China's Plan To Capitalize On The Oil Price War. By Haley Zaremba

China is hurting. The entire global economy has taken a huge hit from the spread of the coronavirus, but so far none have been hit as hard as China, where the COVID-19 pandemic originated. The world’s second-largest economy came to a grinding halt back in January, leading to a historic economic slump for the nation that has seen nothing but growth in recent years. 

Last month Business Day reported that “China suffered an even deeper slump than analysts feared at the start of the year” as “industrial output plunged 13.5% in January and February from a year earlier, retail sales fell 20.5%, and fixed-asset investment dropped 24.5%. The unemployment rate jumped to a record 6.2% in February, when the outbreak worsened and much of the economy was shut down.”

That has major implications for all of us. “China Stopped Its Economy to Tackle Coronavirus. Now the World Suffers,” proclaimed a New York Times headline early last month. “If the coronavirus plunges the world into recession, China will be the biggest reason,” the article reads. To make matters worse, for many economists, the looming recession seems to be a matter of when, not if. “Economists caution that [China’s] shutdown threatens the economies of Japan, South Korea, Europe and even the United States. Huge corporations like Apple, Microsoft, AB InBev and Pfizer have already seen an impact,” and “even those warnings understate China’s reach.”

The oil industry is no exception. As China’s economy halted and the coronavirus continued to spread, oil demand plummeted. This led to a disagreement between the OPEC+ members of Saudi Arabia and Russia, which resulted in a broken alliance and then an all-out oil price war. Now. we’re suffering from one of the biggest oil price crashes in history, the Permian Basin is being rocked by tens of thousands of layoffs, and the first major United States shale company has already succumbed to the crisis and declared bankruptcy this week. And that company, Whiting Petroleum, “is just the ‘first domino’ to fall in US shale wipeout,” according to CNBC. 

And now, with crude oil prices through the floor, the Chinese economy has emerged from its slumber to buy it all up. “China is moving forward with plans to buy up oil for its emergency reserves after an epic price crash,” Bloomberg reported this week. “The world’s biggest importer is taking advantage of a 60 percent plunge this year to snatch up cheaper barrels for its stockpiles, a source of considerable speculation in the oil market because of the government’s reluctance to release information about their formation, size or use.”

The country intends to buy up so much crude oil in the coming weeks that they won’t have enough state-owned storage to hold it all. According to interviews with industry insiders who asked Bloomberg to maintain their anonymity, Beijing has plans to use commercial storage space as well, while also reaching out to the private sector to encourage them to fill their own tanks with cheap gas as part of a nationwide contingency plan.

“The initial target is to hold government stockpiles equivalent to 90 days of net imports, which could eventually be expanded to as much as 180 days when including commercial reserves,” the Bloomberg report continues. “Ninety days of net crude imports is about 900 million barrels [...]. While the current size of China’s state reserves is unknown, and Beijing could use a different method for calculating net imports, oil traders and analysts estimated it could amount to China buying an additional 80 million to 100 million barrels over the course of the year.”

This could be great news for the global oil market, which desperately needs to sell off some of the glut that brought oil prices so low in the first place, but likely will not make enough of a dent to correct the problem any time soon. 

Earth Is Vibrating Substantially Less Because There's So Little Activity Right Now

Flights are grounded. Fewer trains are running. Rush hour is gone. The world - particularly in cities - is looking drastically different during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

According to seismologists, that drastic reduction in human hustle and bustle is causing the Earth to move substantially less. The planet is 'standing still'.

Thomas Lecocq, a geologist and seismologist at the Royal Observatory in Belgium, noticed that the country's capital Brussels is experiencing a 30 to 50 percent reduction in ambient seismic noise since the lockdowns began, as CNN reports.

That means data collected by seismologists is becoming more accurate, capable of detecting even the smallest tremors - despite the fact that many of the scientific instruments in use today are near city centers.

"You'll get a signal with less noise on top, allowing you to squeeze a little more information out of those events," Andy Frassetto, a seismologist at the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology in Washington DC told Nature.

Researchers in Los Angeles and in West London, UK noticed a similar trend.

But seismologists collecting data from remote stations far away from human civilization might not see a change at all, according to Nature.

Regardless, a significant drop in seismic noise also shows that we're at least doing one thing right during the current pandemic: staying in the safety of our own homes as we wait for the virus to run its course.

