Trump’s coronavirus travel restrictions on Europe lack implementation details, have many exceptions

six months of the year, which translates to roughly 100 million passenger enplanements. Given that Europe is a significantly larger market than China, those losses could be further magnified even if the ban is in place for only 30 days. According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), there are roughly 550 flights per day between the United States and the Schengen area, the geographical region covered by the Europe ban. Alexandre de Juniac, IATA’s chief executive and director general, said that while governments should take measures they believe are necessary to contain the virus, they should be mindful that those decisions could have broad economic consequences. “In normal times, air transport is a catalyst for economic growth and development,” de Juniac said in a statement. “Suspending travel on such a broad scale will create negative consequences across the economy. Governments must recognize this and be ready to support.” IATA said the measures taken by the U.S. government will only add to the financial pressures. According to IATA’s analysis, the total value of the U.S.-Schengen market in 2019 was $20.6 billion. Those countries likely to be most affected by the ban are Germany, France and Italy. Despite the spread of the virus, the World Health Organization had advised against travel restrictions to countries where outbreaks have occurred. In guidance issued last month, the WHO said that if such measures are taken, they should be in place only for a brief amount of time and must “be reconsidered regularly as the situation evolves.” Experts outside the U.S. government have also questioned the usefulness of such restrictions. But pressed on Capitol Hill on Thursday on whether they would have a significant impact on community spread of the virus within the United States, Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said “the answer is a firm yes.” Fauci said 70 percent of new infections worldwide are coming from Europe “seeding other countries.” He said 30 U.S. states have recently been affected by travel-related infections from the continent. “So it was pretty compelling that we needed to turn off the source from that region,” Fauci said. China was initially “the seed” of infections in the United States, he said, “But the dynamics of the outbreak changed. It shifted from China to the rest of the world, to Europe to the rest of the world.’ ian.duncan@washpost.com lori.aratani@washpost.com michael.laris@washpost.com nick.miroff@washpost.com


Maryland cancels classes for 900,000 students amid coronavirus fears

it and hand it out to students and parents Friday. Morris — whose nonprofit serves many families attending Park View — is stepping in to help, too. Over the past 24 hours, she has converted her nonprofit, which normally collects clothing items, into a food distribution center. Morris said the organization has gathered roughly 20 boxes of food so far, enough for maybe 200 families — a small fraction, she said, of those who need it. “I know the school made this decision with our safety in mind,” Morris said, “but I do feel this is going to take a toll on a lot of the families in need. They’re going to be so much more vulnerable to the ripple effect of what this virus is causing.” Jay Cuasay, who has an eighth-grader in Loudoun schools, feels fortunate he does not need to worry about food for the foreseeable future. He and his wife, Eileen Sarett-Cuasay, began stockpiling groceries several days ago, for fear of the virus. The Cuasays are not especially concerned about the quality of their daughter’s education, either. Their house has reliable Internet access, so if the system shifts to online learning, that should not pose a challenge — which the couple said they know is not the case for everyone. If the shutdown extends for a significant period, or should Loudoun County’s online offerings prove inadequate, the Cuasays — both of whom have graduate degrees — said they feel comfortable taking turns teaching their child. “She certainly likes her teachers better than asking mom and dad, so I could see that not being the most ideal,” Jay Cuasay said. But what’s most difficult is explaining the pandemic to their 13-year-old daughter. The teen, “a huge social butterfly,” wanted to go to a movie Thursday evening with friends, Eileen Sarett-Cuasay said, and she is unsure whether — or how — to tell her “No.” The family was already canceling plans with friends and take extra handwashing precautions. But it has been hard to convince their daughter of the seriousness of the coronavirus and the threat it could pose to society, Jay Cuasay said, partly because no one can see a pandemic. Eileen Sarett-Cuasay said she does not know what to tell her daughter, partly because she has never experienced anything like the coronavirus pandemic. She worries about the lasting effects on the teen. “I just want to


Coronavirus pandemic tests clout of cruise industry and its long-standing ties to Trump

week and pitching to the White House a plan to safeguard passengers. But stock value of cruise companies has plummeted as the industry struggled to deal with the infections on the two ships and warnings from health experts about the risks of such travel. Trump appears sympathetic and has said he wants to help the cruise lines. At the donor event Friday, the president brought up the industry and said he did not want it to shut it down or for it to suffer job losses, according to three people familiar with his remarks, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the closed-door event. A White House spokesman declined to comment. Trump echoed that sentiment publicly Monday, saying at a White House news conference that he was concerned that cruise lines and airlines “will be hit.” “We’re working with them very, very strongly,” he said. “We want them to travel.” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Wednesday that the administration was considering emergency assistance for affected industries. “This is not a bailout. This is considering providing certain things for certain industries. Airlines, hotels, cruise lines,” he said. But at the same time, several top health officials and members of the administration’s coronavirus task force have been pushing for a tougher stance and wanted to impose a temporary ban on Americans going on cruise ships, according to people familiar with the conversations. They included Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma and Surgeon General Jerome Adams, the people said. The advisories from the State Department and the CDC were recommended by the White House coronavirus task force, according to an administration official who said Trump and Vice President Pence knew about them in advance. There has been mounting frustration with the cruise industry’s handling of the crisis among top administration officials, including in the office of Pence, according to people with knowledge of their thinking. The lack of a clear mitigation plan for ships with outbreaks has forced the government to handle the expensive and complicated logistics of evacuating and quarantining thousands of potentially infected passengers this week aboard the Grand Princess in Oakland, an operation that has drawn in the National Guard and the Defense Department, among other agencies. On Thursday, Princess Cruises announced that it was voluntarily canceling trips on its 18 ships worldwide through May 10, following a


A typically noisy sports month is silenced by coronavirus cancellations

March Madness’s familiar soundtrack of bouncing basketballs and squeaky sneakers fell silent Thursday as sports in the United States ground to a near-halt. Most major professional leagues and college conferences suspended operations, taking unprecedented measures in response to the coronavirus that continues to upend lives and daily routines. The National Collegiate Athletic Association canceled all of its winter and spring championships, including its popular men’s and women’s basketball tournaments, while Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League joined the National Basketball Association in suspending operations. Baseball’s announcement included that its Opening Day will be delayed by at least two weeks. The few sports that chose to continue with their long-scheduled events largely are opting to do so in eerie silence, without fans and spectators. The NCAA’s reluctant decision promises to reshape the rest of the month for millions of Americans, many of whom are being asked to work from home and self-quarantine and now will do so without the familiar brackets, office pools or all-day channel-surfing. The basketball tournaments had been held every year since 1939 for men’s college teams and 1982 for women’s teams. Even non-sports fans could be facing an indefinite perdoors. One day after an usher tested positive for coronavirus, New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) announced a ban Thursday on all gatherings of more than 500 people, suspending all Broadway shows for a month. In Washington, Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) recommended canceling all gatherings with more than 1,000, and the Kennedy Center announced Thursday it suspended all performances through the end of the month. Similarly, all Smithsonian museums and the National Zoo will close indefinitely starting Saturday, and several theme parks, including Disney World and Universal Studios, announced they would temporarily shut their gates. While the entire world grapples with the covid-19 outbreak, public health officials say aggressive responses from event organizers are vital in that they limit the number of large crowds that will gather in the coming weeks and also underscore for giant segments of the population the magnitude of the health crisis facing the country. University of Nebraska Medical Center professor Ali Khan, the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response, said the week’s shock waves in sports made meaningful reverberations in broader society. He called the mass cancellations a “great public reminder of the importance of social distancing” and


try to continue to play games at this time.” NASCAR announced it will move forward with its current event schedule but upcoming stock-car races at Atlanta Motor Speedway and Homestead-Miami Speedway will take place in front of empty stands. The PGA Tour, meanwhile, changed course late Thursday night and canceled the final three days of one of its marquee tournaments, the Players Championship, as well as all events through at least April 5. The NCAA initially announced Wednesday it would continue to stage its winter sports championships inside empty arenas but pressure mounted Thursday to cancel the events altogether. Thursday was filled with team owners, league executives and board of governors from across the sports world weighing their options in light of the NBA’s decision. The NBA announced a second Jazz player, later revealed to be Donovan Mitchell, also had tested positive for coronavirus, and by midday a surreal week settled into a spree of endless delays and cancellations. La Liga, Spain’s top soccer league, postponed the next two rounds of games. Baseball and hockey minor leagues suspended play, as did the National Lacrosse League. Boston Marathon organizers announced this year’s race would be postponed, and ski and snowboard events were canceled across the United States as many Olympic athletes competing overseas scrambled to return home. And the ATP Tour decided to suspend play for six weeks. “This is not a decision we have taken lightly, and it represents a great loss for our tournaments, players and fans worldwide,” ATP Tour Chairman Andrea Gaudenzi said. As the day’s college basketball conference tournaments were about to get underway — in some cases, with teams warming up on the court for their opening games, tweets and news releases started flying in rapid succession. The SEC tournament? Sacked. The Big Ten? Done. ACC and AAC, Pac-12 and Big 12, Big Sky and Big East — all canceled, even after Creighton and St. John’s had played the first half of the day’s opening game. Fourteen conferences in all. What had seemed drastic just 48 hours earlier suddenly seemed not just sensible but necessary. “I’m really, really, really disappointed, but I can’t put my disappointment above anybody’s health,” said Scott Weitz, a board member of the University of Maryland’s athletics booster club who had plans to fly to Indianapolis on Friday for the Big Ten event and attend all of the Terrapins’ NCAA tournament games


