first”] Would you travel by plane? All three say they would avoid it, if possible. Plane travel falls short in three key ways: It’s indoors, requires close contact with people outside the household and keeps a crowd together for an extended amount of time. “There’s a real risk when you’re crammed into a small space with other people,” Fischer said. “I personally will probably be doing family car trips this summer.” If she did have to fly, Fischer said, she would be careful to not adjust or touch her mask, from the moment she entered the terminal or other public space at her departure airport to the moment she left the terminal or other public space on the other end. Every mask adjustment or touch of the face or eyes, she said, increases the risk of transmission. (Most U.S. airlines — and a few airports, including in Los Angeles and San Francisco — require masks as of late May.) Fischer said she also would bring disinfecting wipes to clean the tray table, arm rests, call button and any other high-touch surfaces, and would wash or disinfect her hands as soon as possible after getting off. Sexton said she wouldn’t feel safe flying because of how close she’d be to others while moving through the airport, waiting at a gate and sitting on a potentially crowded plane. “Right now,” Sexton said, “I think the fewer people you can be around, the better.” Jackson said he would not want to fly now but that he will need to if he wants to meet a new grandchild in August — and if the number of covid-19 cases has declined by then. If he does, Jackson said, he will wear a mask “as a measure of respect for other people” and probably gloves while he wiped down “everything around me” as he got settled in his seat. He said he is comfortable with airlines promising to disinfect planes in between trips and thinks their ventilation systems “are actually quite good.” But for now, Jackson said, “I don’t want to be sitting with a bunch of strangers.” Would you go on a road trip? This is the experts’ preferred mode of travel this summer, but only with members of their households. The main risks, they said, will be at gas stations, convenience stores, fast food restaurants and public bathrooms. All three said they would wear


CoCo Bond Investors Face a Covid-19 Reckoning

The Covid-19 pandemic is even starting to affect the highly specialized world of bank capital. Lloyds Banking Group Plc, a large British lender, has just become the third European bank this year to do what was once unthinkable and decline to redeem an outstanding “CoCo” bond at its first call date. This form of hybrid debt — also known as additional tier 1 (or AT1) regulatory capital — is especially risky because the investor bears the losses if the bank fails, and it usually pays a generous interest rate. Because of their special status, there had always been a tacit understanding — though not a legal obligation — that investors would be able to cash in the bonds at the first redemption date, if they so chose, at least with European CoCos. But that tradition looks to be well and truly over among the stronger banks. Lloyds cited “extraordinary market challenges presented by Covid-19” as the reason to extend its own AT1s. With its dividend payments to equity holders suspended currently at the behest of the U.K. financial regulator, because of the coronavirus crisis, it would have looked rum indeed if the bank had cut its equity capital for the benefit of a small group of bondholders. This select bunch ought to have known the risk. The financial savings for Lloyds are just as relevant. By retaining the 6.375% 750 million-euro ($824 million) CoCo, it will switch to paying a floating coupon just above 5%. If it had redeemed the AT1 and issued a replacement bond, it would have had to offer a higher coupon to reflect the current market, probably one above 7%. Lloyds has a solid Tier 1 capital base of 16.9%, so in normal times it would have been expected to keep its bond investors happy. But regulatory pressure and the increase in yields on risky debt during the current crisis has forced even the better capitalized banks to prioritize their financing costs. Spain’s Banco Santander SA set the precedent last year of a blue-chip lender not redeeming its AT1 debt out of pure economic self-interest. That’s standard practice in the U.S. market, but Santander’s action caused a storm here in Europe. Germany’s Deutsche Bank AG and Aareal Bank AG have also skipped calls this year. This Americanization of the European CoCo market looks like a trend. ABN Amro Bank NV and Royal Bank of Scotland Group


These 6 restaurants around the world have found creative ways to enforce social distancing

As the potential impact of the coronavirus pandemic became clear, restaurants and bars were the first targets for closure. But with stay-at-home orders expiring in many states and economies across the world beginning the early stages of reopening, restaurants and bars also have begun the process of restarting dine-in operations. Keeping disease prevention in mind, establishments are getting creative with the use of barriers, props and other objects to enforce social distancing and make their dining spaces seem more lively. While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still recommends safety measures for diners such as frequent hand-washing and face coverings in public spaces, many restaurants have taken extra steps to help keep their employees and visitors safe. Here are some of our favorites from around the world. Blow-up dolls at The Open Hearth The owners of this restaurant in Greenville County, S.C., took a fun and unusual approach to seating capacity guidelines: They filled empty seats with blow-up dolls dressed up to look like fellow diners. The restaurant has taken the additional health precautions of requiring employees to wear masks and checking temperatures, but one of the owners told a local station that instead of roping off tables, they wanted the establishment to appear full. “My grandson told me they look kind of creepy,” owner Paula Starr Melehes told WYFF4. “But I think, when people walk in, they’re going to laugh.” Mannequins at The Inn at Little Washington This three-star Michelin restaurant in the D.C. area is preparing for its upcoming opening by filling the dining room with mannequins wearing 1940s-style outfits. The restaurant, known for its theatrics and glamorous environment, wants to make the space feel less empty as guests return to reduced capacity. A spokesperson told Eater that the performance art project will remain “within the whimsical vein of the Inn’s reverently irreverent approach to hospitality.” Inner tubes at Fish Tales Social distancing at this restaurant in Ocean City, Md., will be enforced in a more physical way than inanimate dolls. The restaurant rolled out what it calls the “bumper table” to help guests maintain six feet of distance when it opens. Diners step into a rolling table surrounded by an inner tube so they can eat, socialize and walk around the space without worrying about getting too close to anyone. “We wanted to come up with a creative and fun way to keep everyone safe and


The Daily 202: Marco Rubio warns of instability without structural changes to help minorities in coronavirus recovery

making less than $25,000 a year, only 32 percent saying they didn’t struggle with uncontrollable worry and 23 percent said they worried uncontrollably nearly every day. The World Health Organization warned of a second peak and cautioned against scaling back restrictions too quickly. “But the pleas for caution collided with a shifting reality as spring gives way to summer,” Brady Dennis, Meagan Flynn and Rick Noack report. "In areas that no longer have enforceable executive orders, authorities insist there is little they can do to require people to practice social distancing. The mayor of Osage Beach, Mo., where packed pool parties took place [over the weekend], said he views it as essential that his town’s tourist-dependent businesses reopen, while police there said they couldn’t enforce restrictions. … Elsewhere, even where executive orders remain in place, some local authorities have refused to enforce them, and many residents have chosen to ignore them. Such was the case in Alamance County, N.C., where an estimated 4,000 spectators filled the stands for races at Ace Speedway. … Some parts of the country continue to wrestle with crippling caseloads, while others have barely been affected by the pandemic.” Experts continue struggling with coronavirus unknowns. “The experts shy away from predictions and instead offer ‘scenarios,'” Joel Achenbach reports. “The question of the true lethality of the virus remains the subject of controversy. When the CDC put out its guidance last week, it estimated that 0.2 to 1 percent of people who become infected and symptomatic will die. The agency offered a ‘current best estimate’ of 0.4 percent. The agency also gave a best estimate that 35 percent of people infected never develop symptoms. Those numbers when put together would produce an ‘infection fatality rate’ of 0.26, which is lower than many of the estimates produced by scientists and modelers to date.” Ilhem Messaoudi, an epidemiologist at the University of California at Irvine, emailed: “With a global pandemic such as this, the public wants the scientific leaders to speak with certainty, but that is not possible. Fear also drives people to think in binary terms such as you are for public health or for the economy; you are for masks or you are reckless.” Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) claimed that her husband was only joking when he reached out to a boat dock company and — dropping his wife's name — asked them if they could


increase at faster rates. That will intensify pressure on hospitals already under strain and will affect access to health care overall. India’s two largest cities — Mumbai and Delhi — are preparing for a surge in cases. In Mumbai, the nation’s hardest-hit city, beds in some coronavirus wards are already full and the local government asked another state to send doctors and nurses to help. In Delhi, authorities are turning yet another major government-run hospital into a center for coronavirus patients and just ordered all private hospitals to reserve 20 percent of their beds for such cases.” Americans are scrambling to leave Brazil ahead of Trump’s new coronavirus travel ban. U.S. citizens and green-card holders are exempt from the prohibition, but flights are getting harder to come by. (Marina Lopes) It’s not just Trump who says he's been taking hydroxychloroquine. Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele claimed that he is, too. The controversial 38-year-old leader said he’s been taking the anti-malarial drug to ward off the contagion. “Most of the world’s leaders use it as a prophylaxis,” Bukele told Reuters. He did not name names. More than 3,000 migrants across Africa and 10,000 worldwide – the vast majority of them refugees – are waiting for their resettlement process to start again after being put on indefinite hold by the virus, according to the International Organization for Migration. (Max Bearak) Around 700 Muslims celebrated Eid al-Fitr with socially distant prayers at an Ikea parking lot in Germany. (IGMG Wetzlar Gençlik) Hong Kong is moving past the pandemic, but an unsung hygiene army soldiers on. “Street cleaners, hotel housekeepers, subway disinfecting crews — form a largely unheralded hygiene army helping to prevent the spread of the virus. Many of them elderly or migrants, they toil at considerable risk to their health, spending extended periods away from their families to minimize potential exposure. As anti-government unrest resumes here, many of these workers also bear the brunt of clearing debris, spent tear gas canisters and broken glass left behind by protesters and police. On Sunday, a cleaner collapsed after a group of people rushed into a bathroom where she was working; she was hospitalized in critical condition,” Shibani Mahtani and Tiffany Liang report. “In cities such as Hong Kong, these workers earn minimum wage and are often treated as part of an underclass. While their efforts have allowed residents to ease back to normal life after