How Four Countries Are Handling This Outbreak Britain recalibrates, while China takes a victory lap. Hungary sinks toward authoritarianism, and Brazil becomes a center of denialism. by CAROLINE MIMBS NYCE

“Epidemics, like disasters, have a way of revealing underlying truths about the societies they impact.”

Five weeks have passed since Anne Applebaum, our Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, first wrote that sentence. But the truths she seeded back in early March are just beginning to flower.

This outbreak is showing the deeper tendencies of governments around the world. Below are glimpses into how four different countries—Britain, Hungary, China, and Brazil—are dealing with this outbreak, and what their responses mean.  

Britain pulls back from the edge.

This weekend marked a turning point, Tom McTague writes from London. “These were 48 hours in which Britain reasserted its foundational stability, and in doing so made real change more likely once this is all over.”

This retooling took the form of three events: (1) the election of a new Labour Party leader to replace Jeremy Corbyn; (2) a rare address from the queen; followed by (3) news of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s hospitalization (he’s since been moved to intensive care).

Hungary falls to authoritarianism.

Last week, the country’s parliament, controlled by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s party, voted to give Orbán extraordinary emergency powers, including “the right to rule by decree—indefinitely.” The EU, meanwhile, stands by largely powerless to curb the country’s democratic backslide.

The pandemic, Anne argues, was merely an excuse for the power grab.

China leans in to propaganda.

Accusations of information suppression and a cover-up have dogged Beijing since the early weeks of the outbreak. Still, the government is now hailing itself as a world leader in pandemic response. “Never mind that China put the world in this predicament in the first place,” my colleague Kathy Gilsinan writes, “[President] Xi is ready to declare victory at home.”

Nadia Schadlow, a former deputy national-security adviser argues that critics should consider the possibility that President Donald Trump was right about China.

Brazil is caught in a political tug-of-war.

President Jair Bolsonaro downplays the virus as a “little flu”—insisting that the economic fallout would be even more deadly. Bolsonaro’s stance has emboldened other hardliners, “but it has also left him isolated and besieged,” Uri Friedman writes.

Local officials, and pot-banging protestors, are pushing back. The governor of Rio de Janeiro, Wilson Witzel, just won a court battle against Bolsonaro, allowing Witzel to proceed with airport and road closures over the federal government’s objections.

Why People Are Confessing Their Crushes Right Now Feelings, like most everything else, become more urgent during a pandemic. by ASHLEY FETTERS

A little more than a month ago, Kesse, 29, traveled to visit a dear friend of his, and as they hung out together, he realized that he had developed feelings for her. At the time, he decided to keep his feelings a secret. But after they parted and he went home to Germany, she informed him that she’d come down with COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus that has rapidly infected more than 1 million people across the globe. Kesse immediately became “incredibly worried for her life and safety”—and then he, too, began to feel unwell. He has been recovering for the past two weeks from an illness he believes to be COVID-19, though he says he’s been unable to get a test.

Kesse eventually went to the emergency room, and “seeing so many people [there] in pain, some of them dying, had an impact on me,” he told me. He’d lost loved ones before, and began to worry that if he succumbed to the virus, his friend would never know how much she meant to him. “Being ill and seeing people in a worse state than myself made me decide I didn’t want to waste time pretending not to have the feelings I have.” The next day, he told her he liked her.

As the COVID-19 pandemic has rapidly, dramatically altered daily life all over the globe, this has been one of the more surprising effects: Thanks to a potent mixture of anxiety, boredom, loneliness, and cabin fever–induced recklessness, people are revealing their feelings to the objects of their affection—“shooting their shot,” so to speak. In some cases, this is because social-distancing measures have forced most interactions to take place remotely or virtually, lowering the stakes considerably; in other cases, like Kesse’s, it’s because the stakes are now higher than ever. In just about every case, though, it’s safe to say that either the coronavirus pandemic or the protocols that have come with it have changed the trajectory of the relationship between the two people in question.

None of this surprises Sandra Langeslag, who studies the neuroscience of emotion and motivation at the University of Missouri at St. Louis. Of course people’s romantic impulses are going somewhat haywire under the circumstances. For one thing, people who are suddenly cooped up at home without anywhere to go or anyone to see “may just have more time to think about another person, and are then more likely to act on it,” she told me.