MLB delays Opening Day by at least two weeks, cancels remainder of spring training

Major League Baseball announced Thursday it would cancel the rest of spring training and delay its Opening Day by at least two weeks as the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, which has increasingly upended daily life across the nation, claimed its most daily of sports. The decision, which began to take on an air of inevitability by Thursday morning, follows similar actions from the NBA and NHL. Baseball’s Opening Day was to have been March 26, with all 30 teams in action. “All the players, we understand … the severity of what we’re dealing with here,” Washington Nationals pitcher Max Scherzer said. “And we understand why such preventative measures have to be taken for the public health to try to keep this from really being a doomsday scenario.” It will be the first time since 1995 that the start of the baseball season has been delayed. That year, it was the players’ strike of 1994-95 that pushed Opening Day to late April, with the schedule shortened to 144 games. This time, it remains to be seen how many games can be played; Unlike the indoor sports of basketball and hockey, which could put their seasons on hiatus and still (at least theoretically) play a full season and postseason by pushing deeper into summer, baseball’s schedule is hemmed in by the weather vagaries of late fall and early winter, which limit how late into the year it can stage the World Series. Baseball officials vowed to “continue to evaluate ongoing events leading up to the start of the season” with the hope of “resuming normal operations as soon as possible.” The evolution of baseball’s stance toward its 2020 season underscores the fast-moving nature of the virus and the threat it presents. It was only days earlier that baseball joined with the NBA and NHL in closing locker rooms to the media, at which time all three leagues expected their schedule to proceed unimpeded. But by Wednesday, as the World Health Organization officially classified the covid-19 outbreak as a pandemic, the pace of disruption accelerated significantly. Local bans on large public gatherings in Washington state and California forced the Seattle Mariners, Los Angeles Dodgers, San Diego Padres and Oakland A’s to explore alternative plans, which could have included playing their opening series at their spring training facilities in Arizona. As late as Thursday afternoon, with Opening Day exactly two weeks away, spring training games


NASCAR, IndyCar postpone races; Little League to delay season; UFC will stage upcoming events

Wednesday that it had suspended the remainder of the 2019-20 season after Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert tested positive for the coronavirus. “A player on the Utah Jazz has preliminary tested positive for COVID-19,” the NBA’s statement read. “The test result was reportedly shortly before tip-of of [Wednesday’s] game. At that time, [Wednesday’s] game was canceled. The affected player was not in the arena. The NBA is suspending game play following the conclusion of [Wednesday’s] schedule until further notice. The NBA will use this hiatus to determine next steps for moving forward in regard to the coronavirus pandemic.” A series of national championship events set to kick off around the country on March 26 and involving high school, youth, girls, adult and sled teams have been canceled Wednesday by USA Hockey. The governing body for the sport in the U.S. also canceled its Disabled Hockey Festival, which scheduled to take place March 26-29 and April 2-5 in Pittsburgh. “Safety of our participants has always been our top priority and with the current coronavirus situation, our executive committee unanimously decided to cancel these national events,” USA Hockey President Jim Smith said in a statement. Citing “a medical situation,” the Western Athletic Conference announced Wednesday that it was postponing a conference tournament game set for that evening between CSU Bakersfield and Grand Canyon. The WAC said the game would be played Thursday morning. Stadium reported that a source said a student-athlete at the WAC women’s basketball tournament “was sick and has gone to a hospital to be tested.” It was also told that the athlete “was never in the arena, but the decision was made to postpone and await further test results.” The Philadelphia Eagles and Pittsburgh Steelers have told their scouts to stop traveling to top college players’ Pro Days, which usually take place at the players’ universities, according to a report Wednesday by Yahoo Sports. “We’ve adjusted our travel plans temporarily as it pertains to Pro Days,” the Steelers told the website. Other NFL teams, including the Dallas Cowboys, have yet to alter their approaches to evaluating prospects ahead of the NFL draft in April. A player for Italian soccer powerhouse Juventus has tested positive for covid-19, the team announced Wednesday. Defender Daniele Rugani is “currently asymptomatic,” the team said, adding that it is “currently activating all the isolation procedures required by law, including those who have had contact with


Coronavirus forecasts are grim: ‘It’s going to get worse’

A rash of alarming forecasts about the coronavirus pandemic emerged Wednesday. The viral outbreak officially became a pandemic in the eyes of the World Health Organization, which cited the alarming spread of the disease called covid-19 and the slow response of many nations to try to contain it. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said 70 percent of Germany’s population could become infected. On Capitol Hill, at a tense House of Representatives hearing, the nation’s leading doctors did nothing to dispel the atmosphere of gloom and anxiety. “Bottom line, it’s going to get worse,” Anthony Fauci, the long-standing director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, testified. How much worse is the pressing question for a nervous American public and its fractious leadership. What happens in the weeks to come is likely to depend on how aggressively the United States acts to contain or slow the novel coronavirus, even at the cost of enormous social and economic disruptions. But what happens also will depend on the virus itself, a new pathogen that is still revealing its true nature. Experts have produced forecasts of likely numbers of infections and serious illnesses as well as death tolls, on the basis of what is known about the novel coronavirus and how past epidemics have played out. They suggest that the United States — which has surpassed 1,000 confirmed novel-coronavirus infections and 30 deaths — must prepare for a potentially historic pandemic. Most coronavirus patients have mild or moderate illnesses and recover without need for hospitalization. The people at elevated risk of serious illness are “older adults,” in the phrasing of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and anyone with an underlying chronic illness such as heart disease, lung disease or diabetes. Data from China showed that the risk increased for people over age 60 and was greatest for people over 80 who had underlying chronic illnesses. How this plays out in the United States may not match what happened in China, where the initial outbreak in late December and early January quickly overloaded the health system and led to a high fatality rate. Some of the projections for covid-19’s spread in the United States have been grave. A forecast produced last month by Professor James Lawler of the University of Nebraska Medical Center on behalf of the American Hospital Association, for example, put the potential death toll at hundreds of thousands if


projections of the outbreak’s trajectory have been publicly released by the CDC or the White House coronavirus task force. Still, Frieden said, “anyone who says that they know where this is going with confidence doesn’t know enough about it.” Communities should undertake social-distancing measures and assume the virus is present, unless proved otherwise, he said. The worst-case scenario can be prevented through common-sense measures, he said, such as holding sporting events in front of empty seats. “Stopping fans from coming into Madison Square Garden is a no-brainer,” he said, alluding to the Big East men’s college basketball tournament scheduled to begin Wednesday evening and run through Saturday. In interviews in recent weeks, epidemiologists have suggested that the coronavirus outbreak could be on the same general scale as the 1957 influenza pandemic that many older Americans remember well. They do not think it would be as catastrophic as the 1918 influenza pandemic, which killed an estimated 675,000 Americans and 50 million people worldwide in an era when the population was much smaller. The case fatality rate for covid-19 — higher than 3 percent so far globally, according to the WHO — is an evolving number that depends on multiple factors, including access to robust health care. The actual lethality of the virus is hard to determine because many people have mild or no symptoms and are never formally diagnosed as having the virus. Some covid-19 deaths may also have been missed, possibly mistaken as flu-related. In his Capitol Hill testimony, Fauci said that a plausible covid-19 fatality rate could be 1 percent. That, he said, is 10 times as lethal as seasonal influenza. He was clear: This is more dangerous than the flu. “We must be much more serious as a country about what we might expect,” Fauci said. Even places that have little or no known community transmission at the moment need to take action to try to limit infections, he said: “A couple of cases today are going to be many, many cases tomorrow.” Knowing how fast and wide the disease can and will spread requires information that the United States lacks, largely because the CDC struggled to produce and distribute reliable coronavirus test kits. “The problem with forecasting is you have to know where you are before you know where you’re going, and because of the problems with testing, we’re only starting to know where we are,” said


from Imperial College London. China has apparently managed to get some control over the epidemic, reporting no deaths outside of Hubei province, where the city of Wuhan is located, on most days in the past week. China’s success came after an intense, society-wide response that included extreme measures of isolation and social distancing. The center of this pandemic is now Europe — to the extent that CDC Director Robert Redfield told Congress, “Europe is the new China.” Any virus is far too small to be seen, and a single sneeze can produce hundreds of thousands of infectious particles. A virus like the one in question potentially can remain alive for hours on a surface, such as a door handle or an ATM touch screen. What makes this virus especially tricky to contain is that it apparently can be spread by people who do not know they’re infected and are not yet showing symptoms of covid-19. That wasn’t the case with SARS, a similar coronavirus that began spreading in China in 2002 and was contained the next year. Because SARS patients shed virus only after they became very sick — nearly 1 in 10 died of the disease — health-care systems were able to identify and isolate patients and keep the total number of cases below 10,000 globally. This new virus already has sickened well over 100,000 people, and the number of infections — including people with mild illness or no illness — is much higher. One fact might serve as a steadying handrail as people worry about how bad this situation will become: The virus (officially SARS-CoV-2) does not spread as efficiently as the influenza virus. This coronavirus has an estimated reproduction rate — meaning the number of infections generated by each infected person — somewhere between 2 and 3. For the epidemic to end, that reproduction rate (“R-nought,” in medical lingo) has to fall below 1. The influenza virus’s rate is about 1.5. But the R-nought isn’t an intrinsic feature of the virus, said Gary Whittaker, an infectious-disease expert at Cornell University. Contagiousness is a slippery metric because so much depends on the social and physical environment in which the virus is spreading. In crowded cities, it spreads more easily than in wide-open areas, and the R-nought can be lowered through a variety of interventions, including, eventually, a vaccine. More important is the metric known as the serial interval.


