In 2020, that’s just a Tuesday.
We have had an unprecedented year already. What months ago would seem like an alternate universe is real life. This is going to be the summer of ups and downs and, maybe, genuine change.
The most important thing today could be the protests, the economy or coronavirus. As they appear on TV or in your news feed, these three topics are divorced from each other, but they are interrelated in everyday life.
Cultural whiplash
One CNN colleague said all these toppling statues makes it seem like regime change of a different sort.
Economic whiplash
But despite what Trump tells you, markets are not the economy and the economic pain from the Covid shutdown is far from over, even with good news on the jobs front.
Now consider that George Floyd was unemployed because of coronavirus, which he tested positive for.
Coronavirus whiplash
Americans ache to reopen the country. And it’s clear they’ll continue moving to reopen even as data suggests the pandemic is far from defeated.
More than 1.9 million Americans have been infected, and more than 111,000 have died in just over four months, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. According to a CNN report Tuesday, more than half of US states are not following CDC guidelines in how they report new cases.
And while some early hot spots are seeing drops, other states — Vermont and Utah — are seeing spikes.
There’s also evidence that food accessibility challenges are growing. In Georgia, the number of residents now living in “food insecure” areas has jumped 69% since the beginning of the pandemic, according to data firm Urban Footprint. The firm uses an index, including jobless claims, pre-existing health conditions, and access to grocery stores and healthy food, to measure food security — or “reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritionally adequate food.”
In Louisiana, Mississippi and Kentucky the number of residents living in food insecure areas has spiked 43%, 36% and 118% respectively, driven by the rise in unemployment, according to the analysis.
The pandemic has made it “very cumbersome” to buy groceries, said Yolanda Jackson, who lives 1.6 miles from her nearest grocery store in Baltimore, Maryland. In 2018, 23.5% of Baltimore residents lived in an area where access to healthy food is limited.