Some people have come to the conclusion that confessing their feelings will be easier when the object of those feelings is far away—and out of range of any awkward encounters if things go badly. Marin, a 19-year-old college student, had been eyeing a classmate of hers all semester, and in mid-March, when it was announced that students would all be dismissed from campus for the rest of the year because of coronavirus concerns, she texted her crush to ask if he’d like to hang out and get to know each other better. If he said yes, they could get together in the next 48 hours, before everyone went home—and if he said no, she reasoned, they didn’t have the same major, so she’d probably never have to see the guy again.

Initially, Marin told me, her crush opened the text and didn’t respond. (Marin, like most people I interviewed for this story, requested to be referred to by just her first name, for fear of being forever linked online to an embarrassing story. As she put it, “Nobody wants their last name included in a story about them getting left on read!”) Hours later, he texted back: Who is this? “It was pretty rough,” she said. Still, she told me, she’s glad she said something. Although her tale of bravery came to a pretty humbling denouement, if she hadn’t spoken up, she might still be hung up on what might have been.

Marin’s text to her classmate. (Courtesy of Marin)

Others have been inspired to profess their feelings not because quarantine is keeping them safe from any uncomfortable run-ins, but because of the deadly threat of the coronavirus itself. “Because this is an emergency situation, people may think about what really matters to them in life,” Langeslag said.

Savanah, 20, told me that she first contemplated telling her crush she liked him when it came up as a joke: Offhandedly, she’d remarked to a friend that maybe it was time to tell her crush that she liked him—so that if, God forbid, the virus took her or her crush, “at least I’d had the nerve to tell him.” As she thought about it, though, the idea became less and less ridiculous. Savanah and this guy were good friends, and because she’d traveled a few states away to shelter in place with her family, he was far away now. She missed him. She had no way of knowing when she would see him again. Why not now? She composed a text—“Okay so before the coronavirus possibly wipes us out, I guess I’ll tell you that I may or may not have this little crush on you or whatever, lol”—and sent it.

The emotional side effects of the coronavirus pandemic can, it’s worth noting, create ideal conditions for something researchers like Langeslag call “misattribution of arousal.” Misattribution of arousal, she explained, is when people mistake emotional or physical stimulation for sexual or romantic stimulation. “Being in an emergency situation, or any situation that makes you very emotional, could lead you to then attribute that resulting arousal to someone else, leading you to find that person more attractive,” Langeslag said. For instance, feeling anxious or frightened because a pandemic is raging across the globe could lead someone to mistake their heightened feelings about the chaos unfolding outside for heightened feelings toward someone they like—and then feel the need to confess them.

While absence and worry seem to make the heart grow fonder, so do close quarters: Adam, 30, quite literally can’t escape his feelings for his roommate, with whom he’s quarantined in a two-man apartment.

Adam, who chatted with me on Google Hangouts so that his roommate wouldn’t overhear a phone conversation, said he’d started having fond feelings a few months ago, but things had really escalated since both his and his roommate’s offices had closed. “Once you start spending 8 to 12 hours a day together, it kinda forces you to confront the things you can put off with work,” he wrote. Once they were housebound, Adam said, they quickly fell into an everyday routine—working in close quarters, checking in on each other during breaks, taking walks together. This felt so much like a relationship that Adam found himself accidentally describing himself and his roommate as though they were already an item. “I’ve definitely slipped the ‘we’ word [into conversation] a few times,” he told me.

When we spoke, Adam hadn’t yet confessed his feelings to his roommate, but said he was leaning toward telling him. Still, he didn’t want to throw a functional and happy roommate situation—already difficult to come by, especially under the current stressful conditions—into jeopardy. “It’s very emotionally confusing,” he said.

Indeed, every big leap of faith these days will mean new realities to face once everyone emerges on the other side. Adam could come out of self-isolation weeks or months from now in a new relationship—or in need of a new roommate. Kesse, who told me his friend has recovered fully but has been somewhat distant since he confessed his feelings, may need to figure out where his long-standing friendship will go from here. Marin, when she returns to school, will have one new person to avoid on campus, but a pretty good story for anybody who wants to hear one.

And Savanah—who told me her friend seemed appreciative of her just-in-case declaration when he responded, “You never know”—could emerge from all of this with a friendship that’s about to become something more. For the many people who have chosen the chaotic present moment to make their feelings known, that thin, shining strand of hope might be enough to pull them through.