D.C. declares state of emergency as concerts, parades, church services are canceled

D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser declared a state of emergency Wednesday that allows her to enforce quarantines and cancellations to slow the spread of the coronavirus, as major churches and organizations in and around the nation’s capital said they would shut down for the rest of the month. The Episcopal Dioceses of Washington and Virginia said churches including Washington National Cathedral would close for two weeks. The Walter E. Washington Convention Center canceled upcoming events, as did the promoter of concerts at the Anthem, the 9:30 Club, the Lincoln Theater and U Street Music Hall. Organizers said parts of the annual Cherry Blossom Festival would be shelved, the Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon had its city permit pulled, and the St. Patrick’s Day parade scheduled for Sunday was postponed indefinitely. More colleges and schools announced plans to close for deep cleaning or move to online classes. Bowser announced six new coronavirus cases, including two not linked to any known source of infection, bringing the total number of confirmed cases in the District, Maryland and Virginia to at least 34. Officials in Alexandria, Va., announced the first case there late Wednesday. Bowser said the District has leased an undisclosed location that can be used to quarantine up to 50 people. “I want to continue to remind everyone to be vigilant,” Bowser said at a news conference. “Our duty now as citizens is to try to contain the spread of germs and this virus in our communities.” Before the emergency declaration, the owner of the Washington Wizards and the Washington Capitals said their games would go on as scheduled at Capital One Arena in the District’s Chinatown neighborhood. Later, the National Basketball Association announced that it would suspend its season indefinitely after a Utah Jazz player tested positive for the virus. City health officials earlier Wednesday had recommended canceling all “non-essential mass gatherings” of 1,000 people or more through the end of the month. Health officials also expanded a self-quarantine recommendation for people who have visited Christ Church Georgetown, which is now linked to three confirmed coronavirus cases. Rev. Timothy Cole, 59, the church rector, was diagnosed with the virus after attending an Episcopal leaders conference in Louisville. Organizers of the conference said Wednesday that two other conference attendees have also tested positive. In recent days, Christ Church organist Tom Smith and a church member from Loudoun County also were diagnosed with the


Coronavirus will linger after the pandemic ends. But it won’t be as bad.

SARS-CoV-2, commonly known as the novel coronavirus, is officially a global pandemic. Multiple chains of transmission are underway in dozens of countries. Heroic efforts, such as instituting worldwide isolation measures like those in Wuhan, China, and in Italy might still slow the spread — but the impact of doing that everywhere could be even worse than the disease. So the virus will traverse the world, probably infecting between 40 and 70 percent of the global population during its first wave. This might occur over a painful six to 12 months, or it might be spread over a more manageable several years. Either way, once the first wave is done, the virus is probably here to stay. This seems scary, as if we are resigning ourselves to tens of thousands — or hundreds of thousands — of deaths in the United States each year. But it is very unlikely that things will remain that bad. Established diseases behave very differently from novel pandemic viruses. Most important, when a disease becomes established, the age distribution of infection changes. Right now, the high death rate from the coronavirus is driven almost exclusively by the oldest cases: One study from Wuhan found that 81 percent of deaths as of Feb. 11 were in people over 60, and only one death out of 1,023 was in a person younger than 20. Because this is a new virus, everyone is susceptible regardless of their age. This means a 70-year-old is just as likely to be infected as a 7-year-old — and far more likely to die. Compare this with an established disease like measles. Before a vaccine was licensed in 1963, nearly everyone got measles at some point in their life. In fact, because measles is so infectious, getting it was an almost universal childhood rite of passage. And because infection with measles confers lifelong immunity, adults caught the disease only under extraordinary circumstances (such as when it was reintroduced to the Faroe Islands in 1846, after an absence of 65 years). We don’t know if infection with the novel coronavirus confers long-lasting immunity. If it does, then something similar will happen: Eventually, almost all adults will be immune, and new infections will be concentrated among children. Since the virus causes severe disease almost exclusively in older adults, this shift to a childhood infection would nearly, but not completely, eliminate hospitalizations and deaths from the virus.


Mohammed bin Salman is a mystery, but his impact on Saudi Arabia is brutally obvious

arrest and most were forced to turn over assets according to some formula that was never explained — to the tune of more than $100 billion. Not incidentally, that episode, which consolidated Mohammed’s unchallenged dictatorial rule, won the enthusiastic approval of President Trump. “Some of those they are harshly treating have been ‘milking’ their country for years!” Trump tweeted. Trump’s admiration for Mohammed, and the crown prince’s chummy relations with Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, are a running theme of the book. President Barack Obama was reluctant to be drawn into what he saw as Saudi Arabia’s sectarian war against Iran, and he tried to maintain some distance between the United States and Saudi Arabia despite their alliance. Trump and Kushner, by contrast, supported one reckless MBS action after another: the Ritz-Carlton purge, an attempt to isolate Qatar and — most destructively — Mohammed’s disastrous and bloody intervention in the Yemen war. And that MBS recklessness was on fully display again as, in the midst of a global health crisis, he initiated a destabilizing price war against Russian president Vladimir Putin. Trump’s willingness to excuse absolutely any behavior reached its low point when he forgave Mohammed for the crime that also serves as the climax of Hubbard’s book: the murder and dismemberment of Saudi exile turned Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. Most of the world is not so forgiving, Hubbard maintains, pointing to congressional disgust and the likelihood that Mohammed could no longer stage the kind of triumphant trips through the West that he engineered shortly after taking power. “Khashoggi’s killing was a wake-up call,” he writes. “Sure, Khashoggi was only one man, but the contrast between his reasoned criticism and his gruesome end caught the world’s attention.” Hubbard acknowledges that even if the revulsion lingers, its effects may dissipate. The world is likely to continue working with the crown prince as long as he stays in power. So the real question will be “whether MBS is learning from his mistakes. Are his dangerous acts the youthful faults of an inexperienced ruler? Or do they spring from deep in his character and serve as harbingers of things to come?” “MBS” does not attempt a definitive answer. But it does not leave a reader optimistic that the crown prince will mature into a wise or humane king. MBS By Ben Hubbard Tim Duggan. 359 pp. $28


Coronavirus curve shows much of Europe could face Italy-like surge within weeks

in Cremona, Italy, warned that without effective containment measures, a similar scenario could be ahead for France, Germany and possibly the United States. “It’s just a matter of time,” he said. “I think we are just maybe 10 days ahead.” Benjamin Maier, who is Brockmann’s research partner at the Robert Koch Institute, has plotted the infection curves of countries in Europe and Asia that have seen outbreaks. Spain is showing galloping exponential growth, he said, while Britain, Germany and France are still on a steep trajectory. “You can see that many countries will follow Italy’s example if they don’t follow strict and stricter measures,” Maier said. Those measures can have a significant impact on how many cases develop. Brockmann and Maier examined the epidemiological curves of the outbreak in China. Although Hubei province initially had an exponential growth rate, the government’s massive containment effort, involving mandatory behavior changes, managed to slow the rate of infection. South Korea, which has carried out widespread testing, has identified nearly 8,000 cases, but the numbers of new infections are tapering off. Singapore, Malaysia and Japan also have seen flatter growth. For those countries facing steep increases in coming weeks, all is not lost, said Alexander Kekulé, a German virologist who heads the institute of medical microbiology at the University of Halle. Acting in advance, rather than in reaction to numbers that lag behind the picture on the ground by weeks, he said, can make a huge difference. “This really decides if you win the battle, or you lose it,” he added. For weeks, Kekulé has publicly urged Germany to act more swiftly with measures to ban mass events, close schools and test everyone who has flu-like symptoms. But China’s swift and drastic action is more of a challenge in Western democracies. Politicians in Europe have been slow to make proactive decisions that could be lifesaving until the danger has sunk in for the public, said Kekulé, meaning they are reacting, rather than getting ahead of the curve. The fact that German Health Minister Jens Spahn recommended events with more than 1,000 people be stopped on the same day that the first German national died was no coincidence, he said. “It’s always the problem of a democratic system; you have to explain yourself to your voters on why this measure has to be taken,” he said. “You have to wait until it’s hurting.” loveday.morris@washpost.com william.booth@washpost.com


Coronavirus fears are disrupting and diverting flights that were ultimately safe

As fears over the spread of the novel coronavirus escalate for travelers across the United States, airplane passengers and operators have taken worries about the condition of seemingly ill fliers to the next level. On Monday, a United flight from Eagle, Colo., set to land in Newark, was diverted to Denver after passengers became disruptive because another traveler was sneezing and appeared to be sick. “United 1562 from Eagle, Colorado to Newark diverted to Denver due to a small group of disruptive passengers onboard who failed to follow crew member instructions. After landing safely, the aircraft was met by law enforcement. The passengers were removed and the flight re-departed for Newark,” a United spokesperson said in a statement to a local station. The group was seated next to a person who was sneezing and coughing, but the passenger was merely experiencing seasonal allergies. After the group was removed, the person in question was screened, showed no signs of a fever and continued on the flight, according to the Associated Press. And in London, two women were forced into a 14-day quarantine after flight attendants suspected they were suffering from symptoms of the coronavirus. One of the women told Britain’s Sun newspaper they were simply experiencing symptoms of a hangover, but that didn’t stop the responders from taking the maximum precautions. “I asked a steward if they had any paracetamol and maybe somewhere to lie down, thinking they might put me in business class, and they asked me if I felt unwell,” she said in an interview with the tabloid. “I tried to explain that I was just tired and hungover, but they moved everyone on my row away and made me lie down.” Upon landing at Heathrow Airport, the women were met by doctors and firefighters clothed in full hazmat suits and taken to an isolated location. They were asked to give a detailed accounting of their travel history, along with their addresses and symptoms. In addition to holding up the plane, the two were disembarked last and told to self-isolate and not have any contact with friends or family. These incidents illustrate the growing fears of travelers boarding planes during the coronavirus pandemic. The inclination to be on high alert could result in the potential diversion or disruption of ultimately safe flights. Thomas Anthony, director of the aviation safety and security program at the University of Southern California, says


