Mexico to start reopening border region, other areas as coronavirus lockdown eases

Long lines form outside a wholesale market in Ciudad Juárez on May 8, 2020. (Jose Luis Gonzalez/Reuters) MEXICO CITY — The country has been on a nationwide lockdown for more than seven weeks, and businesses are eager to reopen. Analysts are predicting that the economy could shrink up to 10 percent this year — one of the most significant recessions in Latin America. “We’ve begun a new stage. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel,” President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said at a news conference on Wednesday. Under the plan, the government would allow 269 municipalities scattered over 15 states to resume most activities on Monday. These are places that have had no confirmed coronavirus cases and whose neighboring counties also have no sign of covid-19, the disease caused by the virus. They represent just over 10 percent of all municipalities in Mexico. The rest of the country will be assigned a color starting June 1 that indicates the extent to which businesses, schools and public gathering places can reopen. In addition, three major industries will be included on the list of “essential” sectors that can resume operations nationwide — construction, mining and auto manufacturing. Mexico has had significant outbreaks in five cities, including Mexico City, the epicenter. As of Tuesday, the government had logged nearly 4,000 confirmed deaths from covid-19. Authorities have said that the actual number is certainly higher. [¡Caray! Coronavirus shuts the Mexican beer industry down, and the country is running dry] The lockdown in Mexico has been less severe than in many other Latin American countries, relying on persuasion rather than police or soldiers to keep people home. Schools and most businesses and government offices have had to close, however. Authorities say the restrictions have prevented a nationwide spike in cases, although the virus continues to spread through the country. Officials indicated that Mexico City will remain “red” — the highest level of lockdown. Three big states on the U.S. border, in contrast, are considered “green” — Chihuahua, Coahuila and Nuevo Leon. If they remain in that category, they will be able to resume manufacturing and other business activities in June, and schools in those states will reopen. New safety measures will be in place to discourage transmission of the virus. The Iztapalapa neighborhood in Mexico City on May 8, 202. (Edgard Garrido/Reuters) The Trump administration has been urging Mexico to restart assembly plants


After a draining spring, parents face the prospect of a summer without a lifeline: Camp

(Victoria Adams Fogg/The Washington Post) When Karen Arroyo packed up her three children to head to Fresh Air Fund’s Camp Junior last summer, the kids were nervous. The camp, at Harriman State Park in Ramapo, N.Y., was just shy of two weeks long, and Gabrielle, Mikayla and Aiden had never been away from the Bronx that long. But by the time the children came home, they were asking when they could return to the camp with a ropes course, kayaks and rustic cabins dotting a tree-lined lake. Now that covid-19 has turned the world on its head, though, they won’t be going back to Camp Junior in August. Fresh Air Fund, which provides free summer camp and host family experiences for children from underserved communities in New York City, has canceled its usual programs for the summer. It may switch to online programming such as virtual tours and meetings, or family camps where parents come and everyone maintains social distancing on site, according to Fatima Shama, the executive director. “We all need it this year,” said Arroyo, 38, a patient-care technician who has been working nights in the ICU and the emergency room at a Bronx hospital, in the thick of the covid-19 response in the city that has been an epicenter of the U.S. pandemic. Karen Arroyo's children (from left) Mikayla, Aiden and Gabrielle on the day the left for Fresh Air Fund’s Camp Junior last summer. They were scheduled to return this summer, but in-person camp is canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic. (Karen Arroyo) The kids’ father, Gabriel Gonzalez, is home with them and tries to provide Arroyo space to cope with the stress. But her work has affected her physically and mentally, and it’s not easy to hide that from her children, ages 14, 11 and 10. “They need it because they’ve been quarantined for so long, and we’ve been pretty strict about it because I’m on the front lines. . . . And I also need some time where I can scream and cry and get all of the emotions out without it affecting them,” she said. Approximately 20 million children attend camp in the United States each summer, according to the American Camp Association. Camp fills a need for many families, whether it’s child care — often methodically lined up months in advance — or simply an opportunity to be immersed in the outdoors,


Germany makes plans to reopen borders, as Europeans eye summer travel

of the tourism sector. (Odd Andersen/AFP/Getty Images) The restrictions pose a special challenge to Europe’s tourism sector, which accounts for 10 percent of its economy and an even bigger chunk in countries such as Greece and Italy. There, leaders are trying to balance public health pressures with a desire not to lose a full summer season of tourist cash. Now that European countries are gingerly loosening restrictions, E.U. leaders in Brussels are trying to avoid a repetition of the chaotic shutdowns. In a wide-ranging set of recommendations released Wednesday, they suggested that until countries feel they can open their borders to everyone, they would open up travel to every country where the pandemic is similarly under control. “Handled correctly, safely and in a coordinated manner, the months to come could offer Europeans the chance to get some well-needed rest, relaxation and fresh air, and to catch up with friends and family, in their own member states or across borders,” it said. For the time being, countries around Europe have started to open up in a piecemeal manner. Austria also indicated last week that it would like to open its borders by June. German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer announces details of planned border openings, in Berlin on Wednesday. (Hannibal Hanschke/Reuters /AP) Greek leaders are talking with a handful of other countries where the pandemic is under control to allow their people to enter. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have started to allow their residents to move freely within their collective territory. But the European Commission also suggested that countries should make sure they have enough medical capacity to handle both residents and visitors before opening up fully to tourism. “Deconfinement and tourism will not be risk-free as long as the virus circulates among us. We need to maintain vigilance, physical distancing and rigorous health precautions across the whole tourism and transport ecosystem to prevent further outbreaks as much as possible,” said Stella Kyriakides, the top E.U. official charged with health. E.U. leaders also encouraged the development of contact tracing apps for phones that would be compatible across borders, so that as Europeans start to circulate again, the digital tools designed to fight the pandemic can continue to work. Birnbaum reported from Brussels. Luisa Beck in Berlin contributed to this report. Read more Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news


The Health 202: Most states lifting coronavirus lockdowns haven't met federal guidelines for reopening

businesses to offer curbside pickup and delivery, after allowing golf courses, bait shops, outdoor shooting ranges and marinas to reopen in mid-April. California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) has allowed lower-risk businesses to reopen with social distancing guidelines as the second stage of his four-phase plan to reopen the state. But individual counties have leeway to chart their own course, with some moving faster or slower. Breaking: Los Angeles County’s stay-at-home orders will “with all certainty” be extended for the next three months, Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer acknowledged during a Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday https://t.co/jswRcZ5FkS — Los Angeles Times (@latimes) May 12, 2020 Washington policymakers — and the president – are raring to go. “Fauci’s comments came during a contentious Senate hearing as lawmakers of both parties pressed him and other federal health officials on whether the country is ready to reopen,” John Wagner, Mike DeBonis, Yasmeen Abutaleb and Laurie McGinley write. “The panel’s chairman and all four witnesses appeared remotely because they all recently came into contact with people with confirmed infections — a testament to how the virus has transformed life even within the corridors of power.” The officials cautioned that neither a vaccine nor surefire treatments would be available when schools are slated to reopen in the fall. They also said the U.S. death toll from the coronavirus is probably higher than the 80,000 reported to date. Yet President Trump has given little regard to the specifics of the CDC guidance, instead emphasizing in news conferences and on Twitter his desire for states to reopen as quickly as possible and proclaiming victory in national testing goals that are still unrealized. CBS News correspondent Weijia Jiang: Dr. Fauci reminds Americans there are "very well thought out" federal guidelines for reopening, and warns against prematurely open up:"My concern is we will start to see little spikes that will turn into outbreaks." Trump has encouraged states that are not following guidelines. — Weijia Jiang (@weijia) May 12, 2020 Welcome to The Health 202, our must-read newsletter on health policy. Ahh, oof and ouch AHH: House Democrats unveiled a massive and sprawling coronavirus relief bill which Republicans pledged to quash. The massive 1,800-page bill would dole out $3 trillion for health systems; state, local, territorial and tribal governments; and a second round of stimulus checks to millions of Americans. It would also bolster the Postal Service


