Roger Goodell and Allen Sills: The NFL is ready for some football in this season of covid-19

brought players and personnel back into training facilities, we did so through an intake process that required multiple negative tests, followed by daily covid-19 testing. We canceled preseason games, slowly ramped up football activities in training camps and piloted the new Oakley Mouth Shield, an extended plastic shield worn on the face mask that covers the nose and mouth to further reduce infection risk when players are on the field. Also implemented at the start of the preseason: a high-tech contact tracing program. Players and personnel are required to wear lightweight, electronic proximity-tracking devices on a wristband or lanyard that collect information throughout the day about their close contacts, including on the football field, where the devices are sewn into their uniform. Data collected in daily downloads allow an independent group of epidemiologists to perform quick and accurate contact tracing when an individual is symptomatic or tests positive, so that exposed individuals can be isolated and undergo additional testing. Based on the single-digit positive covid-19 cases among NFL players and other personnel over the past month of testing, we are cautiously optimistic. Daily testing will continue into the regular season, using a national laboratory to avoid burdening local resources. We will monitor new covid-19 testing methods as they become more reliable and widely available. Players will be tested the day before games to determine their eligibility to play. At the stadium, changes behind the scenes will echo those implemented in training facilities, such as physical distancing. On game days, far fewer people will be allowed in locker rooms to ensure that ample space is reserved for essential personnel — coaches, athletic trainers, equipment staff and team officials who will help to facilitate virtual postgame media interviews. The on-field action seen on television will also look different. For example, only one masked player representative from each team will participate in the coin toss; cheerleaders, mascots, sideline reporters and nonessential personnel will not be allowed on the field; electrostatic sprayers will provide wide coverage over high-touch surfaces and equipment; coaches will be required to wear face masks on the sideline; and players will be urged — required, in some cities — to do the same. Some teams plan to allow a limited number of fans into their stadiums — a few thousand instead of tens of thousands — as dictated by state and local officials. New stadium protocols, such as physical distancing,


The oft-forgotten key issue in 2020

Last month, longtime pollster Stan Greenberg listened to a number of focus groups conducted in working-class and rural areas of Wisconsin, Michigan, Maine and Ohio. They were heavy on people who supported President Trump in 2016, and many were now leaning toward voting for Joe Biden in 2020. But if Democrats want to gain these voters, they’ll need to do better on one key issue. “In today’s working class and rural communities, health care is everything,” Greenberg wrote in recent piece in the American Prospect. “The health care system is failing them, and they want someone to fix it.” And they will vote for whomever promises to do just that — and abandon those leaders when they don’t deliver, Greenberg warns. It’s why they voted for Trump in 2016, and why they turned on the Republican Party in 2018. (It’s also, I should add, one reason people voted for Barack Obama in 2008 but turned on the Democratic Party in 2010. As I’ve long observed, people seem to conflate the phrase “Affordable Care Act” with their own situation.) As for now, it’s the covid-19 pandemic, but it’s more than that. It’s the epidemic of opioid deaths — which appear to be rising significantly this year — and the increasing costs of coverage, both of insurance, co-pays and other out-of-pocket expenses. It’s the impossibility of navigating our health-care system and managing to emerge financially intact. These long-running crises are more pressing than ever. More than 4 in 10 working-age Americans experienced inadequate health-care coverage at some point in the past year — either because they lacked health insurance or were forced to pay such a high percentage of their income in the form of deductibles and co-pays that they might as well have been. The percentage of people with a deductible of $1,000 or more has doubled since 2010 and now stands at 46 percent, according to a recent Commonwealth Fund survey. In particular, 40 percent of Latinos reported lacking insurance either at the time of the survey, or at some point within the past year, something to keep in mind when wondering why, as a group, they are much more likely to die from covid-19 than White Americans. Over and over again, people sitting in the focus groups Greenberg listened in on talked about medical bills in the tens of thousands of dollars, and how the high deductibles made health


Trump allegedly disparaged America’s war dead. The backlash probably won’t decide the election.

Last week, the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg posted an article recounting comments President Trump made about America’s war dead. Multiple sources have now independently corroborated many of the details, although some specifics remain in question. The story sparked a media firestorm and a reaction from Trump on Twitter. This controversy also brings back into focus the significant tension between the norm of the military staying out of partisan politics versus its often political role inside presidential administrations. Here’s how to understand the controversy over civilian-military roles. The military is political, but civil-military lines are more blurred than ever Civil-military relations These norms are just that — norms — and not hard-and-fast rules. In terms of politics, my research shows presidents try to appoint top military leaders — those on the Joint Chiefs of Staff — who share their political worldviews. And as Zachary Griffiths and Michael Robinson recently explained here at TMC, military endorsements in election campaigns have increased dramatically in the last few election cycles, a trend that shows no signs of slowing even though these endorsements don’t seem to have much effect on elections. But the Trump presidency has blurred these lines to a greater degree than most prior administrations, as Carrie Lee recently noted here at TMC. And in June, the military’s role in Trump’s visit to a church in Lafayette Square again raised concerns about Trump politicizing the military, as Alice Hunt Friend explained. Here’s what was so unusual about Goldberg’s source A notable aspect of Goldberg’s article is that it relies in part on the account of an anonymous “retired four-star general.” Given that the general described stories from nearly two years ago for an article released during the home stretch of an election, it is difficult to interpret these comments as anything other than an “anti-endorsement” of Trump. My research with Peter Feaver shows that partisan activity by active or retired officers can reduce the public’s trust in the military. As Jason Dempsey notes, this instance — where an anonymous source used only his rank — represents the worst-possible case for maintaining public trust. The source used the credibility of his rank while avoiding personal accountability for his comments. Complicating the fallout is the fact that key parts of the story mention Trump’s conversations with John Kelly — himself a retired four-star general and Gold Star father. Like former defense secretary Jim Mattis, however, Kelly


Four USWNT stars are moving to England. What does that mean for women’s soccer in the U.S.?

First, Sam Mewis left for Manchester City, which, a week later, swooped in to sign Rose Lavelle, a budding U.S. superstar. Then it was Manchester United’s turn, signing Tobin Heath and Christen Press on Wednesday. Four of the biggest stars in U.S. women’s soccer, World Cup champions and cornerstones of the National Women’s Soccer League, decided over the course of a month to head overseas and trade a comfortable but disrupted domestic setup, both with the national team and NWSL, for fresh opportunity and adventure in North West England. On the surface, the departures are a boon to the FA Women’s Super League and a blow to the NWSL, which is facing increasing competition for players as European clubs wake to the fact men aren’t the only ones capable of mastering the beautiful game. There is, however, a lot to unpack here. They’re leaving, in large part, because of the novel coronavirus pandemic’s impact on U.S. sports. The national team might end up going a year between matches, and the NWSL had to drastically alter its 2020 plans. The players urgently need somewhere to play this fall and winter. The pandemic forced the league to cancel the regular season, leaving a month-long tournament this summer in a Utah bubble and a seven-week fall series in home markets. That’s it: between nine and 11 matches for most teams, then a long offseason. Effective mid-October, NWSL teams will not play competitively again until probably April — an eternity for a sport in which players lose fitness and form after a few weeks of inactivity. Combined with no U.S. matches until perhaps March, the national team stars were staring at extended downtime as the rescheduled Olympics approached. The WSL — and leagues in countries that have handled the pandemic better than the United States — offered an option. The English regular season began last weekend and will run into May. Each of the 12 clubs will play 22 matches plus two cup competitions. For Chelsea and Manchester City, there is the UEFA Women’s Champions League, featuring Olympique Lyonnais, Wolfsburg and Barcelona. From top to bottom, the nine-team NWSL is better than the 12-club WSL, but Manchester City, Chelsea and Arsenal are top class, and others, such as Manchester United, are showing ambition after launching women’s programs in recent years. Many NWSL players have left in recent weeks but on short-term contracts and loans.


Experts project autumn surge in coronavirus cases, with a peak after Election Day

Infectious-disease experts are warning of a potential cold-weather surge of coronavirus cases — a long-feared “second wave” of infections and deaths, possibly at a catastrophic scale. It could begin well before Election Day, Nov. 3, although researchers assume the crest would come weeks later, closer to when fall gives way to winter. An autumn surge in covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, would not be an October surprise: It has been hypothesized since early in the pandemic because of the patterns of other respiratory viruses. “My feeling is that there is a wave coming, and it’s not so much whether it’s coming but how big is it going to be,” said Eili Klein, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. The pandemic is already a dominant campaign issue, and it’s not clear that even a spike in deaths would apply much torque to the presidential race. Outbreaks in some states could also bring pressure further down the ballot and conceivably affect turnout if there is so much community spread that voters who planned to cast ballots in person feel unsafe going to the polls. The warnings from researchers come at a moment when, despite a rise in cases in the Upper Midwest, national numbers have been trending downward at a slow pace for several weeks following the early-summer surges in the Sun Belt. Respiratory viruses typically begin spreading more easily a couple of weeks after schools resume classes. Although the pandemic has driven many school districts to remote learning, there is a broad push across the country to return to something like normal life. The Labor Day holiday weekend is a traditional time of travel and group activities, and, like Independence Day and Memorial Day, could seed transmission of the virus if people fail to take precautions. And viruses tend to spread more easily in cooler, less humid weather, which allows them to remain viable longer. As the weather cools, people tend to congregate more indoors. The coronavirus has a relatively long incubation period, and the disease progression in patients with severe illnesses also tends to be drawn out over several weeks. As a result, any spike in deaths will lag weeks behind a spike in infections. And the infection surges have consistently followed the loosening of shutdown orders and other restrictions. A model produced by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation