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Trump says still ‘lots of options’ for Tokyo Olympics after call with Japan’s Abe

even talking about postponing or canceling the Games, which are due to run from July 24 to Aug. 9. On Thursday, the IOC held a ceremony to light the Olympic flame on the site of ancient Olympia in Greece and start the torch relay to Tokyo. The public was kept away because of concerns about the coronavirus, but IOC President Thomas Bach called it a demonstration of the organization’s “full commitment” to the success of the Tokyo Games. “We remain absolutely in line with our Japanese hosts in our commitment to delivering a safe Olympic Games in July this year,” he said. But on Friday, the Greek Olympic Committee suspended the remainder of the torch relay through the country. The handover of the flame to the Tokyo 2020 organizing committee is still scheduled to take place next week, without spectators. In a statement Thursday, the IOC said it remained in close contact with the World Health Organization, the host city of Tokyo, the government of Japan and the Tokyo 2020 organizing committee through a joint task force set up in February. “The IOC will continue to follow the advice of WHO, as the leading United Nations agency on this topic,” it said. Mainichi and other Japanese media interpreted that comment as opening the door to a possible postponement or cancellation, especially after the WHO this week declared the virus outbreak a pandemic. Cracks have also begun to appear on Japan’s previously united front over the Games after an executive board member of the Tokyo 2020 organizing committee said a postponement might be the most feasible option if the virus prevents the Games from going ahead and that organizers should start considering such a possibility. A senior ruling-party politician then said Japan needed to brainstorm plans to deal with a possible cancellation or postponement, even though the final decision would be left to the IOC. “Not thinking about worst-case scenarios won’t eliminate the risk of them materializing,” Shigeru Ishiba, an Abe critic, told Reuters. But the Japanese government held the line, with Olympics Minister Seiko Hashimoto saying this week that postponement or cancellation was “inconceivable.” On Friday, she said she was aware of Trump’s suggestion of a postponement. “I have heard that neither the IOC nor the organizing committee is discussing the postponement or cancellation of the Olympics and that they will move ahead with their preparations for a safe and


Maryland General Assembly continues session during coronavirus outbreak

Limited staff in legislative offices. No members of the public at bill hearings. No rallies, no receptions and no State House tours. But there will be a flurry of activity in Annapolis as the General Assembly continues its work on Friday amid a coronavirus outbreak that has forced the closure of public schools, the activation of the National Guard and the prohibition of events that draw 250 or more people. The presiding officers issued a statement late Thursday to their members that the General Assembly would hold a rare weekend session to consider some of the “critical” bills that need legislative approval before the session ends next month — if not sooner. Of the 2,746 bills introduced in the General Assembly since the 90-day session began on Jan. 8, only two emergency measures have been enacted. “We have asked House and Senate leadership to prioritize legislation in their communities to the extent possible to finish critical bills in an expedited fashion,” the joint statement reads. “In order to fulfill our constitutional duties and protect the health and safety of all Marylanders, we need to be sure that the Governor has the resources necessary to maintain public health during this extraordinary time.” Among the important bills that still need attention are the $48.5 billion budget for the next fiscal year, a measure that contains an additional $10 million to deal with fallout from the novel coronavirus outbreak. Hogan has already signed an emergency measure that gave $50 million to the governor to deal with the pandemic. Legislative leaders have yet to act on an emergency bill, introduced by Senate President Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore City), House Speaker Adrienne A. Jones (D-Baltimore) and Sen. Clarence K. Lam (D-Howard), the Senate’s lone doctor, that would reduce costs for testing for the virus, prohibit price gouging, improve access to telehealth and ensure private and public workers under quarantine do not lose their jobs. Lam said the legislation enables Hogan to take actions to protect residents from the novel coronavirus that causes the disease covid-19 and to ensure those who may contract the virus receive the help they need. On Thursday night, in its second session of the day, the House opened with a prayer by Del. Richard W. Metzgar (R-Baltimore County), a minister, who “rebuked” infectious diseases to stay away from the members of the House of Delegates. Some delegates were heard shouting “Amen,” and


Readers critique The Post: Enough of St. Pete(r) Buttigieg

designated as “bissextile,” and in Italian, “bissestile.” Jack Aubert ● The March 2 KidsPost article “How parties pick their nominees” was very useful and informative and could help our youths to stay abreast of what is occurring this year. However, permit me to correct one statement: Americans do not vote for president on the first Tuesday in November, as was stated. Rather, we vote for president on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, as provided in law by the 28th Congress in 1845. The mistake is a common one, as is the belief that the day is set forth in the Constitution itself, which only authorized Congress to set a date. George Margolies ● The Post seems to find women in photographs nonexistent. It reminds me of a milestone in the movement to recognize women artists and women in art when it was noted that the great art historian H.W. Janson’s analysis of Masaccio’s “Madonna and Child” completely ignored the Madonna. So it was in one of the photographs that accompanied the Feb. 26 front-page article “Sharp words at a surging Sanders.” The Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Rev. Al Sharpton were identified, but who was the woman whose arms are on both men’s shoulders? Presumably a woman of some significance in the South Carolina Democratic Party? Gail C. Weigl ● In his Feb. 21 Friday Opinion column, “A glimpse of victory against the coronavirus,” about deaths from the coronavirus, Michael Gerson did not appear to understand his own statistics. To a retired Census Bureau statistician such as me, they are, intuitively, nonsense. He used percentages and decimals, but, to simplify, I’ll convert his statistics to cases per thousand. He, therefore, stated that “the mortality rate for the seasonal flu is generally” 1 in 1,000 and for pandemic flu 3 to 5 per 1,000. While I am not an expert on health statistics, Gerson appeared to use U.S. population rather than cases of infection (a figure difficult, if not impossible, to derive) as the denominator in his calculations. The result: The actual mortality rates, while unknown, are far higher than he reported. This obviously is the same error he made in reporting that the apparent mortality rate from the coronavirus is “upward of 2 percent,” about the same as the flu pandemic of 1918, “which took the lives of 50 million people around the world” — including


Sanders received 23.9 percent of the vote in Virginia Beach. The probability of randomly selecting 50 voters who did not vote for Sanders is vanishingly small: 0.00012 percent (76.1 percent to the 50th power). Joyce Migdall ● Rick Maese’s coverage of the U.S. Olympic Marathon Team Trials in the March 1 Sports article “Rupp returns from tough time with easy win at marathon trials” was overly focused on Galen Rupp’s win in the men’s race. Though Rupp’s victory was dramatic, the article gave short shrift to other noteworthy stories — especially from the women’s race. Why no quotations from women’s victor Aliphine Tuliamuk? Why no mention that Molly Seidel’s second-place finish was in her first marathon ever? Why no background on the unexpected men’s second-place finisher, Jacob Riley? Rupp deserves his due, but the race was not all about him. Todd Kushner ● Gabriel Popkin’s Feb. 16 Washington Post Magazine article “The Green Miles” gave the impression that planting trees to reclaim strip-mined land was a new idea when University of Kentucky forestry professor Donald Graves experimented with it in 1996 and a few years later when U.S. Interior Department reclamation specialist Patrick Angel tried it on a broader scale. U.S. Forest Service scientists had been doing it since at least as far back as the 1970s when the Forest Service had a research facility at Berea, Ky., that did extensive research on planting trees, shrubs, grasses and legumes in mine spoils. The article also ignored that thousands of acres of trees were planted in reclaimed mine spoils in Ohio’s Wayne National Forest at about the same time. I was working there as a soil scientist and was involved with that reclamation. Ohio passed strip-mine-reclamation legislation in 1972, five years before a similar federal act was passed. At the time, Ohio’s law was the strictest in the nation, and it became a model for the federal law. The article undercut many years of innovative work by U.S. Forest Service employees. Dave Wester ● Regarding the March 1 front-page article “Miranda’s rebellion”: On the same day the front page reported on Joe Biden turning it around in South Carolina, the coronavirus killing its first American and serious questions about the Taliban peace deal, we also had Miranda, Phillip and Liz in Georgia — hiking, talking, thinking, loving, hating, struggling . . . evolving. No answers, just a compelling story. Marvin Solberg


The danger of prioritizing politics and economics during the coronavirus outbreak

