The nation’s attention has turned to the protests, but the coronavirus hasn’t gone away. In fact, the decline in hotspots like New York may hide a growing problem elsewhere—a problem whose path has been disconcertingly random.Staff writer Alexis Madrigal tracks coronavirus data with the COVID Tracking Project at The Atlantic. He joins hosts James Hamblin and Katherine Wells on the podcast Social Distance to give an update on the state of the virus in the United States.

Every weekday evening, our editors guide you through the biggest stories of the day, help you discover new ideas, and surprise you with moments of delight. Subscribe to get this delivered to your inbox.Minneapolis faces a reckoning.Justin Ellis, who grew up in the heart of the city’s Lake Street corridor, found Floyd’s death, and the violence that followed it, “inevitable.

I cracked a joke to break the tension. “Everyone put on your seat belts, because the cops are definitely pulling us over tonight.” Psychologists say that laughter relieves stress and reduces anxiety—I guess that’s what I was going for in that moment. We were five black men sitting in a very nice car, a black Range Rover, about to go out for a night on the town. As I recall, we really tore it up at the local coffee shop with our lattes and pour-overs.

On a modest scale, police defunding is happening. For years, powerful police unions have made law-enforcement funding all but untouchable. As The New York Times noted in 2018, the number of police per capita has risen over the past three decades even as crime rates have plunged. Last week, however, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced that he would shave at least $100 million from his city’s law-enforcement budget.

After months of living with the coronavirus pandemic, American citizens are well aware of the toll it has taken on the economy: broken supply chains, record unemployment, failing small businesses. All of these factors are serious and could mire the United States in a deep, prolonged recession. But there’s another threat to the economy, too. It lurks on the balance sheets of the big banks, and it could be cataclysmic.