Local digest: Teenager fatally injured in shooting in Northwest Washington

THE DISTRICT A teenager who was shot and critically injured Monday in the Brightwood Park neighborhood of Northwest Washington has died, according to D.C. police. The shooting occurred about 9:35 p.m. at Ninth and Kennedy Streets NW, about one block east of Georgia Avenue. Police said a man was also wounded in the shooting and is expected to survive. Police identified the victim as Taijhon Wyatt Jr., 17, of Northeast Washington. He was pronounced dead on the scene. No arrest was made and police did not describe a possible motive. — Peter Hermann MARYLAND A motorist was killed Monday night in Potomac in a fiery crash, the county fire department said. The crash occurred on River Road at Luvie Lane at about 10:50 p.m., according to the fire department. An initial investigation found that a Hyundai Elantra went off the roadway and struck a utility pole, overturned and caught fire. The driver was the only person in the car and was pronounced dead at the scene, according to Montgomery County police. On Tuesday, officials identified the victim as David Jesse Nebb, 25, of Rockville. — Martin Weil VIRGINIA A self-identified Ku Klux Klan leader accused of driving a truck through Black Lives Matter protesters in June was convicted on multiple misdemeanor charges and sentenced to six years in prison during a court hearing Monday, according to prosecutors and court records. Harry H. Rogers, 36, of Hanover was not found guilty of hate crimes, which would have served as sentencing enhancements. But the judge imposed the maximum sentence on each of the misdemeanors — four counts of assault, a hit-and-run and destruction of property — which amounts to more time than the mandatory sentence for the hate crime. George Townsend, Rogers’s attorney, did not comment on the convictions other than to indicate that he expects his client to appeal. There were no fatalities or life-threatening injuries reported as a result of the June 7 incident in Richmond. — Emily Davies


South Dakota health officials watch for the coronavirus as motorcyclists descend

virus — tests state health officials say came back negative. Plans are already in place to test EMS, law enforcement and fire department personnel statewide starting two weeks after the rally ends. “One of the things we’ve been very transparent about is any time you’re bringing people together — especially if you’re bringing individuals together from areas that might have higher risk of covid-19 in their general communities — that does pose a risk for covid-19 transmission,” state epidemiologist Joshua Clayton said in a news conference last week. “If you’re going to a backyard picnic with three people as opposed to 300, that’s a magnitude of difference in terms of what you might be taking on as an individual risk. When that backyard picnic ends up being 300,000 people at a certain motorcycle rally, there’s still that decision-making that needs to take place.” Still, the difference between a three-person picnic and a 300,000-person rally is significant for health departments tracking possible outbreaks. The bigger the event, the more difficult contact tracing can be if cases emerge. Officials said South Dakota residents will be traced by the state health agency, but cases from out-of-state attendees will be handled by those states. So an outbreak resulting from the Sturgis event would not necessarily show up in South Dakota data. “We will be able to provide information about any South Dakota cases that rise to the level of a cluster,” state health secretary Kim Malsam-Rysdon said. She and Clayton said a system exists so that other states identifying cases linked to the motorcycle rally can contact South Dakota for help in identifying people who might have been exposed. Malsam-Rysdon said the state has deployed Abbott rapid-testing machines and provided 5,000 tests to providers in the area to increase their ability to handle more samples. Monument Health, the major health-care system in the region, said extra staff is always summoned ahead of the Sturgis rally. This year, Monument’s facilities are offering increased access to coronavirus testing, and 172 beds have been added to an unused corner of the Rapid City hospital for potential patients with covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. So far, Monument’s emergency rooms are recording patient volume comparable to previous rallies, according to spokesman Dan Daly. The city of Sturgis has taken steps to deal with the rally’s impact, city spokeswoman Christina Steele said. City employees will undergo mandatory


The pandemic hasn’t hit Syria hard yet. When it does, it’ll be a disaster.

Syria has barely suffered from covid-19, according to official data from the country’s Health Ministry. Testing has confirmed 1,255 coronavirus infections, of which 52 were fatal, as of Monday. The country’s caseload, both total and per capita, hovers near the bottom of global rankings. Until mid-July, Syria reported fewer confirmed cases than Taiwan, the benchmark for effective management of the pandemic. There is ample reason to distrust the numbers published by Bashar al-Assad’s regime, yet health authorities in areas outside Assad’s control have reported similarly low figures. In northeastern Syria, where U.S.-aligned Kurdish forces govern an estimated population of 3 million, there have been 34 cases and a single fatality. In the northwest, where about 4 million Syrians live under the control of Turkish proxies and Islamist militias, there were no confirmed cases until July 9; the current figure is 40. All of these numbers are likely to be understatements, perhaps by an order of magnitude or more, yet it’s clear that there was no major outbreak in Syria during the first months of the pandemic. Still, the fuse of a coronavirus explosion in the country may already be lighted. Low as it may be, the official caseload has tripled since the beginning of July. On social media, Syrians are sharing obituaries for relatives and friends lost to the virus. A medical worker told NPR that hospitals are being overwhelmed while staffers lack personal protective equipment. He said that the regime warns doctors not to share information and that intelligence officers watch the hospitals. “We are all scared, all the time,” he said, referring to hospital staffers. Yet prominent Syrian physicians and front-line doctors have begun to speak up. Nabog al-Awa, the dean of the medical faculty at the University of Damascus, said 100 coronavirus patients are arriving at hospitals daily, but the number of new infections is far higher, since only the sickest go to hospitals. A mortuary official reported that 40 patients die of covid-19 each day in Damascus alone. Ahmed Habas, a physician serving as deputy director of health for Damascus, posted calculations on his Facebook page indicating there have been 112,500 infections in the capital and surrounding areas. He later took down the post, explaining that he did not want to spread fear or spur criticism of the Health Ministry. Shagaf Faour, a physician working in the covid-19 ward at the Mujtahed public hospital in Damascus,


concern, because the northwest is home to 2.7 million internally displaced people — half of them children and many living crowded together in camps. “You want us to wash our hands?” one aid worker asked a Times reporter. “Some people can’t wash their kids for a week.” In March, when the coronavirus began to spread rapidly in the Middle East, aid organizations in northwestern Syria braced for disaster. “Social distance is a fantasy in a camp,” warned Kieren Barnes, the country director for Mercy Corps, adding, “The disease could spread like wildfire.” That did not happen, for reasons that remain speculative at best, such as the country’s relatively young population. But then, on July 9, a physician in the northwest tested positive for the virus, followed by two more on July 11. The outbreak had clearly infiltrated the region’s overtaxed hospitals. There is a single lab in the region that runs coronavirus tests but only a few dozen per day. It has now confirmed 40 cases, yet the virus could be racing ahead undetected — or it could stall as inexplicably as it did in March. While flattening the curve may be nearly impossible in the northwest, Assad’s government is choosing to maintain a relaxed posture. In May, it lifted shutdown measures including school closures, travel restrictions and curfews. Last week, authorities suspended Friday prayers at mosques in Damascus, but they are hesitant to impose other restrictions amid a severe economic downturn. The price of food has doubled over the past six months, while the Syrian pound has lost two-thirds of its value. If and when the public health crisis escalates, foreign assistance will be essential to any mitigation effort. Increasing aid to areas outside Assad’s control will be difficult, since Russia has wielded its veto at the U.N. Security Council to force the closure of border crossings that were once key conduits for assistance. Via U.N. agencies, the United States and other donors can send more aid to areas under Assad’s control, yet the regime’s manipulation of aid is so extensive that it may serve little purpose beyond protecting favored communities while alleviating Assad’s financial distress. Moscow and Damascus routinely call for the lifting of U.S. and E.U. sanctions, yet the sanctions already include comprehensive exemptions for humanitarian trade and assistance. Ultimately, millions of Syrians may have to draw on nothing more than grit to survive yet another catastrophe.


The Daily 202: Journalist offers mea culpa, in new book, for undercovering Black working class

one vaccine for use in its military, ahead of definitive data that it is safe and effective. … The leading Russian vaccine candidate has so far been tested in small, early clinical trials designed to find the right dose and assess any safety concerns. It was given to scientists who developed it — in self-experimentation that is unusual in modern science — 50 members of the Russian military and a handful of other volunteers. … The World Health Organization still lists the Gamaleya vaccine as being in Phase I.” Meanwhile, the global count of confirmed coronavirus cases surpassed 20 million. “Worryingly, that number represents double the infections that had been reported as recently as late June. After the first coronavirus cases were found in China in December, it took roughly six months for the worldwide count to reach 10 million. Another 10 million cases have been detected in the past six weeks alone,” “White House officials have been circulating a proposal that would give U.S. border authorities the extraordinary ability to block U.S. citizens and permanent residents from entering the country from Mexico if they are suspected of being infected with the novel coronavirus,” “The study, published last week in Pediatrics by researchers from Children’s National Hospital and George Washington University, examined 1,000 children tested in March and April at a pediatric drop-in site in Northeast Washington,” “The 51-year-old man had approached an officer posted near 17th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW around 5:50 p.m. and said he had a weapon, said Thomas Sullivan, chief of the Uniformed Division of the Secret Service. He said the man ran aggressively toward the officer and withdrew an object from his clothing. Sullivan said the man then crouched in a ‘shooter’s stance’ as if about to fire. The officer shot him, striking him in the torso, Sullivan said. The man was not further identified. The Secret Service said he and the officer were taken to a hospital,” A bipartisan statement released by the National Governors Association pointed to “significant administrative burdens and costs” associated with attempting to implement a new plan Trump announced over the weekend, which would attempt to provide $400 weekly emergency unemployment benefits, with states required to apply for the funds and pay a quarter of the cost. “The statement was issued by National Governors Association chairman Andrew M. Cuomo, the Democratic governor of New York, and vice chairman Asa