What the Racial Data Show The pandemic seems to be hitting people of color the hardest. by Ibram X. Kendi

I dread every time my partner leaves our home. I dread every time Sadiqa marches to the front lines of the war against COVID-19—the emergency department. I dread every time she comes home and removes her personal protective equipment.

Sadiqa is worried like a soldier in a total war, seeing so many medical providers going down, seeing so many patients going down. I am worried about her health—and my own, as someone surviving metastatic cancer. I am worried about all medical providers, all Americans who have compromised immune systems, all Americans who are infected, all Americans who are healthy and want to remain that way.

As a student of health disparities, I am especially worried about the well-being of people of color. And people of color appear to be especially worried about their own well-being. Black people, at 46 percent, and Latinos, at 39 percent, are about twice as likely as white people, at 21 percent, to view the coronavirus as a major threat to their health.

Last week, I called for states, counties, and private labs to begin reporting the racial demographics of the people who are being tested for, infected with, hospitalized with, or killed by COVID-19. In the absence of that information, I can’t tell for sure whether black and Latino Americans should be more worried than white Americans. Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Ayanna Pressley recently urged the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to lead the effort to collect and publish such data. Local leaders and editorial boards are pushing for the same.

The pressure is on. The pressure will not relent.

Even so, it could be some time before all or even most of the relevant agencies begin releasing racial data. But public-health officials and medical providers like my wife are fighting COVID-19 now. People are sick now. People are on ventilators now. People are dying now. We need more racial data now. We need to assess the data we have right now.

When I examine the trickle of data from states and counties on coronavirus patients, when I scrutinize the racial demographics of hot spots, when I study the survey data, it sure seems to me as if the viral pandemic is hitting people of color the hardest.

Time and again, a state or county releases racial data. Time and again, those numbers reveal a sizable racial disparity. Time and again, black Americans are overrepresented among the infected and dead. America’s newest infection seems to be mating with America’s original infection, reproducing not life, but death.

In Michigan, black Americans comprise 14.1 percent of the state population, but an ungodly 40 percent of coronavirus deaths. In Washtenaw County, home to Ann Arbor, 48 percent of residents hospitalized with the coronavirus are black, though black people make up only 11 percent of the county. In Illinois, the infection rate among black Americans is twice their percentage of the state population. In North Carolina’s Mecklenburg County, which includes Charlotte, black people comprise 32.9 percent of the residents, but 43.9 of the confirmed coronavirus cases, as of March 30. In Milwaukee, black Americans make up 26 percent of the county, but nearly half of the infections and a maddening 81 percent of deaths as of Friday.

This racial pandemic within the viral pandemic is threatening Sadiqa’s entire immediate family. She’s more worried about her parents’ and brother’s health than her own. They seem to be well. But for how long? Just thinking about where her younger brother lives, where her parents live, makes us sick. They, too, are on the front lines of the deadly war.

Sadiqa’s younger brother lives in New York City, the site of the highest number of cases and deaths in the country. City officials have yet to supply racial data on testing, cases, hospitalizations, or deaths. But there are some indications that communities of color may be particularly affected.

On April 1, The New York Times released data on the number of coronavirus cases per 1,000 people for every zip code in NYC. Using Census Reporter, I studied the racial makeup of the zip codes with the highest and lowest coronavirus rates per 1,000 people in NYC. Queens zip code 11370 has the city’s highest rate of confirmed infections, with 12 cases per 1,000 people; the neighborhoods it includes are 37 percent Latino, 25 percent white, 22 percent Asian, and 14 percent black. In the adjacent zip code of 11369, which has the city’s second-highest rate of confirmed infections with 10 cases per 1,000 people, the population is 64 percent Latino, 15 percent black, 12 percent Asian, and 8 percent white.

New York City is 32.1 percent white, 29.1 percent Latino, 24.3 percent black, and 13.9 percent Asian, according to census data. But averaging out the racial composition of the five New York City zip codes with the highest coronavirus rates shows a significant overrepresentation of Latinos (45.8 percent) and Asians (23.4 percent), and a significant underrepresentation of whites (21.2 percent) and blacks (8 percent) when compared with their citywide populations.

Does this mean Latinos and Asians are being infected with, and dying from, COVID-19 at higher rates than other New Yorkers? We don’t know for certain, but it sure seems that way.

A recent Reuters/Ipsos nationwide poll found that 16 percent of Latino Americans surveyed said they were infected, had been in contact with someone who was infected, or knew someone who was infected, compared with just 9 percent of white Americans. It is not a stretch to suppose that, in our highly separated and segregated society, those results reflect different rates of infection in white and Latino communities.