It seems as though American society is grinding to a halt: virtually all sporting events postponed or canceled, Broadway shuttered, entire states closing schools. While these tactics may seem extreme, the goal is to “flatten the curve,” or prevent local outbreaks of the covid-19 virus from overwhelming our medical system and exacerbating a once localized crisis. This year, we mark the tricentennial of an important event in the history of infectious disease, one that carries many lessons for us today as we assess the threat of the novel coronavirus in the United States and debate the extent to which we should impose social distancing and interrupt the daily routines of millions of Americans. On May 25, 1720, a ship named the Grand Saint-Antoine, which had journeyed for nearly a year in the eastern Mediterranean, arrived back at the port of Marseille, France, carrying bales of cotton, imported fine silks and other valuable goods destined for the foire de Beaucaire, one of the most important trade fairs in the Mediterranean. Unknown to those on board and on land, it also carried the bacteria that causes plague. Within two years, as much as half the population of the port city had succumbed to the infection. The Great Plague of Provence, or Great Plague of Marseille, brought southern France to its knees, and led much of the rest of the world to impose strict measures to prevent its spread. Understanding how the outbreak was mismanaged in its earliest days reveals that human actions and inactions can turn what begins as a local outbreak into a rampant pandemic. The key lesson for us today: We must demand more from our leaders than we have received to date, and they must prioritize containing the pandemic over everything, including economic well-being. About two months before the arrival of the Grand Saint-Antoine in Marseille, a passenger died of what appeared to be bubonic plague days after boarding the vessel at Tripoli. Soon thereafter, another seven or eight men, including the ship’s surgeon, are said to have died on the route from Tripoli to Livorno, where Captain Jean-Baptiste Chataud made an emergency stop before heading back to Marseille. In this time, three more likely perished from plague as well. Despite these deaths, local Italian doctors inspected the ship and declared the illness a case of pestilential fever rather than plague. As a result, authorities in Livorno allowed the


to the infection. The Great Plague of Provence, or Great Plague of Marseille, brought southern France to its knees, and led much of the rest of the world to impose strict measures to prevent its spread. Understanding how the outbreak was mismanaged in its earliest days reveals that human actions and inactions can turn what begins as a local outbreak into a rampant pandemic. The key lesson for us today: We must demand more from our leaders than we have received to date, and they must prioritize containing the pandemic over everything, including economic well-being. About two months before the arrival of the Grand Saint-Antoine in Marseille, a passenger died of what appeared to be bubonic plague days after boarding the vessel at Tripoli. Soon thereafter, another seven or eight men, including the ship’s surgeon, are said to have died on the route from Tripoli to Livorno, where Captain Jean-Baptiste Chataud made an emergency stop before heading back to Marseille. In this time, three more likely perished from plague as well. Despite these deaths, local Italian doctors inspected the ship and declared the illness a case of pestilential fever rather than plague. As a result, authorities in Livorno allowed the ship to depart for Marseille with a patente nette, or certificate of health, that declared it free from infection, and the ship’s captain — who was reportedly in a hurry to get back to Provence in time for the trade fair — was more than happy to depart. Upon the vessel’s arrival in Marseille, the ship endured an unusual, and unusually short, quarantine, especially considering the deaths that took place on board. Usually, after deaths, a ship would spend roughly six weeks in isolation. In the case of the Grand Saint-Antoine, however, after only a few days, Jean-Baptiste Estelle, the city’s premier échevin, or municipal magistrate, who owned part of the ship and a large portion of its cargo, used his influence to arrange for the premature unloading of his shipment into the city’s warehouses — already infected with the bacteria, Yersinia pestis — so that they could be sold at the trade fair. Meanwhile, however, the signs of plague were becoming unmistakable as it claimed more victims. Several porters who had reportedly handled the ship’s merchandise fell ill and perished within two to three days. At this time, a local surgeon was called to inspect the bodies and determine


The Energy 202: Students in Portland., Ore., want climate justice taught in every classroom

Cordero and fellow researchers found students who took the university’s climate change course changed their habits and had smaller individual carbon footprints — a reduction of 2.86 tons of carbon per year. “Our research shows that you can have an impact, and it’s not small,” Cordero said. “It’s just as impactful as other well-established climate change mitigation plans.” Not everyone agrees with this approach. The Trump administration has rolled back a number of environmental regulations designed to mitigate climate change. And it proposed gutting funding for the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Environmental Justice. In Portland, Tim Swinehart, a teacher at Lincoln High School, said lessons about the communities hit hardest by climate change should be taught in every school. He wants climate education to go further than what’s currently required in the Next Generation Science Standards, adopted by 20 states, including Oregon, to improve science education. “I think we risk disempowering students if where we stop is just a solid scientific understanding of the climate crisis,” he said. While the district works to develop these standards, Swinehart is already talking about environmental justice with his students, including teaching a class on the subject for the past four years. Sriya Chinnam, an 18-year-old senior at Lincoln who has taken Swinehart’s course, described “learning about environmental racism, about what it means to be an environmentalist in the age of the climate justice movement and how that looks different for various people.” Swinehart’s classes, she said, “have helped me connect social justice to economic injustice, and racial justice into a larger umbrella of climate justice. And on an emotional level, as a woman of color in white-dominant spaces, I’ve been able to see myself represented in the curriculum, and it has empowered me in ways that most of my classes haven’t empowered me.” Chinnam, who was a member of a hiring committee that chose Nichole Berg to be the school district’s climate change and climate justice programs manager, said she wants students beyond her “racially and economically privileged” high school to have access to the same lessons. Berg said the district is working on creating a “common framework” to address climate justice in science and social studies classes in some way at all grade levels. “The science can offer the understanding of the root causes of climate change: How does it occur? How do you remediate it?” she said. “…The social studies


On faraway planet, it’s cloudy with a chance of liquid iron rain

Scientists have detected an exotic planet in another solar system where the weather forecast is always dire — a 100 percent chance of the most outrageous rain imaginable, with droplets of scaldingly hot liquid iron. The researchers said last week they used the planet-hunting ESPRESSO instrument on the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile to observe a planet called WASP-76b, which is about 640 light-years from Earth. It is nearly twice the size of Jupiter, our solar system’s largest planet. (ESPRESSO stands for Echelle Spectrograph for Rocky Exoplanets and Stable Spectroscopic Observations.) Planets discovered outside our solar system are called exoplanets, and WASP-76b is one of the most extreme in terms of climate and chemistry. It is a member of a family of exoplanets spotted in recent years called “ultrahot” gas giants. It resides outstandingly close to its parent star, which is almost twice as big as the sun. WASP-76b orbits at only three times the radius of that star, much closer than our solar system’s innermost planet, Mercury, orbits the sun. The same side of WASP-76b always faces its star, much as the same side of our moon always faces Earth. WASP-76b receives 4,000 times the solar radiation that Earth gets from the sun, and its “dayside” is baked, broiled and barbecued, reaching 4,350 degrees Fahrenheit. This ferocious heat vaporizes metals present in the planet, with strong winds then carrying iron vapor to the planet’s cooler night side where it condenses into liquid iron droplets. Molten iron rain may be a unique feature of these “ultrahot” exoplanets, said David Ehrenreich, a University of Geneva astronomer and lead author of the study published in the journal Nature. WASP-76b illustrates the exotic nature of some exoplanets and shows that much remains to be learned about alien planetary systems. “The extreme atmospheric conditions met in WASP-76b and its siblings, other ‘ultrahot’ gas giants, are not found anywhere in our solar system and would be very difficult to reproduce in a lab,” Ehrenreich said. “Therefore, these exotic objects are unique laboratories to crash-test our climate models and understand the most extreme forms of atmospheric evolution.” “The ‘zoo’ of planetary systems is far beyond our expectations,” added astrophysicist and study co-author Maria Rosa Zapatero Osorio of the Center for Astrobiology in Madrid, coordinator of the ESPRESSO science team. WASP-76b appears to be the only planet orbiting its star. While its diameter of


The coronavirus is here. Someone please tell us what to do.

stay in? The restaurants all say they’re doing more cleaning. We are only beginning to see what some of the likely answers are, and at various points throughout each day, we ask ourselves: Are we overreacting and too afraid? Or are we not doing enough to keep ourselves, and the truly vulnerable, safe and healthy? Many are beginning to bristle at comparisons to the flu — “this is like a bad flu,” we have heard, and that is probably true in some biological sense. But we also have known and lived with the flu for many decades; it has been studied, there are treatments and vaccines, and those treatments and vaccines came at the cost of millions of people dying before they were available and even moderately effective. How can telling us it’s “like the flu” be reassuring, when the flu, known to us since about 1580, still kills about 650,000 people worldwide each year, according to the World Health Organization? We wonder at the realities of a virus that none of us has any immunity to, and begin to realize it’s not like the flu at all. At night, these worries are the darkest, the worst — and we’re still just deep enough into our planet-wide period of worrying to measure the anxiety in days, rather than weeks or months. In the morning, things seem better. We tell ourselves that the world’s scientists and doctors are much more skilled than ever before, that they are working hard and fast to stop, to slow, to understand what we are dealing with. We hope their work on our behalf moves at lightning speed so that life can go on unabated. We grasp the arguments being made — we see the worst-case scenarios and the best-case scenarios. We say to ourselves, China has been fighting this for months, it has billions of people, and only a few thousand have died. We know this is treatable for most people. We know that it is stoppable in one, hard way: If we all stay home, starting now, we will slow the virus, starve it of air, prevent it from spreading. This is true of any virus. If we all stayed home, thousands and thousands fewer people would get sick, and fewer would die. And yet, because we have so little real guidance, because no one is forcing us to stay home here as they