Paint thinner and other flammable material may have ignited devastating Beirut explosion

BEIRUT — Cans of paint thinner and other combustible material may have been stored alongside highly explosive ammonium nitrate in a Beirut warehouse and then caught fire, igniting the blast that devastated the city, according to a fire official at the port. Investigations are not yet complete, but accounts of port workers suggest that hazardous materials were stored together inside Warehouse 12, said Lt. Michel el Murr, head of search and rescue for the Lebanese fire crew at the port. Vapor from paint thinners can ignite in the air and cause fires in unventilated, hot conditions. Fuel may also have been stored there. Murr said teams searching the site have also found evidence of fireworks and hydrocarbons, but there was no sign of munitions. Businessmen with knowledge of the port confirmed that the warehouse was specifically used for storing hazardous flammable materials. “It’s extremely dangerous,” said Murr, who lost 10 of his colleagues in the blast. “It’s wrong to put this all in the same place. We are in a place where the temperature in the summer is crazy.” The revelation that government officials had allowed 2,750 metric tons of ammonium nitrate to be stored for at least six years on the edge of a city home to more than 2 million people has enraged the Lebanese public, which was already reeling from the country’s rapid economic decline. The government resigned Monday following protests, with Lebanese taking to the streets again on Tuesday following a vigil for the one-week anniversary of the blast. Experts say that if such a perilous mix of hazardous materials had been stored in one place, it would represent gross negligence. “It’s madness, total madness that they would do that,” said Jeffrey Lewis, an arms control expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. “There are so many things that could go wrong. It’s an egregious mistake.” He called it “shocking” that such material would have been stored under such conditions in a built-up area. Many paint thinners have what’s known as a “flash point” of around 101 degrees Fahrenheit. On Aug. 4, the date of the explosion, temperatures in Beirut reached nearly 90 degrees, but were probably higher in an uncooled warehouse. Murr said there was no air-conditioning system in the warehouse, with small windows providing the only ventilation. Lt. Andrea, a platoon leader with the French search-and-rescue team, said that the warehouse was used


Facebook says it has taken down 7 million posts for spreading coronavirus misinformation

that led to fewer posts being removed in certain rulebreaking areas between April and June. But other policies benefited from improved artificial-intelligence technology, and Facebook reported a bump in removing posts for violating some policies. Tuesday’s report was Facebook’s sixth on how well its rules are being enforced. The company took down 22.5 million posts on Facebook for violating its hate speech rules during the time period, an increase from 9.6 million posts during the first quarter of the year. Much of that increase was due to better detection technology and adding three languages to its automated system that searches for violating posts, Facebook said. Facebook is also once again expanding its definition of hate speech, it said Tuesday, to include more content depicting blackface and some harmful Jewish stereotypes. But operations tremors caused by covid-19 also meant Facebook had to prioritize some rules over others, and other metrics slipped. The company took down 35.7 million posts for breaking its rules about adult nudity and sexual activity, compared with 39.5 million in the first three months of the year. The change was because of “temporary workforce changes due to COVID-19,” Facebook wrote in the Community Standards Enforcement Report. The company also called for an independent audit of its reports — which will be released quarterly from now on — a move that would give external organizations a peek under Facebook’s secretive hood. “No company should grade its own homework, and the credibility of our systems should be earned, not assumed,” Facebook technical program manager Vishwanath Sarang wrote in a blog post announcing a request for proposals for the audit. Despite the teams of thousands of content moderators, social media sites have still let coronavirus misinformation spread online. In May, Facebook and YouTube removed the “Plandemic” video featuring a conspiracy theory about how the coronavirus spreads, but it had already been viewed millions of times. Facebook took down one of President Trump’s posts for spreading coronavirus misinformation earlier in August, after the president posted a video of an interview he gave on Fox News. It was the first time the company had taken down one of the president’s posts for violating its covid-19 misinformation policy. In the interview, he falsely claimed that children are “almost immune” to covid-19. Twitter also blocked the video on its site and required the Trump 2020 campaign account to delete a tweet with the same clip.


Teen dies of gunshot wounds following Northwest D.C. shooting

A teenager who was shot and critically injured Monday night in the Brightwood Park neighborhood of Northwest Washington has died, according to D.C. police. The shooting occurred about 9:35 p.m. at 9th and Kennedy Streets NW, about one block east of Georgia Avenue. Police said a man was also wounded in the shooting and is expected to survive. Police identified the victim as Taijhon Wyatt Jr., 17, of Northeast Washington. He was pronounced dead on the scene. Police had initially described the victim as an adult. No arrest was made and police did not describe a possible motive. Four other people were shot in the District Monday night into Tuesday. About 11:40 p.m. Monday, police said three people were shot in the 1300 block of Congress Street SE. A police spokeswoman said one of the victims was a juvenile. Police said their injuries are not believed to be life-threatening. In another incident, a man was shot about 2:30 a.m. Tuesday in the 2400 block of Elvans Road SE. He was reported to be conscious when he was taken to a hospital. A police report says he was shot in the right arm. These recent shootings bring the District’s homicide count to 119, a 20 percent increase over this time last year. On Sunday, 22 people were shot, one fatally, at block party in the Greenway neighborhood of Southeast Washington. Police said that as of Aug. 19, 570 people had been shot in the District, a 45 percent increase over the same period in 2019. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) said on Tuesday she has ordered every city agency to prioritize combating violence, noting residents are “fed up with the senseless violence and are desperate to find solutions.”


Iran arrests 5 on suspicion of spying for foreign states

DUBAI — Iranian authorities have arrested five Iranians on charges of spying for Israel, Britain and Germany, convicting and sentencing at least two of them, the judiciary said Tuesday. Addressing an online news conference, judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili named one of the five as Shahram Shirkhani. Esmaili said Shirkhani had spied for Britain and tried to recruit some Iranian officials for the British MI6 espionage service. The spokesman added that Shirkhani had passed on sensitive information about banking and Defense Ministry contracts and that he had been convicted and had received a prison sentence. Masoud Mosaheb, co-chairman of the Iranian-Austrian Friendship Society, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for sharing information on Iran’s “missile and nuclear projects” with Israel’s Mossad and the German intelligence service, Esmaili said. The Austrian Foreign Ministry said efforts to achieve the release of Mosaheb, an Iranian-Austrian dual national, continued unabated and at the highest level. “Since the person detained in Iran is an Austrian-Iranian dual citizen . . . Iran does not allow the monitoring of legal proceedings, visits to prison or access to trial and medical records,” the ministry said in a statement. Iran does not recognize dual nationalities. Austrian media reported that Mosaheb, 72, had been imprisoned in Iran since January 2019. Esmaili gave no details on the other three detainees but indicated that they were working in state bodies. “We had the arrests in the Foreign, Defense and Energy Ministries as well as in the Atomic Energy Organization,” he said. Separately, the Intelligence Ministry said in a statement that “a number of spies related to foreign intelligence services were identified and arrested.” “They sought to spy on sensitive and vital centers in the economic, nuclear, infrastructure, military and political areas for the CIA, the Mossad and some European countries,” said the statement, which was read on TV. There was no immediate indication whether these individuals were the same ones referred to by Esmaili. Several explosions and fires have occurred around Iranian military, nuclear and industrial facilities in the past months, including a blast at the underground Natanz nuclear facility and a blaze at a military and weapons-development facility. Some lawmakers suggested that the explosion in Natanz was caused by a “security breach,” Iranian media outlets reported in July. In an article in early July, the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency addressed what it called the possibility of sabotage by enemies such


D.C. firm aims to be ‘shock absorber’ for businesses coping with extreme weather and climate change

store’s bottom line. Here, Munich RE saw an opening. A decade ago, the company set out to assess highly specific, highly localized weather risks. That could mean helping a convenience store guard against the possibility of rain on its biggest weekend of the year, or it could mean helping a supermarket chain budget for snow clearing at its stores. “If you’re the property owner, we can model what plowing will cost, or if you’re the plow supplier, we can model what your revenue will look like and try to take the variability out of both peoples’ experiences,” said Ed Byrns, president and CEO of Demex. This new venture represented such a departure from Munch Re’s core business that Demex became its own company in December, though Munich Re remains a partner, along with Nephila Capital, which invests in weather risk management ventures. On Tuesday, Demex recently announced $4.2 million in seed funding from venture capital firms Anthemis and IA Capital Group. Bennett said their technology was made possible by more refined weather modeling as well as the advances in computing that gave rise to higher resolution models. More powerful computer models have allowed Demex to process vast sums of data, making the tens of millions of calculations needed to produce such tailored assessments. Necessity also helped birth this invention. Climate change is producing a world of more extremes, posing a threat to businesses. Tropical Storm Isaias offers one recent example. Con Edison, which supplies electricity to the New York City area, reported the second-largest outage in the company’s history as powerful winds downed trees and power lines. A company that was previously able to survive the ups and downs of weather might struggle to do so today, creating an opening for new firms, like Demex, that could help the company protect against escalating risks. “One thing we know is that climate change is making everything more volatile,” Byrns said. “Climate resiliency means creating a shock absorber for climate change. And we hope to be that shock absorber.” Read more Climate change could put businesses underwater. Start-up firm Jupiter aims to come to the rescue. Meet the ClimaCell weather app. Alerting you when it’s about to rain, down to the minute, all around the world. Weather is turning into big business. And that could be trouble for the public. Weather Company lays off dozens, shutters popular Weather Underground ‘Category 6’ blog