view of Danville, Pa., with the Geisinger Medical Center visible in the far rear. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post) But so far, there’s been little need for aggressive mobilization. The area had just 50 covid-19 cases and no deaths as of Tuesday. “This rare combination shows how the push to reopen the economy and the need to control a deadly virus can coexist, with fewer of the tensions that have popped up across the country, such as an anti-quarantine protest that drew hundreds to Harrisburg, Pa., just 65 miles away,” Todd writes. “It might sound strange,” said Gustaaf de Ridder, a pathologist with Geisinger Medical Center, “but it helps when you have so many health-care workers in the region giving the message directly. There’s less resistance. Less suspicion. Because we want this to go right, too.” In other news The Health and Human Services Office of Civil Rights is taking action against West Virginia. The state was accused of denying an adoption request by someone being treated for opioid abuse. Roger Severino, director of the HHS Office for Civil Rights. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP) According to the complaint, an aunt and uncle seeking to adopt their young niece and nephew were denied based on the uncle's long-term use of doctor-prescribed suboxone as part of a medication-assisted treatment program. The couple said that despite receiving a favorable home study finding, social workers determined they weren't an appropriate placement for either child, citing the uncle’s history of taking prescribed suboxone. He hadn't tested positive for illegal drugs during the course of his treatment. Under a voluntary resolution agreement provided first to The Health 202, West Virginia health officials are now creating a new disability rights training plan and updating nondiscrimination policies. “People in recovery from opioid use disorder should never be stigmatized for seeking appropriate medical treatment that can save their lives,” OCR Director Roger Severino said in a statement. “OCR commends West Virginia’s willingness to update its policies and procedures to make sure individuals with disabilities do not face unlawful discrimination based on either misinformation or stereotypes in its state’s child welfare system.” Coronavirus latest Here are a few more stories to catch up on this morning: The Trump administration’s response: The Department of Health and Human Services is purchasing $645 million worth of face coverings for critical workers and federal agencies, Bloomberg Law’s Shira Stein reports. White House trade adviser Peter Navarro is


Power Up: Virtual coronavirus hearing shows Washington zooming to new normal

with Brent D. Griffiths Good Wednesday morning, Power People. Tips, comments, recipes? Anthony S. Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, testifies remotely via teleconference on Tuesday. ( Win McNamee/Pool/EPA-EFE/ Shutterstock) On The Hill ZOOMING IN ON THE NEW WASHINGTON: The first major “in person” Senate hearing on the coronavirus crisis Four of the nation's top health officials warned lawmakers during the virtual hearing about the deadly risks of opening states and cities too quickly — and the potential for a resurgence of the disease. With the death toll crossing 81,000 in the United States, and at least 1,363,000 cases reported, the witnesses outlined a long slog in developing a vaccine and even therapeutics to ease the severity of the disease — and even to ramp up contact tracing and the nation's public health laboratory capacity. But the hearing itself was a snapshot of the ways in which the pandemic is bringing Washington power centers back online — even as it changes business as usual. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and his Cavalier King Charles Spaniel Rufus beamed in to chair the hearing from his rustic-looking home in Tennessee. In a sign of the still-prevalent risks: Alexander is self-isolating due “out of an abundance of caution” after one of his staff members tested positive for coronavirus. Chairman Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., shown on a monitor, right, speaks during virtual Senate hearing, Tuesday, May 12, 2020 on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Win McNamee/Pool via AP) All four witnesses appeared remotely, as most came into contact with a White House staffer who tested positive for coronavirus. Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, appeared to be taking the call from his home office. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield appeared before a cluttered bookshelf against a teal-painted wall and Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn apparently chose a Getty stock image as his virtual background of choice. President Trump’s coronavirus testing czar, Adm. Brett Giroir, who has no known exposure, appeared in an official-looking office before four flags. CDC Director Robert Redfield is seen in a frame grab from a video feed as he testifies remotely from his home. (U.S. Senate Committee for Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee/Handout via REUTERS) The virtual hearing allowed senators to grill the witnesses from their kitchens, living rooms and what appeared to be


The Daily 202: Fauci offers coronavirus reality checks – and a warning to not be ‘cavalier’ about the risk to kids

for them to be furloughed and demand that they find another job within 60 days of being laid off. (NYT) As harvest season ramps up, millions of farmworkers who risk infection in fields and packinghouses lack basic workplace safety protections. Labor conditions on farms are much less regulated than in meat plants. (Politico) April saw the sharpest increase in grocery store prices in nearly 50 years, led by rising prices for meat and eggs, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (Laura Reiley) Most Americans doubt that social gatherings will be safe for months. “Americans are curbing their expectations about when it will be safe for gatherings of 10 or more people, with about 2 in 3 adults now saying it will not be until July or later before those events can happen, according to a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll,” Dan Balz and Scott Clement report. “In the face of plans in many states to gradually ease those limitations, significant majorities of Americans continue to emphasize the need for social distancing and other safety measures. Fully half of all Americans say in the poll that they think it will not be safe for gatherings of 10 or larger until mid-summer, including nearly one-quarter who say it will not be safe until 2021 or later. Just about 1 in 5 say they believe such gatherings are safe now or will be by the end of this month. … Republicans are significantly more likely than Democrats to say the limitations on restaurants, stores and other businesses are too restrictive, with 35 percent of self-identified Republicans and Republican-leaning independents saying this compared with 9 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents.” The contagion has already killed more than 100,000 U.S. small businesses. “Economists project that more than 100,000 small businesses have shut permanently since the pandemic escalated in March, according to a study by researchers at the University of Illinois, Harvard Business School, Harvard University and the University of Chicago. Their latest data suggests at least 2 percent of small businesses are gone, according to a survey conducted May 9 to 11,” Heather Long reports. “The carnage has been even higher in the restaurant industry, where 3 percent of restaurant operators have gone out of business, according to the National Restaurant Association. … Analysts warn this is only the beginning of the worst wave of small-business bankruptcies and closures since the Great


weeks, officials at many other major public universities have proclaimed their plans to welcome students back to campus in the fall, albeit with restrictions. Some schools have been circumspect, saying they plan to make a decision in the next several weeks. Few have openly declared that they will be running mostly online.” (Fun fact: My parents met as students at Cal State Northridge.) When schools reopen in Maryland, students could be wearing masks and getting temperature checks as they arrive. A new state plan proposes smaller classes, desks separated by six feet, and playgrounds with markings to keep students socially distant. (Donna St. George) Los Angeles County could keep its stay-at-home orders in place well into the summer, the county’s public health director said. (Los Angeles Times) A veterinary lab at Oklahoma State University – which typically tests for diseases such as rabies in dogs and respiratory ailments in Oklahoma’s cattle – has been running more human coronavirus tests than any other lab in the Sooner State. (Karin Brulliard) The governors of Virginia and Maryland will allow the D.C. suburbs to keep stay-at-home orders in effect. Maryland’s Larry Hogan (R) “has told leaders of the Washington suburbs and other places hit hard by the novel coronavirus that they will be able to opt out of a gradual reopening he plans to announce Wednesday … The decision could keep the entire D.C. region under extended restrictions even as more-remote areas begin to restart their economies,” Rachel Chason, Erin Cox, Rebecca Tan and Laura Vozzella report. Virginia’s Ralph “Northam (D) signed an executive order Tuesday extending the shutdown of Northern Virginia until at least May 28, two weeks after restrictions will probably be lifted for the rest of the state. Northam intends to move most of Virginia into ‘phase one’ of his reopening plan on Friday, but areas close to the nation’s capital will remain at ‘phase zero’ until the region’s number of new cases and other data related to the outbreak take a more positive turn. … Hogan plans to announce timing for Maryland’s first phase of reopening on Wednesday. But he reassured leaders of the state’s most populous jurisdictions on Tuesday that they will be able to maintain a stay-at-home order as they see fit.” Coronavirus-related deaths in Northern Virginia are nearly double the average elsewhere in the commonwealth, John Harden tabulates. The Supreme Court’s oral arguments over Trump’s tax


The Technology 202: Remote work could be here to stay for some tech workers

consider expanding it to cut office costs, said Hiten Shah, an entrepreneur who has worked remotely for 17 years. Shah advises several tech companies that already have remote workforces, including Buffer and Automattic. “Everyone's doing the math,” Shah, whose company FYI helps with cloud collaboration tasks like finding documents, told me. “Once you follow the money, it points to the fact that this is inevitable. “The cost savings are just ridiculous comparing to have an office and all the things that come with that,” he added. Even before the pandemic began, remote work was growing in popularity in the tech industry. But Shah says it was held back because venture capitalists preferred to invest in companies with offices nearby, and office proximity was also a factor in determining start-up acquisitions. He said the coronavirus has changed that calculation overnight. Tech offices, with perks like coffee bars and more, have also been a key recruiting tool for tech titans. However, they may not be as appealing to workers amid widespread fears about public health and changes to accommodate social distancing. Twitter and other Silicon Valley companies were among the first in the country to send their workers home amid the pandemic. Recent corporate announcements indicate their workforces could be some of the last to return But remote workforces come with serious trade-offs — even under normal circumstances. Nikhil Thorat, who works for Google, said that shifting entirely to remote work could lead to more loneliness: Permanent WFH is a bad direction, in my opinion. We’re already more isolated as a society than ever before and this promotes it even further.I love my coworkers, going to work is rad.And nothing beats in person communication. I will argue this point until the end of time. https://t.co/Zqg750UXU2 — Nikhil Thorat (@nsthorat) May 12, 2020 A shift to remote work could also disrupt many workers in food service, transportation and other administrative roles who support tech office operations. It also can create greater communication challenges for teams. Hunter Walk, a partner at the venture capital firm Homebrew, said companies need to be intentional about adopting policies to support employees who are going remote. Supporting remote work means more than just telling employees they don't need to come into the office. Impacts job roles, infrastructure, work processes, mentorship, benefits, etc — 🧑🏻💻☕ (@hunterwalk) May 12, 2020 Not every tech company is in a position to make