expect one to be distributed, at least in any significant numbers, before the end of the year at the earliest, and broad distribution could take many months. Meanwhile, the country’s health departments are reporting roughly 40,000 positive test results every day — more than double the number in May when many states began reopening after the first wave of infections. Epidemiologist Jeffrey Shaman of Columbia University said a good target for the entire country would be to drive transmission down to 500 infections a day. At that level, contact tracing and testing could keep outbreaks under control. “The question is, is it going to spread out of control broadly?” Shaman said. “Are we going to get us down to 10,000 cases, then under 1,000, and then to my magical number of 500? The thing about this disease, it really spins out of control.” Klein, the Hopkins epidemiologist, warns the fall wave is likely to be more intense than the peak in the spring. Maryland had 2,000 covid-19 patients in hospitals at its peak in April, he said, and his midrange scenario envisions twice that many hospitalized patients at the next peak. At Hopkins, doctors are discussing what they call “Surge 2.0.” They are envisioning outbreaks that could potentially overwhelm hospitals with covid-19 patients. Even less catastrophic surges could hamper other kinds of non-covid-19 medical care, said Lisa Lockerd Maragakis, an associate professor of medicine and infectious diseases. “Even though we have had so many cases and we have had so many tragic deaths, we have the vast majority of people who are not immune to this virus,” Maragakis said. “Without a therapeutic or a vaccine, we are still in a position where the transmission of the virus depends heavily on our behaviors every day.” That is a common refrain among those working around-the-clock to understand this pandemic. “We are collectively in control of how many cases or deaths there are,” Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist at Harvard, said in an email. “Forecasts more than a month from now make sense only if they are conditional on how we behave.” “People’s behavior is a dramatic determinant here,” said Christopher Murray, the director of IHME. “Look at what happened in Florida [after the spike in cases]. People got scared. They started wearing masks, they stopped going to bars.” But the converse is also true: If people stop being vigilant, the virus bounces back.


Telling the difference between flu and coronavirus is essential for treatment

About a week before Pennsylvania shut down last March, at the start of the pandemic, Amanda Bernstein felt short of breath. Then she had a dry cough, followed by a fever. Bernstein, a 29-year-old insurance analyst, asked for a coronavirus test, but her doctor said he didn’t have one. Instead, he tested her for influenza. When that came back negative, he said she probably had a “bug,” and indeed, she was fine after a few days of Tylenol and cough syrup. “I’ll never know if I had covid,” Bernstein said. “If I’d have known more back then about how serious it was, I’d have been much more worried.” Six months later, on the verge of another flu season, Americans know a lot more about covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. Unfortunately, doctors may be just as much in the dark when it comes to distinguishing it without a lab test for influenza or several other common seasonal viruses, including adenovirus or RSV. All of these ailments often share initial symptoms that may include a cough, fever, fatigue and muscle aches. “We’re going to be totally confused,” predicted Arnold Monto, an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. To date, covid-19 has just one common telltale symptom, Monto said, which is a distinctive loss of taste and smell. More than 85 percent of patients reported this symptom in a recent European study of 417 people with mild to moderate cases of the disease. People with influenza or a bad cold and nasal congestion may also lose their sense of smell. The difference with covid-19 is that the loss is sudden and more profound — affecting even the ability to distinguish between sweet and bitter — and may happen without a stuffy nose, said Carl Philpott, a University of East Anglia ear, nose and throat expert. Philpott, one of the authors of a small study recently described in a letter to the editor in the journal Rhinology, gave smell and taste tests to 30 people matched for age and sex. Ten had been diagnosed with covid-19; 10 had bad colds and 10 served as a healthy control group. In an email, Philpott said the finding offers a way to discriminate between covid-19 and influenza or a cold when conventional tests aren’t available. A University of East Anglia statement said the finding supported the theory that covid-19 infects


the brain and central nervous system. Philpott said people who suspect they have covid-19 might screen themselves at home, by sniffing products such as coffee and oranges. A rarer covid-19 symptom that may offer another warning sign is dyspnea, or difficulty breathing. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists this as one of only two symptoms (along with loss of taste and smell) not commonly shared with influenza. Researchers have reported it in about 50 percent of patients with severe cases of the disease, saying it tends to appear about a week after onset, and usually signals a serious respiratory problem. Doctors will be on the alert for these two symptoms in the coming weeks, yet several experts said there’s still enough overlap with symptoms of other respiratory illnesses to raise concerns that they’ll be flummoxed. “Let’s just imagine you have a person in their 60s with diabetes and high blood pressure who has a fever and cough,” said Paul Sax, clinical director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. In trying to distinguish between influenza and covid-19, he said, “There’s no way a physician can confidently tell one from the other.” The stakes of uncertainty are high, given that swift differentiation between covid-19 and the flu could help save lives. Time-tested anti-viral medications, approved by the Food and Drug Administration, can fight influenza and similar illnesses even as they’re powerless against covid-19. But patients with covid-19 should be quarantined as soon as possible, given that on average it is nearly twice as contagious as influenza. What’s more, people infected with covid-19 can be contagious for about twice as long as for those with the flu. Covid-19 is also about ten times more lethal than influenza, as Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has noted. In barely six months, more than 182,000 Americans have died of covid-19, compared with between 12,000 and 61,000 annual deaths from influenza, according to the CDC. This is true even as 80 percent of covid-19 cases are classified as mild or asymptomatic — not requiring hospitalization — according to the World Health Organization. Influenza has a similar share of mild cases. If coronavirus test results were as rapidly delivered in the United States as they are in many other countries, doctors would have less cause for concern about the elusive


Pandemic bankruptcies: A running list of retailers that have filed for Chapter 11

Annual revenue: Number of stores: Founded: Stage Stores, which operates hundreds of Palais Royal, Bealls and Goody’s department stores, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on May 10. The Houston-based company said it is searching for a buyer as it liquidate its stores. The retailer has 738 locations across half a dozen brands, including the off-price Gordmans chain and the Peebles and Stage department stores, in small towns and rural areas in 42 states. Annual revenue: Number of stores: Founded: Department store chain J.C. Penney filed for bankruptcy protection on May 15 and said it would permanently close some of its 850 locations. The 118-year-old retailer was struggling long before the public health crisis forced it to temporarily shutter its stores and furlough the majority of its 90,000 employees. It has nearly $4 billion in debt and hasn’t turned a profit since 2010. Sales have fallen for four straight years as it struggled to win back longtime loyalists who have since gravitated to big box chains such as Target and Costco to outfit their families. In its bankruptcy filing, J.C. Penney said it has both assets and liabilities between $1 billion and $10 billion, and it owes money to more than 100,000 creditors. It also said it would close some stores, but did not provide details on where or when. Annual revenue: Number of stores: Founded: Discount retailer Tuesday Morning filed for bankruptcy on May 27 and said it will shut 230 locations, roughly one-third of its store holdings, this summer, after the coronavirus outbreak disrupted sales. In its bankruptcy filing, the Dallas-based home goods chain said it owed between $50 million and $100 million to as many as 5,000 creditors. Analysts say the retailer has struggled to set itself apart from competitors such as HomeGoods, Ross Stores and Macy’s Backstage outlets, which have gained popularity in recent years. Tuesday Morning stores, they say, tend to be unorganized and overwhelming, with a mishmash of less-than-exciting inventory. “Many stores are not so much an Aladdin’s cave of exciting treasures as a jumbled flea market of whatever buyers could seemingly get their hands on,” Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData Retail, wrote in a note to clients. “Putting together a range requires enormous skill and a certain degree of flair. In our view, Tuesday Morning lacks both.” Annual revenue: Number of stores: Founded: Vitamin and nutrition chain GNC Holdings filed for Chapter 11


U.S. sanctions Ukrainian lawmaker tied to Giuliani as ‘active Russian agent’

The U.S. Treasury Department on Thursday placed sanctions on a member of Ukraine’s parliament for running an “influence campaign” against former vice president Joe Biden, dubbing the lawmaker “an active Russian agent for over a decade” who has maintained “close connections with Russian intelligence services.” The sanctions against Andriy Derkach — who in an attempt to tarnish the Democratic nominee for president released pilfered and edited phone conversations that Biden had years ago with Ukraine’s leadership — come less than two months before the 2020 presidential election and mark the most aggressive public action the U.S. government has taken to date to stanch foreign interference ahead of the vote. President Trump’s personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani has met at least three times with Derkach since late last year and publicized the Ukrainian lawmaker’s claims on his podcast and elsewhere, elevating what the Treasury Department has now characterized as a foreign interference campaign by an active Russian agent aimed at influencing the 2020 election. Giuliani met Derkach in Kyiv late last year, just as the House prepared to impeach Trump over a pressure campaign orchestrated by Giuliani to induce the Ukrainian government into announcing probes of Biden. Derkach later visited Giuliani in New York, months before he began releasing the tapes of Biden at news conferences in Kyiv. Derkach “and other Russian agents employ manipulation and deceit to attempt to influence elections in the United States and elsewhere around the world,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement. “The United States will continue to use all the tools at its disposal to counter these Russian disinformation campaigns and uphold the integrity of our election system.” The Treasury Department said Derkach had “directly or indirectly engaged in, sponsored, concealed or otherwise been complicit in foreign interference in an attempt to undermine the upcoming 2020 U.S. presidential election.” “Today’s designation of Derkach is focused on exposing Russian malign influence campaigns and protecting our upcoming elections from foreign interference,” the department said in a statement. “This action is a clear signal to Moscow and its proxies that this activity will not be tolerated.” In addition to Derkach, the Treasury Department imposed sanctions on three individuals from the Internet Research Agency, the St. Petersburg-based troll factory that created fake accounts on social media during the 2016 campaign in attempt to influence the election. The department said the three individuals supported the IRA’s cryptocurrency accounts,