The Health 202: Coronavirus keeps spreading. But at least we've learned more about it.

spread asymptomatically — and then walked back its pronouncement the next day. It seems clear that asymptomatic transmission does occur. People with no symptoms carry the same level of virus in their nose, throat and lungs as those with symptoms, according to a South Korean study of 303 people published last week in JAMA Internal Medicine. The study was the first to distinguish between patients who didn’t develop symptoms initially and those who did develop symptoms later on — which can cause some confusion when looking at asymptomatic spread. Based on their observations, the researchers estimated that 30 percent of infected people never develop symptoms. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said last week he thinks the figure is closer to 40 percent. “The good news about covid-19 is that about 40 percent of the population have no symptoms when they get infected,” Fauci said, but he added that asymptomatic people "are propagating the outbreak, which means that you’re going to infect someone, who will infect someone, who then will have a serious consequence.” There is some very early, tentative evidence suggesting a segment of the world’s population may have partial protection thanks to the immune system's “memory” T cells, which are trained to recognize specific People may derive this protection from standard childhood vaccinations or from previous infections by other coronaviruses, such as those that cause the common cold, my colleague Ariana Eunjung Cha reported. “This might potentially explain why some people seem to fend off the virus and may be less susceptible to becoming severely ill,” National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins remarked in a blog post last week. “On a population level, such findings, if validated, could be far-reaching,” Ariana wrote. “ … In communities in Boston, Barcelona, Wuhan and other major cities, the proportion of people estimated to have antibodies and therefore presumably be immune has mostly been in the single digits. But if others had partial protection from T cells, that would raise a community’s immunity level much higher.” The head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated in June that there were roughly 10 times more coronavirus infections in the United States than had been confirmed through testing. There were just 2.4 million confirmed cases when CDC Director Robert Redfield made that estimate — which, if accurate, would have translated to 24 million cases at


the immune system's “memory” T cells, which are trained to recognize specific People may derive this protection from standard childhood vaccinations or from previous infections by other coronaviruses, such as those that cause the common cold, my colleague Ariana Eunjung Cha reported. “This might potentially explain why some people seem to fend off the virus and may be less susceptible to becoming severely ill,” National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins remarked in a blog post last week. “On a population level, such findings, if validated, could be far-reaching,” Ariana wrote. “ … In communities in Boston, Barcelona, Wuhan and other major cities, the proportion of people estimated to have antibodies and therefore presumably be immune has mostly been in the single digits. But if others had partial protection from T cells, that would raise a community’s immunity level much higher.” The head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated in June that there were roughly 10 times more coronavirus infections in the United States than had been confirmed through testing. There were just 2.4 million confirmed cases when CDC Director Robert Redfield made that estimate — which, if accurate, would have translated to 24 million cases at the time. Confirmed cases have since doubled, to more than 5 million — meaning the virus may have swept through tens of millions of people. Redfield based his estimate on the results of antibody tests, which examine a person’s blood for indicators that the body fought off an infection, Lena H. Sun and Joel Achenbach wrote. Scientists initially thought the virus easily spread on surfaces, similar to how other viruses operate. That’s why much of the initial public health advice centered around hand-washing and disinfecting surfaces. Now public health experts think SARS-CoV-2 is primarily spread through person-to-person contact. In May, the CDC updated guidance on its “How COVID-19 Spreads” website to say that “the virus spreads easily between people.” The agency also acknowledged the virus may spread other ways, such as through touching contaminated objects or surfaces, but clarified “this is not thought to be the main way the virus spreads.” “The virus travels through the droplets a person produces when talking or coughing,” Ben Guarino and Joel wrote. “An individual does not need to feel sick or show symptoms to spread the submicroscopic virus. Close contact means within about six feet, the distance at which a sneeze flings heavy


own country, but one official said the administration is weighing a public health emergency declaration that would let the White House keep out potentially infected Americans,” they add. “Medical experts have warned the administration that such restrictions would make little difference in controlling the pandemic, because widespread community transmission already is occurring in the United States.” The administration has already cited the pandemic to enforce a system of expelling most migrants taken into custody at the border and returning them to Mexico. The New York Times, which first reported the administration’s discussions, reported that the draft regulation does not detail how long the individual would be required to stay outside the country. The Times adds, “The rule appears to apply to all points of entry into the United States, including at airports and along both the northern and southern borders. In particular, the draft could impact the border with Mexico, where many American citizens and legal residents cross back and forth frequently.” Immigration and Customs Enforcement says it wants to expel migrant children to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. But the children sent home have already tested negative. “Court documents, and information given by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to congressional staff last week, reveal that the Trump administration has agreed to test every child in its custody before sending them back to their home countries under the expulsion policy,” Dara Lind and Lomi Kriel report for ProPublica. “ICE’s comprehensive testing appears to undermine the rationale for the mass expulsion policy: that it is necessary to ‘prevent the introduction’ of COVID-19 into the United States.” The administration has cited the ongoing pandemic as the reason it is sidestepping protections that are meant to direct migrant children to the Department of Health and Human Services. Citing a law that allows the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to exclude an individual if they may introduce diseases into the United States, the CDC began blocking anyone without documentation from entering the country in March. It’s not clear, Dara and Lomi add, when the testing requirements began. Lee Gelernt of the ACLU, which is representing children in legal challenges to the policy, told ProPublica that the administration’s “claim that they need to summarily expel children because of COVID was always a pretext. … If they are now actually testing and know the children do not have COVID, then the policy is that much


Stop justifying school reopening based on false statements

— a similar ratio as adults. Racial disparities seen in adult patients are also mirrored in children: The rates of hospitalization among Hispanic and Black children are nearly eight and five times higher, respectively, than the rate in White children. Even though the virus that causes covid-19 is transmitted through the respiratory system, that’s not all it affects. The virus can cause damage to multiple organs in children, just as it does to adults. There is even a rare but serious associated disease specific to children that we are just beginning to understand, the multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C). In a New England Journal of Medicine study, 92 percent of children with this syndrome experience effects on their gastrointestinal system and 80 percent on their cardiovascular system. Some develop coronary artery aneurysms. There are case reports of children suffering from a toxic shock-like multi-organ failure, which has led to death. It’s also true that children spread covid-19. The largest study involving children and transmission is one from South Korea that traced nearly 60,000 people. It found that children 10 and older transmit the virus at least as well as adults. Children under 10 appeared to transmit it about half as much — though here the study was limited to only 57 younger children. Another study in JAMA Pediatrics found that children carry just as much virus in their nasal passages in adults; in fact, kids under 5 may carry 10 to 100 times more. That children can transmit to one another and to adults around them is also evident in a case report from a Georgia summer camp. After a teenage counselor developed symptoms, the camp was shut down. By then, 260 of 344 campers and staff for whom testing data is available had the infection. Among children ages 6 to 10, more than half were infected. More than half of the staff, too, tested positive. This shouldn’t be surprising considering our experience with other respiratory infections. How many of us parents have had the experience of becoming sick after our kids pick up colds at school? Some who support on-time school reopening point to European countries that have had few outbreaks after resuming in-person instruction. However, these countries undertook many safety measures, including enforcing social distancing and implementing regular testing. They also had far lower rates of covid-19 in the community than we do. A cautionary tale should


University of Maryland to start fall classes online, asks students to stay inside, citing coronavirus risks

Three weeks before the fall semester starts at the University of Maryland, the school’s president announced that classes would begin online. The state flagship school had planned to hold in-person classes in the fall. But Darryll J. Pines, the new president of U-Md., announced Monday that undergraduate classes would be held virtually until mid-September because of the prevalence of the coronavirus in Maryland and Prince George’s County, where the College Park campus is located. The most recent seven-day positivity rate in the county is the highest in the state at 5.4 percent, Pines said in a message to the campus. The president asked that all students — those living on and off campus — stay in their homes as much as possible in early September. “It is our fervent hope and expectation that we will resume in-person and blended instruction on September 14,” Pines wrote. “At the same time, the health of our university community and slowing the spread of COVID-19 must remain our continuing and unwavering priorities.” Graduate instruction and research activities are expected to continue as planned. Campus move-in will proceed as planned this month, but with fewer students than normal. Officials are projecting occupancy of less than 45 percent; last fall, more than 11,000 students lived on campus, university data show. In addition to getting tested before coming to campus, per guidelines set by the state’s public higher education system that oversees College Park and 11 other institutions, Pines told students they will also be required to be tested after their arrival. The university is offering free testing from Aug. 17 through the end of the month for members of the campus community, Pines said. Those who get tested will be asked to stay in their homes or on-campus residences until a negative result is produced, Pines said. If an individual tests positive for the coronavirus, they will be required to self-isolate for 14 days. “Testing everyone who is physically present on our campus is critical to our understanding of the prevalence of the coronavirus in our community,” Pines said. Pines called on the community to comply with safety guidelines — including frequent handwashing, mask usage and social distancing — and said the resumption of in-person classes will be partially dependent on whether students can adhere to those standards. All students must complete an online coronavirus training before the semester starts and sign a pledge, agreeing to


Hawa Abdi, trailblazing physician who built a haven for Somali families, dies at 73