than 2.5 million pieces of content for the sale of masks, disinfectants and covid-19 testing kits, Facebook announced in a blog post yesterday. But the report doesn't "reflect the full impact of the changes we made during the pandemic," vice president for integrity Guy Rosen wrote in a blog accompanying the report. Facebook has streamlined its moderation during the pandemic to prioritize harmful content -- something that users say has left their reports about racist and obscene content unanswered. Facebook's Instagram also announced its enforcement data, including numbers on bullying for the first time. The company took action on1.5 million pieces of bullying content in the past two quarters. The sister company announced new anti-bullying features yesterday including allowing users to control who tags and mentions them. Workforce report Thirteen state attorneys general want Amazon to provide worker safety data following reports of worker illnesses and deaths. Workers protest the lack of adequate protection. (Valerie Macon/AFP/Getty Images) The same group of attorneys general wrote the company in March urging it to improve sick-leave policies, Bloomberg News's Chris Dolmetsch reports. “Amazon and Whole Foods must take every possible step to protect their employees and customers during the COVID-19 pandemic,” Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, who led the group, said in a statement. “We again call on these companies to provide assurances that they are complying with state laws and federal guidance aimed at keeping essential workers safe during this crisis.” Rant and rave The Verge's Makena Kelly gets to the bottom of a major 2020 mystery: Whatever happened to Andrew Yang's hologram? I did it. At long last, I have solved the Andrew Yang hologram mystery. pic.twitter.com/T3qWQuHonC — Makena Kelly (@kellymakena) May 12, 2020 Trending Why Your Shrink Wasn’t Offering Virtual Therapy Until Now Did it need to take a pandemic to let us Zoom with our therapist in our PJs? The Atlantic A Flower Shop Reinvented to Reopen How a small florist in Oakland, Calif., navigated a minefield of rules to sell on the make-or-break Mother’s Day weekend. The New York Times Bookmark this The Confessions of the Hacker Who Saved the Internet At 22, Marcus Hutchins put a stop to the worst cyberattack the world had ever seen. Then he was arrested by the FBI. This is his untold story. Wired Daybook The Senate Commerce Committee will host a hearing on the state of broadband amid the covid-19 pandemic


These are the trips people are dreaming about during the pandemic, according to Internet data

With most travel on lockdown until further notice, the best that people can do to cure their wanderlust is plan or window-shop for future trips. And, according to the data, they’re doing a lot of it. On Google, Pinterest and booking app Hopper, users are searching for destinations, trip ideas and, above all, clarity: Perhaps unsurprisingly, Americans’ biggest travel-related query is when international travel will resume. It’s a good question without, for now, a good answer. The State Department is still issuing a “Level 4: Do Not Travel” global health advisory, urging U.S. citizens to avoid all international travel. That recommendation has been in place since mid-March, and with the world still battling the coronavirus pandemic, there are no signs that officials will back off it soon. In the meantime, our fantasies live on. Here’s what travelers are searching for right now. According to Google The top U.S. travel searches on Google from April 1 to May 11 read like a globetrotter’s sad pandemic monologue: "can you travel during shutdown,” “will we be able to travel this summer,” “when will it be safe to travel again,” “where to travel during covid,” “when is it safe to travel again.” Meanwhile, after “when will flights resume” — and “how much shroom to trip first time” — the top Google searches for flights and trips were about the Maldives. (As of Wednesday, the small island nation had reported 904 confirmed cases of covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. Your amazing Maldivian vacation can wait.) The third, fourth and fifth most popular searches were regarding flights to and from India. The next top destinations? Sweden, Antarctica, Poland and Switzerland. According to Pinterest Pinterest has always been an aspirational social media tool. The platform allows users to find inspiration, collect ideas and share content, and it recently launched new features to help with travel planning, too. But when the coronavirus pandemic hit, user activity shifted. “In the early phases of the outbreak, Pinners put traveling on hold to focus on needs close to home,” Swasti Sarna, Pinterest insights manager, said in an email. “But in April, future optimism began to take hold as searches for ‘travel ideas’ and ‘travel destinations’ started to climb back up.” Sarna reviewed Pinterest’s travel-related activity, comparing searches from April 20 to May 3 against searches from April 6 to April 19. Her research shows that Pinterest users can’t wait


Main Afghan hedlineee goes right in hereeeeee

in west Kabul, newborns who had been rescued from Tuesday’s shooting were reunited with relatives. Outside one of the rooms, Khan Ali held his child, with his wife by his side. His wife had given birth minutes before the attack, and both she and the baby girl escaped unharmed. “God has given a second life for my wife and daughter,” he said. Relatives looking for the babies who were rescued from the attack gather outside the pediatric ward of Ataturk Hospital. About 20 newborns were brought to the ward, and half had lost their mothers. (Kiana Hayeri for The Washington Post) Khan Ali, with his wife, Khadija, holds newborn daughter Maryam. (Kiana Hayeri for The Washington Post) In a statement released Wednesday, Doctors Without Borders said it had “indications” that one of its employees was killed and that its health workers were following up with survivors. “Every effort is being made by our medical team to follow up on the newborns in the maternity hospital to ensure the best possible care to our patients and to those injured, to provide psychological care to affected staff, and to provide every necessary support to those bereaved,” the statement read. At Sarwari’s family home, relatives gathered to comfort the grieving and express their condolences. “Have you ever heard that newborn babies were shot dead? This is the first I hear. It hasn’t happened in any country around the world,” said Mohammad Rahim Yousifi, a distant relative. Sarwari’s mother wept uncontrollably, supported by a group of women in long black robes. “Stop. You’re already sick, don’t cry anymore,” one of the women begged. Outside, Sarwari’s 6-year-old daughter Razia played and giggled in the front garden. No one had told her what had happened to her mother. Rahila Yaqoobi, her aunt, said the young girl had been eager to go to the hospital with her mother. “I told her, ‘Don’t go, wait here. Mommy will bring a baby for you,’ ” she recalled and then began to cry. “I don’t know how to tell her that her mommy is dead,” she said. George reported from Islamabad, Pakistan. Read more Brutal attack on mothers and newborns prompts Afghanistan to resume offensive operations against Taliban Taliban attacks in Afghanistan surge after U.S. peace deal, inflicting heavy casualties Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news


American States Should Chase This Taiwan Company Instead

After all, that’s where TSMC’s largest clients are based. Ironically, given that it’s home to Silicon Valley — a name derived from the metal used to make integrated circuits — the state has relatively few chip manufacturing facilities. The big names of three decades ago have either merged, or gone fabless — meaning they design without making their own chips. In fact, America’s semiconductor production sector is spread across at least a dozen states around the country, according to my analysis of company data and press reports. (1)That could make a new TSMC facility in the U.S. up for grabs. And if making high-end display panels was a bad fit for Wisconsin, a chip factory fits well in the current and future structure of American industry. To this day, the U.S. remains the global leader in semiconductor design, development and manufacturing, with its universities churning out the best electrical and electronics engineers. TSMC founder Morris Chang is an alumnus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford, while the current chairman, Mark Liu, got his Ph.D from the University of California, Berkeley. Exactly how many jobs a U.S. fab might create is hard to predict. Earlier this year, Liu told investors that any factory there would deploy the company’s most advanced technologies, which work best at scale. As a comparison, TSMC employs over 10,000 people at its Tainan facilities, which utilize leading-edge manufacturing processes for Apple’s iPhone chips, and expects to add another few thousand in coming years. Given that semiconductor manufacturing engineer salaries in America can top $100,000, luring even half that number of jobs would be a boon for any state. The eagerness with which communities chased Amazon.com Inc. for the e-commerce company’s second headquarters shows that many local leaders are as eager to chase high-paid employment as they are factory jobs. With the prospect of the world’s eighth-largest tech company by market value looking for a new place to set up shop, U.S. governors are likely to find themselves back in the chase. (1) Data was collated from company statements, annual reports, and press reports for the past 5 years. This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. Tim Culpan is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering technology. He previously covered technology for Bloomberg News. For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion ©2020 Bloomberg L.P.