Five myths about the coronavirus

The novel coronavirus epidemic is in fact two outbreaks: first, the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the disease covid-19; second, an outbreak of misinformation. In a pandemic, misinformation can be as dangerous as the virus itself. For example, panic induced by rumors can result in the “worried well” overwhelming a health system, reducing its ability to care for those who genuinely need treatment. Here are five salient myths about covid-19. Myth No. 1 The stereotypical news photos from modern-day epidemics often show people in public places wearing masks. During the covid-19 outbreak, there have been mask shortages, presumably driven by widespread consumer belief in their effectiveness. In remarks on Feb. 29, President Trump sought to assure Americans, “We have 43 million masks, which is far more than anyone would have assumed we could have had so quickly, and a lot more are coming.” All this despite evidence that commonly used masks, particularly typical surgical masks — essentially rectangular pieces of material connected to elastic bands — don’t prevent respiratory viruses among healthy people. Although a specific type of mask, the N95 respirator, is useful in protecting health-care workers and others caring for sick patients, it is not recommended for healthy individuals. Masks are, however, recommended for those who are sick to prevent transmission to others. Myth No. 2 Vaccines are extremely effective in controlling large outbreaks, which may be why the president and others in his administration have emphasized their supposedly imminent role in containing the current pandemic. At a public event in early March, Trump seemed convinced that a coronavirus vaccine could be ready in “three to four months, in a couple of cases.” Only slightly less optimistically, an NPR headline proposed: “Timetable For A Vaccine Against The New Coronavirus? Maybe This Fall.” As a vaccine researcher, I wish this were true. There has been remarkable progress in creating a vaccine for covid-19. Several dozen development initiatives have been announced, and a candidate vaccine was recently delivered to the National Institutes of Health for human testing. Unfortunately, the vaccine is unlikely to be available for widespread use anytime soon. First, candidates that seem promising in the laboratory are often found to not be effective (or in a few cases safe) in human trials. Second, before licensure and deployment, vaccines must be tested in progressively larger human trials. This process is likely to take several months to more


Five myths about the coronavirus

than a year. Third, when a vaccine is found to be effective, it must be manufactured in very large quantities; scaling up production will take some time. The soonest we could expect a truly pandemic-controllingvaccine would be 12 to 18 months. Myth No. 3 One of the measures the Trump administration enacted soon after the importation of novel coronavirus cases was a travel ban on foreign nationals who had recently visited China. It has since imposed similar restrictions on travelers from Europe. “Now, more than ever, we need the wall,” conservative activist Charlie Kirk tweeted Tuesday, referring to Trump’s proposed barrier at the southern border, despite the fact that cases are not entering the United States from Mexico. The perception that such restrictions are effective is based on a simplistic understanding of how emerging infectious diseases spread. Travel bans are likely to be ineffective for covid-19 because in the time between the initial outbreak of the disease and the shutdown of travel from Wuhan, the virus is likely to have spread to a few other places undetected. So a passenger arriving in early February from Italy, a country that now has a widespread covid-19 outbreak that probably started several weeks ago, would not have been flagged. The limited utility of travel bans is documented by mathematical models of influenza pandemics. In a study published in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization, examining the case of a virus even less transmittable than SARS-CoV-2, bans that shut down more than 90 percent of travel would be needed to have any impact. Even with these bans, there would only be a minimal impact on the total number of cases. Myth No. 4 So far, 3.4 percent of those who had covid-19 in China have died. That figure has led publications such as Science Alert to matter-of-factly report that the “global death rate for the novel coronavirus is 3.4 percent.” But in the United States the mortality rate, formally known as the case fatality ratio, is very likely to be lower than in China, and in many populations outside China it’s likely to be less than 1 percent. To get an idea of what we could face in the United States, it is reasonable to look at South Korea, which has fewer bottlenecks in covid-19 testing and, therefore, has good data. Right now, the estimate of mortality in South Korea is approximately 0.7


Five myths about the coronavirus

bottlenecks in covid-19 testing and, therefore, has good data. Right now, the estimate of mortality in South Korea is approximately 0.7 percent. Since fatal cases of covid-19 cause death three to eight weeks after the onset of symptoms, the South Korean case fatality rate might tick up a bit even as the outbreak wanes in that country. But that doesn’t mean we should expect the same numbers in the United States. Fatality ratios depend on the specifics of a health system, such as the level of care provided and the ability to quickly expand the number of patients under treatment. Since conditions such as heart disease, cancer and other “comorbidities” are risk factors for severe outcomes with covid-19, fatality rates also depend on the prevalence of these illnesses in a population. Therefore, case fatality rates are variable and could be lower here depending on how we manage this outbreak. Sadly, this means mortality will be higher in low-income countries than in high-income countries. Myth No. 5 As the capacity for laboratory testing expands in the United States, we will see a sharp rise in reported cases. This increase is likely to continue for several weeks, if not months. During a public health emergency, it is easy to feel paralyzed. “You’re Likely to Get the Coronavirus,” declared an Atlantic headline, capturing the general sense of inevitability. One Chicago Sun-Times columnist wrote that even expert information leaves him with the feeling that there’s nothing he can do. But we are able to take effective action. For example, social distancing — public health strategies that reduce contact between people — can be effective in reducing the speed and impact of an outbreak. Social-distancing measures include canceling large events, closing schools, encouraging telecommuting and switching to online instruction in colleges. Such measures need to be anticipatory rather than reactive. Since there is an incubation period before symptoms appear and patients seek care, today’s confirmed cases reflect virus transmission that occurred several days ago. Once a case is identified in a community or an institution, it might be too late. We are also not helpless in the face of misinformation. We have the ability to obtain and disseminate facts by using credible sources such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. When it comes to this novel coronavirus outbreak, we must seek truth as if our lives depended on it. Twitter: @SaadOmer3 five myths


Boston Marathon postponed until September

Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh announced Friday morning that the Boston Marathon will be postponed until Sept. 14 to help stem the outbreak of the novel coronavirus. “Our expectation and hope right now is that this day will get us to a safer date," Walsh said at a news conference. “We want to make sure that we keep people safe. … That’s what all this is about." Walsh said moving the marathon — originally scheduled for April 20 — is “a very big undertaking” and that the proposed new date of the race “jumped around like a pinball” as officials discussed it. Questions about temperature and whether the race would conflict with activities at local schools had to be considered. Canceling the race was never considered, Walsh said. Neither was running it on the original date, running it without spectators or limiting it to elite runners. Held annually on Patriots’ Day, a Massachusetts state holiday, the Boston Marathon — which winds its way through eight Boston-area communities over the 26.2 miles — attracts a field of more than 30,000 runners and crowds that annually exceed 500,000 along the route, generating more than $200 million for the area’s economy. Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker said he will push state legislators to make Sept. 14 a state holiday called Marathon Day this year and that they have shown a willingness to do so. Walsh also discouraged anyone from running the race route on its original scheduled date, saying the roads will not be closed. The Boston Marathon, which began in 1897, had been altered only once: in 1918 during World War I, when a military relay race was held instead. Other marathons across the globe have been affected by the coronavirus, with Rome canceling its competition and Paris moving its race to October. On Friday, officials delayed the London Marathon until Oct. 4. It had been scheduled for April 26.


Minutemen, ‘Corona’: The Week In One Song

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South Korea is doing 10,000 coronavirus tests a day. The U.S. is struggling for even a small fraction of that.

rapid and comprehensive responses as some other countries, including the United States, lag well behind. On Friday, the Trump administration — under fire for the slow U.S. testing response — announced steps seeking to boost the availability of coronavirus tests, including giving $1.3 million to two companies to develop one-hour tests. South Korea’s planning dates to a 2015 outbreak of Middle East respiratory syndrome, or MERS. Then, the limited availability of test kits was blamed for aggravating the epidemic, which killed 38 people around the country. That experience led the Seoul government to introduce an “emergency usage approval” system, which allowed for a fast-track approval for test kits during any outbreaks. On Feb. 4, two weeks after South Korea reported its first coronavirus case, the government gave “emergency approval” for Seoul-based Kogene Biotech to move ahead with the test kits. The company already had lab work underway for the test kits, anticipating that the coronavirus would spill over from China. Production has been steadily ramped up to 10,000 kits a week. Each kit can administer 50 tests, and each person is tested twice on average for accuracy. That leaves the potential to test 250,000 people a week. Kogene currently exports test kits for the novel virus to 35 countries in Asia, Europe and the Middle East. It was a similar story in China, which faced the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, in 2002-03 and had plans in place to expand testing dramatically this time around. But Japan, largely bypassed by those epidemics, has been much slower on getting test kits to the public. In the United States, the furor has been growing. U.S. public health experts, politicians — and anxious people seeking tests — have grown increasingly alarmed about the lack of testing across the United States, which has run only about 14,000 tests at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and its network of public health laboratories, according to data updated Thursday. U.S. officials have acknowledged they do not know how many tests are running at hospital labs or by companies, although those capabilities are just coming online this week. “I’m being asked over and over again why the United States is so far behind other countries and why the American people cannot get tested,” Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) said at a House Oversight and Reform Committee Hearing earlier this week. “South Korea can