The Trump team welcomed Russian disinformation, the Trump administration further confirms

President Trump, in August, promoted information that the U.S. government has increasingly connected to a Russian disinformation campaign in the 2020 election — after his personal attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, worked with the man promoting it. Now the U.S. government says explicitly that the man behind it is a Russian agent. The Treasury Department on Thursday identified Ukrainian politician Andrii Derkach as an “active Russian agent for over a decade” — a label that could lead to more direct penalties. It added that Derkach has “directly or indirectly engaged in, sponsored, concealed or otherwise been complicit in foreign interference in an attempt to undermine the upcoming 2020 U.S. presidential election.” “This action is a clear signal to Moscow and its proxies that this activity will not be tolerated,” the Treasury Department said. But the activity has been more than tolerated by Trump and his allies. The situation recalls a recent one in which the GOP-led Senate Intelligence Committee’s report about Russia’s 2016 election interference efforts labeled a close ally of then-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, Konstantin Kilimnik, a “Russian intelligence officer.” The question with Kilimnik is how explicit was the alliance, and the Senate committee report says we may never know the full truth about Manafort’s contacts with him. That’s because Manafort chose to lie about them (while curiously risking extended jail time) and his communications with Kilimnik remain obscured. But with Derkach, who is now officially labeled a Russian agent, it’s evident that his efforts have paid dividends — including with what we’ve learned since Derkach was linked to the Russian disinformation campaign by the U.S. government. Trump in the past month retweeted edited audio of a purported 2016 call between then-Vice President Joe Biden and then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. The tweet came after Derkach had previously leaked purported recordings of their conversations. U.S. intelligence had indicated even then that the Derkach-linked effort was part of a Russian disinformation campaign — raising serious questions about Trump’s decision to promote it — but the designation from the Treasury Department now makes Derkach’s ties official. But Trump isn’t the only one who might have questions to answer in light of the new designation. His personal lawyer, Giuliani, worked with Derkach while trying to dig up dirt on Biden and Ukraine. Giuliani met with Derkach twice since late 2019, publicizing Derkach’s claims on his podcast and serving as a conduit between Derkach


Most Americans expect cheating in the November elections

This concern runs counter to the evidence: Election administration experts find few serious problems associated with the integrity of state and local election officials. Despite these partisan differences, there are variations in opinion within parties as well. One important source of variation is how attentive people are to politics, which we can approximate in this survey with people’s level of formal education. Americans with more formal education tend to be more attentive to politics. They may therefore be more likely to hear and accept both the views of election experts — such as that fraud in mail-in ballots and cheating by election officials is not a serious problem — and the views of the intelligence community that foreign interference is an ongoing problem. Meanwhile, less-well-educated individuals may tend to accept more partisan claims, such as that voter fraud is rampant. The graph below focuses on concern about mail ballots and shows an educational divide among Biden supporters but not among Trump supporters or undecided respondents. Whatever their education level, 80 to 90 percent of Trump supporters are concerned about mail-in ballot fraud. Biden supporters show the expected effects of education. Less-well-educated Biden supporters are more like Trump supporters in their concern about mail-ballot fraud. But better-educated Biden supporters tend to reflect the expert consensus that fraud is rare. For concern about foreign interference, the pattern is different. Now it is Biden supporters who are universally concerned, regardless of their level of formal education. Among Trump supporters, there is less concern overall, especially among those at the lowest and highest levels of education recorded in the survey. Indeed, the best educated Republicans are the least concerned overall. They may be more attentive to messages from Trump and his allies playing down the threat of foreign interference than to the warnings from the intelligence community. Concern about cheating by election officials is fairly widespread among Trump supporters, but especially among those with at least a four-year college degree. Among Biden supporters, this concern generally decreases among those with more formal education — although half or more of Biden supporters with at least a college degree are still concerned about cheating. The figure below illustrates how prevalent this concern is. Among the respondents who were undecided, there is only modest variation across education levels. Overall, the undecideds’ concerns about election integrity are more like Republicans on foreign interference and split the difference between


The strongest evidence yet of Trump’s (ongoing) collusion with Russia

The biggest scandal of the week is that President Trump refused to defend the United States from a pandemic. The second-biggest is that he refuses to defend our democracy from growing Russian attacks on our election — and that, indeed, he appears to be aiding the attackers. The Treasury Department on Thursday imposed sanctions against Andriy Derkach, a member of Ukraine’s parliament, who was described as an “active Russian agent for over a decade.” Treasury says that Derkach has “been complicit in foreign interference in an attempt to undermine the upcoming 2020 U.S. presidential election” — for example, by releasing “edited audio tapes and other unsupported information with the intent to discredit U.S. officials.” The target of Derkach’s smear campaign has been Democratic nominee Joe Biden — and Derkach’s willing collaborator has been Rudolph W. Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer. Giuliani now claims to barely know Derkach, but the former New York mayor has met with him at least three times. Earlier this year, he told The Post that he knew Derkach “quite well” and that the Ukrainian lawmaker “has been very helpful to me.” Trump, in turn, has hyped this Russian agent’s bogus charges against Biden. Talk about deja vu: Paul Manafort was in regular contact with a Russian agent while serving as chairman of Trump’s 2016 campaign — and while Trump was amplifying Russian attacks against the Democrats. Once again, there are suspiciously strong parallels between Trump’s propaganda and Russia’s. This year, both Trump and Russia are assailing the integrity of mail-in voting. The Department of Homeland Security warns that Russian operatives have “denigrated vote-by-mail processes, alleging they lack transparency and procedural oversight, creating vast opportunities for voter fraud.” The president and his unscrupulous appointees have attempted to deflect well-founded suspicions that Russian President Vladimir Putin is helping Trump to win again by suggesting that China is the real election threat — and that Beijing is helping Biden. Microsoft complicated that narrative by releasing an analysis this week showing that China is doing more to hack Biden than Trump. But U.S. intelligence analysts and outside analysts say that the Russian threat to the election is far greater than similar efforts from China, Iran or anyone else. Yet Trump and his minions are working overtime to cover up the Russian attacks — even going so far, the New York Times has reported, as to tamper with a national intelligence estimate.


Newborn giant panda cub at National Zoo in D.C. is ‘packing on grams’

expected to reach another big milestone — opening its eyes. Typically, giant pandas open their eyes when they are between six and eight weeks of age, experts said. In its update, the zoo said, “We can see that its eyes are still sealed when we zoom in with the Panda Cam.” Zoo officials also said that viewers have noticed that the newborn’s tail seems “smaller as it grows.” Here’s why: When a giant panda is born, its tail measures about five centimeters long — roughly a quarter of its body size. “In time, cubs grow into their tails,” Laurie Thompson, an assistant curator of giant pandas at the zoo, said in an online post. “Over the next few weeks, we will also see our cub’s fur transform from soft and wispy to woolly and thick.” In a video on its Twitter page, the cub’s mom, Mei Xiang, can be seen holding and rubbing the baby. Another shot shows the little panda on the floor of their den as its mother watches. And another view shows Mei Xiang drinking water as she cuddles the cub in her arms. Thompson also said in her online post that the cub is getting used to its surroundings and “does not protest as much” when its mama puts it on the floor of the den. At 5 days old, the cub had squealed quite a bit when Mei Xiang put it down. “Now it mostly makes a grunting vocalization, which is normal for a giant panda cub at this age,” Thompson wrote. Mei Xiang gave birth Aug. 21, and it was Washington’s first giant panda cub in five years. At 22, she was the oldest giant panda to give birth in the United States. Her pregnancy was called a “miracle” by panda experts because, given her age, she had less than a 1 percent chance of having another cub, according to zoo officials. She had been inseminated with five-year-old semen from her mate, Tian Tian, and Mei Xiang was the first giant panda in the country to give birth after frozen semen was used, marking what a National Zoo biologist called “a huge accomplishment.” In addition, Mei Xiang had at least nine “false pregnancies,” where female pandas show early behaviors that they may be pregnant but no cub comes. Mei Xiang has given birth to three surviving cubs: Bao Bao, Bei Bei and Tai Shan.