Some of the infected people whom Latino Americans know may be undocumented immigrants. In the United States, an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants were already social distancing from the old virus of xenophobia that Trumpism has been spreading anew. They live in the shadows, mainly in California, Texas, Florida, New York, New Jersey, and Illinois—the very states, save Texas, that have some of the worst known outbreaks. But tracking and arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers have not let up during the pandemic.

The shadows may protect them from the old virus, but the shadows cannot protect them from the new coronavirus. And the convergence of xenophobia and COVID-19 has led to a horrible choice for undocumented immigrants: Do I or don’t I come out of the shadows? For my good. For my family’s good. For the greater good of the people who forced me into the shadows.

Quitting low-wage jobs could mean getting deported. Getting tested could mean getting deported. Getting treated could mean getting deported. And if they are arrested, they could be thrown into ICE’s network of jails and detention centers, where the coronavirus is already spreading.

Undocumented immigrants suffering from these impossible choices are not just Latinos. They are Middle Eastern. They are white. They are black. They are Asian. In New York City, Asians are the poorest immigrant group. The number of Asian Americans living in poverty grew 44 percent from 2000 to 2016, according to the Asian American Federation. Perhaps their growing poverty helps explain the high infection rates in zip codes with large Asian populations in NYC.

Native Americans are being infected in high numbers in urban areas such as Salt Lake City, Seattle, and San Jose. In many rural Native areas, like rural white areas with no confirmed cases, testing could be scarce—but not the disease. The virus has hit Kayenta, Arizona, a small town in the northwest corner of the Navajo Nation, compelling the nation’s president, Jonathan Nez, to issue a stay-at-home order.

In the end, though, no group of Americans may be more vulnerable to COVID-19 than the incarcerated and the homeless. About 40 percent of people experiencing homelessness are black, triple their share of the U.S population. Brown and black people comprise 56 percent of the prison population, doubling their combined share of the U.S. adult population.

Homeless people may be the most vulnerable in cities like Seattle and Los Angeles. Prisons, jails, and detention centers have already turned into outbreak zones for prisoners, corrections officers, and prison health-care workers. At least 167 inmates and 137 staff members have already tested positive for the coronavirus at New York’s Rikers Island prison complex. And it is getting worse by the day.

While sadiqa’s brother is facing an outbreak in New York City, her Baby Boomer parents are facing an outbreak in Albany, Georgia. That means her immediate family members live in the areas with the worst and second-worst coronavirus outbreaks in the United States as of March 26.

Albany, nearly 200 miles south of Atlanta, is the big small town in southwest Georgia’s Dougherty County. Nearly three out of four of Albany’s 90,000 residents are black. Among Albany’s first 24 deaths from COVID-19, 90 percent were black. As of Saturday, Dougherty County had reported 30 coronavirus deaths, an unspeakable death rate of 32.9 per 100,000 people.

To put Dougherty County’s death rate in perspective, it was 67 percent higher than New York City’s, and about 2.5 times higher than Detroit’s, on Saturday, according to New York Times county data. Albany had two more deaths than Milwaukee County, even though Milwaukee County’s population is 10 times greater.

The only two U.S. areas in worse shape than New York City and southwest Georgia are in southeast Louisiana. Orleans Parish, known for the city of New Orleans, is 60.2 percent black. Its staggering infection rate of 892.1 per 100,000 people on Saturday was higher than the infection rates of New York City, Los Angeles, and Miami combined. At 38 deaths per 100,000 people, Orleans Parish’s death rate is higher than Albany’s. Thirty miles west of New Orleans is St. John the Baptist Parish, where the black population is 57.8 percent. If we exclude counties with only a single death, St. John the Baptist Parish has the second-highest COVID-19 death rate in the nation: an unutterable 39.1 deaths per 100,000 people.

The county with the nation’s highest death rate as of Saturday is Montana’s Toole County. The overwhelmingly white county of nearly 5,000 people already had three deaths connected to an assisted-living facility. If black people are likely the most vulnerable to the coronavirus in majority black counties, homeless tent cities, and prisons, then white people are likely the most vulnerable in assisted-living facilities and nursing homes. Nearly four out of five people in nursing homes are white, and older people are more at risk of dying from COVID-19.