Your smartphone could be essential to the fight against coronavirus

Dan Hanfling is a practicing emergency physician at Inova Fairfax Hospital and a vice president on the technical staff at In-Q-Tel, a nonprofit strategic investment firm. Tara O’Toole is former undersecretary of science and technology at the Department of Homeland Security, executive vice president at In-Q-Tel and director of the B.Next Lab, which focuses on biotechnologies in response to epidemic outbreaks. The steady spread of covid-19 threatens the viability of health-care delivery in the United States and elsewhere. Containing the virus has failed. The world must now focus on tending to the sick and protecting front-line health workers who must care for the crush of people who will require medical aid in the coming weeks and months. In confronting that task, one critical capability that needs immediate implementation is conveniently in your hands, sitting on your desk or in your pocket: your smartphone. One of the most important public health functions during an epidemic is ensuring access to care. How can concerned citizens access reliable medical information and obtain needed services when doctors, nurses and other health professionals are overwhelmed? How can we preserve the continuity of health services when quarantine efforts limit travel, the public is incapacitated by anxiety, and the government encourages social distancing to reduce transmission? Digital health tools, including telemedicine and smartphone-based messaging applications, can and should play an important role. The health industry is already using these digital tools. Several large health systems utilize such services to meet patient demands for routine care. But regulatory and reimbursement hurdles have prevented the widespread adoption of these services. With the outbreak of covid-19, there is an urgent need to adjust those restrictions to help deal with the crisis. There are several important contributions that digital health tools could provide in responding to covid-19. Patients could report symptoms, and health-care providers could conduct clinical evaluations remotely, letting patients self-triage while avoiding crowded doctor’s offices and overburdened emergency rooms. Patients suspected of being infected with the virus could be referred to appropriate facilities. Meanwhile, the tools could support rapid response efforts by providing critical real-time data about the spread of the disease, such as geographic location and patient demographics. In the event that providers are exposed to the virus and must be quarantined at home, they could still provide medical services remotely, an important strategy in maintaining the health-care workforce at a time of maximum need. Federal and state


Trump taunts Biden about swine flu, misleadingly cites coronavirus polling to make himself look better

a time when Trump, who announced a 30-day travel ban from Europe to the United States to help fight the spread of covid-19, found himself clarifying a speech riddled with enough misstatements and omissions to cause the stock market to crash to its worst day in more than 30 years. As The Washington Post’s Dan Balz wrote, the president’s address to the nation lacked the kind of direction, reassurance and confidence needed most for a country in crisis. This was noted in speeches by Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and talked about on cable news throughout the day. On Thursday, the president sought to defend how his administration has responded to the spread of covid-19 in the United States, which has killed 41 and infected more than 1,600 people across nearly every state as of early Friday. In his tweet, Trump did not cite the source of the high approval rating. He may have been referring to a Gallup poll, taken nearly a month ago when there was only a single American case, that found 77 percent of Americans were “generally confident in the federal government’s ability to handle a potential coronavirus outbreak.” That number, while it pertained to the federal government as a whole and not just Trump, topped similar polling figures taken during past outbreaks of Zika, Ebola, swine flu and bird flu. But Trump’s claim that the Obama administration’s response to swine flu was “one of the worst on record” did not appear to be accurate. According to Gallup, 67 percent of Americans reported feeling “very/somewhat confident” in the federal government at the time of the 2009 epidemic — the second-highest confidence rating on record. Gallup’s pollster also noted that the “high level of confidence” regarding coronavirus last month “may be related to the fact that all deaths from COVID-19 have occurred abroad, rather than on U.S. soil.” The first domestic coronavirus-related death was reported in late February, after the poll was conducted. A more recent Quinnipiac poll released Monday asked Americans specifically about how Trump is handling coronavirus and reported that 43 percent approved while 49 percent disapproved. In comparison, the same poll indicated that a slightly higher percentage of respondents, 53 percent, had confidence in the federal government’s handling of the outbreak. Trump’s attack on Biden drew instant backlash from critics who pointed out the discrepancies in his tweet and how it contradicted his


the federal government as a whole and not just Trump, topped similar polling figures taken during past outbreaks of Zika, Ebola, swine flu and bird flu. But Trump’s claim that the Obama administration’s response to swine flu was “one of the worst on record” did not appear to be accurate. According to Gallup, 67 percent of Americans reported feeling “very/somewhat confident” in the federal government at the time of the 2009 epidemic — the second-highest confidence rating on record. Gallup’s pollster also noted that the “high level of confidence” regarding coronavirus last month “may be related to the fact that all deaths from COVID-19 have occurred abroad, rather than on U.S. soil.” The first domestic coronavirus-related death was reported in late February, after the poll was conducted. A more recent Quinnipiac poll released Monday asked Americans specifically about how Trump is handling coronavirus and reported that 43 percent approved while 49 percent disapproved. In comparison, the same poll indicated that a slightly higher percentage of respondents, 53 percent, had confidence in the federal government’s handling of the outbreak. Trump’s attack on Biden drew instant backlash from critics who pointed out the discrepancies in his tweet and how it contradicted his call for politics to be put aside amid the ongoing pandemic. The outcry, however, appeared to do little to faze the president. Trump continued going after Biden Thursday night, quoting a segment from Dobbs’s show in which the host called out the Obama administration for how it dealt with swine flu. During his broadcast, Dobbs highlighted Biden’s April 2009 appearance on NBC’s “Today” show during which the then-vice president addressed the swine flu outbreak. “I wouldn’t go anywhere in confined places now,” he said at the time. “The Obama White House had to immediately issue an apology for his remarks and any undue alarm that he might have caused,” Dobbs recounted Thursday, referring to Biden. “Alarm about a swine flu outbreak that took six months for President Obama to then declare a national emergency, one that ultimately killed 12,000 Americans and infected 60 million more.” Dobbs didn’t mention that Obama had declared swine flu a public health emergency on April 26, 2009, when there were only 20 cases in the U.S. and no deaths. Soon after, the administration put in its initial request to Congress for funding, according to PolitiFact. Biden has yet to publicly address Trump’s latest broadside. On


Why is Trump funding quantum computing research but cutting other science budgets?

it is paranoid about its vulnerability to U.S. cyber operations. The United States, by contrast, is undoubtedly the leader in quantum computing. In September 2019, scientists at Google and the University of California at Santa Barbara, achieved a milestone known as “quantum supremacy.” Their experimental quantum machine, known as Sycamore, ran an algorithm much faster than the world’s fastest supercomputer could simulate. Research in quantum networking is also quite advanced in both North America and Europe. It is notable that when a Chinese foundation created a prize to recognize excellence in quantum science, only one of the 12 recipients was Chinese. The quantum espionage threat is exaggerated Yes, quantum technologies may sound like something from science fiction — unbreakable forms of communication and computers that can perform spooky action at a distance. It is easy to jumble different quantum technologies together as if they presented a common problem — and a common threat to national security. And it’s easy to talk in broad terms about their potential, while overlooking the limitations. Some commentators Yet the real obstacles are more social than technical. Even if a powerful quantum computer can be built, analyzing and applying intelligence will still be difficult — and leaders may ignore or misuse intelligence altogether. Even with quantum-safe encryption, likewise, gullible or negligent humans will still expose data. Therefore, as my research suggests, it will still be possible to collect and protect secrets after the quantum information revolution. Political advantage depends on organizational policy and behavior, not just advanced technology. Smart policy can compensate for technological weaknesses, and poor policy can squander technological advantages. In World War II, for example, Germany used the Enigma machine, a formidable encryption device. Yet Britain was still able to read German communications. German operators made many mistakes, and the Bletchley Park code-breaking organization was incredibly well organized. While the national security implications of quantum technology are exaggerated, there are still many promising scientific applications. The ability to perform mathematical operations more efficiently might improve drug discovery and artificial intelligence. While quantum computing will not save us from covid-19, it might aid in research to prevent future pandemics. Don’t miss anything! Sign up to get TMC’s smart analysis in your inbox, three days a week. Jon R. Lindsay is an assistant professor in the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. Follow him on Twitter @jonrlindsay.


The Technology 202: California’s digital team is racing to build coronavirus resources

With Tonya Riley Note to readers: The Technology 202 will run on a limited schedule next week, publishing only Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. In the meantime, we hope you're staying safe and washing your hands. A specialized digital team in California is racing to launch a coronavirus rapid response website as the number of confirmed covid-19 cases in the state “Our task is to try to make sense of all the complex information that’s been presented to the public and turn it into an easier-to-consume [format],” Angie Quirarte, California assistant secretary for digital engagement, told me. “We want to be able to answer people’s top questions and be able to build trust and credibility with the information that’s being disseminated.” The team’s efforts, in concert with the state’s Health and Human Services Office, underscore the pressure on state governments' tech resources as they race to make sure the public has the most up-to-date, accurate information to contain covid-19's spread. California is one of a number of states The novel coronavirus may pose the first big test for many of these relatively new units. The state digital units are also trying to find new ways to collaborate with the private sector, especially during the high-stakes effort to respond to covid-19. Quirarte, for instance, said she had a call yesterday with the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a philanthropic effort from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan, to discuss how their team could help develop content for the coronavirus response website and identify trends that people are searching for. Michael Wilkening, special adviser on innovation and digital services in the governor’s office, said California ensured these digital resources were in place before a problem arose — a move that seems prescient as the nation braces for perhaps the greatest public health emergency in modern times. “This is really, how do we engage people with their government? And how do we rethink our way of doing business?” Wilkening told me. “There wasn’t that catalyzing event like Healthcare.gov had at the federal level.” Digital talent working for or consulting with the government known as “civic tech” is a tightknit community, and many people working in the digital units at the state level are veterans of USDS or Code for America, a nonprofit that was started by USDS founder Jen Pahlka. These shared ties have resulted in strong communication across the various state organizations,


which often communicate regularly in a Slack channel. Many of the state teams were planning to convene in Washington this week for Code for America’s summit. The event was called off because of concerns about virus’s spread. But JP Petrucione, the director of digital media in the California governor’s office, tells me that many of the officials still held a call to make sure they’re coordinating across states amid the coronavirus outbreak. They discussed how they would stay in touch as states attempt to contain the virus and common high level-challenges across their offices. “There’s a very unusual professional openness that is core to what civic tech and civic digital is,” Petrucione added. The Colorado Digital Service, which launched in October 2019, is one of the newer government units trying to draw techies for tours of service in government. Kelly Taylor, who worked for USDS for about two years in Washington, told me in an interview other states have helped get the Colorado unit off the ground. New Jersey, for instance, shared job descriptions used for its openings, allowing Colorado to use them and quickly post their open positions. They also share a common problem in addressing the public perception there’s no tech talent in government. “A big misconception is that there is no engineering talent within government. We found quite the opposite in Colorado, where there is strong engineering talent and it’s a matter of kind of empowering that talent in a different way.” You are reading The Technology 202 , our guide to the intersection of technology and politics. BITS: A court document revealed yesterday that the Pentagon asked a federal court to give it 120 days to “reconsider certain aspects” of its controversial move to award an important cloud computing contract known as JEDI to Microsoft, Just days ago, U.S. Court of Federal Claims Judge Patricia Campbell-Smith sided with Amazon on a motion to halt contract performance. Amazon is suing the Defense Department over the award, which it claims it lost due to improper intervention by President Trump. The Defense Department said in the filing it wants to review one aspect of how it compared prices for the two competitors, which Campbell-Smith said was a mistake. It also asked to review its approach to online marketplaces that Defense agencies can use to select cloud-based applications. A Pentagon spokeswoman told Aaron that the evaluation process was “fair and


