Utopia, you are standing in it!

This piece is the result of a collaboration between the Economic History Review, the Journal of Economic History, Explorations in Economic History and the European Review of Economic History. More details and special thanks below. Part A is available at this link 

Man and women with the bubonic plague with its characteristic buboes on their bodies — a medieval painting from 1411.
 Everett Historical/Shutterstock

As the world grapples with a pandemic, informed views based on facts and evidence have become all the more important. Economic history is a uniquely well-suited discipline to provide insights into the costs and consequences of rare events, such as pandemics, as it combines the tools of an economist with the long perspective and attention to context of historians. The editors of the main journals in economic history have thus gathered a selection of the recently-published articles on epidemics, disease and public health, generously made…

Reader Sue Davies sent a report from Australia on how they’re handling the pandemic, and gave me permission to post it. While much of her information comes from two sites (a Guardian Australia site and an Aussie federal government site), the summary and words are her own, and I’ve indented them:

I thought you might like to know how we in Australia are handling the crisis.

The Prime Minister has set up a “National Cabinet” made up of Premiers and Chief Health Officers of all six states and the Northern Territory.  This meets daily to make decisions affecting the whole country.  All the states are implementing the same laws to ensure that the response is the same everywhere.

Presently the rules are these:

1).  No more than two people can congregate outside at any one time (excluding family members). There are stiff on-the-spot fines ($1600) for people caught flouting…

John Tamny writes at Real Clear Markets ‘Studies’ Indicate Disappearing Beaches. Markets Think Studies Idiotic.Excerpts in italics with my bolds and images.

As USA Today recently reported, a new study from the European Union’s Joint Research Center warns that a global catastrophe looms due to “the near-extinction of almost half of the world’s sandy beaches by the end of the century.” Hmmmm. Really?

It seems the only individuals who never get the message about the “near-extinction” of beaches are those who actually live at those beaches, along with those who yearn to live at beaches. Stop and think about it.

Presumably the desirability of Malibu, Laguna, La Jolla, the Hamptons, Martha’s Vineyard, Newport (RI), Ibiza, St. Tropez and other glamorous coastal locales has something to do with these destinations existing essentially on the beach. In other words, land and the housing that sits on said land is quite…

Talk about a survivor: this is unbelievable! The story (h/t Malgorzata) comes from the Jewish Journal (first headline) and Forbes (second) and you can see it by clicking on the screenshots. But I’ll reproduce the whole short report from JJ below.

The report:

A 101-year-old man, identified as ‘Mr. P’ has been released from isolation after recovering from COVID-19 in the Italian city of Rimini. Mr. P., a WWII and Spanish Flu survivor was admitted last week to a hospital in northeast Italy after he was tested positive for the Coronavirus.

According to Gloria Lisi, Vice-Mayor of Rimini, as the patient began to recover it became “the story everyone talked about” in the hospital.

“Everyone saw hope for the future of all of us in the recovery of a person more than 100 years old,” Lisi said in a televised interview.

“Every day we see the sad stories from these weeks…