It seems as if every day now Sadiqa learns about another high-school friend, another parent or uncle or aunt of a close friend who is infected, who is in the hospital, who has died from COVID-19. As of Saturday, Albany had 560 confirmed infections, including Sadiqa’s best friend.

Albany is what Sadiqa knows and no longer knows. “My whole community is in shambles,” she told me the other day.

Sometimes racial data tell us something we don’t know. Other times we need racial data to confirm something we already seem to know.

Britain Just Got Pulled Back From the Edge The country has reasserted its foundational stability, and in doing so made real change more likely once this is all over. by TOM MCTAGUE

Perhaps a testament to how close Britain has come to losing its way is the fact that it took a pandemic, an emergency of foggy complexity, for the country to get back on its path. This was a weekend that felt defining, not just for the immediate story, the coronavirus, but for British politics—and for Britain itself.

It was not a good weekend. Prime Minister Boris Johnson was hospitalized, and Britain’s death toll jumped as another 621 people died over 24 hours. The gravity of the situation moved the Queen to deliver an emergency address to the nation, something she has done only a handful of times in her 68-year reign. This was not a weekend in which Britain reached, or even caught a glimpse of, the peak of the coronavirus outbreak—never mind found a route back down from it and off the mountain.

Instead, the weekend was momentous because of the reemergence of something fundamental to the country, how it functions and sees itself—its core, institutional strength. These were 48 hours in which Britain reasserted its foundational stability, and in doing so made real change more likely once this is all over.

The weekend was defined by three profoundly important moments. The first came on Saturday morning, when the Labour Party elected Keir Starmer its new leader, replacing Jeremy Corbyn as the official head of the opposition. The second and third are more obvious but no less profound, and came in disorientingly quick succession on Sunday night as the Queen attempted to reassure the nation at 8 p.m.—an hour before news broke that her 14th prime minister had been taken to the hospital.

As long as Johnson recovers fully and quickly, Starmer’s election has the potential to be more consequential than either of the other two events, even if those are more immediately defining. Starmer’s elevation is of deep importance on a number of levels. First, after years of appalling ineptitude and moral vacuity under Corbyn’s catastrophic leadership, Britain’s opposition will be led by a credible alternative prime minister whose competence, professionalism, and patriotism are unquestioned. The government can now be held to account.

Corbyn’s replacement is important not just for the Labour Party, but for the country. The former leader’s politics meant that effective collaboration with Johnson’s Conservative Party was impossible, even in areas where the parties shared consensus. Corbyn’s refusal to appear alongside then–Prime Minister David Cameron in the campaign against Brexit was emblematic of this, as was his subsequent refusal to play ball with Theresa May as she sought to introduce a “soft” form of Brexit with Labour’s support. That then paved the way for Johnson’s emergence as prime minister—and Labour’s crushing defeat at a general election in December.

But the importance of this moment is rooted in more than effective opposition. Starmer is left-wing, perhaps radically so on the American spectrum, but he is not a teenage revolutionary. Taxes would go up under his leadership, foreign policy would be more idealistic, Britain would tilt more toward Europe. But he would be recognizable. It is hard to overstate how unrecognizable Corbyn was. For much of his life, until being catapulted into the position of Labour leader, he was a fringe figure even on the political fringes, driven by the moral anti-imperialism of the Cold War radical left, which saw him line up with every enemy of the West—and Britain—imaginable. He was a question mark over Britain. Take one small example: Corbyn had, to his eternal shame, allowed anti-Semitism to raise its head in the British left. Starmer’s first act as leader was to apologize on behalf of the Labour Party. By Sunday morning, the return to institutional normality was clear. Starmer, appearing on the BBC’s flagship political program, The Andrew Marr Show, broke with the Corbynite position, offering “constructive engagement” with the government. “We’ve all got a duty here to save lives and protect our country,” he said. A boring statement, but almost revolutionary after the Corbyn years.

The leader of the opposition is a pillar of the British establishment, a role that is required for the system to work. Starmer holds special privileges, is allowed to keep state secrets, is awarded particular prestige, and gets additional funding. It is a staging post to become prime minister, though many, even most, don’t make it. It sits alongside other individual positions instrumental to the functioning of the British state: the speaker of the House of Commons, the archbishop of Canterbury, the chief of the defense staff, the prime minister, and the monarch. On Sunday, the final two came to the fore.