The intelligence community got the pandemic right. Then politicians botched it.

on it. Third, the information must be trustworthy to outside observers and could be viewed in the same way, or reliable. Fourth, it should measure or capture reality in ways that assure it is valid. Fifth, it must be adequate, or framed in its proper context. Finally, Wilensky holds that intelligence should inform policymakers in such a way to allow them to best confront the challenge, making it wide-ranging. On each of these fronts, the U.S. intelligence community seems to have risen to the occasion. It was without question clear, since the WHO, NPR and The Washington Post’s reporting suggested that even the details-averse president understood the pandemic’s severity by January. Likewise, coronavirus intelligence appears to have been timely: Press reporting indicated that the National Security Council was repeatedly briefed on the topic in December, and beyond the in-person briefings to the president, a coronavirus-related article appeared in the president’s daily brief in early January. On Capitol Hill, Intelligence analysts drafted products and held staff-level briefings for both the House and Senate intelligence committees that month as well. The Senate Health and Foreign Relations Committees held a briefing for all senators on the 24th. Only 14 senators showed up. Even if few were paying attention to it, that intelligence also seems to have been reliable, thereby meeting Wilensky’s third benchmark: Multiple parts of the government had reported to the White House about this terrible pandemic. The CDC began screening for covid-19 at San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York City airports Jan. 17. Beyond any classified information, the fact that China canceled its Lunar New Year celebration in Wuhan and Beijing — like axing Christmas and the Super Bowl simultaneously — by Jan. 23 meant that something terrible was brewing that Chinese authorities were struggling to control. Further, the intelligence appears to have been valid, seemingly using basic concepts of epidemiology and capturing the reality of a pandemic. The CDC on Jan. 21 confirmed the very first case of a patient with covid-19 in the United States after alerting clinicians earlier that month to be aware of patients with respiratory problems who had traveled to Wuhan, China. The United States believed the warnings were valid enough to pass along to our NATO and Israeli allies. As best as we can tell, the intelligence presented to the president and other policymakers was also adequate, based on the multiple warnings from military,


if few were paying attention to it, that intelligence also seems to have been reliable, thereby meeting Wilensky’s third benchmark: Multiple parts of the government had reported to the White House about this terrible pandemic. The CDC began screening for covid-19 at San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York City airports Jan. 17. Beyond any classified information, the fact that China canceled its Lunar New Year celebration in Wuhan and Beijing — like axing Christmas and the Super Bowl simultaneously — by Jan. 23 meant that something terrible was brewing that Chinese authorities were struggling to control. Further, the intelligence appears to have been valid, seemingly using basic concepts of epidemiology and capturing the reality of a pandemic. The CDC on Jan. 21 confirmed the very first case of a patient with covid-19 in the United States after alerting clinicians earlier that month to be aware of patients with respiratory problems who had traveled to Wuhan, China. The United States believed the warnings were valid enough to pass along to our NATO and Israeli allies. As best as we can tell, the intelligence presented to the president and other policymakers was also adequate, based on the multiple warnings from military, intelligence and health sources. Presumably, still-classified diplomatic cables from U.S. embassies and consulates in China indicated much the same. Moreover, the intelligence community appeared to participate at the highest level — for example, Trump tweeted Jan. 29 that he received a coronavirus briefing, and provided a series of photos from the Situation Room. If one looks closely at the images of the video teleconference screen that he tweeted, one can see representatives from CIA, NSA and the Office of the Secretary of Defense in the discussion. Lastly, it was wide-ranging. This country hasn’t faced a civilization-changing pandemic in more than a century, but all the warnings pointed to the fact that the virus was moving, and moving fast. And thankfully, the United States had a “pandemic playbook” that detailed the steps required to handle such an catastrophe. Indeed, the intelligence community had long assessed that this kind of pandemic could occur. Months before the virus even existed, the intelligence community’s Worldwide Threat Assessment indicated that the United States and the world “will remain vulnerable to the next flu pandemic or large-scale outbreak of a contagious disease that could lead to massive rates of death and disability, severely affect the world


Violencia policial en Colombia. El coronavirus en Bergamo.¿Ganará Trump en Florida?

El director de la ONG Temblores describe la violencia de los policías en Colombia. Un reportero italiano habla de los sobrevivientes del Covid-19 en Bergamo. Y un periodista de BBC Monitoring, de lo que puede pasar en Florida.


The Trump administration finally takes action against Russian election meddling — even as it tries to deny it

THERE APPEAR to be two minds in the Trump administration: one that acknowledges Russia is a hostile geopolitical foe; and that of President Trump and his most craven flunkies, who seek to help the Kremlin escape blame and punishment for its persistent wrongdoing. The first occasionally wins out, as was the case on Thursday, when the Treasury Department placed sanctions on Andriy Derkach, a pro-Russian member of the Ukrainian parliament. The department concluded that Mr. Derkach “has been an active Russian agent for over a decade, maintaining close connections with the Russian Intelligence Services.” In the past two years, “Derkach waged a covert influence campaign centered on cultivating false and unsubstantiated narratives concerning U.S. officials in the upcoming 2020 Presidential Election, spurring corruption investigations in both Ukraine and the United States designed to culminate prior to election day,” Treasury stated. What Treasury did not mention is that Trump lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani worked with Mr. Derkach to smear Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden based on the fact that Mr. Biden’s son was once on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian natural gas company. The smear effort continues with the ongoing Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee investigation led by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who denies the by-now obvious conclusion that hyping Biden-Ukraine conspiracy theories right before the election advances a Russian disinformation plot. Sadly, there may be many senior members of the Trump administration who approach protecting the country with a similar level of partisan blindness. A bombshell whistleblower complaint emerged Wednesday from the Department of Homeland Security, claiming that leaders of the powerful federal agency pressed persistently to cook intelligence reports so they aligned with Mr. Trump’s political views rather than reality. In his complaint, Brian Murphy, the former chief of intelligence and analysis at DHS, alleges that top officials demanded misleading information on immigration, on Russian interference in U.S. elections and on antifa, three issues on which Mr. Trump is particularly sensitive — and particularly insistent on denying the facts. Mr. Murphy claims that acting DHS secretary Chad Wolf, under orders from national security adviser Robert C. O’Brien, told him in May “to cease providing intelligence assessments on the threat of Russian interference in the United States, and instead start reporting on interference activities by China and Iran.” Then, in July, Mr. Murphy alleges Mr. Wolf ordered him to hold up an intelligence notification on Russian disinformation


Some will refuse a coronavirus vaccine. Can anything change their minds?

century, an estimated 300 million people died of it. Now, no one does. Yet, as author Jonathan M. Berman recounts in his new book, “Anti-Vaxxers,” foes of vaccination began to emerge soon after the first vaccines were deployed. When the British government passed the Vaccination Act of 1853, making smallpox immunization mandatory, John Gibbs, a practitioner of hydropathy, or water therapy, argued that it infringed on people’s control over their bodies, benefited doctors, had failed in some cases and might “lower the vital resistance” to illness. (In fact, vaccines train the immune system to recognize and fight off specific infections.) In 1866, Gibbs’s cousin, Richard Gibbs, founded the Anti-Compulsory Vaccination League in England — the first organized opposition — and in 1879, a similar group, the Anti-Vaccination Society of America, was established in the United States. When smallpox spread to Montreal in 1885, a riot erupted in the city’s streets to fight compulsory immunization. The resulting smallpox outbreak was the last to occur in a major city in the developed world. Opposition to vaccines persists today, periodically gaining traction in the United States and other countries. Berman, an assistant professor of basic science at an osteopathic medical school, explores the history of anti-vaccine movements and how best to counter them. Such movements, he finds, share beliefs and features: wariness of government control, distrust of the medical establishment and its products, false claims about vaccines (often made by people with economic interests), and unfounded fears of harm, spread by misinformation and social media. Those most vulnerable to such claims are often parents trying to decide what is best for their children’s health. Rather than learning from reliable sources why childhood vaccines are necessary to protect both individuals and the population as a whole from infections, they may receive unreliable information from others in their community who oppose vaccination. Historically, accidents or errors in vaccine production have been rare but, on occasion, calamitous. In 1955, more than 100,000 doses of polio vaccine manufactured by Cutter and Wyeth Laboratories were improperly inactivated, and caused 250 cases of paralytic polio and 11 deaths. The disaster shook the faith of parents, doctors and health authorities, and slowed the progress of the campaign to vaccinate the world’s children against polio. It led, however, to stricter oversight and testing of vaccine manufacturing. In the United States, vaccine coverage overall remains high, with rates above 90 percent for


Week after week, New York boroughs saw more deaths from covid-19 this year than they did on 9/11

act of immediate devastation. It was good people doing their best to save lives where they could — many of whom ended up succumbing themselves. In that sense, though, the parallels to the pandemic are stronger. As the novel coronavirus became apparent in the city, the same dynamic played out: Medical professionals did their best under dire, dangerous circumstances to save as many people as possible. And although the pandemic was not as immediately deadly as the 9/11 attacks, it was far deadlier over time. Data compiled by The Washington Post indicate that the number of deaths in New York state passed the state’s initial death toll from 9/11 (as measured by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) by March 31. In New York City, more people had died of covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, by April 1 than had died in the initial attacks. While the death toll from the virus accrued more slowly than the toll in the 9/11 attacks, it grew steadily and overwhelmingly. It’s the difference between a flash flood and a tsunami. Both are deadly; both have different effects. Even so, there were days in the spring when the Bronx saw more deaths from covid-19 than the borough lost in the 9/11 attacks. For about two weeks, in fact, the borough was seeing more deaths each day than were lost, according to that CDC tally. Both Brooklyn and Queens — hit much harder by both the attacks and the virus — saw nearly as many deaths on single days in mid-April as the boroughs saw on that day 19 years ago. On a weekly basis this spring, though, both New York state and each borough consistently lost more people to covid-19 than to the terrorist attacks. In the week of April 12, Brooklyn and Queens each lost about six times as many people as were killed in the 9/11 attacks. In the Bronx that week, the toll was 11 times as high. This trauma is different and unresolved. The city has lost numerous first responders to the coronavirus, including police officers, firefighters and, of course, medical professionals. But those deaths have been quieter, both because they have been more scattered and because the crisis is ongoing. In New York, the initial peak has receded, but the threat still looms. What’s different now, too, is the national response. The United States rallied around