D.C. trivia night is on Zoom. It benefits restaurants (and keeps my friends together).

proved popular, with sometimes 50 different competitors in one Zoom. Many are regulars who return every week. My team, however, is the only one that’s (in a way) China-based. This is a weird brag, but here it goes: I am a member of Beijing’s current second-most-winningest English-language trivia team. I was affected by the global pandemic earlier than most Americans because I live in China — or did, until February. For over five years, I worked as a magazine editor and freelance journalist in China, and for much of it, my group of friends and I gathered at an American-style bar in Beijing on Thursdays for their English-language trivia night. The bar mimics Mid-America barbecue-joint vibes — an accurate, if overpriced, portal to my faraway home. I was visiting my family in Pennsylvania when news of the coronavirus outbreak began to swirl. My family hoped I would stay for a while longer, but I was hesitant, because my work, my social life and my belongings were all abroad. Then United Airlines made my decision for me when it canceled flights to China indefinitely. Since then, chances of me getting back to China this year have grown smaller by the day. In March, Pennsylvania enacted its own stay-at-home order. In April, China banned entry to all foreigners, even ones with residence permits, like me. Last week, Chinese officials announced restrictions on international flights would continue through October at least. My group chats with fellow Americans in China have become spaces for commiserating, swapping info on quarantine requirements and venting about visa issues. My trivia chat was no exception. Several of us were in America, and one in his home country of Iran (the irony of leaving China for places that would have their own horrific experiences with covid-19 is not lost on us). Then my friend Sarah, an American in Beijing who’d previously lived in D.C., brightened the mood when she sent over a link and said: “You guys should try this out.” It was a link to Distantly Social Trivia, and that was March. My team has been playing ever since — the five of us who are in the United States, anyway. “I believe we have a team from China playing?” Hackett said into her webcam, looking both confused and amused, our first night playing. I was going to correct her and clarify we weren’t actually in China, but


In March, Pennsylvania enacted its own stay-at-home order. In April, China banned entry to all foreigners, even ones with residence permits, like me. Last week, Chinese officials announced restrictions on international flights would continue through October at least. My group chats with fellow Americans in China have become spaces for commiserating, swapping info on quarantine requirements and venting about visa issues. My trivia chat was no exception. Several of us were in America, and one in his home country of Iran (the irony of leaving China for places that would have their own horrific experiences with covid-19 is not lost on us). Then my friend Sarah, an American in Beijing who’d previously lived in D.C., brightened the mood when she sent over a link and said: “You guys should try this out.” It was a link to Distantly Social Trivia, and that was March. My team has been playing ever since — the five of us who are in the United States, anyway. “I believe we have a team from China playing?” Hackett said into her webcam, looking both confused and amused, our first night playing. I was going to correct her and clarify we weren’t actually in China, but my teammate Miriam, quarantining in D.C., beat me with: “Yes, it’s 9 a.m. here and we’re drinking anyway!” My team isn’t the only one using online trivia as a way to stay together — in fact, Hackett tells me it’s a bit of a theme among her regulars. “So many families and people with friends spread across the world and the country have used this as their weekly way to catch up. We’ve had parents connecting with their children stationed far away in the military, girlfriends who were supposed to be celebrating a wedding, high school friends reconnecting and siblings maintaining a healthy sibling rivalry.” My friends and I have been glad to have our trivia routine back, too — especially now that it’s for a good cause. There’s something reassuring about a straightforward, answerable fact during this confusing time. Many of my trivia friends are also stranded, and some of us have lost jobs as a result (telecommuting is difficult when there’s a 12-hour time difference). Many of us are journalists, unable to cover China from thousands of miles away. Trivia doesn’t fix any of this, but it is a balm. What does CVS stand for? Consumer Value Store!


Transcript: The Path Forward: Travel

mentioned, but electrostatic fogging. MR. HAYES: Oh, yes. MS. SELLERS: What is that? How does it work? And how do you know it works on planes? MR. HAYES: Well, you know, I--I remember when I started first flying many years ago, used to go to all these exotic places and the crew would come through with what looked like deodorant cans. You know, they'd go down and they'd spray them into the air and all that stuff was landing on us and it was there to stop--you know, stop insects and--had insecticide in it. Thankfully, we've come a long way since then. And you know, what we're doing now is just a much--high level of cleaning. And you can do that in a number of different ways. You can do a--you know, a hand clean or you can use these electrostatic cleaners. And what's that doing? Is really taking the product that we are using to sanitizing--sanitize the airplanes, and it's like an aerosol. You go through the cabin and you spray it and then it kind of gets into all the nooks and crannies that it's hard for someone to go in there with a hand and do. So, again, the thing about safety on the ground, it's a layered approach. There's not one single thing that you can do that is the silver bullet, here, but it's a number of things that work together to create a sense that flying really is as safe as anything else you would do when you leave your house. MS. SELLERS: So, a number of our listeners and readers have sent in questions, and they're particularly concerned, I think, about personal safety. One person, Cindy Nayer [phonetic] from California, asks: "What do you do about people who are immunocompromised? Can you make special circumstances for them?" MR. HAYES: Well, again, you know, everyone's got different health issues. And you know, I think everyone is going to have to make their own decision when it's safe to fly again. You know, we believe that, you know, the use of masks, keeping the seats next to you free as we're doing for now, you know, we think that that is offering a significant level of protection. But again, you know, everyone is going to have to make a decision to fly based on, one, what they think their health risk is; and two, what


Transcript: The Path Forward: Travel

world to help people get international travel going again. You know, we're seeing countries as they start thinking, opening their borders, or thinking about different ways of protecting their country. And I do think that could be very confusing if every individual country comes up with their own solution as to how to do that. MS. SELLERS: Let me ask you, though, about this country. Public health officials have made it very clear in this country that contact tracing, knowing where people have been, knowing where they're flying to, knowing who they've sat with is key to preventing this disease from having a second wave or continuing to spread. But the airline industry has been in a 15-year, at least, battle lobbying not to produce more information for public health officials. Where do you stand on that? What is the proper role of the airline industry, here? MR. HAYES: Well, again, I think that, you know, for contact tracing, we have those cases today where we are contacted by the CDC or state officials. And you know, we cooperate and we make sure that we do that quickly. You know, I think some of the--maybe what you're referring to was two or three months ago, as some of these flights were coming from China, you know, when--at the beginning, everyone thought the virus was coming from China. And then, later, it was--maybe it's been coming from Europe, as well. We're still learning that. You know, there were requests about how can we get that kind of information. And it wasn't that the airline was resistant, that we didn't really have any--airlines was resistant that we didn't really have any tools that made that easy to do. MS. SELLERS: Right-- MR. HAYES: And so, as you [audio distortion]-- MS. SELLERS: --going back 15 years--going back 15 years to SARS, there have been questions about how much data the airlines should collect and hand over, I think, and that's come to a head-- MR. HAYES: Yeah, I mean, we have privacy--it really isn't a question about being resistant. It's really making sure that we have the information. And again, we actually offered as a U.S. airline group, through A4A, which is our trade association, to actually build a contact tracing app that we would all use and could be used. And again, so, it's not that we're resistant; it's just that we


Transcript: The Path Forward: The Food Industry

some that decide, "Hey, this is the last year I'm going to be doing this." You see more acres moving, meaning land being sold. The banks are starting to derisk their portfolios against operating loss, against agriculture. So, sometimes, the banks will be in charge. We're going to see continued consolidation. You know, consolidation was occurring, for instance, in the dairy sector at a 10-percent clip last year. And in fact, in this year, the start of this year, we're at 34,000 dairy producers. Now, you referenced the 60 Minutes interview that I did last October. At that point, it was at 50,000--a little bit less than 50,000--producers. So, you can see the dramatic decline in the number of producers in the country. MR. CAPEHART: You know, in that 60 Minutes profile, one of the fascinating things was how Land O'Lakes uses technology to maximize the farmland. It was really fascinating--not just the farmland, but even the cows, with their own Fitbits and things like that. And I'm wondering, what kinds of technology do we need to invest in to prevent this sort of volatility in the future? MS. FORD: I don't know if it will prevent volatility, but you know what? The most immediate and most urgent, urgent investment that must be made as a country is in broadband and technology and rural communities. There is a--there are probably 24 in the last--I said 19 or 20--let's call it 24 million Americans that lack broadband access. Nineteen million are in rural America, and it is concerning at a level that is more than just farming. The reality is it doesn't stop with the farm. There are communities that are sitting next to where these farmers are and, you know, that means the schools lack investment. That means there's no health care. There's a risk of 450 rural hospitals shutting down, and there's a shortage of 40,000 doctors in rural communities and there's no technology. So, here we are, in this pandemic, where we're all working from home and we're going to school; right? My kids are going to school remotely. And you need health care access, you need to go to a doctor, and there's no technology access. One of the things we did, partnered with Microsoft, with the Mayo Clinic, with others is to stand up access for free WiFi. We turned on free WiFi in our local


