The Weekly Sift

You know what I’m going to talk about this week, right? There’s a historic crisis happening, and I can’t justify focusing on anything else.

So this week’s two featured posts will look at it from two very different altitudes. On an extremely personal scale, the most important thing that happened this week is that I got a Covid-19 test. But you really shouldn’t worry about me. So far I’ve got either a very mild case or a hyperactive imagination. (My current bet is on the latter.) But I also have a wife with a number of risk factors, so I’ve been quarantining myself since Tuesday. I should hear results in another day or two.

I’m writing about it because I think my personal experience has some news value: At least in the part of the country where I live, people with fairly minor symptoms are getting tested now. Those 15-minute tests you read about are still science fiction, and I think we’re still a long way from the kind of widespread testing we need if we’re going to reopen the country. But a result in 3-5 days is lots better than never.

That’s the small scale. On the large scale, I asked myself what great president would say to the country right now. I know we don’t have a great president, or even an average one. But far too often, we have let our expectations of the presidency shrink to fit the tiny man who currently occupies that office. If we’re ever going to have a great president again, we need to hold a space in our imaginations that a great president could fill.

So that’s what I did. “The Speech a Great President Would Give Now” will be out soon, and contains a shocking announcement. I don’t expect Trump to give this speech, but if he does, he doesn’t even need to give me credit. Hearing the speech would be satisfaction enough.

“My Coronavirus Test” isn’t written yet, but it shouldn’t be that hard to pull out of memory, so I expect it to post between 10 and 11 EDT. Expect an abbreviated weekly summary around noon.