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the quadrant representing a combination of social liberalism and economic conservatism — what you might call the libertarian position — is largely empty.

you can see that most voters like government benefits, a lot. Opposition to social spending comes mainly from voters who believe that spending goes to the wrong people — people who don’t look like them.

even as we marvel at Truss’s political obtuseness, we should ask what it is about the United States that prevents the emergence of anyone catering to a large bloc of voters who want the nastiness of MAGA without the right-wing economics.

In America, the positions of the two parties are clear. Democrats are in the southwest quadrant, both socially and economically liberal, while Republicans are socially and economically conservative.

There are, however, many voters who are economically relatively liberal and socially illiberal — who hate wokeness and fear immigrants but want to maintain and even expand Social Security and Medicare, at least for people they see as “real” Americans. Such voters do have political champions in other countries: France’s National Rally, formerly the National Front

Liz Truss is squarely in the libertarian box. She didn’t make appeals to anti-immigrant, anti-woke sentiment; she did advocate what one analysis assessed as the most conservative economic position of any party in the developed world. So she placed herself in the political wilderness, a barren quadrant where few voters may be found.

Politics in the modern West tends to be more or less two-dimensional. One dimension is the left-right divide in economic policy, between those who favor high taxes on the rich and large social benefits and those who want low taxes and small government

The other dimension is the divide over social issues, between those who favor policies promoting racial equality and gay rights and those who bitterly oppose anything they consider “woke.”

The next day, recovering upstairs, the man still had a fever. Doctors ordered a test for the coronavirus. A day later, his results came back positive.

Last week, the Illinois Department of Public Health sent a notice to clinics that only those people “hospitalized with severe acute lower respiratory illness” could be tested for the coronavirus

Today, if every hospital employee who had a close encounter with a COVID-19 patient disappeared for two weeks, the medical workforce would quickly become depleted

The virus has an average incubation period of five days, which means people can spread it in the absence of symptoms

After the man with appendicitis (a patient of one of the doctors I spoke with for this story) tested positive, the hospital implemented such precautions. And staff members who’d cared for him went into two weeks of isolation.

The majority of workers who keep America’s hospitals running don’t have the salary to afford extra bedrooms, much less extra properties

During World War II, Ford and General Motors rallied to the cause by building tanks and manufacturing ammunition instead of car

The ubiquitous curve is being flattened by shutdowns and social distancing, but it is not flat enough. Those who might end up in a hospital, which is to say all of us, can do at least one thing to help relieve pressure on the medical system and its overtaxed, dwindling workforce.

America rolled the dice. For just one example, the federal government has invested only about $500 million annually in the strategic stockpile, maintaining about 12 million N95 masks and 16,600 ventilators. This is enough to equip an area hit by a localized disease outbreak, natural disaster, or terrorist attack. But it is nowhere near what could be necessary in a Disease X pandemic.

In January of this year, some Chinese scientists warned that a Disease X had arrived, based on genetic sequencing they’d performed.

When we spoke by phone late Tuesday night, as he was driving home from the hospital, he sounded tired. I asked him to think back to the Disease X war game