MS. FORD: It is, and now it's actually up to 170. And we--I talked to a number of governors. You know, it's about access and it's also about regulatory changes, where they can identify, for instance, a location, meaning your car, you're calling into a doctor. That can be seen as a place of--for a visit. And thus, there's reimbursement to--[technical difficulties]--standing up and saying we will also turn on our WiFi for free. And I think the more we can encourage businesses that are in rural communities are those that lack access to turn on their WiFi for free, right now. It is urgent so that we can have access to health care and education for our families. MR. CAPEHART: I want to--in the little bit of time that we have left, talk about the logo change issue. Recently, Land O'Lakes decided to roll out a new logo, moving away from Mia, who was a long time on--part of the logo of Land O'Lakes. What led the decision to change the logo? MS. FORD: You know, we're stepping into our 100th anniversary. You noted we're a farmer-owned cooperative. We found out many people didn't--weren't aware of that. And they said, "Well, why didn't you tell us that? We would have been even more likely to purchase your products." So, as we're stepping towards our 100th anniversary, which is next year, and as we're saying, "What are we trying to message? What is different about Land O'Lakes, beyond the quality of our products?" What is different and--when many of us are seeking to understand where does our product come from, where does our food come from, what is different is that we are farmer-owned. The milk that we--that is used to make the butter, the milk that is used to make the cheese, the Purina, our products--what is different is that we are farmer-owned. And we wanted to shout about that on our packaging. The farmers on that package are our farmers, they're our members. And so, that was what led to the change. It was a number of years of research that said what is different, and what do we need to do to engage others who are unfamiliar with our franchise--our butter franchise, especially, about what we are. MR. CAPEHART: So, one more question on this: Some activists encouraged the removal of Mia, the Native-American character featured in


the former logo due to concerns of cultural appropriation. Did that have any influence on your decision? MS. FORD: It did not. It did not. I was not being--our team was not being pressured. This was not an issue about that. This was really us looking forward, trying to message to consumers who are making decisions about what they buy based on the values that they believe the company has. And what we know is special for us was that we're farmer-owned, and that was what led to this change. MR. CAPEHART: Land O'Lakes has roughly 10,000 employees and, as a leader of that company, during a time of crisis, what lessons have you learned? MS. FORD: Well, I hope what you do is you're going to back to the basics, probably what your parents told you, you know, and what you think that you show up as every day but maybe now much more intentionally. You know, the most important thing that we focus on is the employee: their safety, their health, their mental health, their concerns. And when you put them as the primary area of focus, our members, their health, the health of their farms, the health of their families, you know, what we've learned is, by focusing on that, we've gotten even more levels of engagement across our business; more--I don't want to say it's--I have gratitude and I'm so grateful for my team's efforts to do everything that they can right now in a very difficult time. And so, that's what I would say. It's not--what I hope to change--what I hope is an intentional view of what is really the priority. MR. CAPEHART: And Beth, last question comes from Esther Ngumbe [phonetic] from Illinois, and she asks: "How do we build an equitable food system post-COVID-19? How do we correct the inequalities that existed before the pandemic?" MS. FORD: I wish I had a magic answer. I really do. I mean, I think information--you know, less than, I think, one-and-a-half percent of the population is involved in production agriculture. Food supply, to me, it is a pillar of our national security. And as I said at the beginning, you know, what my--observed is that much of the risk is held at the farm level. And what I'd like to do, just like you're mentioning here, Esther, is to make sure that the rewards profile


The Energy 202: ExxonMobil declines to set long-term climate goal, bucking oil industry trend

cast votes during the investors’ meeting in favor of splitting the CEO and chairman roles and against the reelection of members of the board of directors because of how the company manages the risks of climate change. Pointing out the lack of new greenhouse gas targets, the investment management company wrote in a bulletin that Exxon does not have a proper “sense of urgency” when it comes to climate change. BlackRock officials, however, did note that Exxon recently told them it is “developing future targets” for greenhouse gas emissions. During the virtual stockholders’ meeting, Woods said Exxon does not plan to invest in solar and wind power, arguing the company has no “unique advantage” in developing those renewable sources of energy. A “breakthrough” technology, such as one capturing carbon dioxide from the air, “would allow us to then start to set some targets,” Woods added. It is leading nearly two dozen other states and numerous cities in filing a lawsuit against the administration over its move to ease fuel efficiency standards for vehicles. The lawsuit states the “new rule from the Environmental Protection Agency and Transportation Department, dubbed the Safer Affordable Fuel Efficient (SAFE) Vehicle rule, is unlawful and rests on an error-ridden analysis concocted to justify the administration’s desired outcome,” the Los Angeles Times reports. In a statement, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra (D) — whose office said the lawsuit is the state’s 82nd filed against the administration — called the SAFE rule a “a job-killer and public health hazard.” “The outcome is likely to be decided by the Supreme Court and could have serious consequences for California and the 13 other states that have embraced tougher car pollution standards than those set by the federal government,” the LA Times adds. In a letter to the acting director of the Office of Management and Budget, the House Natural Resources Committee chairman referred to a potential final rule, “ONRR Reporting and Royalty Payment Delay Related to Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19),” sent to the White House for review. “Finalizing this rule as described would financially benefit oil and gas companies at public expense and create a ridiculous double standard for economic relief,” Grijalva writes. “While the administration is doing little to support clean energy companies struggling through the pandemic, DOI is already approving dozens, if not hundreds, of requests by oil and gas companies to reduce the royalty rates they must


Public health partisanship confronts a new reality: The virus is surging in rural America

This week, the United States reached a grim milestone: Covid-19 deaths surpassed 100,000 in this country. In recent weeks, the geographic areas and the communities this deadly virus touches, have begun to shift. The Washington Post analyzed case data and interviews with public health professionals in several states to find that the pandemic, which first struck in major cities, is now increasingly moving into the country’s rural areas. Rural America faces unique and significant challenges that make an outbreak there likely to be particularly deadly. What’s more, the virus seems to have taken hold in many of the counties where residents are more likely to flout social distancing guidelines or believe the pandemic to be exaggerated by President Trump’s political foes and a liberal media. The virus’s effect on rural America may make things more politically complicated for the president, who has at times raised doubt around key public health measures like masks, business closures and social distancing. So in our current political climate, where health guidance seems to have become a heated partisan issue, how might a shift in which parts of the country are touched by the pandemic alter the actions of Trump or his supporters? Might the Trump campaign’s political calculations change? And how might partisan divisiveness over public health measures evolve, as the virus moves to previously unaffected parts of the country? On this episode of the “Can He Do That?” podcast, national reporter Abigail Hauslohner discusses the tragic vulnerabilities many counties in rural America face, as the coronavirus surges across many parts of the country that were originally spared from it. Plus, senior political reporter Aaron Blake offers insight into the relationship between the president, partisanship and public health guidelines. “


If employers require workers to have antibodies, people will try to get sick

getting reinfected or transmitting the virus. Concerns about test accuracy may be surmountable, too. To reduce the problem of false positives, workers might be tested twice, with different test types, for example. If the practical obstacles can be overcome, the passports could prove a useful tool. Imagine, for example, that a nursing home declares that it would prefer to hire workers with covid-19 antibodies to care for the most vulnerable residents. This could help lower the frighteningly high mortality rate in nursing homes, which so far have accounted for one-third of all U.S. covid-19 deaths. The problem is that, with unemployment at historic highs, unemployed health care workers may be motivated to “strategically self-infect” so they can qualify for those nursing-home jobs. And that would be true in any industry that used passports. Workers often take fatal risks when they think it’s the inevitable price of getting a job. For younger workers, the fatality rate for covid-19 is similar to, or less than, the annual fatal work injury rate in some high-risk industries. One study in the medical journal Lancet estimates that a person in his or her 20s who contracts covid-19 has an 0.031 percent probability of dying. For a logger, the annual risk of death from an on-the-job injury is more than three times that — 0.098 percent. The annual risk of death for fishers, aircraft pilots, and roofers is also above the estimated risk to 20-somethings of covid-19. People who self-infect would not be risking only their own health, however. If, for instance, younger people join crowds without masks to pick up the novel coronavirus, they may pass it along to others — including older, sicker Americans — before they show symptoms. While 20-somethings have a relatively low risk of death from covid-19, more than 1 percent of infected members of that cohort end up in the hospital, according to the Lancet estimates. A wave of strategic self-infections could cause a flood of patients into emergency rooms and intensive care units — not unlike what Italy weathered in March. Self-infectors would compete for resources with those who caught the coronavirus involuntarily. Fortunately, several policy measures would make it less likely that young people take this calculated risk. First, instead of a private-sector free-for-all, policymakers should prioritize specific sectors for earlier immunity licensing. If positive antibody tests are used to choose workers in only a few corners of


Researchers ponder why covid-19 appears deadlier in the U.S. and Europe than in Asia

plotted the trajectory of the virus across the world and said they noticed stark regional disparities. “That means we need to take into consideration regional differences first, before analyzing what policies and other factors are affecting the spread of infection in any given country,” said Akihiro Hisaka of the university’s Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences. The baseline assumption, at the moment, is that the virus — officially SARS-CoV-2 — mutates the way all viruses do and is just as innately contagious and lethal in one part of the world as in another. “We are all facing the same bug with the same general arsenal of immune responses,” said Jeffrey Shaman, an epidemiologist at Columbia University. “There are differences in testing, reporting, control from country to country. And there are differences in rates of hypertension, chronic lung disease, et cetera, on a country-by-country basis.” Part of the reason for the high number of deaths in the United States and Western Europe may lie in an initial reluctance to react to an epidemic that seemed distant and unthreatening. In Asia, meanwhile, previous experience with the SARS and MERS epidemics enabled much faster responses to the new threat. Taiwan, for example, has been widely praised for its speedy response to the epidemic, including early screening of air passengers from Wuhan. South Korea built a massive program of testing, tracing and isolating patients. But in Japan and India, two very different countries, the relatively low death toll has baffled many scientists. Similar mysteries have emerged from Pakistan to the Philippines. Hot and humid weather could be a factor in places such as Cambodia, Vietnam and Singapore. Several studies have suggested that heat and humidity can slow, although not stop, the spread of the virus, just as is seen with influenza and with coronaviruses that cause common colds. But some equatorial countries, including Ecuador and Brazil, have seen many cases and deaths linked to covid-19. Demographics also play a role in regional disparities. Africa’s generally younger population may have been more resistant than northern Italy’s older communities, for example. In Japan, which has the world’s oldest population, different reasons are being explored. There is a widespread belief in Japan that good hygiene and habits, like wearing masks and avoiding handshakes, helped slow the spread of the virus, while universal health care and the country’s emphasis on protecting the elderly may have lowered the death toll.