The Cybersecurity 202: Democratic coronavirus bill shows how partisan election security has become

secret court that grants spying warrants. A government watchdog found widespread problems with that process. Sens. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah.) are proposing an amendment that would introduce greater oversight of the court. Here's more on today's hearing from Politico's Andrew Desiderio and Martin Matishak. More government cybersecurity news: Coronavirus roundup Facebook put fact-checking warning labels on 50 million coronavirus posts last month. The Facebook app. (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg News) The company also removed more than 2.5 million posts to enforce a temporary ban on the sale of masks, disinfectants, and Covid-19 kits, Facebook announced in a blog post yesterday. Meanwhile, hackers are using celebrity giveaways to con users into sharing their bank details, researchers at the cybersecurity research firm Tenable found. More on coronavirus scams: A Guide to Pandemic Scams, and What Not to Fall For Fraudsters see opportunities to target us in these uncertain times. Here are their most popular schemes and how we can protect ourselves. New York Times Industry report Companies are slashing cybersecurity budgets as the pandemic creates long-term economic pressure. Fiber-optic cables feed into a switch inside a communications room. (Jason Alden/Bloomberg News) "It’s not a 2020 conversation when we talk about the impact of Covid. It’s a 2021 and a 2022 discussion,” Frank Dickson, program vice president at research firm IDC, told Catherine Strupp at the Wall Street Journal. More on the cybersecurity industry: Huawei Struggles to Get Along Without Google Chinese smartphone giant Huawei, barred by the U.S. from buying American technology, has found a lot of workarounds—but is having a hard time replacing Google, on which it has relied for a decade. Wall Street Journal Chat room Marcus Hutchins, a British cybersecurity researcher who stemmed the damage from the WannaCry attacks You can read some of Hutchins's reactions to the 14,000 word piece here: This is something I've wanted to do for a long time. I felt it better to share the full unadulterated story, and let people make up their own minds. It meant discussing a lot of uncomfortable facts about my past, but I want the story not to be some airbrushed half-truth. — MalwareTech (@MalwareTechBlog) May 12, 2020 It was also pretty clear that my lack of cooperation was not due to my resentment for the law, but because I don't believe that any nonviolent offender should go through the absolute hell that is the current


Time is running out: Small businesses and households are burning through what’s left of their cash

will return to normal, eventually. Thirty-nine percent of Americans with household income below $40,000 lost a job in March, according to a recent Fed survey of more than 1,000 people conducted April 3 to 6. These are people who had a job before the pandemic but then lost it. In contrast, only 13 percent of Americans earning over $100,000 lost a job in March. “While we are all affected [by the pandemic], the burden has fallen most heavily on those least able to bear it,” Fed Chair Jerome H. Powell said Wednesday, as he urged Congress to do more to aid the economy. A huge issue is that only certain types of work can be done from home. Sixty-three percent of workers with a college degree could fully work from home in March, the Fed found, versus only 20 percent of workers with a high school degree or less. According to the Fed survey, 18 percent of Americans did not expect to have enough money to pay all of their bills in April as the fallout from the coronavirus deepened, and it looked unlikely people would return to work soon. Not surprisingly, the results were even more painful for people who lost their jobs: 35 percent of people laid off believed they would miss a payment in April, the Fed found. The Fed conducted its economic “well-being” questionnaire just before the $1,200 relief checks began to go out from the U.S. Treasury, providing a lifeline for many poor and middle-class Americans who have lost a job or had their hours reduced. But there are ongoing signs that Americans continue to struggle with their bills. A third of renters have not paid their May rent at all or in full, according to a survey by Apartment List, an online rental marketplace. About 7 percent of U.S. small business owners said in late April and early May that they had no cash on hand, and another 9.5 percent say they cannot cover more than a week of operations, according to the Census Bureau. All told, about half would be out of cash within a month, and only 17 percent said they could last 3 months or longer without revenue. Already, 11.5 percent of small businesses — including 29.5 percent of accommodation and food-services operations — reported missing loan payments. And 24 percent reported missing other bills or scheduled payments. That number soars


The Finance 202: Small businesses got economic relief. Understanding how to use it is much harder.

and analytics real estate firm, estimates up to 28 million renters, or 22.5 percent of all U.S. households, are at risk of eviction or foreclosure because of the coronavirus. The Fed is encouraging such actions: “But for those companies needing financing the most, taking on new debt can be expensive. Those added costs come just as their ability to pay is threatened by falling earnings, a consequence of the pandemic-related shutdown. Despite the risks, this latest borrowing binge — unusual amid a punishing recession — may be the only way to avoid even more short-term pain for the U.S. economy. But the swollen debt means the recovery is likely to be a slow, grinding affair rather than the sharp, election-year rebound the White House covets.” Republicans universally panned the measure: “There are several pressure points looming that will increase the stakes, including expiring pandemic unemployment insurance and [PPP] provisions at the end of July, and the Sept. 30 ending of grant funding for airlines, as well as the fiscal year.” The bank's money laundering controls continue to be an issue: “The rebuke, pertaining to the bank’s U.S. operations, came in the form of a letter sent to the bank. According to German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, which first reported on it, the U.S. regulator also slapped Deutsche Bank for failing to solve problems that led it to classify the bank’s U.S. operations as being in ‘troubled condition’ in 2017. The Wall Street Journal reported on the classification in 2018, saying it had contributed to constraints on the bank’s operations. The designation is rare for a major bank.” They are now calling for an independent board chairman: “New York state’s pension fund, Church Commissioners for England, and Legal & General Investment Management, which all battled Exxon over global warming and lobbying disclosures have this year taken up a call to split the CEO and chairman roles, expecting a better reception from an outsider.” Cryptocurrency is becoming even more concentrated: “The change follows a deep market crash in March, when Bitcoin as well as the more than 5,000 other coins listed on crypto exchanges nosedived. Searching for safety, many investors also flocked to Tether, which is a so-called stablecoin, whose value is supposed to not deviate much, and is used as a conduit to purchase other coins.” He said any trade benefits won't be nearly enough: Today: Friday: From The Post's Tom Toles:


The limits of smartphone data are on display as the country seeks to reopen

location data in 369 Chinese cities, the Texas modelers had correctly determined infection had spread extensively beyond its origin in Wuhan during a period of widespread travel for celebrations related to the Lunar New Year in January. As the Texas team began developing models of the outbreak in the United States — a task made more difficult by the sheer novelty of a pathogen that spreads rapidly, with no cure or vaccine, through communities with no prior immunity — the smartphone location data was a welcome addition, said Lauren Ancel Meyers, a mathematical biologist who leads the Texas effort. But the exact connection between the slowing movement in late March and the decline in transmission was less clear when attempting to project into a future in which the world had changed. Officials could lift restrictions but not fear of covid-19. During the weeks when Americans were traveling much less, amid the closure of schools, businesses and large gathering spots, other changes also were underway that did not appear in the smartphone data. People stood farther back when chatting with friends. Many wore masks. Hand-washing became more frequent and thorough. Sneezing near others became seen as a reckless act. Modest fevers became cause to seek medical advice and testing. Such subtleties are hard to capture in available data sets and, as a result, difficult to convey in disease models. They rely on equations that amount to the best, most educated guesses of scientists weighing factors likely to affect transmission and death. The University of Texas model shows deaths falling gradually later this month, despite growing travel by Americans. But it will take at least several more weeks of infection data to determine more precisely the relationship between the broad metrics of movement and covid-19 transmission. All of this is made even more difficult by the time lag between the moments of infection, positive test results, hospitalizations and, in the worst outcomes, deaths. That means policy mistakes today could easily take weeks to show up in such traditional epidemiological data. But smartphone data showing renewed trips to coffee shops or nail salons typically depict events just a few days earlier — giving potential early warnings that the pandemic is growing more dangerous. But how much so remains unclear. “This data is informative, and it has allowed us to make reasonable predictions,” Meyers said. “It’s not perfect.” Murray, the University of Washington modeler,