Longevity, the simple fact of time, gives the Queen an unmatched presence in British life. The way she has personally sought to carry out the role has added power and solemnity to the position. Because she rarely intervenes—and never politically—each time she does carries weight. Last night, she made a special address to the nation for the first time since her diamond jubilee in 2012, itself the first time she had formally spoken out since her mother’s death in 2002. Before that, 1997 was the last time she had done so, because of an event so grave it was deemed necessary—the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. That she chose to again during this pandemic had the perverse effect of making the situation feel even more solemn.

In hindsight, the two weeks of national lockdown preceding the Queen’s address were marked by an unnerving void. The prime minister, even before last night’s news, had been in self-isolation for more than a week after contracting COVID-19. The health secretary had also caught it, along with the chief medical officer—the principal adviser informing the prime minister on his strategy. Meanwhile, the Labour Party was waiting for its interminable leadership process to reach its conclusion. All the while, the death toll was climbing ever closer to the hidden peak. The timing of the Queen’s intervention was crucial.

Dressed in green and speaking from an ornate study inside Windsor Castle, the Queen set the crisis alongside the national struggle during the Second World War. She said she wanted to offer reassurance that if the country remained “united and resolute,” it would overcome this latest obstacle. “I hope in the years to come, everyone will be able to take pride in how they responded to this challenge,” she said. It was an old-fashioned call to arms. She finished, though, with hope. Although we will have more to endure in the coming weeks, she said, better days will return: “We will be with our friends again; we will be with our families again; we will meet again.” The payoff was a conscious nod to what had become the anthem of the Second World War, “We’ll Meet Again,” by Vera Lynn: “Don’t know where / Don’t know when / But I know we’ll meet again some sunny day.”

The Queen is the only public figure able to personally link the current fight against the pandemic to the Second World War, the prior struggle that still defines the country, at least in its own perception. The message was well pitched, nodding to the young and old, frontline and staying-at-home. It cast her as a spiritual leader, more than merely figurative.

The message would soon be overshadowed by the news of the prime minister’s hospitalization, a question mark placed at the very heart of the state’s response to the crisis. Yet, as true as that is, this weekend nevertheless offered a tentative sense that the institutions and positions of state were not jamming, but clicking into gear, even if they remain old, grinding, and archaic. The National Health Service appears to be rising to the task, the military has been deployed, the BBC has found its voice after years of unease, and the political institutions—torn apart by the financial crash, Brexit, and Corbynism—have refound something of a common set of rules and purpose.

The establishment is back. And British politics has some measure of its old self back. Both will be needed again soon, for once this immediate medical crisis is over, an economic one will emerge. Real change may soon follow.

What does a state of emergency mean for Japan? by Sara HUSSEIN

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe plans to announce a state of emergency as soon as Tuesday in several parts of the country, including Tokyo, where coronavirus infections are spiking.

But the measure falls far short of the lockdowns seen in other parts of the world. So what does a state of emergency entail in the world's third-biggest economy?

- Which areas are affected?

The declaration is not nationwide. It affects seven areas where medical experts believe the virus is now spreading rapidly, risking overloading the healthcare system.

Abe said Monday it would cover Tokyo, as well as neighbouring Chiba, Kanagawa and Saitama, the western hub of Osaka and neighbouring Hyogo, as well as the southwestern region of Fukuoka.

Other parts of the country are not affected. In February, the governor of northern Hokkaido announced a localised state of emergency as cases increased, but lifted the measure after several weeks.

- What does the measure allow?

The state of emergency empowers governors in affected regions to call for restrictions on movement and commerce but offers little in the way of enforcement.

Governors can request people stay inside -- something Tokyo's governor has effectively already done by asking people to limit unneccessary outings and work from home.

It also allows governors to call for businesses that attract large numbers of people, like entertainment venues or department stores, to close their doors.

But there are no punishments for those who defy the request, nor any other enforcement mechanisms.

Public transport is expected to continue running, though possibly on a more limited basis. Shops and other business may remain open.

- So what can governors order?

The strongest power accorded governors is the ability to commandeer buildings or land for medical purposes.

This could mean requiring landowners to turn over property to build temporary medical facilities, or businesses to free up space for housing patients.

Governors can also close public institutions like schools, many of which have been shuttered since February after Abe urged a nationwide shutdown.

- How will the public react?

While the measure does not contain strong enforcement measures, expectations are that most individuals and businesses will comply.