widely praised for its speedy response to the epidemic, including early screening of air passengers from Wuhan. South Korea built a massive program of testing, tracing and isolating patients. But in Japan and India, two very different countries, the relatively low death toll has baffled many scientists. Similar mysteries have emerged from Pakistan to the Philippines. Hot and humid weather could be a factor in places such as Cambodia, Vietnam and Singapore. Several studies have suggested that heat and humidity can slow, although not stop, the spread of the virus, just as is seen with influenza and with coronaviruses that cause common colds. But some equatorial countries, including Ecuador and Brazil, have seen many cases and deaths linked to covid-19. Demographics also play a role in regional disparities. Africa’s generally younger population may have been more resistant than northern Italy’s older communities, for example. In Japan, which has the world’s oldest population, different reasons are being explored. There is a widespread belief in Japan that good hygiene and habits, like wearing masks and avoiding handshakes, helped slow the spread of the virus, while universal health care and the country’s emphasis on protecting the elderly may have lowered the death toll. Research by a team at Cambridge University showed how the virus mutated as it left East Asia and traveled to Europe, noting the possibility that the initial strain may have been “immunologically or environmentally adapted to a large section of the East Asian population” and needed to mutate to overcome resistance outside that region. Peter Forster, the geneticist who led that study, said there is “very limited clinical data” on how the various virus strains interacted with different populations. He noted, however, that the question “should be followed up” on whether different strains explained contrasting mortality rates. A team of scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory also argued that a more highly contagious strain of the virus has taken hold in Europe and spread in the United States — but other experts have said the significance of emergent strains remains unclear. “It could just be an accident that whoever had that mutant went to the most rock festivals and nightclubs and transmitted to the most people,” said Jeremy Luban, a virologist at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. “But the other possibility is that that strain is more transmissible.” Nobel laureate Tasuku Honjo, a Japanese physician-scientist and immunologist, said people


Trump vs. Big Tech

Tensions between President Trump and big tech reach a boiling point. Asian American health-care workers are fighting racism as well as the coronavirus. And, how air travel has changed during the pandemic.


How the pandemic spread and contracted on its way to killing 100,000 Americans

set of coronavirus cases. The dots below are roughly scaled to size, with small dots representing up to 50 deaths in the identified period and the largest dots representing up to 400. You can see how the earliest chunk of cases is weighted to Washington state, where a cluster of deaths in a nursing home marked the first significant isolated toll in the United States. The center of the outbreak quickly moved to the New York City area and then to the broader Boston-to-D.C. corridor. Cook County, Ill., also stands out — where Chicago is — as a consistent center of numerous deaths. This is to some extent misleading: New York City has five counties, each displayed separately below. All those little dots serve to show how the death toll from the virus was geographically distributed, again, unevenly. It does obscure, though, how much worse the virus was in certain parts of the country. Displaying the same data as a heat map, with darker red regions indicating more clustered deaths, shows how the mortality hot spots spread and shifted as the number of cases climbed. New York quickly gets dark red. It spreads up to Boston and down to the District. But compare the first chart with the last (which includes data through May 26): The red is a bit more saturated east of the Mississippi now than it was for the first 5,000 deaths. That comports with the broad decline in the number of cases in the Northeast as the number of deaths increased, with the number of deaths in other parts of the country making up the difference. (For the chart below, we used Census Bureau designations for regions.) Remember that the time frame for the milestones reflected below varies. We’re adding 5,000 deaths more slowly than we had been, which is obviously good news. That’s in part because of the fade in new deaths in the Northeast, where deaths are coming more slowly than they had. That means other regions can add more new deaths over the lengthier time period. At 5,000 deaths, the pandemic was a novelty. At 25,000 deaths, it was a narrowly contained wildfire. Now it’s a slow burn, claiming victims by hundreds every few hours across the country. One death is a tragedy and 100,000 a statistic, to modify an old saying. But statistics still have use in delineating and describing ongoing tragedies.


Census Bureau’s real-time surveys assess impact of pandemic

with school-age children at home have also reported spending an average of 12.3 hours a week on teaching activities. The Household Pulse Survey is a new addition to the Census Bureau’s tool kit. It was developed rapidly in late March and early April and ready to use less than a month after Americans began observing stay-at-home directives. A separate Small Business Pulse Survey was rolled out at the same time; it releases reports each Thursday. Both have been approved by the Office of Management and Budget to provide weekly data until July; it is possible that one or both could be extended. The data release comes as the House Oversight and Reform Committee moved to extend deadlines for the 2020 decennial count, which has been hampered by stay-at-home precautions. The Fair and Accurate Census Act, introduced Wednesday, would push deadlines for 2020 apportionment and redistricting data delivery deadlines by four months as requested by the Trump administration. It also would require the bureau to submit monthly operational and technological status reports to Congress and allow colleges and universities to provide necessary data to the Census Bureau. The household survey was developed in partnership with five federal agencies — the National Center for Health Statistics, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Agriculture Department, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the National Center for Education Statistics. The data is expected to be used by federal agencies, policymakers, scholars and others to conduct analyses and help determine policy around the pandemic. For the third report, released Wednesday and covering May 14-19, invitations went to 1,287,000 households; 133,000 responded. The latest results found 48.5 percent of adult respondents had lost employment income since the nation shut down in mid-March, and 10.7 percent of households said they could not get enough of the food they needed sometimes or often, both slightly higher than the previous week. Slightly over 40 percent said they had delayed seeking medical care because of the pandemic, and nearly 100 percent of those with children in school said they had education plans disrupted by school closures, transitions to online learning or having parents teach at home. Nevada had the highest percentage of people reporting loss of employment, at 61.9 percent; Michigan, California and Hawaii were all over 55 percent. Arkansas reported the lowest percentage, at 36.3 percent. The District of Columbia was also relatively low, at 39.1 percent. In


As restaurants reopen, here’s what you should know about air conditioning, air flow and the coronavirus

airflow and how viruses circulate, because people linger there far longer than they do in, say, a grocery store. Exposure to the virus can come from encountering a high dose for a short time or a low dose over a longer period, he says. “In a restaurant, you’re enjoying your dinner and spending more time, which means you are stuck with the same people for a long time.” As restaurants reopen their dining rooms, here are experts’ answers to some of the questions would-be diners might have about the air around them. Should you sit inside or out? Public health experts are recommending alfresco activities, including dining, over indoor ones. The virus is quickly diluted in fresh air, Roy notes. “It’s much easier to socially distance outdoors,” which is the most effective preventive measure (along with washing your hands), says Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “You can space tables farther,” he says. Cities around the world are moving to accommodate more people engaging in open-air activities. Some are closing off streets to cars to allow more room for pedestrians and additional patio seating for restaurants. The Lithuanian capital of Vilnius is allowing bars and restaurants to take over public spaces, essentially turning the city into a massive outdoor cafe across its plazas and squares. And San Francisco’s mayor just approved a plan to allow eateries to apply for permits to use sidewalks and parking lanes once dine-in service is allowed. Completely open-air dining is safest; covered patios are better than indoors, Lo says. “The more obstruction for natural air movement, the less flushed-out the air is going to be,” he says. Can air-conditioning systems spread the virus? The short answer is that it’s possible but unlikely, according to experts. A recent study of an incident that took place at a restaurant in China, where the virus originated, found nine people were infected with covid-19 by a diner sitting near an air-conditioning vent. A study of the transmission, published in a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention journal, showed how one diner infected diners at adjoining tables, as droplets containing the virus were apparently carried by the air conditioning. Four people at the person’s table later tested positive for covid-19, as well as five people at neighboring tables, some as far as 14 feet away. Scientists caution that the study documents a single


U.S. brings massive N. Korean sanctions case, targeting state-owned bank and former government officials

The U.S. government has charged 28 North Korean and five Chinese individuals with facilitating more than $2.5 billion in illegal payments for Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons and missile program in what court papers describe as a clandestine global network operating from countries including China, Russia, Libya and Thailand. In a 50-page federal indictment unsealed Thursday in Washington, D.C., the Justice Department accused the individuals of acting as agents of North Korea’s Foreign Trade Bank in what officials say is the largest North Korean sanctions violations case charged by the U.S. Working for the FTB — which is North Korea’s primary foreign currency bank and under sanctions for facilitating nuclear proliferation — the agents allegedly set up more than 250 front companies and covert bank branches around the world to mask payments transiting the U.S. financial system, including through several Chinese banks and for equipment from Chinese telecommunications giants Huawei Technologies Co. and ZTE Corp., charging documents said. Those charged include two former FTB presidents, Ko Chol Man and Kim Song Ui; two former co-vice presidents, Han Ung and Ri Jong Nam; and Han Ki Song, who allegedly operated FTB’s covert branch in Thailand and served in North Korea’s primary intelligence agency. “Through this indictment, the United States has signified its commitment to hampering North Korea’s ability to illegally access the U.S. financial system, and to limiting its ability to use proceeds from these illicit actions to enhance its illegal weapons of mass destruction program,” Michael R. Sherwin, acting U.S. Attorney for D.C., said in a statement. The massive enforcement action comes as United Nations experts have detailed North Korea’s widespread evasion of sanctions by using agents of state-owned and other banks overseas to facilitate a global web of illicit oil, arms and coal deals to bring in foreign currency. The efforts have been augmented through offshore, ship-to-ship transfers, large-scale cryptocurrency hacks and ransomware attacks. The Justice Department moves highlight Washington’s stalled diplomatic effort to eliminate Pyongyang’s nuclear missile and weapons capabilities, analysts said. The actions also reflect an internal U.S. election-year debate over whether President Trump’s withholding of tougher sanctions and emphasis on personal diplomacy with Kim Jong Un can succeed if existing American pressure tactics are not effectively enforced, analysts said. The Trump administration had outpaced predecessors at building a global coalition to pressure Pyongyang before talks started. But the biggest hole in sanctions enforcement remains U.S. reluctance to penalize