“Still I did not lose my hope. One day my people’s lives will change in a better way. I hope my children and the children who grow in camp, and are born in the hospital, will change the lives of Somali people.” Hawa Abdi Dhiblawe was born in Mogadishu in the spring of 1947. Without knowing her precise birthday, she adopted the May 28 birth date of her daughter Mohamed. Her father worked at the city port, in an era when Mogadishu was controlled by Britain and then Italy; her mother died of childbirth complications when she was 12. The episode introduced her to the shortcomings of the country’s health-care system and set her on a path to become a doctor. “I wanted to help future generations and children to avoid the pain I felt,” she later told an interviewer. It also led the family to give Dr. Abdi up for marriage, according to Mohamed. The marriage ended in divorce after the death of her infant daughter, which she attributed to a female genital cutting ritual that she had undergone as a child and that apparently compromised the birth. After the child died, she returned to school and received a scholarship to study gynecology in Kyiv, in what is now Ukraine, as a result of Somalia’s Cold War-era alliance with the Soviet Union. Dr. Abdi returned to Mogadishu in 1971, at a time when Somalia had about 60 doctors, according to her memoir. She worked at Digfer Hospital, where most of her colleagues were Italian and only one was female, before starting her own clinic at her family farm. Its location, on the road between Mogadishu and the town of Afgooye, made it a destination for families in need. By 2010, the corridor was home to more than 400,000 displaced people — more than anywhere else in the world, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees — and the camp had grown to about 90,000 people. Dr. Abdi initially sold a stockpile of gold to feed the women and children who flocked to her doorstep. “Then, as the famine worsened, she had to pay gravediggers in food to bury the more than ten thousand who died,” journalist Eliza Griswold wrote in her 2010 book “The Tenth Parallel.” In interviews with visiting reporters, Dr. Abdi often said she had not intended to support thousands of displaced families. But “necessity is


Two pitchers quarantine, one opts out and more games are postponed as coronavirus disrupts MLB

“We’re going to handle this in-house, and we’ll see where it goes from here.” On Monday, the Indians announced that pitcher Mike Clevinger also will quarantine — causing him to miss his scheduled start against the Chicago Cubs on Tuesday — after the club learned that he violated safety protocols as well. According to ESPN, Clevinger accompanied Plesac on his night out. Meanwhile, the Mets’ Marcus Stroman has opted out of the 2020 season. Stroman praised the team’s approach to safety protocols, but he said (via the Athletic) that seeing outbreaks elsewhere “makes you realize how hard it is to make sure that everything is buttoned up, 24/7, from every angle.” And after another St. Louis player tested positive, the Cardinals’ series against the visiting Pittsburgh Pirates, which was to have run Monday through Wednesday, was postponed Sunday. On Monday, MLB announced that St. Louis’s doubleheader at the Detroit Tigers on Thursday also had been postponed. The Cardinals have not played since July 29; 17 members of the organization (10 players and seven staff members) have tested positive since last week. Manager Mike Shildt revealed Sunday that some members of the organization have had to seek treatment in an emergency room after experiencing symptoms. John Mozeliak, the team’s president of baseball operations, said one player and one staff member had gone to a hospital, but neither was admitted for treatment and both are at home. “There are people that have symptoms and have had a few visits to the ER for some IVs and a little more clarity,” Shildt said during an interview with KMOX Radio. “Nobody has had to stay [in the hospital]. But there are people dealing with — I mean, this is real. And people are experiencing a lot of the symptoms that we hear about, that are associated with this. A variety of them. Most of them are experiencing multiple ones. Seems like they rotate with them. And, again, nobody is in close to any critical shape, but people are having to deal with some things that aren’t comfortable at all.” Since the MLB season began July 23, 29 games have been postponed because of coronavirus concerns. MLB has responded by placing stricter rules on players and staff on and off the field. For Mozeliak, that meant the team is “doubling down on our tracing” in an effort to get back on the field. “It’s a


What type of covid-19 test should you use? It depends.

more extensive testing. Here’s how this algorithm would apply when it comes to national policy decisions. The covid-19 test that we have been depending on is the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test. This is the more accurate test that requires processing in a laboratory and has long wait times in many parts of the country — averages in July were running about four days, and 10 percent of patients waited 10 days or more, according to a national research survey. We can ease the demand for this test by ramping up production of another test: the antigen test. These tests don’t require laboratory processing and can provide results in as little as 15 minutes. Moreover, the PCR test can cost hundreds of dollars, while the antigen test costs at little as $1. Why not invoke the Defense Production Act to immediately mass produce these less accurate — but much faster and cheaper — screening tests? They are already being made available in India and Senegal, and some versions are FDA-approved in the United States. Imagine if we had enough of these tests that, every morning, all children and teachers could take one at home. Imagine if restaurants and other retail establishments required them as a condition of entry. Imagine if one could take a home test before getting together with extended family. How much safer would we all feel — and be? Some would say that the antigen tests just aren’t accurate enough. But the alternative is people not being tested at all. Catching 80 percent of asymptomatic cases is a lot better than catching zero. Others might say that we shouldn’t deny people the more accurate test. But we have limited resources and are rationing tests now. We shouldn’t leave it to chance to determine who receives what test, or whether people get one at all. Lack of testing is our country’s Achilles’ heel in the fight against covid-19. A tiered strategy can help identify far more infections than we do now. Let’s get the right test to the right people. Read more: The Post’s View: What if the coronavirus vaccine doesn’t arrive soon? David Skorton: We need a covid-19 reset. So we developed a comprehensive plan to do just that. The Post’s View: Trump has a new tone on the pandemic. But not a new strategy. Leana S. Wen: 7 things the administration is getting wrong about testing


Forty percent of people with coronavirus infections have no symptoms. Might they be the key to ending the pandemic?

to similar pathogens. Perhaps fortuitously, SARS-CoV-2 is part of a large family of viruses. Two of them — SARS and MERS — are deadly and led to relatively brief and contained outbreaks. Four other coronavirus variants, which cause the common cold, circulate widely each year but typically result in only mild symptoms. Sette calls them the “less-evil cousins of SARS-CoV-2.” This week, Sette and others from the team reported new research in Science providing evidence the T cell responses may derive in part from memory of “common cold” coronaviruses. “The immune system is basically a memory machine,” he said. “It remembers and fights back stronger.” Interestingly, the researchers noted in their paper, the strongest reaction they saw was against the spike proteins that the virus uses to gain access to cells — suggesting that fewer viral copies get past these defenses. “The current model assumes you are either protected or you are not — that it’s a yes or no thing,” Sette added. “But if some people have some level of preexisting immunity, that may suggest it’s not a switch but more continuous.” Nearly 2,000 miles away, at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., Andrew Badley was zeroing in the possible protective effects of vaccines. Teaming up with data experts from nference, a company that manages their clinical data, he and other scientists looked at records from 137,037 patients treated at the health system to look for relationships between vaccinations and coronavirus infection. They knew that the vaccine for smallpox, for example, had been shown to protect against measles and whooping cough. Today, a number of existing vaccines are being studied to see if any might offer cross-protection against SARS-CoV-2. The results were intriguing: Seven types of vaccines given one, two or five years in the past were associated with having a lower rate of infection with the new coronavirus. Two vaccines in particular seemed to show stronger links: People who got a pneumonia vaccine in the recent past appeared to have a 28 percent reduction in coronavirus risk. Those who got polio vaccines had a 43 percent reduction in risk. Venky Soundararajan, chief scientific officer of nference, remembers when he first saw how large the reduction appeared to be, he immediately picked up his phone and called Badley: “I said, ‘Is this even possible?’” The team looked at dozens of other possible explanations for the difference. They adjusted for


trying to figure out how to minimize the receptors or to trick the virus into attaching itself to a drug so it doesn’t replicate and travel throughout the body. Was it possible, Togias asked, that children naturally expressed the receptor in a way that makes them less vulnerable to infection? He said recent papers have produced counterintuitive findings about one subgroup of children — those with a lot of allergies and asthma. The ACE2 receptors in those children were diminished, and when they were exposed to an allergen such as cat hair, the receptors were further reduced. Those findings, combined with data from hospitals showing that asthma did not seem to be a risk factor for the respiratory virus, as expected, have intrigued researchers. “We are thinking allergic reactions may protect you by down-regulating the receptor,” he said. “It’s only a theory of course.” Togias, who is in charge of airway biology for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is looking at how those receptors seem to be expressed differently as people age, as part of a study of 2,000 U.S. families. By comparing those differences and immune responses within families, they hope to be able to better understand the receptors’ role. Separately, a number of genetic studies show variations in genes associated with ACE2 with people from certain geographic areas, such as Italy and parts of Asia, having distinct mutations. No one knows what significance, if any, these differences have on infection, but it’s an active area of discussion in the scientific community. Before the pandemic, Gandhi, the University of California researcher, specialized in HIV. But like other infectious-disease experts these days, she has spent many of her waking hours thinking about the coronavirus. And in scrutinizing the data on outbreaks one day, she noticed what might be a pattern: People were wearing masks in the settings with the highest percentage of asymptomatic cases. The numbers on two cruise ships were especially striking. In the Diamond Princess, where masks weren’t used and the virus was likely to have roamed free, 47 percent of those tested were asymptomatic. But in the Antarctic-bound Argentine cruise ship, where an outbreak hit in mid-March and surgical masks were given to all passengers and N95 masks to the crew, 81 percent were asymptomatic. Similarly high rates of asymptomatic infection were documented at a pediatric dialysis unit in Indiana, a seafood plant in