A ‘travel log’ of the times in South Korea: Mapping the movements of coronavirus carriers

50 miles south of Seoul with about 100 confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus that causes the disease covid-19. A Cheonan resident launched a petition to South Korean President Moon Jae-in complaining of the “nerve-racking delay” in the public release of additional virus carrier travel logs. The petition drew more than 22,000 supporters. The names on the travel logs are kept confidential. But there are possibly awkward revelations about the personal lives of patients — whose identities could be easily figured out by family and friends. In central city of Daejeon, more than 1 million phones received an alert saying a virus carrier visited “Magic Coin Karaoke in Jayang-dong at midnight on Feb. 20.” In Cheonan, a text alert to residents showed that an infected person visited “Imperial Foot Massage at 13:46 on Feb. 24.” The digital diaries of infected people grew to cover all kinds of places: bars, karaoke clubs and short-stay “love hotels.” One woman, who asked to be identified only with her surname Seo out of privacy concerns, said she has stopped going to a bar popular with gay women. “If I unknowingly contract the virus . . . that record will be released to the whole country,” Seo said. “It’s as daunting as being outed in front of the public.” At the start, the South Korean disease-control center was alone with the details: lists of confirmed cases, sex, age and pre-quarantine movements. It wasn’t long before private coders saw the potential for audience views. Several apps have turned the data into comprehensive digital maps. One of the most visited, coronamap.site developed by a South Korean college student, has drawn more than 14 million hits since the outbreak. South Korea has been preparing for this moment. Its strategies have root in a 2015 outbreak of Middle East respiratory syndrome, or MERS, in South Korea, which was the biggest outside of Saudi Arabia. The government in Seoul was criticized for holding back data about the hospitals treating MERS patients. South Korea later revised its laws to grant greater access to personal information of infected people. Now, anyone found guilty of lying about details considered necessary for infection containment can be subject to a maximum of two years in prison. Nothing, though, compares to the surveillance reach in China, where the coronavirus first flared late last year in Hubei province. Its mass surveillance system allows authorities to pin down


East respiratory syndrome, or MERS, in South Korea, which was the biggest outside of Saudi Arabia. The government in Seoul was criticized for holding back data about the hospitals treating MERS patients. South Korea later revised its laws to grant greater access to personal information of infected people. Now, anyone found guilty of lying about details considered necessary for infection containment can be subject to a maximum of two years in prison. Nothing, though, compares to the surveillance reach in China, where the coronavirus first flared late last year in Hubei province. Its mass surveillance system allows authorities to pin down infected people’s whereabouts to the minute. Last month, the English-language edition of the Global Times, a newspaper controlled by the ruling Chinese Communist Party, released video on Twitter showing drones calling out instructions as they hover above people disobeying health protocols, such as wearing a mask. “Yes, Auntie, this is the drone speaking to you,” a voice booms over an elderly Chinese woman, according to the Global Times’s English translation. “You shouldn’t walk about without wearing a mask.” It’s unclear how much of South Korea’s tracking has lessened the number of possible infections. A certainty though, is that it has attracted “voyeuristic gazes from the people,” said Yoon In-jin, a professor of sociology at Korea University in Seoul. “A month into this nationwide experiment, we have yet to gauge its epidemiological effectiveness, but already saw too many virus patients getting ridiculed and judged for places they visited,” Yoon said. Even with names redacted, there are cases where enough information was made public to deduce the patient’s identity. A South Korean — the third confirmed coronavirus patient in the country — was savaged by online trolls after it was revealed that he, while symptomatic, accompanied a Chinese woman to a hotel and a plastic surgery clinic in the upmarket Gangnam district in Seoul. The woman also tested positive for the coronavirus. Online comments labeled them “a couple in extramarital affair” and accused them of “super-spreading” the virus across the city. Lee Wang-jun, chairman of Myongji Hospital where the patient was treated, said the man received psychiatric treatment after the online attacks. “It’s time for us to look back at the side effects,” said Cho Sung-il, an epidemiologist at Seoul National University who advises South Korea’s coronavirus tracing team, “and ponder ways to minimize the impact on people’s privacy.” minjoo.kim@washpost.com simon.denyer@washpost.com


Metro, other transit systems on high alert to prevent coronavirus spread

its trains, paying close attention to common areas such as handrails, armrests and seat backs, officials said. “Our restrooms are thoroughly disinfected and restocked with supplies, like hand soap,” VRE spokeswoman Karen Finucan Clarkson said. “Given that this is an evolving situation, we are monitoring advice from federal and state health agencies and are prepared to adjust if indicated, as protecting the health and safety of our passengers and crews is paramount.” Officials the three airports in the Washington region also said they are monitoring the outbreak and adhering to recommendations from local and federal authorities. No information was provided on whether fewer passengers are traveling through the airports. A spokeswoman for the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, which manages Reagan National and Dulles International airports, said the airports are sharing with employees important information provided by the CDC about the virus and following the CDC’s recommendations on cleaning protocols. Jonathan Dean, a spokesman at BWI, said airport staffers have increased cleaning of surfaces commonly touched by travelers in recent week. The airport doesn’t have any airlines from countries that have experienced major outbreaks of covid-19, he said. Metro said its MetroAccess fleet was thoroughly cleaned over the weekend after news broke that a person with covid-19 traveled to a senior community in Rockville that is routinely serviced by the paratransit service. Stessel said the agency will continue the daily, enhanced cleaning of the vans that transport people with disabilities and the elderly in the region. He added that there is no evidence that anyone exposed to the virus at the Rockville senior community traveled on one of its vans. In a memo to workers Friday afternoon, Metro General Manager Paul J. Wiedefeld called the news about positive covid-19 cases in Maryland “concerning” but reassured staff that Metro was “taking appropriate precautions to protect the health and well-being of our employees and customers” and working on contingency plans should it need to escalate its response. “As with any flu-like illness, the best way to prevent the spread of this illness is personal hygiene,” Wiedefeld said. “Meanwhile, rest assured that Metro is absolutely focused on decisions about service schedules and policies that make the health and safety of our employees and customers our priority. … I will not hesitate to direct additional steps to keep you — and our customers — safe, if warranted by conditions or guidance from public health experts.”


It’s now or never for the U.S. if it hopes to keep coronavirus from burning out of control

now, public health messaging should be framed in light of this clear objective. Community-based interventions are needed to delay the outbreak peak. On this, the 1918 flu taught us a lot. The difference between the steps taken in Philadelphia, which waited too long back then, and St. Louis, which acted quickly, is staggering. Aggressive interventions put off and ease the peak burden on hospitals and other health-care infrastructure. Ultimately, these measures can also diminish the overall number of cases and health impacts. Consider the actions taken in Italy. On Feb. 20, Italy reported three instances of infection and no known deaths. On Feb. 21, Italy had 20 cases and its first attributed death. Officials implemented interventions, including school closures, the following day and instituted a cordon sanitaire affecting 50,000 people. That’s aggressive, but it was too late. On Feb. 22, Italy reported 63 cases and a second death. A little more than a week later, there were 2,036 cases, with 140 patients in serious condition and 52 deaths. Today, the numbers continue to climb, with more than 9,100 cases and 460 dead, and on Monday the government expanded travel restrictions to the entire country. By contrast, Hong Kong and Singapore acted immediately and are still holding the line, literally. Through isolation, quarantines, contact tracing, canceled gatherings and widespread surveillance, they have achieved linear growth of the virus, meaning a reproduction number close to one. What they are doing is working. Working parents without child care have a legitimate concern, and we must find ways to help one another. But school closings can be the single most effective intervention. Amid an influenza pandemic, schools would be closed to protect the students themselves. Because children are not among the groups most vulnerable to coronavirus, schools should be closed in an effort to reduce community transmission and to protect the children’s parents and grandparents. How long? Epidemiologists suggest eight weeks might be needed to arrest this outbreak. Administrators, students, teachers and parents need to get busy figuring out how to continue the education of our children while contributing to this community-wide public health effort. The United States and other liberal societies must mount a significant, coordinated response with public buy-in. Panic must, of course, be avoided. Most people who become infected are likely to get what feels like a mild case of seasonal flu. Many will not develop symptoms. But the elderly and