to a Chinese bank in 2014 that an FTB front company in Shenyang was wiring payments to Panda and the second company, Dandong Kehua Economic and Trade Co., for legitimate equipment purchases, as previously reported by The Post. According to the charges, an employee for Huawei, referred to as “Chinese telecommunications company 1” in the indictment, also received a receipt showing that a Nov. 5, 2015, payment to a Chinese company for a shipment of electronic goods to North Korea had been blocked by a U.S. bank. The following day the employee received an updated receipt from the company and an FTB agent in Shenyang that falsely stated the goods’ destination was Hong Kong, when it was in fact North Korea, the indictment said Spokespeople for Huawei and Panda could not immediately be reached for comment. In a statement last year, Huawei said it “has no business presence” in North Korea, and “is fully committed to comply with all applicable laws and regulations in the countries and regions where we operate, including all export control and sanction laws and regulations” of the U.N., United States and European Union. The indictment also reveals details of an earlier prosecution involving a Hong Kong shell firm hit with sanctions in 2017 that worked with Chinese telecommunications maker ZTE. The new indictment charges three defendants who officials say managed the Mingzheng International Trading Limited front company to launder money for FTB. The activity occurred, according to the indictment, despite intermittent failures in which three Chinese banks at times blocked payments, and one advised that a U.S. bank stopped the transaction because of U.S. sanctions aimed at the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The indictment said Mingzheng and Dandong Kehua worked with “Chinese telecommunications company 2,” a reference that aligns with ZTE, to purchase handsets from at least 2013 to 2015 despite a prohibition on shipment to embargoed countries. The U.S. indictment draws on Chinese bank records, including a recorded July 2014 phone call by one Mingzheng manager about opening an account with “Chinese Bank 4,” which later passed on the U.S. sanctions warning. The records appear to be ones requested under Justice Department subpoenas upheld last July by a U.S. appeals court to three large Chinese banks linked to Mingzheng that U.S. investigators were probing, and which later identified themselves as the Bank of Communications, China Merchants Bank and Shanghai Pudong Development Bank


How solo cooks are managing in the pandemic — without resorting to cereal for dinner

us are not making lasagna, but we are cooking, and we’re doing all right for ourselves. Based in Union City, N.J., Leigh-Ann Martin, 35, an executive assistant at a biopharma company, has been avoiding casseroles of any kind and the “heavy rice dishes and soups” she grew up eating in Trinidad. “I need to stay positive, and in the past, eating rich foods all time didn’t do any good for my mood.” In Boston’s Brighton neighborhood, Springer, 33, who works at the city’s WBUR public radio station, has been craving her mom’s cooking: linguine with clam sauce, a riff on Portuguese jagacida with kielbasa in place of linguiça, meatloaf. She’s texting her mother for the recipes, which make her feel closer to a family she can’t visit. Previously, she adhered to a monthly $100 limit on her grocery expenditures. Now, she’s shelling out $170 every two weeks when she walks 12 minutes to the nearest store with her own small shopping cart. “I buy whatever I can fit in the cart, because it’s all I can manage to get back home,” she explained over email. “This hasn’t allowed me the freedom to cook or eat whatever I want as much anymore.” Jones, 49, has been responding to the idiosyncrasies — or errors — inherent to online shopping in Atlanta. “I cook whatever they give me,” she said. “If there is an edible item in my house, I will cook that sucker. I will search the Internet. I will do whatever has to be done. I cannot waste food in this climate.” Too many lemons? She preserved some in salt and froze the juice of the rest in ice cube trays. 100 bulbs of garlic? She roasted some of the heads whole, squeezed out the softened cloves to use in soups, and preserved the rest of the raw cloves in vinegar. She’s actively maintaining what she calls her “food archive,” or the assortment of leftovers in her freezer. There is the “cooking and freezing phase,” followed by the defrosting phase. Lea Addington, the 28-year-old Detroit-based chef who founded LIT Vegan Kitchen to provide culinary education and wellness consulting for plant-based eaters, isn’t “really into leftovers,” or “wasn’t before the quarantine,” she said. When she does have them, she leverages them to barter for things she needs. A container of quinoa scored her a loan of gym equipment for a month, and


We’ll have to be a lot ruder if we want to make it through covid-19

other should you stand? What will you say if she wants to move the conversation indoors, or if she needs to use the restroom? To preempt awkward moments in person, it may help to have explicit conversations with people in advance of meeting so you can talk about your shared expectations. This helps all parties acknowledge things will be different and can bring any mismatched boundaries to the forefront. You might ask about where you’ll interact — for instance, in the backyard, in chairs 15 feet apart — or other details, like whether guests are allowed to pet your dog or use your bathroom. You might also share what you’ve been up to — who you’ve seen, or whether you’ve been going into the office — and ask the same of your friends and family. That might feel forward and strange, but it could start conversations about risks and boundaries. Family physician Evelin Dacker posted a risk tolerance chart on Facebook, which some people are using as shorthand for their attitudes toward virus risk. The chart lists patterns of behaviors and categorizes them on a scale of 0 (very strict) to 5 (very open); someone who’s a 1 (strict) leaves their home only for essentials and does not socialize with people they don’t live with, whereas a 3 (somewhat open) leaves multiple times a week and socializes with no more than 10 people. Saying “I’m a 2” could show what you’re comfortable with and give others an opportunity to express their habits using the same scale. These conversations might become uncomfortable as they expose mismatches between your boundaries and those of your friends and family. With heightened stress and so much pandemic shaming, people may feel attacked about their beliefs. It may be smart to anticipate that, too, and express your personal rules without judging or prescribing others’ choices. Smith recommends taking an “I” position: While something like “you’re not allowed to come into the house” or “people shouldn’t be going into each other’s houses” might come off as defensive or preachy, a statement like “I’m not having guests in the house right now” focuses on your actions. Just as mask-wearing is a sign of being considerate of others, establishing expectations can be a way to show we care about others. It may feel strange to say “I won’t hug you because I love you,” but these are strange times.


The Daily 202: America grows more divided amid coronavirus crisis, as a distracted Trump sows discord

clear before registering to vote as naturalized U.S. citizens. USCIS closed its offices in mid-March amid the coronavirus outbreak and canceled nearly all naturalization ceremonies … Though USCIS is scheduled to begin a phased reopening next week, the agency has not committed to resuming a full slate of ceremonies nor has it publicly released a plan for rescheduling the approximately 150,000 naturalizations that have been postponed because of the closures.” “When Manuel Ochoa started feeling sick — his body sore, his breathing restricted — he drove from his mother’s home in Mexicali, Mexico, to the U.S. border,” Kevin Sieff reports. “That’s when U.S. immigration officials made a call that has become increasingly common during the coronavirus outbreak: for an ambulance to transport a U.S. citizen or resident from the Mexican border to the nearest American hospital. As Mexico’s health-care system has strained under the coronavirus, small community hospitals in Southern California, some of the poorest in the state, have been flooded with Americans who have fallen ill and crossed the border. They are retirees and dual citizens, Americans working in Mexico or visiting family there. It is an example of how easily the virus moves between countries, even as governments — and particularly the Trump administration — have attempted to shut their borders. … As a result of that surge, Imperial County, home to El Centro, has a much higher concentration of coronavirus cases — 760 per 100,000 residents — than any other county in California. ‘It’s amazing how this disease has taught us that borders don’t exist,’ said Adolphe Edward, the chief executive of El Centro Regional. The hospital’s staff includes 60 people who cross the border from Mexicali each day to work.” “The changes are intended to ease manufacturers’ supply-chain snags, but advocacy groups say they are concerned that the changes will become permanent and that they will present problems for consumers concerned about tracking the provenance of their food,” Laura Reiley reports. “The new guidance allows manufacturers to substitute hard-to-source ingredients in their products without changing the label. And it allows vending machine operators latitude to omit calorie information for foods sold.” “Executives said Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom will reopen July 11, while Epcot and Disney’s Hollywood Studios, also in Florida, will resume business July 15,” Steven Zeitchik reports. “A number of social-distancing measures will be imposed at the parks … Customers will be required to