The Daily 202: Taliban prisoners linked to killing U.S. troops are released ahead of 9/11 anniversary

flown to Doha. Three of the six are accused of involvement in the deaths of U.S. troops in so-called insider attacks. “The negotiations are a result of a bold diplomatic effort on the part of my administration in recent months and years,” Trump boasted. “Despite objections from U.S. allies to the transfer of the men accused of killing the foreign nationals, U.S. officials did not raise formal concerns,” my colleague Susannah George reports from Kabul. “The six men who landed in Doha are the last of thousands of Taliban inmates released by the Afghan government in a prisoner swap process that was the central issue delaying peace talks for months. The U.S.-Taliban deal called for the Afghan government to release 5,000 Taliban fighters in exchange for 1,000 members of their security forces. … In Doha, the six prisoners will be kept under house arrest through November, after which their stay could be extended or they could be returned to Afghanistan … It is unclear if the prisoners would be placed under house arrest if returned to Afghanistan or if they would be set free like thousands of other Taliban fighters.” As part of its deal with the United States government, the Taliban said it will cut ties with international terrorist groups. But there are concerns that the group is not upholding that pledge and cannot be trusted to do so in the future. Nevertheless, Trump has persisted in pushing to withdraw as many U.S. troops as possible from Afghanistan before the November election so that he can argue he kept his 2016 campaign promise to end America’s longest war. The top American commander in the Middle East, Gen. Frank McKenzie, announced on Wednesday that the U.S. military will reduce the number in troops in Afghanistan from 8,600 to about 4,500 by early November. ”We don’t want to be an occupying force in this country, but we do have strategic interests, vital interests, that compel us to be certain that these entities such as al-Qaeda and ISIS can’t be guests there to attack the United States,” McKenzie told Voice of America. U.S. troops have been in Afghanistan since the weeks after 9/11 when Mullah Omar, then the Taliban’s leader, rejected President George W. Bush’s demand to hand over bin Laden. Biden said in an interview with Stars and Stripes on Thursday that he supports drawing down troops in the Middle East


Meditating on disasters, she predicted a pandemic

stories” — a strategy recommended by a scholar Gabbert quotes — but by depicting the problem’s un-depictability. Climate change is so “massively distributed in time and space,” Gabbert writes, citing the philosopher Timothy Morton, that it “can’t be captured in a photograph or even an abstraction.” It is “happening everywhere all the time.” To perceive it at all, we have to artificially shrink it or pause it. Consider time-lapse GIFs of melting ice, whose “extreme compression only minimizes the impact of what’s happening at actual size.” Gabbert’s descriptions of the human failure to grasp climate change in all its dimensions end up being a far better aid to apprehending it. They are not, however, likely to rouse anyone to action. “Big and Slow” is typical of Gabbert’s disaster essays in that its bent is deterministic. “Don’t be upset when a teacup breaks, because its breaking was inevitable,” she writes, invoking a Buddhist philosophy. “Is the world already broken?” If it’s not, “The Great Mortality” suggests, we might have other inexorable catastrophes to thank. “A pandemic, an asteroid, or a nuclear war could all lead to global cooling,” Gabbert observes. “When you look at it that way, it’s almost as though we are acting with a higher collective intelligence — a hive mind, employing folly as a strategy.” Another essay offers a similar explanation of catastrophic technological failures like the Titanic and the Challenger. Such disasters, Gabbert fears, are the unavoidable outcome of collective progress. (She quotes the philosopher Paul Virilio: “The invention of the ship was also the invention of the shipwreck.”) Humanity, in these framings, becomes an object of detached awe and curiosity that resemble what you might feel during a nature documentary. Despite her drone’s-eye perspective, Gabbert remains a human being concerned with human suffering. She often describes her horror at death and destruction, and her rage against what she sees as evil. But these moral instincts do not usually translate into well-defined moral positions. (After quoting her, I keep finding upon reflection that I need to delete “she argues” and replace it with something else.) Her essays are not argumentative or even narrative as much as they are accretive, example after example building on a given theme: nuclear disaster, the threat of tsunamis and earthquakes, the nature of pain, the difficulty of seeing oneself as one is. The technique effectively conveys each topic’s “sheer sheerness,” to borrow


College football’s quasi bubbles have been disrupted with other students returning

As sports in the United States worked to lift themselves out of an unprecedented shutdown, leagues developed similar strategies — all focused on confining athletes to a set of facilities and keeping them away from anyone who could disrupt the season by spreading the novel coronavirus. So far, it’s working. The NBA has staged a months-long marathon of games at Disney World. Women’s soccer played in Utah. Hockey set up outposts in Canada. Games have run smoothly, and few players have contracted the virus. College football longs for that same success and needs the season just as much to keep athletic departments financially afloat. But at the college level, players are, according to the NCAA, simply students. The association’s logic is that the same way some students help with economics research or study sociology, these students play football. That long-standing philosophy turned into a hurdle in returning to play. But on some campuses where classes have shifted online and most students who live on campus have been sent home, athletes have stayed to prepare for their seasons. That’s the closest college football has come to creating a bubble, and the risk is still far greater than in the professional environments. Football in major conferences kicks off this weekend, with ACC and Big 12 teams playing their season openers. Many of those universities have welcomed students back, and some already have had surges of cases on campus, where large social gatherings are inevitable. Four of the games previously scheduled for this week were postponed because of outbreaks that kept the teams from practicing. “We’re all one big test away from having to make tough decisions,” Oklahoma Coach Lincoln Riley said at a news conference this week as his team prepares to face Missouri State. “That’s every team every single week.” The return of the student body has worried officials for months. Football players began voluntary workouts in June, living on somewhat empty campuses. Coaches could strictly monitor their players’ behavior, and the athletes themselves are motivated to adhere to guidelines because they don’t want to risk losing their season. But a campus filled with regular students, who might be less inclined to exercise caution, heightens the risk. So football programs are now tasked with keeping their players guarded from the outside world, even though complete separation on college campuses remains impossible. Early on, there were doubts about whether college football could


A group of students knew they had covid-19. They hosted a party over Labor Day anyway.

officer sighed. “You’re not quarantining if you’re mixing with other people,” he said. Citing federal privacy laws, a spokeswoman for Miami University told The Washington Post in a statement that the school cannot comment on individual cases. But added that “any Miami University student who violates a quarantine or isolation order or hosts a large gathering that violates the City of Oxford mass gathering ordinance will face disciplinary action under our Code of Student Conduct.” “We take these matters most seriously, and students can face suspension or dismissal for these types of violations,” the spokeswoman said. On Tuesday, the school announced it would resume in-person classes beginning Sept. 21 and that all students moving to on-campus housing, which will begin through a phased-in process during the week of Sept. 14, are required to take a covid-19 test. Over Labor Day weekend, the university reported 159 new student cases of the coronavirus, bringing the total number of active cases to 1,037, WCPO reported, at a school with almost 20,000 students. So far, the state of Ohio has had more than 134,000 cases of covid-19 and there have been more than 4,300 deaths, according to The Post’s coronavirus tracker. “Upperclassmen moved back,” Miami University President Gregory Crawford told WCPO. “Those early weekends in August we saw an uptick in parties and gatherings.” Other large universities, which have had students on campus for weeks now, have had a difficult time preventing students from holding large gatherings. The University of Alabama, which has had more than 2,000 positive cases, issued 639 individual sanctions to students as of Thursday, and 33 students have been suspended, the Associated Press reported. There have been more than 135,000 cases in the state, according to The Post’s tracker. Despite having a comprehensive plan that included testing students twice a week and an app to track them, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign hasn’t been able to stop students — including those who tested positive — from partying, the New York Times reported. Since the first day of classes in late August, the school has recorded more than 400 new cases, according to a news release from the university earlier this month. “If you know you are positive and you go to a party, that’s not just a bad act,” Ahmed E. Elbanna, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the university, told the Times. “That’s very, very dangerous.”


Where states reopened and cases spiked after the U.S. shutdown

public spaces and outdoors when social distancing is not possible. On Aug. 3, the governor and leaders of the state’s largest jurisdiction clashed over whether private schools should be able to bring students back on campus for in-person learning. In amending a previous executive order, the governor said school systems and private schools should have sole authority to determine when and how to safely reopen; local health officials may shut down schools only on a case-by-case basis for health reasons. On Aug. 27, four days before the school year begins in many parts of Maryland, the governor announced the state’s 24 school systems are “fully authorized to begin safely reopening” for in-person classes, based on improving health metrics. On Sept. 4 The governor has extended through May 18 his original order, which prohibits gatherings of more than 10 people. People can go out for groceries, medicine and other essentials. Outdoor exercise is allowed as long as people maintain six-foot physical distancing. On May 11 On May 18 On May 25 On June 8 On June 22 On July 6 The governor has said that the state will not enter the fourth phase of reopening — which allows bars, nightclubs and large entertainment venues to operate — until there is a vaccine or treatment. On April 9, the governor implemented additional restrictions for stores, specifying limits on the number of customers allowed in a store at one time based on floor space. On April 27, the governor introduced a plan to start reopening the state’s businesses, which she said would be done at an “incremental” pace. Construction businesses were allowed to resume operations May 7. On May 1, the governor signed a new executive order that extended various business closures and the emergency declaration until May 28. On May 22, businesses and restaurants in northern Michigan reopened at reduced capacity under a new executive order the governor issued May 18. It allows bars and restaurants to operate at 50 percent capacity, with face coverings required for servers and six feet of distance between customers, as well as social gatherings of up to 10 people. The governor said the existing stay-at-home order affecting the rest of the state will remain in effect until May 28 unless decreases in the rate of new cases and deaths and increased testing indicates it is safe to revise them earlier. On May 26, retail stores and


