If you need something to cheer you up, this is the best I’ve got:

Everything is related:

U.S. public health officials are warning that the massive countrywide demonstrations against police brutality, which show no sign of abating, could be followed by a sudden increase in novel coronavirus cases. Black people are both among the most seriously affected by the virus, and among those out in force protesting.

“Crowded protests, like any large gathering of people in a close space, can help facilitate the spread of covid-19, which is why it’s so important participants wear masks, eye protection and bring hand gel,” Saskia Popescu, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government, wrote in an email to The Post.

We are probably going to see an increase in COVID-19 cases this month anyway thanks to the end of lockdowns. Now we have yet another accelerant waiting in the wings. And unless Republicans in Congress get off their butts, a month after that supplemental aid to the unemployed will mostly end. It is, to use the common cliche, a perfect storm awaiting us. I’m not looking forward to June.

Protesters and police in front of Los Angeles City Hall.Hans Gutknecht/Orange County Register via ZUMA

I don’t know what the George Floyd protests looked like in the rest of the country,¹ but in Los Angeles they were damn strange. The LA Times captures it:

Two groups emerged more distinctly later in the day: one ransacking shops, the other rallying on message. In Santa Monica, they were often blocks apart. Looters in the shopping district on 4th Street appeared organized, smashing windows with crowbars and skateboards and loading the stolen goods into waiting cars. Some ran or drove off as sirens approached, but mostly continued as they passed. Dozens stole shoes and gear from a Vans shop, while bike after bike was pulled out a hole in the front door of an REI store. Fires were lit, with at least two squad cars burned.

Several blocks away, police tried to break up demonstrators on Ocean Avenue with smoke grenades, and fired rubber bullets when eggs and water bottles were hurled at them. By early evening, a similar dynamic developed in downtown Long Beach, with police facing off with protesters as groups of people looted stores nearby.

This was obvious the entire day and into the evening. The people looting were completely unrelated to the protesters, who were generally peaceful. But there were hundreds of police officers facing off against hundreds of protesters, seemingly just waiting for a water bottle to be thrown so they could retaliate in force. Meanwhile, a few blocks away, TV helicopters showed people destroying storefronts in precision formation with not a cop in sight. Since local law enforcement also has helicopters, I assume they knew perfectly well what was going on. They just didn’t feel like doing anything about it.

The LAPD, of course, says they are understaffed, and that might be so. But it sure didn’t look like the main mass of protesters needed 100 percent of their attention. Even a modest police presence dictated by helicopters and social media surveillance might have reduced the looting while doing no harm to their ability to control the peaceful protesters.

That’s what it looked like, anyway. The reality on the ground may be different, so I’ll wait before coming to any final judgment.

¹That is to say, I know bits and pieces from newspaper and social media coverage. But I wasn’t watching events unfold all day, as I was in Los Angeles.

Here’s the coronavirus death toll through May 31. Sweden is really not looking good. Canada’s outlier is due to a big increase in deaths reported from Quebec. The UK is flat at around 4 deaths per million and the US remains flat at around 3 deaths per million.

The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here. The Public Health Agency of Sweden is here.

Stefani Reynolds/CNP via ZUMA

The year 2020 in a nutshell:

Crisis #1: The United States is hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. Donald Trump insists it’s no big deal and fritters away months of time that could have been used to prepare for it. In April, having done almost nothing as cases and deaths continued rising, he begins demanding that lockdowns end—almost certainly far before they should have been. In May the number of COVID-19 deaths goes over 100,000.

Crisis #2: Congress ponders how to respond to the economic recession caused by the virus. Trump and his Republican enablers propose a bill that helps out businesses but ignores the devastation that unemployment has caused for individuals, hospitals, and schools. They agree to add provisions that help individuals only after Democrats force them to. In May, as the epidemic continues to get worse, Trump shrugs and resists any further help.

Crisis #3: In late May, protests and riots over the death of a Black man in the custody of a white police officer engulf the country. Trump stays silent because “some of his advisers calculated that he should not speak to the nation because he had nothing new to say and had no tangible policy or action to announce yet.” Instead he rage tweets about calling out the National Guard and blaming Democratic mayors for not being tough enough. Even many Republicans are appalled, admitting that Trump is doing nothing but making things worse.

This is how our president has responded to the three great crises of 2020. And we still have half the year to go.