— and particularly the Trump administration — have attempted to shut their borders. … As a result of that surge, Imperial County, home to El Centro, has a much higher concentration of coronavirus cases — 760 per 100,000 residents — than any other county in California. ‘It’s amazing how this disease has taught us that borders don’t exist,’ said Adolphe Edward, the chief executive of El Centro Regional. The hospital’s staff includes 60 people who cross the border from Mexicali each day to work.” “The changes are intended to ease manufacturers’ supply-chain snags, but advocacy groups say they are concerned that the changes will become permanent and that they will present problems for consumers concerned about tracking the provenance of their food,” Laura Reiley reports. “The new guidance allows manufacturers to substitute hard-to-source ingredients in their products without changing the label. And it allows vending machine operators latitude to omit calorie information for foods sold.” “Executives said Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom will reopen July 11, while Epcot and Disney’s Hollywood Studios, also in Florida, will resume business July 15,” Steven Zeitchik reports. “A number of social-distancing measures will be imposed at the parks … Customers will be required to wear masks and undergo temperature checks. … Parades and fireworks displays will remain temporarily suspended.” “Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) also will ease statewide restrictions to allow for outdoor dining and youth day camps this summer, but the leaders of populous Maryland suburbs that border the District have not yet said whether they will join in,” Fenit Nirappil, Emily Davies and Ovetta Wiggins report. “For the first time in nearly two months, Washingtonians will be able to dine at a restaurant (outside seating only), get a haircut and shop curbside from stores deemed nonessential. Indoor worship services will be capped at 10 people, and gyms, pools and day camps will still be shuttered. Most people who have been working from home should continue to do so, local leaders said. D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) said she decided to lift the capital’s stay-at-home order Friday because covid-19 hospitalizations have stabilized in the city and the spread of the virus is declining, even as the rate of positive tests in the region remains higher than that of many states. ‘In my mind, I call it stay-at-home light,’ Bowser said of the relaxed restrictions. … [The virus] has infected more than 97,000


and regional contrasts in obesity levels and general health,” Simon Denyer and Joel Achenbach report. “The snags in delivering Putin’s bonus promise is more than just one bureaucratic glitch. It’s about a top-down governance system with underlings terrified to act. It also helps inform some of the larger truths in Russia’s struggle to control the pandemic even as countries to the west in Europe begin to lift their lockdowns,” Robyn Dixon reports. “Putin’s centralized power structure cannot handle the crisis alone. The president delegated much of the burden to regional officials, who were frightened of drawing attention to local problems and risking Moscow’s wrath. One way to stay under the radar could be to understate cases or deaths, analysts say. With Putin’s promised bonuses, the instinct by regional leaders — ingrained over decades — was to minimize payments, fearing trouble from Moscow if they spent too much or paid people not entitled to bonuses.” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared on Fox News to say that he does not believe digital platforms should act as the “arbiter of truth of everything that people say online.” The CEO of Twitter responded: White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany continued criticizing voting-by-mail, even after Tampa Bay Times reported that McEnany has voted by mail 11 times in the last 10 years: Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president, argued against mail-in voting by saying that if people are willing to wait an hour in line outside Georgetown Cupcake, they can wait in line for an hour to vote. The shop responded that it’s only selling cupcakes right now by mail or delivery: Utah’s junior senator was one of the few congressional Republicans who spoke out against Trump’s unfounded conspiracy mongering: And Ecuadoran President Lenín Moreno quickly deleted a tweet that showed him “video chatting” with Germany’s Angela Merkel: SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket launch, which would have been the first human launch to orbit from U.S. soil in nearly a decade and also the first time a private company has performed the feat, was scrubbed due to bad weather: Masahiro Hoshino, 74, recorded his last goodbyes to his wife and sons from a Tokyo hospital bed. But after months of recovery, he is back to playing his saxophone: The Post spoke to nursing home residents to hear, in their own words, how they’re coping with the virus: And “The Daily Show” has a solution for those


Frustration and caprice during a pandemic

annually attend two conferences with more than 5,000 attendees. In a world without any therapeutics, vaccines or proper contact tracing to ward off the coronavirus, those seem like exactly the kind of events that cannot go forward. And yet we go through the motions of organizing them, as if planning will make it so. The information about the pandemic continues to flummox. With each month, new information emerges that somewhat contradicts the old information. Official guidance went from not wearing masks to wearing masks. Obsessions about contracting the virus through touching contaminated surfaces now appears to be overblown. Events that seem guaranteed to lead to a spike in cases have not, in fact, done so. Living in Massachusetts, it has been frustrating to see the long plateau that our state has endured for both infections and deaths from the novel coronavirus. Both the state and its residents reacted well to the pandemic; citizens were already socially distancing before the state took official action. In contrast to, um, other parts of the country, appropriate mask-wearing in the commonwealth has been pretty robust. Nonetheless, the Bay State has been hit hard. There are some plausible explanations for this. The Biogen conference in late February was a superspreader event, giving the virus a serious head start here. The spread in nursing homes has been a significant problem. And there’s suggestive evidence that the exodus of New Yorkers to Boston helped spread the novel coronavirus. As a Red Sox fan, I find this last hypothesis entirely convincing. What seems most frustrating about the current situation is the caprice of it all. Whether one looks globally or nationally, there are puzzles that make no sense. Why has Massachusetts done so poorly compared with other states? Why has Sweden, which altered its behavior the least, had a high mortality rate but not an astronomically high infection rate? The pandemic has led me to dive into a bevy of historical work on pandemics, and this literature is dominated by two narratives. The encouraging one is that medical science has conquered an awful lot of the plagues that were endemic to mankind. The discouraging one is the enormous number of fumbles, stumbles and misperceptions that dominate the discourse until (and usually after) science has made the leap. Right now we are still in the stumbling and fumbling phase. I hope it ends soon. I fear it will not.


The Health 202: Americans are not expecting a quick return to normal. Or a vaccine next year.

coronaviruses that circulate continuously, causing the common cold. And many experts think this virus will become the fifth — its effects growing milder as immunity spreads and our bodies adapt to it over time,” William and Carolyn write. “Eventually, everyone is going to know someone who got infected or died from this virus,” said Michael T. Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy. “That’s what it may take.” “They are retirees and dual citizens, Americans working in Mexico or visiting family there,” Kevin Sieff reports. “It is an example of how easily the virus moves between countries, even as governments — and particularly the Trump administration — have attempted to shut their borders. And it’s a window into how many American lives span the U.S.-Mexico border, including families who have moved freely across the region since before that line was drawn and whose movement has continued during the pandemic.” About half of the coronavirus patients in numerous hospitals on the California border are recent arrivals from Mexico. That flood of patients has created an unprecedented hurdle for small community hospitals. “El Centro Regional normally serves a county with a population of about 180,000 residents, many of whom live below the poverty line,” Kevin writes. “Suddenly, the hospital was responding to an additional community of Americans in Mexicali, thought to number 100,000 people.” “It’s amazing how this disease has taught us that borders don’t exist,” said Adolphe Edward, the chief executive of El Centro Regional. It’s a temporary measure that was pushed forward by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and fellow Democratic leaders to allow lawmakers to participate amid the pandemic. But the vote occurred as Republican leaders filed a federal lawsuit challenging the move’s constitutionality. “Several Democrats have fretted about the House’s effectiveness as the outbreak has sidelined lawmakers — while other parts of the federal government have adapted to the new reality and the Senate, with fewer members, has returned to Washington to vote on nominations and legislation,” Mike DeBonis reports. He adds: “Under rules adopted earlier this month, 71 House members filed letters designating a colleague to cast floor votes on their behalf during the pandemic while they remain away from the Capitol. One by one Wednesday, dozens of Democrats stood at the microphones Wednesday afternoon and announced — most of them through masks — how the absent members were voting.”


China endorses Hong Kong security law, imperiling city’s status as financial hub

Hong Kong’s days as an international city with a high level of autonomy from mainland China now appear to be numbered, following a decision by China’s rubber-stamp parliament Thursday to press ahead with a new national security law that will criminalize acts such as protesting and criticizing Beijing. The move, although widely expected, is nonetheless a shocking development for the people of Hong Kong and international corporations that have built their Asia operations in the former British colony. Many in Hong Kong fear China will use these provisions to intimidate and punish critics of the government in Beijing. “This fundamentally changes the landscape for both the rule of law and for the rights and freedoms of Hong Kong,” said Antony Dapiran, a Hong Kong-based lawyer and author of the new book “City on Fire: The Fight for Hong Kong.” “Beijing is imposing this law over the heads of the duly elected legislature and in contravention of the Basic Law,” he said, referring to the mini-constitution that has allowed Hong Kong to enjoy relative freedoms under a “one country, two systems” framework agreed when Britain handed control of the city back to China in 1997. “This law will mean whatever Beijing wants it to mean, and that has serious implications.” Hong Kongers have faced down riot police to protest the plan this week. Hundreds of them, including schoolchildren in uniform and others who were simply shouting slogans, were apprehended. Western governments have broadly condemned the plan, but none more forcefully than the Trump administration, which looks set to strip Hong Kong of its special status and impose other punishments on Beijing. China has been steadily encroaching on Hong Kong’s supposed autonomy in recent years, from seizing book store owners who had been selling volumes critical of the Communist Party in 2015, to promoting a law this week that would make it a crime to insult the Chinese national anthem. But the new law constitutes Beijing’s boldest move yet to undercut the city’s autonomy and take full control of its legal and security structures. Now, 23 years into the 50-year agreement between Britain and China, Beijing is seeking to seize control of key parts of the city’s legal system. Wrapping up its annual meeting Thursday, China’s National People’s Congress approved a plan to “improve” the legal system and safeguard national security by drafting a law that will allow it to deploy “relevant


New York Times Magazine appends editor’s note to covid-19 diary story

the claim. The reporting, claimed the reader, didn’t meet the standards of the New York Times. “Is this piece really supposed to be about the emotional experience of the NYC ER rumor mill — or are readers supposed to believe that the stories recounted are true?” asked the reader in an email to the magazine’s editor in chief, Jake Silverstein. “If the former, I feel like there should be an editor’s note saying that, and even then, I’m concerned about the alarmism of things like this in the piece. A claim that a 26 year old physician died needs reporting, because I’m worried it fuels a certain hysteria that is dangerous.” (The reader, who wishes to remain anonymous, shared the correspondence with Times staffers with the Erik Wemple Blog.) Silverstein told the reader, “The story about the 26-year-old who died was reported by Helen, who spoke with the man’s attending physician to confirm details of his death. It was confirmed by fact-checkers, as was everything in the piece.” The reader also pressed Philip Corbett, associate managing editor for standards, as well as Executive Editor Dean Baquet, who emailed at one point, “Enough. Our Standards editor and the editor of the magazine have looked into this. We appreciate your holding us to account. But we have answered and we are done.” On May 4, New York Times spokeswoman Danielle Rhoades Ha told the Erik Wemple Blog that, pursuant to a reader’s question, editors and fact-checkers at the magazine reviewed their reporting. “We have spoken to someone with direct knowledge of the case who confirmed the facts we reported. It can, however, be difficult to gather detailed information in these situations, both because of privacy rules and because in many instances hospitals will not allow staffers to discuss their experiences with the news media. There is no known obit,” noted Ha. “We continue to believe that our account was accurate. However, we are continuing to seek more information, and if anything emerges suggesting that something we reported was wrong, we would of course correct it.” In an interview with the Erik Wemple Blog, Silverstein said the magazine had assigned a researcher who hadn’t participated in the original story to re-investigate the claim. Original sourcing for the passage, says Silverstein, consisted of “medical workers at the hospital where this person had died.” There is “no discrepancy,” says Silverstein, between that description of the