We need to enter the fifth stage of coronavirus grief: Acceptance

Tom Frieden The five stages of grief provide a useful framework for thinking about crises caused by the pandemic. Although the concept sometimes oversimplifies a complex process, there are core truths: People tend to accept harsh realities gradually and with difficulty. People don’t necessarily proceed through all the stages or in linear order. But recognition of the pandemic’s impact, and widespread embrace of the final stage, acceptance, could speed our collective path to new, post-pandemic normal. Covid-19 Familiar stages of grief have been visible. At first, world leaders and even many experts in respiratory disease were in denial, hoping that the coronavirus would disappear. The pandemic provoked anger — at China, immigrants and the (essential) public health measures imposed to reduce spread. Some have tried to bargain, suggesting that the pandemic would be mild, harming “only” the elderly and infirm, or might even fizzle. Others succumbed to depression and considered giving up on control measures, hoping to magically achieve “herd immunity.” These responses are understandable. But the sooner people come to terms with the reality of the pandemic, the quicker we can prepare for lasting changes to the ways we work, learn, relax, govern ourselves and even treat one another. Details will emerge in the coming weeks and months, but some aspects of our changed lives are already clear: There will be more remote learning and telework and fewer in-person meetings. Travelers may have more space on planes, trains and buses. They’ll probably also face new barriers, including periodic border closures and quarantines. Schools and workplaces will better accommodate people vulnerable to severe disease, such as the elderly and those with underlying health conditions. Universities may shift to more online learning; many could close or be forced to adopt different economic models, including lower tuition. Facilities will change, too: Chairs and tables can no longer safely be close together for now. More elevators and doors are likely to be made touch-free, hand sanitizer and masks will be abundant, and disinfection will become routine. Our leisure habits will shift. Instead of large indoor gatherings, we’ll enjoy the outdoors. We may go to fewer restaurants and bars, at least for a while, but, as many already have in lockdown, we’ll find alternatives to meaningfully connect with people and groups. When the gym reopens and I’m able to play squash again, my partners and I will skip a match if we feel unwell;


Transcript: The Path Forward: Business & the Economy

packages and freight from every person in the world to every other person in the world, except for the four or five places prohibited by the United States Government. So, the reason that's important is that people see us in their neighborhoods where we perform business to consumer deliveries, but they don't see us moving the defibrillators and the ventilators and the airplane parts and things of that nature. So, in our international business, it's been quite challenged, really, since the trade wars began in the spring of 2018. We were sort of the first people to talk about that, and the tremendous pressure on Europe that the dispute with China and United States caused. But now, with the COVID-19 situation, we're basically operating an aluminum highway across the Pacific and from Asia to Europe and, to a lesser degree, across the Atlantic. On a daily basis, we generally have 15 or 16 flights across both the Pacific and the Atlantic. So, in that sector, we have flown hundreds and hundreds of flights in and out of China all during this period of time. We first got exposed to this virus in early January because we had about 900 employees in Wuhan. So, we've been dealing with it for a long time. But we never ceased service to China. And now, we are flying just a prolific amount of flights moving PPE and all sorts of medical equipment. In fact, we've moved, incredibly, about 17,000 tons of PPE. So, as you've seen, the concern about PPE has dissipated a great deal, and a big part of that was the airlift that was put in place by FedEx. We've been--the biggest participants, of course, have been others like UPS and Atlas and so forth. Then, in the domestic U.S. business, our B-to-B business, our business-to-business traffic contracted significantly when the lockdowns went into place, but it was replaced by enormous amounts of business to consumer deliveries. And fortunately, over the last two or three years, we had been leaning into that sector significantly, including, for instance, opening up Sunday as a regular delivery day just this past January, which was a very, very good thing that we did. So, and the freight business, which is also a big part of our company, the industrial economy, had not been doing very well prior to COVID-19, and it's definitely been hit hard. But


but it's Keynesian economics on steroids, that's for sure. But at the end of the day, the business of America is business, as a former president one time said. That's where all the income comes from. So, I'm more optimistic that you'll see a lot of progress, a lot of entrepreneurship, and invention--things that come across my desk every day, it's amazing, people that have come up with new products and they're trying to sell FedEx. And so, I think that you've got lots of contentious issues, like the Postal Service. And I think people forget, at great peril, that what really made the world wealthy from the end of World War II, was opening markets and invention and innovation. But opening markets, led by the United States, and now the protectionism that we have in this country and the mercantilism that China's demonstrated in the last few years, that, to me, is the most dangerous thing, to get that back in control and recognize that trade is what made the world much richer in 2020 than it was at the end of World War II. MR. DUFFY: How are you feeling? Are you worried about the phase one deal with China that had been negotiated and then is a little bit uncertain in the view of some people now? Given where you're perched, what do you think is likely to be the outcome, there? MR. SMITH: Well, we've been in China 35 years. Last week alone we probably flew 250 to 300 flights into China. China constitutes about almost 40 percent of the world's manufacturing, today. What was happening before COVID-19 is most western companies were bifurcating their supply chains so that they had one supply chain inside China for that enormous market of 1 billion 400 million people, but they were diversifying their supply chains outside of China, the--Vietnam, Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe. Of course, in this country, we did USMCA and we have a significant amount of our supply chain based in Mexico and China. So, I think it's important, as we come out of COVID-19, that whether they can execute exactly on the trade deal that was done, or not, that the effort be there on both sides to recognize how important this economic relationship has been, to mutual prosperity. And of course, we're very much in favor of re-embracing the TPP and the trade agreements


IOC pledges $800 million in aid to offset losses from Tokyo 2020 postponement

The International Olympic Committee created an $800 million fund to cover increased costs associated with the 12-month postponement of the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics, providing a starting point for estimating the financial hit the IOC will absorb from the scheduling shift resulting from the ongoing novel coronavirus pandemic. Of the funds, about $650 million will go to cover operating expenses associated with postponing the Games from summer 2020 to summer 2021, which the IOC announced in March, with the remaining $150 million going to individual international sport federations (IFs) and national organizing committees (NOCs) to help cover cash-flow shortages. “This crisis has had a very severe financial effect on the world, on society and on governments and so, of course, also on the Olympic Games,” IOC President Thomas Bach said in a conference call Thursday following a remote meeting of the IOC executive board. The $800 million figure represents only the IOC’s contribution and does not include the expected losses for the Tokyo 2020 organizing committee and the Japanese government. A previous budget estimate pegged the overall cost to the Tokyo 2020 committee, Japan and the city of Tokyo of hosting the Olympics at $12.6 billion. During Thursday’s call, Bach declined to estimate the overall additional cost associated with postponing the Tokyo Games, saying, “We are assessing … the respective impact caused by the postponement.” Bach also said the IOC would be looking for ways to “reduce the cost while maintaining the spirit of the Games and quality of the sports competition.” “We want this Olympics to be a frugal Games,” Bach said. It was unclear what formula or process the IOC would use to distribute the $150 million to IFs and NOCs or how much could be obtained, for example, by the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee and its affiliated national governing bodies. With some American NGBs suffering massive revenue losses, USOPC chief executive Sarah Hirshland last month said the organization hoped to complete an “expense reduction plan” by the end of May. Hirshland also took a 20 percent pay cut, while other members of her executive staff took cuts of 10 percent and other employees were offered voluntary buyouts. “What we know today is that we can expect both a significant delay in our revenue and a decline in that amount,” the USOPC told NGBs in a memo last month. Since the postponement of the Tokyo Games —


Where are people less likely to obey coronavirus restrictions? Republican counties.

visits to non-grocery businesses in blue counties dropped significantly more than in red counties, until the gap reached about 20 percent, a gap that remained roughly stable for the next five weeks — except on Easter, when Republican counties also stopped moving around. Of course, Democratic and Republican counties differ along other dimensions as well. But when we include demographic controls in our models — accounting for such things as education, population density, age and race — the difference in behavior between red and blue counties drops by only four percentage points, from 18 to 14 percent. We even find this gap when counties are hit with more covid-19 cases. In both Democratic-leaning and Republican-leaning counties, shopping drops after a covid-19 outbreak — but a gap remains, with Democratic counties still that are much more likely to stay home. The gap also holds when we take into account when governors started reacting to the pandemic. We checked whether blue counties are more likely to be in states where governors closed businesses earlier, which might cause the partisan gap. The answer is no. So what accounts for these partisan differences? We don’t know for sure. We are investigating various possible explanations, including differences in media consumption and local law enforcement practices. But we did find two noteworthy factors. You can see the first in the figure below, which shows how shopping in counties tracked the rise of covid-19 cases. Along the x-axis, you can see that for most people, visits to stores decreased as more county residents tested positive for covid-19. But that drop varied both by the county’s partisan leanings, and by its average education level. For the figure, we define “low education” as counties where high school dropouts outnumber college graduates by 5 percent and “high education” as counties where college graduates outnumber high school dropouts by 20 percent. In Democratic counties, people were more likely to stay home as covid-19 cases rose, no matter what percentage of residents had college degrees. That wasn’t true in Republican counties. As the virus spread, in red counties, people with high education were more likely to stay home, although not as much as people in blue counties. People in Republican counties with low education, however, paid no attention to the growing threat; they continued to go about their daily lives. Even when a governor issued a directive to stay home, the pattern


