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A few of you said my queenscreen photoshops are disrespectful, and you're right.

The Queen is definitely a corgis > cats lady. pic.twitter.com/XmQI5jJ5Ao

— Peter Chiykowski respects the Queen, I promise (@rockpapercynic) April 5, 2020

Okay 2020 let's break the Internet pic.twitter.com/dBgi7IgEae

— Peter Chiykowski respects the Queen, I promise (@rockpapercynic) April 5, 2020

This canvas speaks to me pic.twitter.com/iWk6FuGsPM

— Ned Pyle (@NerdPyle) April 6, 2020

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  Here is a shot of our hero, Fyodor Ivanovich Sukhov. He is a Red Army soldier fighting in Central Asia during the Russian Civil War. [credit: Mosfilm/YouTube ]

Sometime Wednesday, perhaps around the time this article is published, NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy and his two Russian crew mates—Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner—will repair to their quarantine crew quarters for movie night in the Cosmonaut Hotel.

This Soviet-era building in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, is where astronauts spend their final days before launching into space on board the Russian Soyuz vehicle. Cassidy's crew is due to launch on Thursday afternoon, at 1:05pm local time. (This is 4:05am ET Thursday, and 8:05am UTC.) They will spend about six hours catching up to and docking with the International Space Station.

The Russians have the oldest space program in the world and by far the most traditions and superstitions related to launch, including peeing on the wheel of the bus that takes the crew to the launch pad—a tradition that dates back to Yuri Gagarin's first human spaceflight in 1961.

1. Air pollution is very bad for Covid-19 deaths (NYT).  Worse than had been thought.

2. U.S. vs. Europe.

3. Using mobility data to predict the growth of Covid-19 cases.

4. Allcott, Boxell, Conway, Gentzkow, Thaler, and Yang: “We then present new survey evidence of significant gaps between Republicans and Democrats in beliefs about personal risk and the future path of the pandemic.”  Recommended.

5. Averting the 1957 pandemic with a vaccine.

6. Why New Zealand is doing so well.

7. Coronavirus MIE: “A German fourth-tier club have sold more than 100,000 tickets for a match against an “invisible opponent” – despite averaging crowds of 3,000.”

8. How measles and coronavirus are interacting.

9. My Friday Princeton webinar on the economics and social implication of Covid-19, limited availability but you can sign up at the link.

10. Redux of my January 27 Bloomberg column on Covid-19.

11. A good thread on why contrarian views on Covid-19 probably are wrong.  By J.D. Vance, recommended.

12. Hundreds of Dr. Fauci-related products for sale.

13. It seems so far we have returned to the 1925 death rate in America.

14. Greenland vs. Covid-19.

Enlarge (credit: Orange County NC )

Plastics have a lot of properties that have made them fixtures of modern societies. They can be molded into any shape we'd like, they're tough yet flexible, and they come in enough variations that we can tune the chemistry to suit different needs. The problem is that they're tough enough that they don't break down on their own, and incinerating them is relatively inefficient. As a result, they've collected in our environment as both bulk plastics and the seemingly omnipresent microplastic waste.

For natural materials, breaking down isn't an issue, as microbes have evolved ways of digesting them to obtain energy or useful chemicals. But many plastics have only been around for decades, and we're just now seeing organisms that have evolved enzymes to digest them. Figuring they could do one better, researchers in France have engineered an enzyme that can efficiently break down one of the most common forms of plastic. The end result of this reaction is a raw material that can be reused directly to make new plastic bottles.

An unwanted PET

The plastic in question is polyethylene terephthalate, or PET. PET has a variety of uses, including as thin films with very high tensile strength (marketed as mylar). But its most notable use is in plastic drink bottles, which are a major component of environmental plastic waste. PET was first developed in the 1940s, and the first living organism that can break down and use the carbon in PET was described in 2016—found in sediment near a plastic recycling facility, naturally.

1. “We are at a critical juncture for the market.”

2. Pandemic insurance for Wimbledon cancellation.

3. Borjas on who is undertested, from NYC data.

4. Japanese cook draws every meal he eats.

5. How to close a bag of chips with no clip.

6. Latino incidence in NYC.

7. How is the Swedish approach working out?

8. Re-entry stickers for the Florida Keys — get the picture?

9. Stapp and Watney, masks for all.

10. Hong Kong quarantine diary.

11. How the Faroe Islands aced it (so far).

12. “Many brands are using keyword blocklists to stop their adverts appearing next to stories about Covid-19, meaning that even though news websites are getting record traffic from readers they are barely earning any money from the clicks.”  Link here.

13. The Pandemic Challenge, from Singularity University.

14. Will Covid-19 induce a decline in religiosity?

15. Taiwanese baseball with robot mannequins as fans.

16. The mortgage system is under very real threat.

Enlarge / A drive-through COVID-19 testing site operated by Omni Healthcare in Melbourne, Fla. on April 8. (credit: Paul Hennessy | Echoes Wire | Barcroft Media | Getty Images)

One of the biggest challenges hampering US institutional response to the COVID-19 crisis is testing: when you can't identify who has the disease, you can't tell who might transmit it, or where they might do so. After critical months of delay, the US finally ramped up testing, but now, just as experts forecast many states are heading into the peak of this emergency, the federal government is ending funding for some successful testing programs.

The feds will stop covering the tab for most community testing sites as of Friday (tomorrow), April 10, NPR reports.

These popular drive-through sites have helped bolster other testing efforts in counties, towns, and cities nationwide. NPR spoke with officials in Pennsylvania's Montgomery County who said their drive-through site has tested at least 250 individuals per day since opening on March 21. By the time it closes Friday due to lack of funding, officials said, more than 5,000 tests will have been performed at that site.