Many people have already heeded calls to work from home, with Tokyo's notoriously crowded transport system noticeably emptier in recent weeks.

And a request from the Tokyo governor for people to stay home on weekends has also resulted in significantly quieter streets, even in the sunny final days of cherry blossom season.

Japan's legal system, influenced by the legacy of wartime excesses, limits the government's power over its citizens.

Yasutoshi Nishimura, the minister in charge of the law implementing the state of emergency, said residents would be asked, not ordered.

"Our legal system is set up so that people as a whole unite and share the burden of preventing the spread of infection," rather than resorting to forcible measures, he said in parliament on Monday.

And there are signs the public is on board, with a poll published by private broadcaster TBS on Monday showing 80 percent of participants supported a declaration of emergency.

- How is it declared?

The state of emergency measure comes from a revised 2012 bill intended to slow the spread of new strains of flu.

The declaration can only be made if certain conditions are met, including that a virus is spreading rapidly and having a significant impact on the lives of citizens and the economy.

To make such a determination, Abe is required to consult a taskforce convened for the purpose last month, which includes legal experts and medical professionals.

Asia virus latest: Japan proposes state of emergency, Singapore quarantines dorms

Here are the latest developments in Asia related to the coronavirus pandemic:

- Japan state of emergency -

Japan's prime minister proposed a state of emergency for several major regions seeing a sharp rise in coronavirus cases, as well as a stimulus package worth $1 trillion to cushion the impact on the world's third-biggest economy.

The official declaration of the state of emergency would likely come as soon as Tuesday, Shinzo Abe told reporters, as the country grapples with a recent spike in coronavirus cases, especially in the capital Tokyo.

- Singapore quarantines foreign workers -

The city-state has put nearly 20,000 migrant workers under quarantine for two weeks after a growing number of infections were detected in their dormitories.

Authorities reported 120 new virus cases Sunday, the highest jump in a single day, with many linked to the dorms.

Many workers from less affluent countries -- particularly parts of South Asia -- come to Singapore to work in construction, and are typically housed in large dormitory complexes.

- Markets up, oil down -

Asian markets rose as some of the world's worst-hit countries reported falling death rates, although oil prices were rocked after a meeting of top producers was delayed.

- Virus-stricken cruise ship docks near Sydney -

A cruise ship that has accounted for a quarter of all COVID-19 deaths in Australia was allowed to dock near Sydney after 200 crew members began exhibiting coronavirus symptoms.

The Ruby Princess berthed at Port Kembla, some 80 kilometres (50 miles) south of Sydney, after weeks stranded at sea to allow doctors to assess sick crew members and take the most serious cases ashore for medical treatment.

- South Korea reports fewer than 50 cases -

South Korea reported fewer than 50 new coronavirus cases for the first time in more than six weeks, having once been the hardest-hit country outside China.

The South confirmed 47 new cases on the previous day, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said, taking its total to date to 10,284. It was the lowest increase since late February.

- Singapore airport to suspend Terminal 2 operations -

Singapore's Changi Airport, one of Asia's busiest travel hubs, will suspend operations at its Terminal 2 for 18 months from May 1 due to the steep fall in passenger numbers, its operator said.

The operator also said it would consider suspending operations at Terminal 4, which have already been scaled back considerably, if more airlines axe flights or adjust their schedules.

- Indonesian police to guard virus victims' burials -

Indonesia's capital Jakarta has launched a special police unit to guard the burial of coronavirus victims over concerns that scared residents would try to block their funerals.

The move comes days after angry mobs in several cities on Sulawesi island and in Central Java blocked streets to prevent ambulances from transporting victims of the deadly illness to local cemeteries.

- Mumbai hospital shut after medics test positive -

A major private hospital in Mumbai was shut to new patients and declared a "containment zone" after 26 nurses and three doctors tested positive, an official said.

Mumbai city authority spokesman Vijay Khabale-Patil told AFP that "extreme precautions" were being taken at the Wockhardt Hospital, which included quarantining 300 staff members.

- Easter bunny 'eggs-empt' from New Zealand lockdown -

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern officially granted the Easter Bunny an exemption from strict travel restrictions imposed under a nationwide lockdown.

"You'll be pleased to know that we do consider both the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy to be essential workers, but as you can imagine they're potentially going to be quite busy at home with their own bunnies," she said -- cautioning youngsters may have to organise their own egg hunts.