A coronavirus vaccine won’t change the world right away

and killing five. Those infections seeded their own epidemic, paralyzing 113 others and killing an additional five people. “What’s incredible is it was only a blip. Parents were so trustworthy of doctors and scientists, and it went on, people got their shots,” Markel said. The Salk vaccination was a transformative moment, but it was also not the end of polio. Over the course of two years, cases in the United States dropped by 80 percent, but outbreaks continued for several years, even as the vaccine was rolled out. Six years later, an oral polio vaccine that could be given as a sugar cube that dissolved on children’s tongues was introduced. Polio was eliminated in the United States in 1979. But the polio vaccine came at a distinct moment in American history, Markel said, when people had great faith that scientists, medicine and government institutions could change their lives for the better. For the coronavirus, a relatively small setback — a miscommunication about vaccines, an unpleasant side effect, a much-hoped-for candidate that fails in large clinical trials or a vaccine that is only partly protective — could have outsize effects, especially with anti-vaccine activists already working to sow distrust. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, testified Friday before Congress that he is “cautiously optimistic” that a 30,000-person, Phase 3 clinical trial just getting underway will yield an effective vaccine. But there has been little talk about how to think about failures, even though those are an inevitable part of science. “What happens if any of them fail a Phase 3 trial — are people just going to give up? Is it going to be like entering Dante’s inferno?” Columbia’s Rasmussen said. “I’m really worried people have been relying on this hope that a vaccine is going to fix everything, and vaccines are not perfect, just like any type of therapeutic. They do fail.” All approved vaccines must be shown to be safe and effective, but that doesn’t mean they perform the same. The measles vaccine is one of the best — 98 percent effective at preventing disease. But the flu vaccine clocks in most years at 40 to 60 percent effective. And some vaccines work less well in groups of people — older people, for example, have less robust immune responses and need a special high-dose flu vaccine, or one with an extra ingredient


Russian labs race to find a covid-19 vaccine by fall, but concerns raised about fast-track methods

using inmates in clinical trials. “When we mention some timelines, this is always somebody’s hope,” Popova said. “We can say when it’s technically going to be possible to get the vaccine, but we cannot say in advance how efficient that vaccine is going to be.” Russia, which has the third-highest number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the world — more than 400,000 — is far from alone in the vaccine hunt. It is competing against other countries, including those with the world’s two biggest economies, the United States and China, in the race for the prestige of having the first team to crack the coronavirus code. Testing is underway on at least five experimental vaccines in China and four in the United States. Top infectious-disease scientists, including Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, have offered a timeline of a year to 18 months for a vaccine. But Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said Thursday that Muscovites will be required to wear face masks until a vaccine is available and that he expects that “will happen between October and February of next year.” “I would like to hope that we will receive the first large vaccine shipments in October,” Sobyanin told the state-run Tass news agency. Russian Health Minister Mikhail Murashko was more optimistic just two weeks ago, telling state television that a “vaccine’s availability for broader use should materialize somewhere in late July.” He made the same claim during a parliamentary session. Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova said last month that Russia is developing 47 coronavirus vaccines, but that 10 are listed on the World Health Organization’s latest registry. “I think it’s impossible, if we’re talking about a tested, reliable vaccine ready for mass application,” said Vitaly Zverev of Moscow’s Mechnikov Research Institute of Vaccines and Sera. “We should always remember that we’re going to administer a vaccine to perfectly healthy people. That’s why we have to be absolutely sure it’s safe, but it’s impossible to check that in such a short period of time.” Zverev said the rush to claim the world’s first vaccine for the novel coronavirus could be about “prestige” for Russia, which has long prided itself on its legacy of scientific innovation. The Soviet Union was a vaccinating force, collaborating with U.S. scientists on a polio vaccine during the Cold War and donating more smallpox vaccines to the World Health


The vegetable garden, priceless in a pandemic

The other day, I had this rather tasty meal: a baked zucchini sliced lengthwise, with each half filled with a saucy mixture of sausage, tomatoes, onion and garlic. The plate included steaming boiled potatoes. I don’t know if this was a meal fit for a king, but it was certainly one befitting the gardener. All the ingredients, save the pork, had come directly from the garden. It is that time of year, when months of disparate planting and cultivating converge for the summer feast. To the list of current grow-your-own fare, I might easily have added peppers, various beans, beets, chard, carrots, melons, corn and cucumber. Growing edibles is both pleasurable and laborious. When you sit down to eat your work, there is a sense of satisfaction — not only the lofty feeling of empowerment but also the more practical reward of consuming food that is fresh and nutritious. The potato was a variety named Kennebec, a white, midseason spud that is firm, buttery and waxy. You just don’t seem to find potatoes of this quality in the grocery store. When was the last time you saw fingerlings for sale or authentic young, new potatoes? In a normal growing season, the August harvest would be simply the icing on life’s cake. In a time of pandemic, it is a practical way to both help fill the larder and ease, a little, the underlying anxiety of these times. The veggie garden, last year a quaint domestic appendage, became overnight a survival bunker. It was a little scary to see back in early spring how the whole world was banging on the doors of seed companies. In my large community garden, approximately 20 of the 150 plots become free each year. This year, there were just four. No matter how intensely you cultivate things, a small city garden is not going to provide all the food you need, and crops come in waves, anyway. One day, I will have a large and well-organized fruit and vegetable garden that will furnish far more of my victuals. For now, eating also means a weekly expedition to the grocery store. This used to be an hour’s enterprise after work. Now it is akin to a spacewalk, with all the attendant preparation and aftermath. I discovered a family-owned grocery store that provided curbside pickup. This worked after a fashion, but the logistics were challenging and some


Florida governor says he’d welcome players from conferences that have canceled fall sports

related deaths since March. In a media session Tuesday after the Pac-12 announced its decision, conference officials said they were concerned about not only the continued spread of the coronavirus but also “emerging data about some health risks” for athletes. The coronavirus has been linked to cardiovascular issues, possibly including myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle, in some cases. “We wanted to really give [a fall season] the best shot, but in the end we looked at the recent cardiac evidence,” University of Oregon President Michael H. Schill said during the media session. Schill’s language was echoed by Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren, who said in a statement Tuesday, “As time progressed and after hours of discussion with our Big Ten Task Force for Emerging Infectious Diseases and the Big Ten Sports Medicine Committee, it became abundantly clear that there was too much uncertainty regarding potential medical risks to allow our student-athletes to compete this fall.” Thrasher said Tuesday that the issue of myocarditis, which can cause chest pain and heart failure, “seemed to get a lot of attention nationally, and it caused a lot of the other conferences to say: ‘Let’s take a step back. Let’s review where we are.’ ” He said his school’s reaction was to “agree we needed to look at the medical aspects again just one more time to make sure our protocols, the other teams’ protocols are in place.” The chair of the ACC medical advisory group said (via ESPN) that he thought established safety protocols could “mitigate” the risk of coronavirus to the point where the conference could “safely have two teams meet on the field.” “You can’t tell me that running onto a football field is supposed to be a zero-risk environment,” added the chair, Duke University infectious-disease specialist Cameron Wolfe. “Look at all of the regular sporting injuries that we accept as a certain level of risk as part and parcel of football. Now the reality is that we have to accept a little bit of covid risk to be a part of that.” DeSantis claimed Tuesday that canceling the fall football season, with no guarantee the sport would be played early next year, amounted to “short-circuiting the dreams that so many of our student-athletes have worked for, in many cases, their whole lives.” “We’re here to say from the state of Florida, we want you guys to play,” the


Beirut urgently needs aid. But residents fear the state’s involvement will make matters worse.

problems: a collapsed economy, a political uprising and a coronavirus outbreak. Now there’s a humanitarian crisis to contend with. To be effective, donors need to approach the situation as they would a simultaneous earthquake and an economic crisis, Houry said. “Like managing a fire on many fronts.” “We’ve seen how money gets siphoned off,” he continued. “[So] what transparency efforts are going to be put in place? How can these measures be strengthened and ensure accountability?” At protests and on social media, Lebanese activists have urged international donors to support local initiatives and organizations, from the Lebanese Red Cross to the beloved owner of a destroyed corner store or restaurant. Accessing cash, though, can pose another set of problems, Rizk said. Lebanon’s crisis-ridden banking sector has limits on withdrawing dollars and the Lebanese pound. The collapse of Lebanon’s currency has led to inflation, so money sent in dollars loses much of its worth once converted. One workaround has been the Lebanese diaspora mobilizing to raise funds and send assistance, Rizk said. But until Lebanon’s indebted government — now dissolved — agrees to a long-sought loan from the International Monetary Fund, the banking crisis is unlikely to be resolved. The United Nations is another actor quickly mobilizing on the ground. On Tuesday, it announced that it would send tens of thousands of tons of wheat flour to Lebanon to prevent a food shortage after the country’s ’s main grain silo at the port was destroyed. Still, Rizk warned, the international body faced the same long-standing issue of the political impact of how it distributes aid. “The issue is who is their interlocutor in Lebanon and how to channel and organize the funding in the absence of the state, in the absence of a budget, in the absence of a financial system,” she said. Several countries have pledged millions in aid. French President Emmanuel Macron was the first world leader to visit Beirut; he walked its shattered streets Friday. It was, Lebanese noted, a show of solidarity from the country’s former colonial power that none of Lebanon’s embattled leadership dared to carry out. Two days after the blast, the United States sent its first round of emergency aid from the U.S. Central Command hub in Qatar, the Associated Press reported. The State Department said Friday that it has pledged more than $17 million overall. The United States has focused aid in part


Trump has a new metric by which he wants to evaluate the pandemic. Please update your records.