Designate grocery workers as first responders

move. The governors of Minnesota and Vermont recently designated grocery and food workers as first responders. Massachusetts, which designates grocery workers as essential, provides these employees access to priority coronavirus testing sites the state has set up. To be fair, many of our elected officials have taken positive steps. For example, D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) issued an executive order limiting the number of customers in stores, providing masks and gloves to employees and establishing hourly disinfecting procedures for self-checkouts, carts and baskets, as well as requiring customers to wear masks. She also recently opened testing sites for grocery workers and other essential employees. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) issued an executive order requiring shoppers and workers to wear face masks and requiring employers to make hand-washing stations available to employees at least once every 30 minutes. He also classified all “food distributors and suppliers” as “essential persons,” making them eligible for access to free child-care services. These moves are welcome but insufficient. First-responder designation is the only way to provide the protection needed by our essential grocery workers and their customers. Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) has taken no steps to protect grocery workers. And West Virginia went the opposite direction, overriding previous guidance to add 50 percent more foot traffic in that state’s stores, endangering everyone. If we had a normal, functioning federal government, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration would have implemented strict standards for all grocery employers. And the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would have implemented universal testing, prioritizing front-line workers such as grocery employees. But with President Trump’s refusal to accept responsibility for anything, it is up to governors and mayors to fill the gap. The scene in most grocery stores today is chaotic. Many shelves are depleted because of supply chain problems and customer hoarding. Customers are frazzled and anxious, don’t always adhere to social distancing and sometimes take out their frustration on employees. The situation is even worse in nonunion stores such as Walmart and Whole Foods. And the lack of testing leaves everyone vulnerable, with workers fearful that every encounter might not just cause them to get sick but also transmit the coronavirus to their families. Rather than giving grocery workers lip service by calling them heroes, let’s actually do something to protect their health. That’s what the first-responder designation will do. What are our elected officials waiting for?


With the pandemic shutting borders, digital nomads find it harder to roam

helped create modern borders, as Charles Kenny wrote in a March 25 article for Politico. “The Black Death is the first time in history that we’ve seen what I think you could call border controls,” said Kenny, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development. The long-term impact of the coronavirus remains to be seen, but Kenny says pandemic border controls have often lingered beyond the diseases themselves, frozen in place by apprehension of strangers. “Fear does drive a sort of instinctive reaction to keep outsiders away,” he explained. “That’s particularly true of a fear of infection.” Pandemics have affected U.S. border and immigration policies, as well, Kenny said, citing then-candidate Donald Trump’s insistence that the U.S.-Mexico border be closed during an Ebola outbreak in West Africa. “Tremendous infectious disease is pouring across the border,” Trump claimed in 2015. The 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act limiting Chinese immigration into the United States was extended in 1904 amid racist depictions of Chinese people as a source of epidemics, including the plague. The law stayed on the books until 1943. And as the world grapples with a novel, 21st-century virus, old impulses to keep outsiders away remain. After their frantic drive to the Czech Republic, Ang-Canning and Marriott scrambled to fly back to Vancouver, tripping repeatedly over border restrictions inside and outside the European Union. They arrived home March 20, cutting their trip short by three months, and entered a self-imposed quarantine. Since then, more countries have closed their doors. In addition to policies limiting travel, xenophobia has flared, with ugly incidents in Australia, China and beyond. Kenny hopes for a quick return to global cooperation, which he and other experts say is more helpful than border controls for quelling pandemics. There’s no sign those border controls will lift anytime soon. But some digital nomads are itching to book when the frontiers loosen. As they follow the coronavirus pandemic in a borrowed Vancouver apartment, Ang-Canning and Marriott are already eyeing a trip to Asia next fall. On Koh Tao, Dree Ziegler is ready to travel, as well. Before the coronavirus hit, she had planned to continue on to Japan and Malaysia, countries she said she would still like to see. “We’re under no illusions that this is going to happen quickly,” she said. However long it takes, she’s willing to wait it out in the island sunshine. “As long as I have


The Health 202: Only North Dakota and Kentucky meet federal criteria to reopen, new coronavirus tracker finds

quickly.” One example: Griffin Hospital in Derby, Conn., which has been a fixture of the state’s lower Naugatuck Valley for more than a century. The hospital is part of the community, running a program of 10 weeks of free lectures and a medical library for the public. But it may not be prepared to deal with the pandemic’s financial shock, Amy Goldstein reports. “To care for people of the valley who would get infected, Griffin invested in expensive preparations as the virus approached. During three weeks in March, the hospital spent $1.7 million — more than half its capital budget for the year — including for a crash renovation of East B, a shuttered medical unit,” Amy writes. “The hospital made these investments as the usual patients were vanishing,” The hospital’s fate depends on how long the virus lingers in Connecticut, as well as how much it can get from congressional aid for affected hospitals and whether the state pitches in any funds. It’s far from the only hospital in such straits. “U.S. hospitals will have lost a total of $50.7 billion a month from March through June,” Amy writes. “Some are better buffered to absorb a financial shock than the 115-bed community hospital on its own in working-class Derby, Connecticut’s smallest-size city.” That’s according to a preliminary study by a New York University group that found the test meant to determine whether an individual has the coronavirus in minutes missed a third of positive cases that were caught by diagnostic company Cepheid when using nasopharyngeal swabs and more than 48 percent when using dry nasal swabs, Carolyn Y. Johnson and Steven Mufson report. Abbott disputed that its test had any major issues and suggested the samples in the study may not have been tested correctly. It said the company’s reported false negative rate is 0.02 percent. There had been concerns about the Abbott test, which Trump hailed as a “whole new ballgame,” even before the NYU study. “Before a Senate committee last week, National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins testified that the rapid Abbott test had a 15 percent false negative rate, an apparent reference to unpublished data from Cleveland Clinic,” Carolyn and Steven write. The company will seek help from hospitals to expand the study that was launched last month, Stat News’s Rebecca Robins reports. The study previously only included individuals who have opted in to participating


Lockdowns are ending. We need to stay ready for the virus to surge.

handle on the virus than we do (that’s why German soccer will probably be able to resume play this weekend, while almost every other major professional sports league in the world remains shut down). Wriggle room for politicians remains in the Berlin system, not least in exactly how the effective reproductive number is estimated. But their approach includes clear metrics and consequences. In contrast, the British government announced a nonsensical equation to measure the pandemic consequences of its own lockdown loosening, which attracted widespread mockery and sowed confusion among a public that has endured more pandemic deaths to date than any other European nation. As U.S. states emerge into the summer and loosen their grip on the pandemic, they should be prepared for it to come roaring back. Nobody knows exactly when or where it will. We have to accept that there are a lot of things we don’t yet know about the virus, or how people will react to reopening. We will probably make different sorts of contacts with each other than we did in the winter before the pandemic: Some places will mandate the use of masks; others won’t. Some places will permit larger gatherings than others, and with that will come the risk of super-spreading events. The amount of time people spend together in the relatively close quarters that appear necessary for most transmission will be crucial. As will how many people are actually immune after infection — it’s not a given that they all will be. I and a group of colleagues have put together a website that identifies 13 key areas that can form the basis for how we handle the next few months. They start with some of what I’ve talked about here and go on to discuss the other components of a long-term plan to deal with the pandemic. It’s our take on a possible way ahead that responsibly manages the crisis. I started with talk of the winter easing. But the weekend after that happened here in Boston, it snowed again, and as I type, there is a frost advisory. Things that get better can get worse again. But unlike the temporary reversals of nature as the seasons change, we know that the virus will be back once it gets the opportunity. If we do the right thing now, we can be ready for it. Don’t panic. Do prepare. Read more: Virus


Today’s children are the pandemic generation. For millions, the future is now grim.

critical vaccines. Extensive surveys conducted by Save the Children also found that nearly half of all children said they were “worried” and a third reported feeling “scared.” These challenges only add to the serious adversities many children already face — from poverty and homelessness to food insecurity and suboptimal schools. A new report from Columbia University’s Center on Poverty & Social Policy projects that if unemployment reaches 30 percent, child poverty could rise from 13.6 percent as of February 2020 to nearly 21 percent by the end of the year, representing an enormous setback in the painfully slow progress that has been made over the past four decades. The sudden closing of schools and elimination of educational summer activities in many communities might have lifelong consequences for children who already live with severe social and economic adversities, impairing even further their ability to read at grade level, graduate from high school on time and have equitable access to post-education opportunities generally. A recent study from the University of Southern California finds that 37 percent of students whose families make less than $25,000 per year do not have Internet access, appropriate technology or both to allow remote learning. Nearly 23 percent of New York City high school students living with low-income families have not availed themselves of Internet-based classes. This does not include another 19 percent of the student body who are in schools that have not yet reported attendance. If we assume that full reopening of schools will not be feasible until an effective vaccine is available, it is altogether possible many children will lose at least a good part of the 2020-2021 school year in addition to what they lost in the current academic year. It is nearly impossible to imagine, much less calculate, what this will cost in opportunities lost for our most vulnerable children. Many of us have taken some comfort in early data suggesting that covid-19 had largely spared children from the most dire medical consequences of the disease. While it is true that the prevalence of the diseases’s most serious complications will likely remain predominantly among adults, there are reasons to be concerned about a new pediatric illness that experts believe is related to covid-19, known as pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome, consisting of rash, high fever and, while rare, cardiovascular shock and death. While data are not yet published, we spoke with pediatricians in Detroit,


