As many of you enjoy your weekend without a hint of “Covid” crossing your mind, residents of Shanghai, a city of 25 million, will spend another Saturday in lockdown, where they’ve been for more than a week.

They’re not happy. Because the pandemic is more than two years old and effective vaccines are widely available, the extended lockdown is testing residents’ patience with their government’s drastic “Zero Covid” approach—which is only magnified in a city as cosmopolitan and economically influential as Shanghai.

• Angry residents have posted on social media about shortages of food and essential goods. One pregnant woman who tested positive pleaded for help after she was turned away from a hospital.
• During an anti-lockdown protest at a Shanghai housing complex, people chanted “we want to eat” and “we want freedom,” according to Bloomberg. That video was taken down by the tech company Tencent.

How bad is Covid there, anyway?

The current outbreak in Shanghai, which is the handiwork of the Omicron variant, is the worst flare up in the country since Wuhan in 2020. 131,000+ cases have been detected in Shanghai since March 31, and more than 21,000 new infections were recorded on Friday alone. So far in the wave, authorities have reported no deaths.

Most of the world would probably shrug its shoulders at that caseload…but not China. From the very beginning of the pandemic, it’s been quick to order people to stay in their homes to root out numbers of infection you can count on your hands. That’s spared it the high death toll of other countries, but by sticking to this strategy in spring 2022, it’s left itself vulnerable to complaints from citizens who say these policies are more harmful than the disease itself.

Big picture: Shanghai is trying to keep its factories and ports running through workarounds (like by having employees sleep at their workplaces), but you cannot simply lock down a major global city without a degree of economic disruption. Expect to hear deep sighs about China’s Covid strategy on upcoming earnings calls by American companies.—NF

Will Smith has something in common with us: We both aren’t going to the Oscars for the next 10 years. The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences banned Smith from all Academy events for a decade for slapping Chris Rock at this year’s Oscars. It also said it did not do enough to address the situation when it occurred. Following the ruling, Smith said, “I accept and respect the Academy’s decision.”

The FAA is seeking monster fines. The regulator has proposed its two biggest fines yet for unruly passengers: $81,950 for a passenger who struck a flight attendant and headbutted and spit at crewmembers, and $77,272 for one who bit another passenger during a flight. “If you are on an airplane, don’t be a jerk,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said.

Tiger made the cut at the Masters. Battling a strong wind, Tiger Woods (and other players) struggled to tame Augusta National. But Scottie Scheffler, the No. 1 player in the world, had no issues, building a five-shot lead going into Saturday.

WarnerMedia is the iconic Hollywood entertainment brand that controls Batman, Harry Potter, and CNN. Discovery is the company that owns the Property Brothers. But, against all odds, the two have completed their megamerger, becoming the country’s newest media juggernaut.

That juggernaut is called Warner Bros. Discovery, and it’ll house the massive library of shows, movies, and news programming that the two companies are known for.

The origin story: The $43 billion Discovery—WarnerMedia merger was announced in May and approved by the Justice Department in February. Discovery made a deal to acquire the brand from AT&T after the telecom giant owned it for less than four years.

• Although the deal will weigh Discovery down with $55 billion in debt, Discovery CEO (and now Warner Bros. Discovery CEO) David Zaslav thinks ankle weights only make you stronger. He predicts the merger will result in the “best media company in the world.”

What does all this mean for your Sunday night watch parties? Well, controlling that debt load might mean that HBO won’t be adding pricey new prestige dramas to the mix anytime soon. In February, Zaslav told investors that the company wants to be judicious, not “win the spending war,” and claimed that HBO’s dramas like Succession, Euphoria, and The Gilded Age seemed sufficient for the network’s lineup.—MK

As the stigma around mental health recedes and therapy remains too expensive for millions, Americans are increasingly looking to social media for mental health content. In fact, the hashtag #mentalhealth alone has 30 billion views on TikTok, and there are more than 37 million posts with the tag on Instagram.

We’ve only begun to grapple with the effects of “influencer therapists.” For instance…

• Instead of offering individualized attention, like in private practice, mental health influencers must appeal to the masses and work in short sprints rather than marathon talk sessions.
• Platitudes might help users feel better, but they also make people part of an ongoing experiment where therapists are media personalities and therapy is content.

It’s a brand-new ethical frontier. Read all about it here.

Stat: Food prices soared 12.6% between February and March to their highest levels on record, with the war in Ukraine disrupting shipments of critical supplies like wheat and vegetable oils. Higher food prices can lead to social unrest in low-income countries, where food accounts for a much larger share of spending. In sub-Saharan Africa, food makes up 40% of consumer spending, compared to 17% in higher-income economies.

Quote: “In my family, it took just one generation to go from segregation to the Supreme Court of the United States.”

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson celebrated her appointment to the Supreme Court as a victory for Black women everywhere. “We’ve made it! We’ve made it—all of us,” she said at a White House event yesterday.

Read: This guy deliberately got infected with dysentery as part of a vaccine clinical trial. He’s been documenting the journey. (Jake Eberts)

Weekend conversation starters:

• Is this what peak performance looks like?
• What are these things called?
• What Americans think a lunch break in France is like.
• Have you ever seen a more beautiful photo?

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