly chill about it.

Links in the description.