Hogan announces gradual reopening; D.C. shutdown extended through June 8

protecting low-income people and communities of color while reopening. The covid-19 death toll in the District, Maryland and Virginia passed 3,000 on Wednesday after government health departments reported 103 new fatalities. The deaths include 14 in the District and three dozen in Virginia, including nine in Fairfax County, seven in Prince William County and three in Arlington. Maryland disclosed 53 fatalities, with Montgomery and Prince George’s Counties reporting 15 and 16 new deaths, respectively. Known infections in Prince George’s passed 10,000, the most of any jurisdiction in the greater Washington area. Maryland also reported that the number of covid-19-related deaths among residents and employees at nursing homes, assisted-living facilities and group homes has risen to 995, up from 804 the week before. According to a Washington Post analysis, half of the 372 fatalities reported by the state since last Wednesday involved residents or staff at long-term care facilities. In Montgomery, the state’s most populous jurisdiction, 294 deaths — or nearly 70 percent of its total — are linked to long-term care facilities. This is significantly higher than neighboring Prince George’s, where about 37 percent of covid-19 deaths are linked to nursing homes. D.C. health department director LaQuandra Nesbitt said the city is measuring community transmission by focusing on when people started developing symptoms — because test results lag behind when people were infected — and excluding new infections at group facilities such as nursing homes. The District has seen four days of declining community transmission, she said, but officials want to see that decline continue for two weeks before reopening. The city has met other reopening metrics, such as hospitals running below 80 percent of capacity for seven days in a row and the ability to test high-risk groups. While Virginia and Maryland have seen conservative-led protests against social distancing measures, deep-blue Washington has not seen a similar backlash. That could change Thursday with a noon protest scheduled at Freedom Plaza outside the District government building. It is being organized by a former Republican D.C. Council candidate and an activist who supports President Trump. Bowser said she hadn’t heard about the protest but “it better be small.” As of Wednesday evening, a dozen people indicated on Facebook that they would attend. On a phone-in town hall organized by the mayor’s office, Betsy Fisher, who runs a Dupont Circle clothing shop, said the deaths of 350 in a city of 700,000


The real problem with the cruise industry

Christine BN Chin is a professor and the dean of the School of International Service at American University. Her research focuses on global migration, including global tourism and the cruise industry. She is the author of “ Cruise ships have garnered unprecedented global news media attention in 2020. But little of it has been favorable. In February, Diamond Princess was forced to quarantine in Yokohama, Japan. Soon, what appeared to be an isolated story of shipboard infectious disease quickly transformed into stories about all-inclusive oceanic hotels becoming “floating Petri dishes.” Thousands have been infected and nearly 100 have died of covid-19 in cases linked to cruise ships. Last week, Carnival Cruise Line announced that it might resume sailing from three U.S. ports for Caribbean itineraries as early as Aug. 1, one week after the expiration of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s “no sail order.” Pre-bookings jumped to twice the level of last year. Clearly, shutdown-weary travelers are ready to go cruising. But the resumption of sailing should be accompanied by a “new normal” — a rethinking of how we regulate the cruise industry. Cruise ships operate in a unique, loosely regulated environment that endorses all sorts of questionable practices. What the novel coronavirus has revealed about the cruise industry is a “hidden in plain sight” problem — an international maritime regulatory structure that obfuscates and often ignores legal and social responsibility, accountability and culpability. In April, ocean cruising came to a complete halt when the CDC issued its “no sail order.” But the order was enforceable only within U.S. territorial waters. While cruise lines successfully negotiated with port authorities to allow ships to dock and debark passengers, crew members were required to remain onboard until arrangements could be made for transportation back to their home countries. By mid-May, approximately 100,000 crew members remained on ships in international waters all around the world: At least 50 of their ships have reported onboard infections. The Cruise Lines International Association (the largest global cruise trade association) responded to the CDC’s strict conditions for debarking crew by saying that they were “impractical.” Passengers and crew members (or their surviving families) have filed lawsuits against several cruise lines. Until the early 20th century, ships were mostly built, managed, crewed, flagged and operated under the umbrella of their owner’s nationality or one country’s primary ship registry. Between the two world wars and for military,


Trump administration plans to expand emergency gear in national stockpile

President Trump announced Thursday a plan to reconfigure the government’s chronically undersupplied stockpile of emergency gear to help combat the coronavirus pandemic, accelerating manufacturing and broadening the array of supplies it houses. The president said his administration is launching what he termed a “groundbreaking initiative” to “replenish and modernize” the government’s stores of masks, ventilators and other essential pandemic-fighting medical equipment to create a 90-day reserve. In keeping with his “America First” mantra, Trump and his aides said the manufacturing would be carried out by U.S. companies, diminishing the reliance on foreign factories that have been the stockpile’s major sources. Speaking in Allentown, Pa., at an Owens & Minor distribution center for medical supplies, the president said “the cupboards were bare” in the federal Strategic National Stockpile when the novel coronavirus arrived in the United States. “I am determined that America will be fully prepared for any of the future outbreaks, of which we hope there’s going to be none,” Trump said, standing in front of stacked cardboard boxes, each with a drawing of a medical gown. “Our effort begins by dramatically increasing our reserves.” Neither the president nor senior administration officials who briefed reporters before his remarks addressed the effort’s cost. They did not say whether building up the supplies would affect the administration’s method for allotting the materials, which has been relatively opaque. And they did not say whether the plan would alter Trump’s stance that the stockpile should be a resource of last resort and that states and hospitals should buy whatever protective gear they can on their own. The adequacy of the federal Strategic National Stockpile and the way supplies have been distributed emerged as a sore point in the Trump administration’s response to the escalation of covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. The disease has claimed more than 85,000 lives in the United States. Long before the coronavirus arrived, the stockpile had been underfunded. In early April, Department of Homeland Security officials acknowledged that stores of emergency gear they’d had in the stockpile were nearly depleted. Since the pandemic reached the United States, the stockpile’s scant supplies have been distributed unevenly, prompting complaints from many governors. Trump has bristled at those frustrations. At one point, he said he had told Vice President Pence not to call governors who were dissatisfied. Another day, Trump said, “You know, we’re not a shipping clerk.” The stockpile was


Quarantine Is a Terrible Way to Start Your Holiday

rather than scientific decisions. Michael O’Leary, the boss of budget airline Ryanair Holdings Plc, called the U.K.’s position “nonsense.” When you look at the hodgepodge of baffling and often contradictory national solutions that are emerging, you can understand the frustration. Like his peers, O’Leary is desperate to get back in the skies and he’s aware that telling visiting tourists and business travelers that they face lengthy confinement, even in comfortable Airbnb accommodation or a hotel, would be the kiss of death for his industry. Unless things change, a Brit holidaying in Spain might have to isolate on arrival and then again on their return home, meaning they could spend almost a month in isolation. That’s not many people’s idea of a holiday. IATA, the global airline body, warned this week that international travel “cannot restart under such conditions.” National governments have begun teaming up with countries they consider safe, but those with more serious virus outbreaks might be left out, with no realistic option for their citizens other than a staycation. As beauty contests go, it’s become a pretty ugly one. Instead of a clear and synchronized international approach, the confusing patchwork of policies will be difficult for holidaymakers and travel companies to navigate. One can’t forget that Covid-19 was only able to spread so swiftly because infected travelers brought it with them on planes and ships. Places such as Hong Kong and New Zealand, which have stamped out the virus, might undo that good work if infected tourists seeded lots of new cases. Some governments may decide that keeping people alive is more important than guaranteeing tourists their two weeks in the sun, whatever the consequences for the travel industry. It’s certainly not for the airlines to decide how and when flying restarts. Still, as lockdowns are gradually being lifted, the quarantining of international arrivals is starting to look arbitrary. While people can move around more freely within their home countries, if you cross a border, even for a few minutes, you risk having to self-isolate. Yet within national borders there are often big differences in regional infections rates. Some parts of countries are clearly much safer than others. Quarantine is a particularly sensitive topic in the European Union because free movement is a cherished principle. The bloc is urging countries not to discriminate and for places with similar virus-risk profiles to open up together. Ultimately, however, national governments