a bit more than 4 percent of the world’s population — but we’ve seen more than a quarter of the recorded coronavirus cases. There are two big caveats to that point. The first is that we are, in fact, conducting more tests than other countries (like Mexico), meaning that we’re confirming more existent cases than other countries. That doesn’t conflict with the reality that the virus has spread unchecked here, of course, but it does mean that other countries are probably underrepresented on the graph above. The other caveat is related: We can’t be confident that all countries (looking at you, China) are accurately reporting data. Nonetheless, the United States is an outlier. It’s an outlier on deaths, too, with more than 22 percent of the confirmed deaths globally. Countries below the diagonal dotted line on these graphs are ones that make up more of the confirmed deaths than they do the world’s population — and are therefore seeing disproportionately high effects from the pandemic. We have colored the countries Trump mentioned in orange. Here, you can see that several of those countries fall below the diagonal line, often a function of their seeing surges in new cases early in the pandemic when contracting the virus was more likely to be fatal. Looking only at recent cases, the United States still fares poorly. India makes up a higher percentage of recent cases, but, then, it’s far more populous than the United States. You’ll notice that several Central and South American countries appear as disproportionately affected on the graphs above. That’s true when considering recent deaths, as well. Trump did mention those countries during Tuesday’s briefing, noting that the region had completed far fewer tests than the United States. In the past, he has been more pointed about comparing the pandemic in the United States to its progression there, but, of course, the global expectation is that the United States will respond to situations like this one in a manner more similar to Germany and France than to Peru and Argentina. So he laid out some percentages from those European countries on Tuesday, then tacked on a promise. “In our country, [new cases] are going down,” he said. “We will be seeing that even more rapidly as time goes by — a short time.” If not, look for a new metric to become the focal point of the White House’s attention.


The Future Reset: Global Food Systems

are sold to people who can afford them. They're expensive products. Very nourishing, very high-quality, high nutrition, et cetera, but nonetheless, it is not the cheap steak you can buy at Costco. So what we've built is a very resilient system that has the farmers all aggregated mostly in Arkansas, a little bit in Missouri and Mississippi, and then linked directly to a processing system that is also owned by this co-op, this system, which is exceptionally flexible and unlike the large mass meat processors, has its workers as a highest priority in terms of how they operate. So, we have a cooperative system that produces the farmers--the individual smallholder farmers has an outlet or they have outlets for their meat, whatever the cattle, pork, chickens. They send it to a system, a processing system that's also highly labor oriented. And then we sell it to an ecommerce operation called Grass Roots Co-Op, which is also partly owned by the rest of us so that it's this whole continuum unitary system, if you like, and we sell that by retail on ecommerce. So, we--what happened during the COVID situation, we were doing quite well, sales were going on quite well before that, and suddenly COVID hit and nobody could get meat in the retail. Now they can, but they couldn't then. And sales just skyrocketed. And we had the inventory, so that--we were able to meet demand. And today the Grass Roots Co-Op or the whole system is probably selling about twice as much as it was before. So, it's a boutique system. This is not competing with Walmart or Costco or Safeway or Kroger or any of these massive retailers. But we found that consumers--and this is the interesting part of it. Will consumers hold on to the experience they've had at sampling and enjoying higher, much higher-quality products than what is found in the commercial system? So--and I just go back to the beer industry at some point--I don't know if you remember the 90s, the small local breweries began to have a huge impact on the monopolistic control by Anheuser-Busch, Coors, and Miller. And I'm wondering whether the same thing is actually going to happen in the supply of higher-quality product. You know, I don't think I've had a Coors Lite in 20 years. I mean, I--you know, I drink local brews, right? I mean, and a


The Future Reset: Global Food Systems

before that, and suddenly COVID hit and nobody could get meat in the retail. Now they can, but they couldn't then. And sales just skyrocketed. And we had the inventory, so that--we were able to meet demand. And today the Grass Roots Co-Op or the whole system is probably selling about twice as much as it was before. So, it's a boutique system. This is not competing with Walmart or Costco or Safeway or Kroger or any of these massive retailers. But we found that consumers--and this is the interesting part of it. Will consumers hold on to the experience they've had at sampling and enjoying higher, much higher-quality products than what is found in the commercial system? So--and I just go back to the beer industry at some point--I don't know if you remember the 90s, the small local breweries began to have a huge impact on the monopolistic control by Anheuser-Busch, Coors, and Miller. And I'm wondering whether the same thing is actually going to happen in the supply of higher-quality product. You know, I don't think I've had a Coors Lite in 20 years. I mean, I--you know, I drink local brews, right? I mean, and a lot of people do. And it's changed that industry. It absolutely changed the brewery industry. MS. TUMULTY: Well, we have just another few minutes. I would like to bring a question from our audience, Anne Whiteside in California, who wants to know how do we make these local food economies more resilient in terms of climate change and our longer-term environmental challenges. MR. FERRARI: Right. So, we practice what is called, you know, climate-smart agriculture. Ricardo talked about the fact that you could--you can raise beef in a way that's actually very detrimental to the climate in terms of deforestation, et cetera. And we don't do any of that. There's a mechanism or there is an approach to for example livestock raising--we made mostly beef--called holistic management. What happens is that you rotate the grazing of the animals in such a way that you actually improve the quality of the soil and sequester an enormous amount of carbon. There's a man out there--which actually is a great Ted Talk--by a guy called Allan Savory which I would recommend your viewers to watch. It's 20 minutes of incredibly entertaining perspectives on how livestock, from his point of view, can actually be


The Future Reset: Global Food Systems

a major tool in carbon sequestration and therefore climate mitigation. So, we do that. We do that all over the world, primarily based on managing the land in a way that's smart, and of course using the manure and the waste from the animals in a way that enhances soil quality, soil fertility, et cetera. So that is the fundamental approach we take to ensure that agriculture, the way we do it, is actually climate smart and sensitive, and actually climate-improving. MS. TUMULTY: Well, I would also like to bring up a topic--I brought it up in our earlier segment--which is the political component of these problems. Heifer International works in a lot of parts of the world that have had a long and difficult history of civil strife. How important is strengthening civil society to building these sorts of resilient systems that you are talking about? MR. FERRARI: So, it's extremely important. And the way we try to approach that--and I think we've been quite successful--is to work with local communities, okay? So, we've got to create a sense of community and participation and inclusion across the whole villages where we work. Then, an informed collective operations, generally they're co-cops, cooperatives is the way they are in this country. And once you've got these cooperatives successfully connecting to markets and generating positive cash flow for the communities, now that develops economic and political power. They can then go to local, regional, provincial, national governments and begin to demand change, such as, for example, can you build a road? Can we have electricity? Can we have municipal water systems. All sorts of fundamental requirements to build a society that is stable and flexible and resilient. But until these communities, especially the poorer communities, can actually show that they have economic power--right?--economic advantages that they are generating income for themselves and capital for themselves, they will not have power. And our work, our work is very much oriented towards developing these political capacities on the part of co-ops all over the world. And it can be very successful because it's a sort of a self-feeding system. It's a virtuous cycle. Because once you begin to have success in the marketplace, you have resources with which you can make more investments, which then generates more income and capital and savings, which then allows you to get the attention of the political infrastructure.


Harris wants U.S. to give Americans $2,000 a month during pandemic, a contrast with Biden’s measured approach

picks often have differing policy views from the other person on the ticket, and they typically follow the lead of the presidential contender when it comes to a campaign platform. But Harris’s past proposals will probably face sharp scrutiny during the campaign, from both Democrats and Republicans, as they try to decipher what type of vantage point she would bring to policy debates if Democrats win in November. Conservatives have said Harris’s policies would add trillions to the national debt while expanding the federal government’s involvement in daily American life. Critics to her left have said she would not go far enough to rectify inequality and provide adequate government benefits to the poor, and have questioned her ties to wealthy Democratic Party donors and the party’s establishment. Harris’s rent proposal on its own would probably cost about $500 billion per month, or as much as $5.5 trillion a year, said Brian Riedl, an economic policy analyst at the Manhattan Institute, a right-leaning think tank. It would amount to a limited and temporary universal basic income, an idea once confined to the left of the party, and on its own cost about the entire federal budget before the virus. Proponents of the plan, including Sanders and Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), have pointed to other countries that have adopted similar measures in response to the pandemic. “Harris is many things, but please do not use ‘moderate’ or ‘pragmatic’ to describe someone whose own campaign proposed approximately $40 trillion in new spending over the decade,” Riedl said. JPMorgan Chase has described Harris’s economic policy as consisting of “largely centrist views,” pointing out her opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement, support for a corporate tax hike and opposition to a single-payer health care system. Briahna Joy Gray, who served as a spokeswoman for the Sanders campaign, criticized Harris’s economic policies. She pointed to a complicated plan to provide limited student debt relief for some entrepreneurs who meet select criteria — short of the more sweeping measures pushed by Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) — and to Harris not backing their sweeping plans for a “wealth tax" on the richest Americans. “Harris’s means-tested policies leave out some of the most vulnerable among us,” she said. “I don’t have a great deal of confidence that differences between her campaign platform and Biden’s mean that she will push him left on those issues.”