Oh hey, remember this from 2018?

Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions has drastically limited the ability of federal law enforcement officials to use court-enforced agreements to overhaul local police departments accused of abuses and civil rights violations, the Justice Department announced on Thursday….The move means that the decrees, used aggressively by Obama-era Justice Department officials to fight police abuses, will be more difficult to enact. Mr. Sessions had signaled he would pull back on their use soon after he took office when he ordered a review of the existing agreements, including with police departments in Baltimore, Chicago and Ferguson, Mo., enacted amid a national outcry over the deaths of black men at the hands of officers.

It’s not just tweets and rhetorical bluster that separate the Obama and Trump administrations. It’s true that law enforcement is primarily a local issue, but there are still real, concrete things that federal agencies can do. In this case, the Obama administration did them and the Trump administration rolled them back.

Stuart Palley/ZUMA

Here is a brief history of Los Angeles protests and riots through the lens of Hispanics and African Americans:

June 4, 1943: During a period of rising racial tension following the Sleepy Lagoon murder case, servicemen on the West Coast periodically begin getting into clashes with Mexican American men wearing zoot suits, which the servicemen consider unpatriotic. After a series of minor incidents in Los Angeles, a group of 200 sailors hires a brigade of taxis on June 4th and heads to East LA, where they periodically stop and beat up anyone they can find wearing zoot suits. The LAPD does nothing to stop the taxi brigade, nor do they do anything the next night as sailors and marines parade through downtown LA stopping anyone wearing “drapes.” However, 27 Hispanic boys were arrested on “suspicion” of various infractions. This was the start of the Zoot Suit Riots.

August 11, 1965: During a period of rising racial tension following persistent charges of police brutality against African Americans and others, a California Highway Patrol officer pulls over Marquette Frye for reckless driving. Shortly thereafter, reports spread that police had roughed up Frye and kicked a pregnant woman. This was the start of the Watts Riots, aka the Watts Rebellion.

April 29, 1992: During a period of rising racial tension following the Rodney King beating, a jury with no Black members acquits four LAPD officers of assault despite videotape evidence which showed them beating King dozens of times while he lay on the ground a year earlier. This was the start of the 1992 LA Riots.

May 25, 2020: During a period of rising racial tension following the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd is arrested in Minneapolis after allegedly trying to pass a counterfeit $20 bill. A Minneapolis police officer keeps his knee on Floyd’s neck for more than eight minutes, including four minutes after he had stopped moving. Floyd was declared dead on arrival at the hospital, and protests immediately broke out across the country. This was the start of the LA George Floyd Riots.

Each of these incidents has two things in common. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out what they are.

Here’s the coronavirus death toll through May 30. The United States has been flat for nearly a week. This might mean nothing, or it might be the calm before the storm. June will be a very nervous month.

The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here. The Public Health Agency of Sweden is here.

My mother sends along this picture of mama Meowser and two of her kittens. Meowser and Stripey are nearly twins!

I have just a couple of wee changes to propose.

I have a constitutional amendment in mind:

Section 1: No person born before 1965 shall be eligible to vote in any federal, state, or municipal election.

Section 2. No person born before 1965 shall be allowed to hold any elective office of the United States or any of the States thereof.

Section 3. That is all.

Sure, I’m joking. Or am I? I don’t really care what else us oldsters do. We should still get our Medicare and our Social Security. We can retire or keep on working. We can take our cruises, or we can sit around watching Fox News and bitching about the kids these days. We can write newspaper columns or compete for Nobel prizes or catch up on Netflix. Whatever. But we no longer get to tell the rest of you what to do.

This is not because I think boomers are responsible for everything bad in the world. We aren’t. But God almighty, I am sick of every last thing turning into yet another replay in our endless battle over the ’60s. Climate change. Pandemics. (Pandemics!) Artificial intelligence. Civil rights. Marijuana. Income inequality. Cold wars. LGBTQ rights. The Oxford comma. Everything. And it won’t end until every last one of us is finally hauled off to the afterlife to continue arguing about it there while Jesus rolls his eyes at us.

Donald Trump is, perhaps, the final, panicked version of this. But it’s not his world anymore. It’s not my world. We boomers will be dead by the time most of these things finally start to irreversibly ruin the country and the planet. It’s time for us to turn things over to the Xers and Millennials and get out of their way.