associations and some state lawmakers. The governor said local officials now need only inform the state health department if they want to issue mask requirements. No statewide stay-at-home order has been in place. On April 17, the governor issued an order that outlined a multiphase plan to reopen the state, with certain businesses able to reopen April 20. On April 24, the governor outlined additional openings, including outdoor businesses, construction operations and recreation maintenance work, with a maximum of five workers per location, beginning April 27. Outdoor retail space could allow in-person shopping beginning April 27, with a maximum of 10 people. On May 18 On May 22 On May 29, zoos reopened. Personal-care businesses such as salons and barbershops reopened by appointment and with occupancy limits. On May 31, overnight camps, youth sports and certain professional sports without fans reopened. On June 1 On June 5 On June 26, event venues and restaurants can increase occupancy to 50 percent. Indoor events can resume with up to 75 people, while outdoor events can have up to 150 people. On Aug. 1, a statewide mask mandate went into effect, tightening mask requirements in public spaces. On April 15 On April 24, the governor released a blueprint for eventually easing public-health restrictions. He said Virginia will follow federal guidelines for deciding when to ease restrictions: The percentage of positive coronavirus tests and the number of hospitalizations must decline for 14 consecutive days, and the state must have ample hospital capacity and an “increasing and sustainable supply” of personal protective equipment. On May 12 On June 5, most of the state moved to the second phase of reopening. Restaurants were allowed indoor dining at half capacity and gyms and fitness centers opened at 30 percent capacity with additional guidelines. Northern Virginia and the city of Richmond will remain in Phase 1. In most of the state, the limit on groups expanded to 50 or fewer people, which allows some entertainment venues to reopen, while pools, museums and zoos reopened with restrictions. Recreational sports were allowed with proper distancing and no sharing of equipment. On June 12, Northern Virginia and Richmond moved to the second phase of shutdown recovery. The looser restrictions include opening restaurants for indoor dining at half capacity and allowing gyms and fitness centers to reopen indoors at 30 percent capacity. The governor said Virginia students will return to school in


For Filipino migrant workers, coronavirus dashes their ticket to a better life

MANILA — When the novel coronavirus upended lives and livelihoods around the world, it hit the poor especially hard. But the pandemic's effects also proved damaging for those vying for a foothold in the middle class, knocking them back down the economic ladder. The repercussions are felt in places like the Philippines, the source of a vast migrant labor force that keeps industries ticking, from health care in the West to construction and domestic help in the Middle East. A steady income put many of these workers on their way to a better life, despite difficult conditions, allowing them to send money home or save for a deposit on a house, car or their children’s education. More than 2 million Filipinos were employed as overseas workers in any given year over the decade preceding the pandemic; their remittances accounted for about 10 percent of the Philippines’ output. But as the coronavirus savaged the world economy, many lost jobs abroad or were unable to take up positions because of travel restrictions. The government has set up an assistance program, offering cash payments of about $200 each to 280,000 migrant workers displaced by the pandemic at home and abroad, according to the Labor Department. About 170,000 overseas workers have returned to the Philippines since February, official data show. In many cases, they find themselves just as vulnerable as when they were abroad — if not more so. Now, returnees are recalibrating their lives, coming to terms with diminished earning power and prospects for their families. Before the Philippines imposed a lockdown in March, Bong Florentino, a software engineer, and Yllang Montenegro, a part-time hotel housekeeper, were already planning to head home from Japan. Montenegro had taken a leave of absence after her first year back at college to help her husband earn a living abroad. She had worked in Japan before, and the couple needed the extra income. Their children remained in the Philippines. Right after their contracts and the lease on their small Osaka apartment ended in April, their return flight was canceled. Suddenly homeless and jobless, they ended up in a dorm in Kobe, working as extra hands in a restaurant that employed migrant workers. He cooked, while she designed prints and shirts for a fundraiser to keep the small business afloat. They were stranded for three months before they returned to the Philippines in July. Florentino is still unemployed,


Hospitals prepare for ‘nightmare’ scenario of flu and coronavirus striking at same time

country to build on existing business links, clinical partnerships or affiliations with larger systems. Despite the experience health-care workers have gained in managing covid-19 patients, the shortages they face are real, said Nancy Foster, vice president for quality and patient safety at the American Hospital Association. While many have devised means of reusing personal protective equipment, the supply-chain crisis is not over, she said. “We are still conserving,” Foster said. “To the extent we can do it, we want to walk into flu season as prepared as possible.” Foster said the AHA is urging the federal government to increase the supply of chemical reagents for testing as both viruses compete for the same compounds and equipment, raising the possibility that emergency-room doctors will not be able to make rapid distinctions between covid-19 and the flu in patients. Complicating the burden on testing is increased demand from asymptomatic health-care workers, said Lauren Sauer, director of operations at the Johns Hopkins Office of Critical Event Preparedness and Response. When staffers do need time off, bigger institutions have more flexibility. “Small hospitals won’t have a deep bench,” Sauer said. “If people go out, there is nobody to backfill them.” The fact that flu is coming and the coronavirus will be with us “for the long haul” means transitioning both in practice and psychologically from surge mode, Yealy said. “It’s hard to be in battle mode for an extended period,” he said. Yealy has encouraged town halls to ensure health-care workers understand the latest science and its impact on strategies adopted by the hospital system, so they are less likely to feel overwhelmed or to second-guess those decisions. At Mount Sinai, Carr said, major new programs have been instituted around wellness and health that are integrated with anti-racism initiatives. But some approaches, such as shared yoga sessions and free counseling, do not fit the sensibilities of many ER doctors, he said. On the advice of an Army reservist on the staff, his team has set up a “battle buddy” system in which people are paired up and check in with each other regularly. “It’s so simple,” he said. “Watching death gets in your head, and explaining that to a civilian is hard. But everybody gets what peer support is.” One means of relieving burdens on hospitals is to increase flu vaccination rates. Rebecca Dineen, assistant commissioner for the Bureau of Maternal and Child Health


Latin America, unable to flatten its curve, struggles to cope with pandemic

Seven months after Latin America diagnosed its first case of covid-19, the region continues to rack up some of the worst numbers in the world — failing to flatten its curve as it reels from persistently high infection levels and devastating mortality rates. Brazil The region suffers from a range of preexisting conditions. The population is more urbanized than in Europe, Oceania, Asia or Africa. Covid-19 has scythed its way through the urban slums of Sao Paulo in Brazil, Lima in Peru, Buenos Aires and Mexico City. Close quarters and multigenerational households have undermined attempts at social distancing. Inequality is high, health care uneven and safety nets limited. The region’s many poor people must work to live, and they have routinely violated lockdowns to eat. Porous borders have made it difficult to quarantine infected travelers. As in the United States, erratic leadership has also played a role, particularly in hard-hit Brazil under coronavirus skeptic Jair Bolsonaro and in Mexico under Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Some countries haven’t even tried contact tracing, which health experts say is key to containing the virus. “Here, in the area where I live, there are huge families living all together, some in houses, and others just share rooms,” said Daniela Fonseca, 21, a public administration student in Colombia. Fonseca, her mother, brother, sister and 2-year-old son all were infected in the rundown colonial-era home they share near downtown Bogota. They lost her 44-year-old father to the virus in July. But despite rampant infections in the neighborhood, she said, “there’s still people walking around without face masks, people on the street corners drinking, having parties. . . . There really is a big lack of awareness.” Indeed, analysts say, Latin American countries have suffered from the same divisive individualism that has hampered a unified coronavirus response in the United States. In Colombia, people attended thousands of fiestas clandestinas — secret parties — as cases exploded in July. In Peru, a mayor undermined quarantine by going out, getting drunk, then playing dead in a failed attempt to avoid detection. And in Brazil, where the virus has infected 4.2 million and killed more than 129,000, people have packed beaches, jammed into bars and flouted pleas to wear masks. A survey released this week found that a plurality of respondents blamed not Bolsonaro’s chaotic leadership nor local leaders for the country’s crippling outbreak, but other Brazilians. National leaders who


have long criticized health guidelines as governmental overreach, meanwhile, have cheered the rule-breakers on. “Crowded beaches don’t just show people’s willingness to have fun, but are also a message to aspiring dictators,” tweeted Eduardo Bolsonaro, the president’s son. “People know what’s best for themselves, not hypocritical government leaders and authoritarians.” Critics say fumbled, sometimes inexplicable government decisions have helped fuel the region’s failures. Authorities in Mexico blame the country’s size for an outbreak that has infected more than 652,000 and killed more than 69,000. They hired more than 45,000 doctors, nurses and other health professionals in the early days of the crisis, and they boast that no coronavirus victims have been denied a bed. But critics say Mexico’s epidemic has been more deadly than it would have been if authorities had conducted mass testing. And while the country locked down for 70 days starting in late March, it began reopening businesses while case numbers were still rising — in part because of pressure on the economy. “Economic conditions forced a reopening that was too early,” said Malaquías López Cervantes, a public health expert at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Peru now has the highest coronavirus mortality rate per capita of any major country in the world. But because of limited testing, even its official tally of more than 700,000 cases might be a gross underestimate. Infections, analysts say, might be as high as 7 million. Peru’s disastrous performance might appear perplexing, given President Martín Vizcarra’s initially decisive response: an early and strict lockdown that put the economy into deep freeze. Restrictions including a national 10 p.m. curfew remain in force. Yet poverty, decades of underinvestment in health care and what critics say are strategic errors by the government — repressive policies enforced by the police and military, a complete lack of contact tracing, the failure to use targeted lockdowns for local outbreaks, and the lack of a communication strategy — have undermined the response. Even as Peru struggles to control its virulent outbreak, it is facing a constitutional crisis. Congress on Friday voted to open impeachment proceedings against Vizcarra amid allegations, denied by the president, of his involvement in an influence-peddling scandal. Only 20 percent of the nearly 3.3 million coronavirus tests administered so far in Peru have been the molecular tests that require a swab from the nose or throat, considered the best way to diagnose patients before


PM Update: Showers end this evening. Warmer but still cloudy on Sunday.

