Our Coronavirus Policy

Essential guidelines for liberal democrats during the coronavirus outbreak

Dear Readers,

Claire Berlinski’s Invariably Interesting Newsletter is committed to providing a safe and healthy environment for its readers and its employee as we assess the constantly evolving global health situation.

Given the uncertainty we all confront in the face of the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) epidemic, I wanted to write to you directly to keep you informed of the measures we’ve implemented at Claire Berlinski’s Invariably Interesting Newsletter to mitigate the spread of coronavirus. My absolute priority is the safety of our readers and our employee.

Hygiene is essential

There are many things we do not yet know about Coronavirus. However, health officials have indicated that maintaining good hygiene is absolutely essential. So in addition providing you with a newsletter, we have provided a contactless delivery service that allows you to read it without leaving your home, eliminating the need for direct contact between you and any other party.

Following the recent advice of the World Health Organization, we have implemented the following policies across our workplace, with effect immediately:

• Before writing every newsletter, we will thoroughly cleanse our keyboard with sanitiser spray. We kindly ask for your patience while our employee completes this task.

• Some of our longer newsletters (3,000 words and above) will be reduced to allow extra time for cleaning.

• After reading each newsletter, we ask that you clean your equipment thoroughly, including the yoga mat.

What we’re doing now to keep you and our employee safe:

• We are continuously monitoring developments with respect to COVID-19 and following the advice and guidance of local health authorities.

• We have ensured that our facilities have extra stocks of hand wash, cleaning wipes, and sanitiser spray.

• We have significantly increased the number of cleaning hours across our workplace.

• We have made information posters available about how to protect our employee.

What we’d like you to do to help us:

• We encourage you to take simple, common-sense steps to help reduce risk, including using a tissue when sneezing, washing your hands regularly, and leaving the pangolins alone.

• Don’t go anywhere near anyone else. Don’t go outside—not even if you feel just fine and you think this is all over-hyped. You’re wrong. I thought it was over-hyped, too. Now I’m locked in my apartment and I can’t go out without a permit.

• Asymptomatic carriers are the engine of the pandemic. (According to this paper, 86 percent of infections in China went undocumented before January 23.) The people who won’t accept that yes, this is really happening are a serious danger to everyone else.

• Quite soon, if you refuse to stay home voluntarily, they’ll lock you up. It will happen faster than you think. It will happen as soon as the government realizes that the health system is collapsing. Remember that the US, roughly, is a week behind France, which is, roughly, a week behind Italy. If you’re telling yourself the US will be different, you’re in denial. Exponential growth means you don’t have time to move through that stage of grief.

• It would be infinitely better if you stopped kidding yourselves and locked yourselves up voluntarily. Otherwise, the state will do it. They’ll start using AI to track you, too, like in China. When enough people die, everyone else will beg them to do it and forget all about liberal democracy and the rule of law. If you give the state a taste of that—not to mention the legal precedent and authority—it will never give it back. Remember the 2001 AUMF? The Patriot Act?

• So just lock yourselves up. Now. Don’t let them create a new legal fiction or a Constitutional pretext to do it. Remember: any new power you give the state goes to Donald Trump, and Ivanka will inherit it.

• These are indeed stressful times. Staying healthy is your number-one weapon. There’s nothing like Claire Berlinski’s Invariably Interesting Thoughts to beat stress, combat anxiety, and strengthen your immune system.

• I can’t leave my apartment. Please subscribe. How else will I support myself?

Yours sincerely,

J. Claire Berlinski

Founder and Employee, Claire Berlinski’s Invariably Interesting Thoughts