A pandemic challenge for lifeguards: Protect beachgoers, and themselves

New Jersey had tested positive for covid-19. And on Sunday, CapeCod.com reported 11 cases among lifeguards in Falmouth, Mass. To protect the safety of lifeguards and beachgoers alike, lifeguarding divisions around the country have changed their protocols. Tom Gill, spokesperson for the United States Lifesaving Association, says his organization has recommended minimizing lifeguard interactions both during training and regular operations. Lifeguards answered the pandemic “like every other first responder agency that had to alter operations and do things they’ve never done before to protect their people and to protect the people they were going to help,” Gill said. In the case of Halphide’s team in Newport Beach, that means lifeguards now wear masks when they’re within six feet of each other and limit the number of people allowed in their building (which Halphide says is being kept cleaner than ever before). When someone requires help through close contact, Newport Beach lifeguards respond wearing masks and gloves, putting a mask on the person in need when appropriate. But even with the new procedures, the Newport Beach lifeguards still suffered two separate coronavirus outbreaks once the department brought in more staff for the summer season. Because the lifeguards and fire department have transported people who tested positive for the coronavirus without incurring any outbreaks, Halphide thinks the issue isn’t the job and the workplace. Rather, he believes it’s a lack of off-duty social distancing that’s plaguing the lifeguards. Many of his lifeguards live together and hang out outside of work; some are even siblings. “It’s a really tight group of people, and that was part of the problem," Halphide said. “It just it seemed to allow the covid to spread pretty rapidly among a couple of groups.” On the job, the lifeguards are instructed to wear masks while they work together and follow social distancing protocols. Halphide says he and his team advise the lifeguards on how to take precautions after work, too — although he’s not sure how much the message resonates. “If you’re 20 years old, you’re pretty immune to anything and not really worried that you’re going to be affected by [coronavirus],” said Halphide, 55. “So that was part of our struggle, just helping them understand that it’s a real thing and could impact them.” With the pandemic still raging, lifeguard departments will continue to adapt through the rest of the year. But Gill has a message for travelers


Lebanon’s crises are only getting worse

that they don’t want to reward a reviled and corrupt establishment. “Not only do we have an absence of government and a political vacuum, but we’re going to have a severe problem with the function of the state of Lebanon,” Imad Salamey, a political scientist at Lebanese American University in Beirut, said to the Wall Street Journal. “We are heading toward the unknown.” “ “If we continue like this, if that vacuum lasts a year or two,” Diwan added, “Lebanon becomes Somalized,” — a reference to political chaos that gripped Somalia following state collapse in the 1990s — “the population will find itself living off international aid and charity and remittances from cousins and friends abroad." Paul Salem, president of the Middle East Institute in Washington, invoked the same metaphor during the webinar The protests that have gripped the country over past year have “been very successful in bringing down governments,” Salem said. But they have “not managed to raise up governments, not managed to raise up leaders who can take the place of the corrupt oligarchy.” Maha Yahya, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center, pointed to the “talent” widely on view in Lebanese civil society and the apparent formation of new political parties taking place in the aftermath of the explosion. She highlighted two conflicting trends shadowing the country. “You see this amazing sense of social solidarity from all walks of life, all parts of Lebanon,” Yahya said. But it’s “complemented by a total absence of state institutions. The municipality is barely visible. Even the rescue mission has been botched up by the government." My colleagues reported on the myriad ordinary Lebanese who are volunteering to help clean up the ruined capital, including painstaking efforts to enter and help fix countless apartments damaged by the explosion. “Every time I would come back to my apartment, which is obviously relatively destroyed, it would still end up being cleaner and cleaner,” a 32-year-old man said to my colleagues. “This has been the worst week of my life in a lot of ways.” But, he added, “I’ve never felt like I’m more part of a community though at the same time.” Read more: At Beirut’s shattered port, a crater nearly 50 yards deep and small signs of previous lives Paint thinner and other flammable material may have ignited devastating Beirut explosion What we know about the Beirut explosions and their aftermath


U.S. coronavirus deaths once again top 1,000 a day, as Florida, Georgia hit records

in a number of nations that were largely unscathed earlier in the pandemic, including Colombia, Peru, Argentina and South Africa. The global death toll now stands at more than 732,000 — a number that is almost certainly an undercount — and the head of the World Health Organization said the tally is expected to surpass 750,000 this week. At least 160,000 Americans have died of covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, a number that continues to grow by the hour. Of the 1,282 U.S. deaths reported Tuesday, Florida and Georgia recorded their highest single-day death tolls since the start of the pandemic, with 277 and 122, respectively, according to a data analysis by The Washington Post. Tuesday marked the first time Georgia has exceeded 100 deaths in a day and its highest reported seven-day average. Texas and California also ranked among the deadliest counts with 220 and 109 dead, respectively. Wisconsin surpassed 1,000 coronavirus-related deaths since the state’s first reported death in mid-March. Aside from Georgia exceeding its average death count, Puerto Rico, Tennessee, North Dakota, Montana and West Virginia tied for their highest seven-day death averages, a metric that is considered more accurate than daily figures. The United States’ seven-day average for deaths was 1,052. In 16 states and Puerto Rico, the seven-day death average as of Tuesday rose from the previous week, indicating a growing trend in more than a quarter of the country. Washington and North Dakota tied for the biggest increase in average deaths. At the same time, the virus continued to upend the rhythms and traditions of daily life throughout the United States. The Big Ten on Tuesday became the first major college football conference to call off its fall season because of the coronavirus pandemic, and the Pacific-12 followed shortly after. The conferences, whose moves affect all of the fall sports they sponsor, said they would evaluate the possibility of playing in the spring. President Trump continued to push for college football to go on, saying that canceling the season would be a “tragic mistake.” “Get out there and play football. People want to see it,” Trump said at a White House news conference late Tuesday. “These are young, strong people,” he added of the players, insisting most would encounter few problems with the virus. Meanwhile, hundreds of students and dozens of teachers in a recently reopened north Georgia school district have been


Trump weighs blocking Americans at the Mexico border, but legal authority is shaky and no decision has been made

gone through the “traditional White House policy process.” The initiative is “not necessarily a good election move for us,” one official said. “I can't imagine we would actually do it.” DHS officials declined to comment on the discussions. Border closures and travel restrictions have been a preferred policy tool of the president’s from his first week in office, when the administration attempted to bar travelers from majority-Muslim countries. Those restrictions were scaled back, and while federal courts have upheld the administration’s authority to restrict entries on national security grounds, Trump has not tried to place broad limits on the ability of American citizens to enter their own country. “I could see a scenario where a court might uphold it, like an Ebola outbreak in Mexico that amounted to a true public health emergency,” said John Sandweg, who served as the top attorney at DHS under President Barack Obama. “But it’d be very hard to bar U.S. citizens from entering based on covid. At this point, the barn door is wide open, and to say to a U.S. citizen that you can’t return home because you’ve been exposed, I don’t see how that’s constitutional.” A system that would selectively screen out some travelers based on a suspicion of covid-19 infection also appears unworkable, according to others involved in the discussions. U.S. Customs and Border Protection personnel have the ability to question travelers and perform cursory inspections, but because large numbers of covid-19 carriers are asymptomatic, the effectiveness of such screenings is questionable. Temperature checks are considered unreliable as well, because many infected carriers do not have fevers or develop them well after they are already contagious. Some of the U.S. cities and counties along the Mexico border have been among the hardest-hit by the pandemic, especially in Arizona and the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas. Those areas could be hurt even more by border closures, because they depend heavily on cross-border trade and many essential workers — including in hospitals and health care — who live in Mexico. The official said the strongest thing they could anticipate would be a kind of federal “stay at home” order from the CDC telling travelers on both sides of the border to avoid crossing into the other country “unless you have a good reason” such as a school, work or a medical appointment. The goal would be to reduce some of the daily


court might uphold it, like an Ebola outbreak in Mexico that amounted to a true public health emergency,” said John Sandweg, who served as the top attorney at DHS under President Barack Obama. “But it’d be very hard to bar U.S. citizens from entering based on covid. At this point, the barn door is wide open, and to say to a U.S. citizen that you can’t return home because you’ve been exposed, I don’t see how that’s constitutional.” A system that would selectively screen out some travelers based on a suspicion of covid-19 infection also appears unworkable, according to others involved in the discussions. U.S. Customs and Border Protection personnel have the ability to question travelers and perform cursory inspections, but because large numbers of covid-19 carriers are asymptomatic, the effectiveness of such screenings is questionable. Temperature checks are considered unreliable as well, because many infected carriers do not have fevers or develop them well after they are already contagious. Some of the U.S. cities and counties along the Mexico border have been among the hardest-hit by the pandemic, especially in Arizona and the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas. Those areas could be hurt even more by border closures, because they depend heavily on cross-border trade and many essential workers — including in hospitals and health care — who live in Mexico. The official said the strongest thing they could anticipate would be a kind of federal “stay at home” order from the CDC telling travelers on both sides of the border to avoid crossing into the other country “unless you have a good reason” such as a school, work or a medical appointment. The goal would be to reduce some of the daily volume of travelers without severely disrupting local economies or triggering a cascade of lawsuits. CBP officials at ports of entry could interview travelers to determine whether their trip would be essential, and then potentially turn them back if they acknowledge the purpose of the trip does not meet that threshold. “If you’re just coming for the day to shop and eat, and then leave, you can’t do that,” the DHS official said. The screenings would have to function “on the basis of the honor system,” the official cautioned, acknowledging that CBP officers would have limited ability to turn back U.S. citizens who profess to be traveling for essential purposes, even if officers doubt their claims.