Persistent flow off the ocean kept the cloud cover packed in tight today. We may see some brightening skies as afternoon turns into evening, but don’t be surprised if the sun fails to make an appearance. At the very least, the light areas of drizzle should become less dense over the next few hours. Sunday will be warmer, but clouds should rule the day once again. Listen to our daily D.C. forecasts: Apple Podcasts | Amazon Echo | More options Through tonight: View the Tomorrow (Sunday): See Ian Livingston’s forecast through the weekend. And if you haven’t already, join us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter and Instagram. For related traffic news, check out Gridlock. Want our 5 a.m. forecast delivered to your email inbox?


Alexei Navalny was once a mere annoyance to the Kremlin. His poisoning shows how much that has changed.

major threat, he faced similar charges. He was sentenced to five years in prison for embezzlement in 2013 but was freed after mass protests. In 2014, he and his brother Oleg were convicted in another embezzlement case and sentenced to 3½ years in prison. Alexei’s sentence was suspended, but Oleg served the full term, much of it in solitary confinement. Alexei Navalny saw it as psychological pressure designed to stop him. In 2013, Navalny shocked the Kremlin by finishing second in Moscow’s mayoral elections with 27 percent of the vote. “He was doing what people in developed democracies were doing, which was a novelty in Russia,” Ashurkov said. Navalny’s mayoral campaign, with three to four daily rallies, was “something that no candidate in Russia has ever done.” Russian authorities miscalculated in letting Navalny participate, Kolesnikov said: “They thought that he would get two, three or five percent and it would show his weakness” and his strong showing “gave the authorities a fright and they decided not to let him participate in any election after that.” A famous Navalny video from 2017 alleging that Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev had amassed property worth $1.4 billion was a critical turning point that hammered home the extent of governmental corruption. It gained 36 million views. But Navalny was barred from running against Putin in the 2018 presidential elections. The only way to remove the regime, he argues, is through mass protests. Last year, he also launched “Smart Voting,” an app that directs voters to the candidates most likely to defeat Putin’s United Russia party — for example, in regional elections being held Sunday. Navalny’s future is unclear, given the uncertainty about the long-term health effects of his poisoning. But the attack has already magnified his influence. “After the poisoning, he simply became a more and more recognizable figure in Russia and a more and more important figure for the West, and especially for the European Union,” Kolesnikov said. “He is at the center of the historical process.” In 2017, Navalny told an interviewer he was always aware of the dangers he faced and of the sacrifices of others, including his brother Oleg and opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, who was assassinated in 2015 near the Kremlin. “If I stop, it will mean that all those sacrifices are useless, and they are not,” he said. “I do believe that my alternative is better for Russia.”


Why Trump’s alleged comments about soldiers brought so much outrage

by Trump’s alleged remarks for two reasons. First, the U.S. military has long been rated the country’s most trusted institution. Large majorities of Democrats and Republicans have confidence in the U.S. military and consider it among the best militaries in the world. Though more-liberal Americans — and a majority of veterans — think people join the military for its good pay and benefits and more-conservative Americans think service members join out of patriotism, the vast majority of Americans consider military service a worthy undertaking. As a result, the public sees the military as especially deserving of government support. Second, the alleged remarks about missing and captured soldiers came up against what scholars call the “deservingness heuristic” — meaning that how people judge the reasons for an individual’s need for assistance will affect how they view the government’s obligation to help. Research shows that the public is more likely to support assistance for those seen as “deserving” help and less likely to support helping those who might be blamed for their circumstances and choices. How the public feels about missing soldiers Just after the presidential election in November 2016, we ran a nationally representative survey with Survey Sampling International to explore how Americans use these lenses to think about helping to recover Americans who go missing abroad. We surveyed more than 1,000 adults, asking respondents how likely they would be to support a costly military mission to bring someone home. In our study, every respondent read a scenario in which an American went missing in a dangerous area abroad. We randomly divided our sample into three groups, with one group reading that the missing person was a soldier, another group reading that the missing person was a journalist and the third group reading that the missing person was a tourist. We also gave some respondents information that the missing individuals were either at fault for their circumstances or had been sent to the dangerous area by an authority figure. After reading the scenario, we asked respondents whether they strongly opposed, somewhat opposed, somewhat supported or strongly supported a U.S. military mission to bring the missing individual home. We found very strong bipartisan support for bringing Americans home, as you can see in the figure below. Across all treatments and regardless of the person’s circumstances, an average of 80 percent of respondents either strongly supported or somewhat supported rescuing Americans missing abroad.


Restaurant rebellion: Limits on alcohol and indoor dining aimed at taming the coronavirus leave Pennsylvania bar owners fuming

responded, he said. “Where are the Democrats? Are they waiting to make Trump look bad?” said Phil Catagnus, one of Ambrogi’s brothers in arms and the owner of the Double Visions go-go bar outside Philadelphia. “We are the people stuck in the middle of this.” Because people can no longer drink without ordering food, Catagnus, 64, joked that he now sells “virus-killing hot dogs.” Still, the restrictions on indoor dining are killing business, he said. “I’m very grateful for being open. But the margins are so small,” said Catagnus, who plans to vote for Biden despite feeling neglected by Democrats in Harrisburg. Meredith Meyer Grelli grew up in Pittsburgh’s North Hills, teaches entrepreneurship at Carnegie Mellon University and runs Wigle Whiskey, the first distillery in Pittsburgh since Prohibition. Before the pandemic, nearly 150 customers showed up for Saturday tours. These days, Grelli relies heavily on bottle sales to stay afloat. “What’s frustrating for bars and restaurants is they have been singled out, but there has been no effort to provide specific support,” said Grelli, 35. “We are fortunate that we have bottle sales. But this capacity issue? No one builds a business to operate at 25 percent or 50 percent.” Grelli said that she doesn’t blame the state for her problems but that she understands why many bar owners are angry. The distillery “gave up on profitability a long time ago,” she said. “We are bleeding money like anyone else.” Lawyer and brewer Peter Kurzweg co-owns the Independent Brewing Company and two other craft beer halls in Pittsburgh. He used to pack 120 people into his hipster beer room in the city’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood on Friday nights. Today, he has no indoor seating because he thinks ventilation is key to controlling the virus. Kurzweg, too, is unhappy with the statewide restrictions. “I have lost count of the number of good restaurants that have closed,” he said. But Kurzweg, 38, said he places greater blame on Trump. While countries like Germany kept the virus at bay and largely have returned to normal life, he said, the White House failed to gain control of the outbreak, allowing it to become a national calamity. “I have mixed feelings about what the state did. They needed to find a happy balance,” Kurzweg said. But “fundamentally, I attribute what we have now to a lack of a strong federal response and strong federal guidance.”


Before college football’s first big week, these games have been postponed by the coronavirus

The college football season, such as it is after the Big Ten, Pacific-12 and others decided they would not be playing this fall, was supposed to kick off in full this weekend, but a number of teams already have had to postpone their openers because of the novel coronavirus pandemic. Some of these games may not be made up, or won’t be made up until December at the earliest, and other postponements cannot be ruled out as colleges deal with spikes in on-campus coronavirus cases. The postponements are a reminder that college football remains on shaky ground as it tries to find its way through the pandemic. Here’s a list of games that have been affected. SMU at TCU Originally scheduled: New date: TCU announced Friday that a cluster of Horned Frogs players and team support staff tested positive for the coronavirus. North Carolina State at Virginia Tech Originally scheduled: New date: The two ACC schools announced the postponement of their season opener in late August to give the Wolfpack more time to prepare after a spike in on-campus coronavirus cases. Tulsa at Oklahoma State Originally scheduled: New date: The game was pushed back one week after the Golden Hurricane was limited during preseason camp because of multiple positive tests. Louisiana Tech at Baylor Originally scheduled: New date: Louisiana Tech Athletic Director Tommy McClelland said Tuesday that the Bulldogs had only one positive coronavirus test before they had to scatter to avoid Hurricane Laura. Upon their return, a sizable number — the Athletic put it at 38 — tested positive, forcing this game’s postponement. Marshall at East Carolina Originally scheduled: New date: The game was postponed in late August because of a East Carolina team coronavirus outbreak. Florida International at Central Florida Originally scheduled: New date: FIU announced in mid-August that it was postponing all of its college sports competitions until Sept. 16. Virginia at Virginia Tech Originally scheduled New date The mutual decision unfolded after Virginia Tech officials contacted Virginia Athletic Director Carla Williams on Friday to discuss moving the date of the instate rivalry because of concerns stemming from the novel coronavirus pandemic. Virginia Tech announced it would be suspending football practices for four days. BYU at Army Originally scheduled New date BYU announced the postponement after “a small number of positive COVID-19 test results and the resulting tracing exposures.” Temple at Navy Originally scheduled: New date: The