Copying the U.S. is leading Brazil to disaster on covid-19

tempered somewhat by institutions such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the leadership of state governors and figures such as Anthony S. Fauci. But in Brazil, Bolsonaro fired his health minister after he continued to sound the alarm about the virus. His replacement then quit less than a month later, after refusing to endorse Bolsonaro’s view that chloroquine was an effective treatment — a stance heavily influenced by Trump’s advocacy for the drug, I’m told. In recent weeks, even as the World Health Organization called South America a “new epicenter” of covid-19 and the overall death toll in Brazil passed 20,000, Bolsonaro supporters were sharing Twitter memes of anti-social distancing protests in places such asMichigan, and using distinctly American language about “personal liberties” to call for a return to normalcy. Brazilian media have documented how, each time Bolsonaro downplays the virus on TV, social distancing rates slip further. In a country that invests a far lower share of its gross domestic product in health care than the United States, and where people live cheek-by-jowl in favelas in places such as Rio de Janeiro, the effect has been disastrous. And, in perhaps the ultimate irony, Trump closed the border on Tuesday to most travelers from Brazil as cases soar. It did not have to be this way. Neighboring countries such asArgentina and Colombia have seen much greater discipline from their leaders — and lower infection numbers. Even some ardent Brazilian conservatives have become critical of Bolsonaro, worried about both the rising human toll and the risk of impeachment as his approval ratings slide. “This could destroy our movement for the next 30 years,” one told me, speaking privately to avoid potential retribution from Bolsonaro’s followers. Like others, he expressed hopes for a dramatic change of course. There may indeed be things worth imitating about the United States, but our reaction to covid-19 is surely not one of them. Read more: Rosana Pinheiro-Machado: Bolsonaro is endangering Brazil. He must be impeached. The Post’s View: A failure of leadership in Latin America León Krauze: Mexico is not ready for the coronavirus. Just look at AMLO’s behavior. ‘It’s a waking nightmare’: The coronavirus crisis has led to difficult situations Monica Maggioni: In Italy, we live in silence, die in silence — and wait Mark Lowcock and Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus: The coronavirus threatens all of humanity. All of humanity must fight back.


The U.S. death toll has reached 100,000. The pandemic has exposed the nation’s vulnerabilities and dangerous divide.

to breathe in. Some of the deadliest clusters of cases can be traced to richly social events: Mardi Gras in Louisiana, chorus practices, corporate meetings. Patricia Frieson and Wanda Bailey, sisters who lived near each other in the Chicago area, attended a funeral together in early March. Within days, Frieson, a 61-year-old retired nurse, fell ill. By mid-month, she was in the hospital, struggling to breathe. Before a test confirmed that she had the coronavirus, her family gathered with her, hugging. As Frieson neared death, Bailey, a 63-year-old former medical coder, developed a wicked cough, a frequent symptom of covid-19. She too ended up in the hospital. The sisters died 10 days apart. The Post’s analysis of state and city data shows that in some places where the virus has hit hard — including New York City, the District and Illinois — African Americans died at disproportionately high rates. For example, in the District, where 46 percent of residents are black, 76 percent of those who have died of covid-19 were black. In contrast, although the city’s population is 37 percent white, whites account for only 11 percent of deaths. Elsewhere, the disparity is even greater. In Michigan, African Americans have accounted for 40 percent of the deaths, though they make up 14 percent of the population. Some of the most ferocious outbreaks have burned through majority-black locales, where the social safety net was already frayed and health-care shortages are common amid high levels of underlying medical conditions. A predominantly black section of southwest Georgia, for example, has suffered a higher death rate than even the hardest-hit New York City boroughs. The coronavirus has struck Latinos in a similarly devastating way, in part because many live in multigenerational households and work in service industries in close contact with other people. Latinos are more than twice as likely as whites — 26 percent vs. 10 percent — to know someone who has died of the virus, according to an ABC News-Ipsos poll released last week. The virus has accentuated differences between people who have good health care and those who cannot afford it. In two Queens neighborhoods along one bus line, there’s an 800 percent difference in the death rate from covid-19. It’s low where the affluent live and sky-high among the poor, many of whom are immigrants who are afraid to seek medical attention because they are in the country


Michigan dam failure shows the Midwest’s growing vulnerability to climate change

In the past decade, I’ve spent a lot of time working as a videographer in Greenland, a place where climate change was, at one time, perhaps more obvious than in temperate zones. In this pandemic year, however, there will be no fieldwork in the Arctic. As it happened, climate change came to me. The dam catastrophe in Midland County, Mich., my home since birth, was a huge blow to the local economy and an emotional gut punch for those who live here. The very geography of our lives and memory has changed. Walking through the battered, mud-covered main street of Sanford, Mich., flooded from a breached dam, and the dry moonscape that once was Wixom Lake, held back by the Edenville Dam, brought me a visceral sense of dread. The story that has been well covered in recent days is one of finger-pointing between the lake homeowners, the dam owner, and the city, county, state and federal authorities: to assign blame for the tragedy and the damage. But a key underlying dynamic has gotten a lot less attention. According to the U.S. Global Change Research Program, heavy precipitation events, fueled by more moisture in a warming atmosphere, have increased almost 40 percent across the upper Midwest in recent decades. Like sea level rise, ice-sheet loss, ocean acidification, desertification and deforestation, the change has been, in human terms, gradual, and for those not paying attention, easy to ignore. Most of our infrastructure — the roads, dams, bridges, hospitals, airports, harbors, power plants, pipelines, businesses, storm sewers and homes — was built for a planet that no longer exists. Climate change is not something that will only take place in the future. The climate has already changed in large because of human actions, and the sooner we recognize this and adapt, the better. For most of us, climate change won’t be like the giant tsunamis and superstorms from the movie “The Day After Tomorrow,” at least in the coming few decades. Instead, it will take the form of insidious, creeping, gradual changes that tend not to draw the media and public attention and that force politicians to deal with them. That is, until extreme events push our infrastructure past important thresholds. Storms come and go, but as long as the water stays a few inches below the levee, life goes on. Then, suddenly, with just an extra inch of rise, a barrier


In Phase 2 of reopening, theaters and museums are a go. But the Smithsonian will take it slow.

a vaccine or cure is widely administered, which could take years. The move toward recovery means that arts leaders are turning their attention to deep-cleaning regimens and personal protective equipment (PPE) requirements that include mandatory face masks, crowd control and visitor flow. Art museums and small to midsize facilities will probably have an easier transition, while interactive attractions and kid-friendly venues, such as the International Spy Museum and the National Children’s Museum, will have ongoing cleaning issues to tackle. Many performing arts events will struggle with the financial challenges that will come with severely reduced audience size. The organizations are eager to return, but are cautious about sharing their plans. “I’m not in a rush to do this wrong,” said Dorothy Kosinski, director and chief executive of the Phillips Collection. Washington’s largest attractions are keeping their plans under wraps until more data is available. Officials at the Kennedy Center, which is closed until at least Aug. 9, are looking at how to use the center’s 19 indoor spaces and the Reach’s 130,000-square-foot green space for “live experiences,” a spokeswoman said. Details are still weeks away. The National Gallery of Art is not ready to share details, either. And Smithsonian executives will only say that they plan to open two or three museums at first, followed a month or so later with a second wave of institutions. “There’s a sweet spot. Some museums lend themselves to being able to be cleaned, but there’s also the public’s desire” to visit, Hall said. The facilities and dates haven’t been finalized, he said. “All of them will open at some point.” In keeping with the mayor’s task force recommendations — which the Smithsonian, a federal entity, is not bound to follow — Hall said the institution is adopting a multiphase schedule. “It’s also a way of dipping our toe in the water, practicing new policies and procedures,” he said. Susan Fisher Sterling, director of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, has selected July 7 for the tentative reopening of the private museum. “That is a moment of hope,” she said. “We felt that setting the date helps us move toward our goal of serving the public.” The museum will open with timed admission for up to 200 visitors a day, about two-thirds of the average attendance for the first 10 weeks of the year. Procedures will be in place for a no-touch


