Welcome to the commentary magazine daily podcast today is Wednesday April 8, 2020.

I'm John Poghortzi editor of commentary with me is always senior editor Abe Greenwald hi Abe hi John

senior writer Christine Rosen high Christine

hi John and associate editor Noah Rothman high Noah hi John

so um

We we continue in this peculiar moment where uh

The long term news is good and the short term news is horrible

uh

death toll increasing in New York City

um

And yet there's all this evidence that the curve is flattening which either suggests that the

uh

The model was flawed that suggested that we were going to have 16,000 people on ventilators or or an ICU or whatever or

That the social distancing and extreme measures that have been taken to shut down New York's

entire working economy and uh and uh public civic life um are are having a

really positive effect um or both uh which is probably

closer to the truth um

Does that have an interesting I'm an interesting social sociological question to ask which is

If we were to presume that there was a some slight element of the noble lie involved here meaning that

uh androquomo and and trump and fauchi and the modelers and all that uh

We're leaning on the side of catastrophe in order to um scare the bjza set at everybody and get people to

conform to very strict as close as possible to very strict

...