MARCH 10 WAS JUST a few days ago, but it already feels very far away— before the NBA season was suspended, Tom Hanks tested positive, and a national state of emergency was declared. On that date, Think Global Health, which is a project of the Council on Foreign Relations, produced a report that includes a data table that tells us how many people in the United States might ultimately die from covid-19 under a variety of different assumptions. In the top-left corner, the table shows a scenario where 0.1 percent of people in the U.S. contract the virus and 0.1 percent of those die from it, leading to a bit more than 300 deaths. That’s the best corner of the table. We like that corner. What we don’t like is the bottom-right corner of the table, which contemplates 50 percent of the American population contracting the virus and one percent of those dying. If we end up in that corner, about 1.6 million of us will die.
This story is from the March 16-29, 2020 edition of New York magazine.
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This story is from the March 16-29, 2020 edition of New York magazine.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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THE BEST ART SHOWS OF THE YEAR
IN NOVEMBER, Sotheby's made history when it sold for a million bucks a painting made by artificial intelligence. Ai-Da, \"the first humanoid robot artist to have an artwork auctioned by a major auction house,\" created a portrait of Alan Turing that resembles nothing more than a bad Francis Bacon rip-off. Still, the auction house described the sale as \"a new frontier in the global art market.\"
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