D.C. to join Northern Virginia in slight reopening Friday; Maryland suburbs not sure

among the first to reopen. Dave Nicholas, a managing partner at Alexandria Restaurant Partners, which oversees eight restaurants, including Vola’s Dockside Grill in Old Town, said he plans to allow about one-third capacity at each restaurant. At Vola’s, just 40 of the 110 patio seats will be available. Employees will have their temperature checked several times a day, while patrons will be required to cover their faces while using the restrooms and will eventually have a QR code for menus. “We’re not in a rush, going to take things cautiously and slowly. Safety is going to be first. We’re thinking, if we get to 30 percent of our normal volume in months to come, that will be good,” Nicholas said. Andy Shallal, founder of the chain Busboys and Poets, has rehired 40 percent of his staff and held a training session in new procedures Wednesday to prepare for resuming dine-in service. D.C. restaurant owners can apply to extend seating into sidewalks or streets for limited periods of time. But Can Yurdagul, who owns Sushi Capitol, said he is wary of serving sushi outdoors in hot weather, and will remain closed for now. “It’s survival mode right now,” he said. “This is not the time to be financially motivated. It is the time to be health motivated.” Sheila Weaver, a barber at Wrenn’s in the Navy Yard, spent Wednesday morning texting her regulars, trying to gauge their level of interest in getting a haircut under the new rules. “I have to see what my customers want because they are the ones who are paying me,” she said. “But I am definitely concerned. I don’t want to be thirsty and pull down my mask to drink water and kill everybody in the shop.” Angela Sitilides, the owner of the boutique cosmetic store Bellacara in Alexandria, has offered only curbside pickup for the last two months, but will welcome up to five customers inside at a time starting Friday. She and her three employees spray all of her products with alcohol each hour, and she has placed samples in single-size packaging and installed a sink to ensure patrons can wash their hands if they wish. “It’s going to be about trust,” Sitilides said. “It’s going to be about knowing that we’ve done everything we need to do to make sure that their shopping environment feels safe.” Religious leaders, meanwhile, are weighing whether to


Arts groups in distress call on a former Kennedy Center president for help

It was another of the hundreds of emergency telephone therapy sessions that Michael M. Kaiser and his team of arts survival experts have been conducting. On the line were leaders of the 34-year-old Nashville Ballet, Tennessee’s premier professional ballet company. The modulated tones of the conversation belied the rampant anxiety across the arts in America over a pandemic that continues to threaten their existence. “You are in the exact same position as every cultural institution in this country and, in fact, the world,” Kaiser advised during the hour-long consultation, which covered issues such as messaging and fundraising. “It is time to go for larger programming gifts, and just be very honest: ‘We don’t know when we’re coming back, but this is what we have planned — and it’s going to be amazing!’ ” The ballet’s leadership sought the guidance of Kaiser, former president of the Kennedy Center and now chairman of the DeVos Institute of Arts Management at the University of Maryland, for a way forward. In March, the institute sent an invitation to arts groups for pro bono assessments. More than 400 organizations signed up. “They’re all doing the best they can,” Kaiser said after the call, adding that there has been no spate of nonprofit groups closing their doors for good. (The next six months, he says, may be more volatile.) In large measure, though, arts groups have no substantial public support mechanism, financial or otherwise. “The pandemic is a global problem; the difference is, in other countries the government plays an avuncular role,” he added. “Our government has never played that role. There is no sense that the [National Endowment for the Arts] feels responsible. I’m trying to jump into the breach.” While attention is often focused nationally on behemoth enterprises such as Broadway, whose 600- to 2,000-seat theaters are likely to remain shuttered for months, it is the vast national constellation of small, medium and large nonprofits that Kaiser is keying on. The NEA has access to a relatively modest $75 million fund under the Cares Act for emergency grants to nonprofits. But if museums, theaters and symphonies end up in free fall, it is basically up to them to cushion the impact. The economic losses will continue to mount, according to a paper published this month by SMU DataArts — an arts research group at Southern Methodist University — and Jill Robinson, chief executive of


FDA rolls back food rules for 5th time during pandemic

(including food allergens, gluten, sulfites or other ingredients known to cause sensitivities in some people, for example, glutamates).” Cassell says the formulation changes should be consistent with general factors such as safety, including food allergens, and prominence of the ingredient. But for the estimated 32 million people in the United States with food allergies, “the devil is in the details,” Dave Bloom, chief executive of SnackSafely, a food allergy organization, wrote in a blog post. “The guidance goes on to introduce numerous loopholes that are of concern to members of the food allergy community.” Betsy Booren, senior vice president of regulatory and technical affairs at the Consumer Brands Association, a trade group formerly known as the Grocery Manufacturers Association, says that the FDA changes reflect a desperately needed flexibility to reallocate foods and alleviate hiccups in supply chains during the pandemic. “The [Department of Agriculture] and FDA have been really proactive to get food that was in the food service arena and transferring it to retail,” she said by phone. She says that disruption in international supply chains for spices and other ingredients have forced manufacturers to find new suppliers and swap ingredients. “This guidance was the FDA recognizing that there could be some minor changes that do not impact food safety,” Booren said. “To change a label takes upwards of two years for a food company — doing the analysis, sending products to the printer — all that takes time. The FDA is allowing digital disclosures, stickers and smart labels.” The FDA says temporary substitution of certain oils, such as canola for sunflower, may be appropriate without a label change because they contain similar types of fats. And with flour in short supply, unbleached flour can be substituted for bleached flour without a label change. Manufacturers now have the flexibility to substitute spices or vegetables without alerting consumers because of these new guidelines. And for vending machines, providing calorie information is no longer required, although it is encouraged. There are 4 million vending machines in the United States. Right now, the industry has seen a major shift, says Roni Moore, vice president of marketing for National Automatic Merchandising Association, the trade group representing the $25 billion vending machine industry. Those in offices and other workplaces, in schools and in malls have spent the past two months in suspended animation, their Cool Ranch Doritos and Duchess honey buns going nowhere


The second-best flower shop in Naperville, Ill., is struggling to survive. Along with the American Dream.

cancer at age 74. Now, Celidan is in danger of dying, too. Last April, in the before times, Celidan grossed $35,000. Last month’s receipts totaled $6,000, “mostly because of funerals,” Latham says. The monthly rent is $3,800. “The whole town loved her,” she says of her mother. “People keep asking, ‘Are you going to keep it running?’ ” And she begins to cry. The pandemic and ensuing public health restrictions have destroyed more than 100,000 small businesses so far. Embracing risk, becoming your own boss and executing a distinct vision are part of the American Dream. The shuttering of a small business shreds jobs, destroys security and flattens commercial districts. A vacant store is an eyesore and a well of heartache. It represents the death of someone’s fervent aspiration. Jacobs, an exuberant woman born in Remscheid, Germany, launched the floral department in the grocery where she worked but dreamed of her own shop. Her daughter, who went to school for education, shared her vision.The cozy store is decorated in natural colors, starburst pendants dangling from the ceiling, with gifts interspersed among the plants. Celidan is located in Naperville Plaza, a strip mall at the corner of Gartner and Washington, home to Oswald’s Pharmacy (established 1875) and Casey’s Foods (opened in 1969, celebrated for its meat market), the sort of entities that help make Naperville Naperville. Sure, there’s a Trader Joe’s — Celidan stopped stocking orchids because it couldn’t compete with a $15 phalaenopsis — but the country has more than 500 Trader Joe’s, each one featuring Hawaiian-shirted employees, wood decorating accents and too many frozen dumpling options. Then again, five decades ago, Trader Joe’s was also a small business. For years, the city magazine tapped Celidan — a mash-up of the three original employees’ middle names — as Naperville’s second-best florist, tied with another. Did this bother Jacobs? Not at all. “That was something she was so proud of with so many florists in town!” Latham wrote in her mother’s death notice. Being crowned the best became a goal. “Karin’s death hit everyone so hard. It’s like losing a member of the family,” says Carol Gallagher, a customer of 25 years who hired Celidan for her three daughters’ weddings. Latham says she didn’t qualify for a Paycheck Protection Program loan because her mother is still listed as president of the corporation. Though she’s the named beneficiary of the business, Latham


How Congress can expedite — or continue to delay — economic recovery

From the University of Chicago’s Becker Friedman Institute — named for Milton Freidman and Gary S. Becker, two of the university’s 30 Nobel laureates in economics — comes this warning: Recovery from the pandemic’s economic damage will be protracted, and perhaps made more so by some of Congress’s intendedly ameliorative measures. In their report “Covid-19 Is Also a Reallocation Shock,” Jose Maria Barrero, Nicholas Bloom and Steven J. Davis estimate “that 42 percent of recent pandemic-induced layoffs will result in permanent job loss.” And the authors say “creation responses to major reallocation shocks lag the destruction responses” — in consumer behavior and business practices — “by a year or more.” Disruption-triggered behavioral changes are producing some surges of hiring (e.g., by Amazon, Walmart, Dominos, Papa John’s, Facebook and Lowe’s, the home-improvement chain). Some of today’s shift to online shopping and to telemedicine will endure. But these positive developments are dwarfed by negative ones. For example, a late-March survey showed that 3 percent of restaurants had permanently closed and another 11 percent anticipated doing so within 30 days. This indicates 100,000 near-term closings, with large knock-on effects for associated sectors. Also, airlines, hotels and resorts will find that Zoom is convincing many people that much business travel is dispensable. The BFI report Barrero, Bloom and Davis recall the auto industry’s experience after the 1973 oil shock. Demand for small, fuel-efficient cars increased, and that for large cars plummeted. Many workers laid off from making the latter needed to, but would not, relocate to make the former. The authors also note “the emergence of 335 new infectious diseases in human populations from 1940 to 2004, with a rising incidence over time,” because of, among other things, urbanization and the democratization of air travel and international tourism. And now come some unintended, but not unpredictable, effects of government policies intended to be palliative. The BFI report says that policies designed “to preserve all pre-COVID jobs and employment relationships could prove quite costly” because they “are analogous to policies that prop up dying industries and failing firms.” These policies exact a high cost in resource misallocation and taxpayer burden. In contrast, there would be “potentially large benefits” from policies “that facilitate a speedy reallocation of jobs, workers, and capital to newly productive uses.” Slowing this will prolong the “reallocation shock.” The authors note that a loan from the Paycheck Protection Program is forgivable if