G-20 leaders, don’t forget the women’s rights advocates rotting in Saudi prisons

aide to MBS, who threatened to personally rape and kill her. In all, 14 women’s rights activists were arrested in 2018, and 14 more the following year, according to Alqst, a Saudi human rights group. But their cases were overshadowed by another MBS-ordered operation overseen by Qahtani: the murder and dismemberment of exiled journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in October 2018. The global reaction to the Khashoggi murder shattered MBS’s reputation. But the experience did not change him. He has continued to persecute any Saudi, at home or abroad, who criticizes his regime. He rejected demands, including from the Trump administration, that he purge Qahtani. Instead of justice, he has offered fig leaves: Last Monday, a court announced that eight members of the 15-member team sent to kill Khashoggi had been given prison sentences ranging from seven to 20 years. The same day, King Salman placed phone calls to Russia’s Vladimir Putin and France’s Emmanuel Macron to discuss arrangements for the G-20 summit. On Wednesday, he called Xi Jinping of China, Narendra Modi of India and Angela Merkel of Germany. In the cases of the women, MBS has conceded even less. In early 2019, eight of those arrested in 2018 were released to home detention, and they and four others were put on trial. The charges against them were ludicrous: For example, Hathloul (who was not released) was said to have committed the offense of providing information to human rights groups and the European Union. Maybe that explains why the trials soon went dormant. There have been no hearings in months, and none are scheduled. A year ago, Hathloul’s family said she had been offered her freedom — provided she videotape a statement saying she had not been tortured. She refused, and so she remains in a cell at al-Hair. For three months this summer, she was again incommunicado. Finally, on Aug. 31, her parents were allowed to see her. They found her weak from a hunger strike. Hathloul, and the regime, know that her death might finally awaken the consciences of the G-20 leaders, and spoil the summit. It shouldn’t take that. Macron, Merkel, Boris Johnson, Justin Trudeau and others who don’t share Trump’s love for dictators could accomplish far more than the summit will by setting a simple condition for their attendance: the freedom of Loujain al-Hathloul and her fellow women activists. Read more


YouTube personality gains fame — by getting stung by bugs

mother, who had moved there several years earlier. She warned him to beware of the harvester ants in her yard. Peterson took that as a dare. “We were like, Dude, what do you think would happen if I just put my hands in there?” he recalled. Vins challenged him to last for 60 seconds. “Ah! Oorgh! AH!” Peterson grunted, as ants crawled up his arms and pant legs, plunging tiny mandibles into his flesh as their stings turned the back of his hands bright red. But he held out for the full minute. The video remained unedited for the next several weeks, but within a day of its release in January 2016 “ANT ATTACK!” went viral, tallying more than a million views. At last count, it had more than 8 million. Peterson wasn’t that surprised. As many as 19 million Americans share a fear of skittering, crawling bugs, says entomologist Jeffrey A. Lockwood, author of “The Infested Mind: Why Humans Fear, Loathe, and Love Insects.” The reasons, Lockwood says, include evolutionary adaptation — after all, some of those critters are dangerous — and cultural reinforcement. The success of “ANT ATTACK!” inspired Peterson’s decision to be stung, over the next two years, by several frightening-looking insects ascending in degree of pain. Conveniently, he says, he has a high tolerance. Only once — following an encounter with a giant desert centipede (16.7 million views) — did he seek medical attention, as he explained in a follow-up video: “VENOM EXTRACTION — Centipede Bite Aftermath!” (28.7 million views). Topping the pain list was the “executioner wasp,” Peterson’s made-up name for Polistes carnifex, an inch-long brown-and-yellow paper wasp he tracked down in Costa Rica. Peterson was inspired by Tucson entomologist Justin Schmidt, a mild-mannered raconteur now in his early 70s. He pays homage to his mentor in a 2017 video, “Origin of STINGS!” for his invention of the Pain Scale for Stinging Insects. That subjective, sometimes whimsical connoisseur’s guide rates the stings of 78 species, from “light and ephemeral, almost fruity” (for Halictidae, or “sweat bees”) to “Like walking over flaming charcoal with a 3-inch nail embedded in your heel” (for Paraponera clavata, the “bullet ant.”) Since leaving Animal Planet, Peterson has kept busy. He’ll release his latest book, “The Beast of Bites,” on Tuesday. He has also been running experiments, some involving venomous snakes and snarling police dogs, as he searches for the next


With safety protocols working, Smithsonian to reopen four more museums on Friday

Two months after the Smithsonian successfully reopened the National Zoo and the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Va., four more museums will welcome back visitors on Friday. The Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the Renwick Gallery are the next sites in the gradual reopening of the world’s largest museum complex. The success of the zoo and Udvar-Hazy gave the Smithsonian confidence to introduce more, Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III said. “We have not had any infections of staff, which means our safety protocols are working,” he said, citing his first priority. Social distancing guidelines, including signage on the floors and public address announcements, have worked, Bunch said, while concerns about potential resistance to wearing masks proved unfounded. About 45,000 people have visited Udvar-Hazy since July 24, when the Smithsonian also reopened the zoo, which has welcomed about 170,000 visitors. The Hirshhorn Museum’s Sculpture Garden and other Smithsonian gardens opened Aug. 17. Procedures similar to those in place at the zoo and Udvar-Hazy will help to protect the health and safety of the staff and visitors. They include reducing hours, limiting capacity and requiring visitors to obtain free, timed passes for three of the four sites. About 1,100 passes a day will be distributed for the American Art museum and Portrait Gallery, which share the historic Patent Office Building in Penn Quarter. About 250 a day will be available for the African American Museum. The museums will require visitors ages 6 and older to wear face coverings and to stay distanced. One-way paths and directions will help control the flow of guests, and hand-sanitizing stations will be plentiful. Visitors who are sick or do not feel well are asked to stay home. The Smithsonian closed its network of museums and the zoo on March 14 as part of the effort to reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus. The rest of the Smithsonian sites remain closed. The four museums will be open Wednesdays through Sundays, but their hours will differ. The National Museum of African American History and Culture on the Mall will be open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., while the American Art Museum and the National Portrait Gallery will operate from 11:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. (Visitors must use the G Street NW entrance.) The Renwick’s hours are


It’s time to focus on potential long-term organ damage from covid-19

experiencing clots in these blood vessels. The vascular component of covid-19 may help explain a number of previously puzzling aspects of the illness, including “long-haulers syndrome," wherein patients struggle with severe symptoms such as brain fog, trouble breathing, fatigue, aches, hair loss and elevated heart rate months after clearing viral infection. If covid-19′s vascular effects are widespread, the more than 20 million patients who have “recovered” could be living with serious damage to their blood vessels. That could unleash a global surge in vascular diseases, from stroke and atherosclerosis to myocarditis and heart attack. Consider a recent study published in JAMA Cardiology, which looked at 100 patients who had recently recovered from covid-19. The researchers found some form of heart abnormality in 78 of these cases and detected an inflammation of the heart muscle in 60, despite the lack of a relevant preexisting condition. This looming pandemic of vascular disease has catastrophic implications for the U.S. health-care system. Before the pandemic, such diseases were responsible for a third of all deaths and a sixth of all health spending. Cardiovascular disease costs the United States more than $500 billion a year. Within 15 years, that tab was expected to exceed $1 trillion. If these conditions proliferate among post-covid-19 people in the prime of their life, the human and economic costs would be staggering. Now is the time for public health officials, politicians, researchers and medical professionals to address this threat. That begins with an aggressive effort to better understand the virus's effects on our blood vessels and to develop treatments to counteract them. While we wait for a vaccine, there are no therapies to stop this virus from infecting people. There are no treatments yet for those suffering from long-haulers syndrome. And there's been little to no research into therapies that could address the damage to blood vessels caused by the coronavirus. This new research effort must transcend the siloed thinking that has historically characterized medicine. Blood vessels interact with every organ in the body. To develop effective treatments, experts must collaborate with others outside their disciplines. Finally, public health officials need to exhort people to shore up the health of their blood vessels. This includes eating foods that can promote blood vessel health, and regular exercise. It’s hard to imagine that covid-19 could have an even bigger impact on public health — and the global economy — than it already


in 78 of these cases and detected an inflammation of the heart muscle in 60, despite the lack of a relevant preexisting condition. This looming pandemic of vascular disease has catastrophic implications for the U.S. health-care system. Before the pandemic, such diseases were responsible for a third of all deaths and a sixth of all health spending. Cardiovascular disease costs the United States more than $500 billion a year. Within 15 years, that tab was expected to exceed $1 trillion. If these conditions proliferate among post-covid-19 people in the prime of their life, the human and economic costs would be staggering. Now is the time for public health officials, politicians, researchers and medical professionals to address this threat. That begins with an aggressive effort to better understand the virus's effects on our blood vessels and to develop treatments to counteract them. While we wait for a vaccine, there are no therapies to stop this virus from infecting people. There are no treatments yet for those suffering from long-haulers syndrome. And there's been little to no research into therapies that could address the damage to blood vessels caused by the coronavirus. This new research effort must transcend the siloed thinking that has historically characterized medicine. Blood vessels interact with every organ in the body. To develop effective treatments, experts must collaborate with others outside their disciplines. Finally, public health officials need to exhort people to shore up the health of their blood vessels. This includes eating foods that can promote blood vessel health, and regular exercise. It’s hard to imagine that covid-19 could have an even bigger impact on public health — and the global economy — than it already has. But the vascular consequences of the disease, which we’re only beginning to discover, could make this first wave of the pandemic look mild. The work of preventing this second pandemic can’t begin soon enough. Watch Opinions videos: Read more: Megan McArdle: Don’t just look at covid-19 fatality rates. Look at people who survive — but don’t entirely recover. Danielle Allen: Congress has taken a break from dealing with covid-19. The rest of us don’t have that luxury. The Post’s View: No one wins a vaccine race if public confidence is lost Stephen M. Hahn: No matter what, only a safe, effective vaccine will get our approval Joseph G. Allen: It’s time to talk about how toilets may be spreading covid-19