Big Ten becomes first major college football conference to cancel fall season

The Big Ten Conference has postponed the 2020 football season because of safety concerns stemming from the novel coronavirus pandemic, the league announced Tuesday. The Big Ten is the first of college football’s elite Power Five conferences to decide against playing football this fall. After sports halted in March, college athletic departments and their conferences have gradually moved toward returning to competition this fall. But the number of coronavirus cases in the United States began rising in June and multiple schools dealt with outbreaks within their football programs even before formal practices had begun. The Big Ten’s decision to cancel all fall competition also affects all other fall sports — men’s and women’s soccer, men’s and women’s cross-country, field hockey and women’s volleyball. The conference said it will continue to evaluate options regarding these sports, including the possibility of playing in the spring. The Big Ten has not made a decision regarding winter sports, such as men’s and women’s basketball, which begin their seasons in November. “The mental and physical health and welfare of our student-athletes has been at the center of every decision we have made regarding the ability to proceed forward,” Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren said in a statement. “As time progressed and after hours of discussion with our Big Ten Task Force for Emerging Infectious Diseases and the Big Ten Sports Medicine Committee, it became abundantly clear that there was too much uncertainty regarding potential medical risks to allow our student-athletes to compete this fall.” With the Big Ten’s decision, 41 of the 130 FBS schools have either said they will not play this fall or are in conferences that have made that decision. The Mid-American Conference postponed its football season Saturday, becoming the first league to do so in the Football Bowl Subdivision, the top tier of college football. The Mountain West Conference followed Monday, canceling all fall sports. In addition, the University of Massachusetts, an FBS independent in football, announced on Tuesday that it was canceling its season. Last week, the University of Connecticut became the first FBS program to shut down its 2020 season, which would have been its first as an independent. Old Dominion, a member of Conference USA in most sports including football, canceled all fall sports Monday. Players, coaches, lawmakers and President Trump expressed support for playing this fall, while others have doubted that they can practice and play safely


The Pac-12 won’t play football or any other sports until at least the start of 2021

The Pac-12 Conference announced Tuesday that it has postponed the 2020 football season because of safety concerns stemming from the novel coronavirus pandemic. With the Big Ten announcing its decision to cancel the fall sports season earlier in the day, only three of college football’s elite Power Five conferences plan to play this fall. The Pac-12 will not hold any athletic competitions until after Jan. 1. The decision affects all fall sports and some winter sports, such as men’s and women’s basketball, which typically begin their seasons in November. The conference said in a statement that it would consider holding games for the affected sports after Jan. 1. College football players returned to their campuses in June for voluntary workouts, but as the fall season approached and the virus continued to spread throughout the United States, a path forward became uncertain. “The health, safety and well-being of our student-athletes and all those connected to Pac-12 sports has been our number one priority since the start of this current crisis,” Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott said in a statement. “Our student-athletes, fans, staff and all those who love college sports would like to have seen the season played this calendar year as originally planned, and we know how disappointing this is.” The Pac-12 had previously planned for its 12 teams to play conference-only schedules beginning Sept. 26. Fall practices would have started as early as Aug. 17. Numerous athletes, coaches and politicians, including President Trump, have publicly pushed for schools to play football this fall, but some players and decision-makers have concerns about the long-term effects of the virus. Health experts are worried about how covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, affects the heart. More than 30 Power Five football players have already decided to opt out of the 2020 season. On a teleconference session with media members after the Pac-12′s announcement, conference officials cited recent indications that the coronavirus could cause cardiovascular issues for athletes as a major factor in their decision. “There is emerging data about some health risks … that we don’t know enough about,” said Doug Aukerman, the senior associate athletic director for sports medicine at Oregon State who also serves as the head of the Pac-12′s Covid-19 Medical Advisory Committee. “Once we started becoming more concerned about some of the side effects and some of the other health outcomes, that we don’t know what the short-term


These neighbors were hospitalized with coronavirus. Their vastly different journeys show the depths of Brazil’s rich-poor divide.

completely different experiences with the virus. One goes into the private health system, which can rival any in the developed world. The other heads into the public health system, where shortages in equipment and personnel can mean the difference between life and death. The story of the two systems — and two Brazils — was the story of Lemos and Guedes. They were roughly the same age: Lemos is 37, Guedes, 38. They lived in neighboring communities in Rio de Janeiro. They grew into adulthood in a Brazil that was ascendant, where a better life was there for the taking. Each of them had seized it, rising above the conditions into which they were born. But there were key differences. Lemos has private health insurance. Guedes doesn’t. Lemos, a physician, lives in the wealthy community of Barra da Tijuca, where President Jair Bolsonaro also maintains his home residence. Guedes has spent his life in nearby Rocinha, the largest favela in Brazil, where he owns an optical shop. When the virus came to Rio, their lives collapsed around a shared experience: Each man in the prime of his life, neither with preexisting conditions, being taken to the hospital as his lungs failed. One entered the private medical system. The other, the public system. And from there, their lives diverged, once more. Months into the world’s second-worst outbreak, the coronavirus has become one more metric to measure inequality in Brazil. The coronavirus has reached 98 percent of cities and infected more than 3 million people. On Saturday, the official death toll passed 100,000. But the destruction has not been distributed equally. Among intensive care patients, people with less education have been three times as likely to die as those with college degrees, researchers found. The rate of transmission has been three times as great in poor neighborhoods compared with wealthy ones. Black patients are at greater risk than Whites. When explaining these discrepancies, researchers have pointed to differences in health and living conditions. The poor tend to live in dense slums, grapple with more infectious diseases and die a decade earlier, on average, than the wealthy. But others have highlighted the failures in the public health-care system. That system has been hailed as a marvel in the developing world, serving more than 150 million Brazilians. But despite its size and resources, it has failed to keep pace with the coronavirus. As its


As U.S.-China rift grows, Mexico tries to lure American businesses to move operations closer to home

a Tijuana production facility to remanufacture devices including alternators and starters and brake power boosters — which the company used to make in China. “I saw a number of years ago a number of big inflationary moves in the Chinese economy and started to get a little uncomfortable with situation there,” CEO Selwyn Joffe said. “I thought we should balance where we do business and our supply chain.” The company maintains a footprint in China, which Joffe says is still a cheaper place to produce. “But stability and government relations seem to favor Mexico,” he said. “Mexico is more expensive, but we weigh that with the accessibility of the marketplace.” At the outset of the pandemic, the Chinese supply chain was hit badly. In the first three months of the year, China’s exports dropped 11.4 percent compared with the same period last year. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security claimed in May that Chinese officials “intentionally concealed the severity” of the virus so they could stock up on medical supplies. Mexican officials hoped to distinguish themselves by keeping their supply chains with the United States open, even as cases in the country peaked. Mexico continued to export ventilator parts and medical equipment north of the border as its own hospital suffered from shortages. Labor activists said workers were pressured to stay on the job even as co-workers contracted the virus. But Mexican officials believe their supply chains proved to be reliable through the crisis. “I would say in general terms Mexico performed relatively efficiently, and we can see that because it has continued to be a major supplier to the U.S.” said Acevedo, the deputy minister Still, in April, as Mexico’s caseload increased, large corporations and the U.S. government complained that Mexican factories were being shuttered without explanation, disrupting supplies needed for aerospace equipment and medical gear. Ellen Lord, the U.S. defense undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment, called Mexico’s supply-chain problems “somewhat problematic for us.” Joffe said supply-chain problems during the pandemic in Mexico and China were equally disruptive to his company. Mexico’s Economy Ministry had planned a road show to meet with companies across the United States about shifting production south of the border. That has been canceled because of the pandemic. Mexican officials have instead been holding video calls with CEOs. “The idea,” Acevedo said, “is ‘Consider Mexico as a place to begin or expand your businesses.’ ”


Where’s the most relaxing place to sip a cold beer right now? At a farm.

stream to the business.” Around 300 hop plants grow on a quarter-acre plot, but you won’t find tanks or brewing equipment on-site: Roberts brews the beers at Antietam Brewery in Hagerstown, where they’re also kegged and canned. The arrangement has been especially beneficial during the pandemic, allowing Mad Science to have a steady stream of cans for to-go sales. If all goes well, Roberts hopes to build out a brewery at the farm in the next five years. Roberts is an unabashed hophead, using a wide variety of hops, including Nugget, Cascade and Columbus, to create punchy IPAs. The Agent Orange is a standout: a hazy IPA with pine, citrus and candied orange flavors, thanks to the addition of sweet orange peel, and caramel malt providing a sturdy backbone. Human Harvester, brewed with fresh hops, is malty and resinous, with a lingering bitter grapefruit note. Beyond the hops, look for Helles Belles, a lighter lager that Roberts regularly infuses with blackberries, peaches and other fresh fruit from the farm as a taproom exclusive, or the Prion Porter, a delightfully roasty dark beer with six kinds of malt. Mad Science’s outdoor seating is attractive and pleasant, surrounded by lush shrubs and trees, and some of the shaded tables have views of the fields across the road which, according to a historic marker on the property, look much the way they did when soldiers camped there during the Civil War. Local food trucks serve lunch on weekends. There’s a playground out back for younger visitors, who can also meet brewery dog Sinnamon and the garden center’s chatty parrot, Chico. When you do leave, don’t be surprised if you find yourself carrying potted plants back to the car along with a four-pack of beer. 1619 Buckeystown Pike, Adamstown, Md. madsciencebrewing.com. Open Saturday and Sunday. Manor Hill is probably the most familiar farm brewery for Washington-area beer lovers, as cans of its juicy IPA and dry, quaffable Grisette farmhouse ale are found in bars and liquor stores in D.C. and Delaware, as well as across the Free State. The farm that Randy and Mary Marriner initially envisioned as a way to supply food to their Victoria Gastro Pub in Columbia has become so much more than when it opened in 2015. You can’t forget that Manor Hill is a farm and brewery: The dramatically long one-lane driveway rolls past fields on either side, and