Marketers have a new message

(The Washington Post illustration/iStock) In early March, when Cara Marshall was planning her annual family trip to Puerto Rico, where she and her wife own a condo, the novel coronavirus was a headline about a devastating virus in China. But when the time came to book flights mid-month, the news was getting closer to home and more dire. Although she was looking forward to attending local friends’ wedding, traveling in May appeared to be a non-starter. Then, while scrolling Instagram, she saw posts on the Visit Puerto Rico page that served as a reality check. The running hashtag, #AllInGoodTime, assured her that canceling her family’s plans was not just the right thing, it was necessary. “It’s nice to be casually reminded that there’s something to look forward to,” says Marshall, a finance professor who lives in New York City. “It really puts things in perspective.” As the coronavirus pandemic continues to pummel the travel industry — grounding flights, shuttering hotels and cultural institutions, canceling events and sports games — plans are on hold. Indefinitely. Tourism experiences have been downgraded to virtual tours of museums, zoos, castles, national parks and forests as destination marketing organizations aim to stay on people’s radars. But a few tourism bureaus have taken a radical approach, completely upending the message that every destination tries to communicate creatively. As a sign of our unprecedented times, they’re saying — rather, insisting: Don’t come here. Forget about FOMO and don’t even think about trying to score a deal on a plane ticket. Stay home. Please, for the love of all that’s holy. [Planning your summer vacation amid coronavirus fears] “It’s a weird situation. Tourism marketers’ reason for being is to get people to come visit,” said Rosie Spinks, global tourism reporter for Skift, a travel news and intelligence website. “It’s an interesting time for tourism marketing. Not only is there the challenge of figuring out how to market tourism when everyone is scared to travel, but almost reinventing what the market is.” And so travel companies have been compelled to pivot into community health awareness vehicles and promote safety and social distancing. It’s a tricky maneuver because if it isn’t done just right, it risks sounding tone-deaf or, worse, opportunistic. Perhaps the most widely seen examples of how to play it right is the Hotels.com television commercial featuring its distinguished mascot, Captain Obvious. Sitting in a chair, he slathers


CDC offers brief checklists to guide businesses, schools and others on reopening

help them safely resume a version of their previous lives. The documents released Thursday were reviewed extensively by White House Office of Management and Budget officials who were concerned the initial draft was too burdensome on churches and restaurants, among others. The CDC removed from an earlier draft a recommendation that no facility open in an area where spread of the virus requires “significant mitigation.” But it left a warning against reopening against local or state orders. That puts the responsibility squarely on state and local governments to impose those rules. “Usually it’s the state and local health department that follow CDC’s lead and not the other way around,” said Matthew Seeger, who has researched crisis communication for the past 35 years at Wayne State University. “It’s the latest way the current leadership is putting the onus on states and trying to make this a decentralized structure. That’s not how CDC usually works.” Thursday’s guidance helps workplaces decide whether to reopen, how to promote hygiene measures such as mask-wearing and hand-washing before they do and how to monitor employees for symptoms of infection, among other advice. It recommends that restaurants and bars “encourage social distancing and enhance spacing at establishments,” in part by “spacing of tables/stools, limiting party sizes and occupancy, avoiding self-serve stations, restricting employee shared spaces, [and] rotating or staggering shifts, if feasible.” It advises mass transit systems to “limit routes to and from high transmission areas” before resuming full service. No decision tree for faith communities was released. Telling houses of worship how to operate stirred controversy when the CDC’s original draft instructions were leaked last month. Public health experts said the way the Trump administration has rolled out guidelines makes it less likely people will heed them. “In many ways, this advice is the only medicine we have,” Seeger said. “We don’t have a vaccine yet. We don’t have treatment. All we have is human behavior and that behavior is based on the information people get and whether they will listen to that information.” Seeger also helped CDC create a manual on emergency communication. The advice so far from the federal government has been inconsistent — on masks, on the need and availability of testing and contact tracing, and now on how businesses and community organizations should approach reopening. The White House at first shelved the CDC guidelines. When asked about them, the White House said


We are a country to be pitied

Korea’s fatalities total 260. That is not a typo. How could a nation with barely half our per capita income have done so much better? Washington has been Seoul’s patron and teacher for more than six decades, yet somehow we apparently have unlearned much of what we taught. Much closer to home, Trump’s boasting about how his border wall is supposedly helping protect Americans against the virus is a joke. Mexico’s reported death rate from covid-19 is a small fraction of ours (though the numbers may be higher than the official count). In the border town of Nogales, Mexican authorities are using disinfectant spray to sanitize visitors arriving from Arizona. How could it be that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which I always thought of as the premier public health agency in the world, so completely botched the development of a test for the novel coronavirus? We have by far the biggest economy in the world, and we believe we have the most advanced science. Yet for the first months of the pandemic, as the coronavirus silently spread, we were essentially blind. By the time we had eyes on the enemy, it was too late. We have managed to slow the spread of the virus, but I worry we lack the social cohesion to stay the course. On Wednesday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court invalidated Gov. Tony Evers’s (D) extension of his stay-at-home order. By evening, bars in some Wisconsin cities were packed — no social distancing, no masks. In Milwaukee and several other jurisdictions, however, orders by local officials kept the bars closed. What are the Wisconsin cities that remain closed supposed to do? Set up roadblocks to keep outsiders away? The Florida Keys have done just that: Since March 27, checkpoints have been in place to keep visitors from entering the island chain — which has seen just 95 cases of covid-19 and only three deaths. The America I know, or thought I knew, is one of restlessness, free movement, open roads. Until there is a vaccine, post-covid America may be very different. Thanks to Trump, we have no coherent national plan to survive the pandemic. But also thanks to the federal government — and I include Congress as well as the president — we lack the kind of sturdy economic safety net that protects unemployed workers and shut-down business owners in some of the hardest-hit European


We are a country to be pitied

to slow the spread of the virus, but I worry we lack the social cohesion to stay the course. On Wednesday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court invalidated Gov. Tony Evers’s (D) extension of his stay-at-home order. By evening, bars in some Wisconsin cities were packed — no social distancing, no masks. In Milwaukee and several other jurisdictions, however, orders by local officials kept the bars closed. What are the Wisconsin cities that remain closed supposed to do? Set up roadblocks to keep outsiders away? The Florida Keys have done just that: Since March 27, checkpoints have been in place to keep visitors from entering the island chain — which has seen just 95 cases of covid-19 and only three deaths. The America I know, or thought I knew, is one of restlessness, free movement, open roads. Until there is a vaccine, post-covid America may be very different. Thanks to Trump, we have no coherent national plan to survive the pandemic. But also thanks to the federal government — and I include Congress as well as the president — we lack the kind of sturdy economic safety net that protects unemployed workers and shut-down business owners in some of the hardest-hit European countries — nations that once looked up to the United States as a model. In the Netherlands, for example, the government is granting employers up to 90 percent of their payroll costs so they can keep paying their workers rather than resort to furloughs or layoffs. That kind of continuity ought to speed recovery when reopening becomes safe. Here, nearly 40 million workers have filed for unemployment. [ The Opinions section is looking for stories of how the coronavirus has affected people of all walks of life. Write to us. ] The European Union is working with the World Health Organization and other wealthy nations such as Japan and Saudi Arabia in a crash program to develop a covid-19 vaccine, with initial funding of $8 billion. The United States has decided to go it alone with its own vaccine program, “Operation Warp Speed.” In the past, one might have bet on U.S. ingenuity and drive to win the race. But given our failure in testing, would you still make that bet now? And why is there a race at all, rather than a U.S.-led global effort? The covid-19 pandemic has exposed the depth of America’s fall from greatness. Ridding ourselves


As virus shuts borders, digital nomads find it hard to roam

really fell apart.” They left that morning on a frenetic, eight-hour drive to reach Prague before the borders closed. At crossings that had been wide open a few days before, guards took their temperatures and asked pointed questions about the trip. [A world of small-screen adventure: Here are the best travel TV shows for streaming] “This virus does not respect borders,” World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in February. Historically, in fact, pandemics helped create modern borders, as Charles Kenny wrote in a March 25 article for Politico. “The Black Death is the first time in history that we’ve seen what I think you could call border controls,” said Kenny, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development. The long-term impact of the coronavirus remains to be seen, but Kenny says pandemic border controls have often lingered beyond the diseases themselves, frozen in place by apprehension of strangers. “Fear does drive a sort of instinctive reaction to keep outsiders away,” he explained. “That’s particularly true of a fear of infection.” Pandemics have affected U.S. border and immigration policies, as well, Kenny said, citing then-candidate Donald Trump’s insistence that the U.S.-Mexico border be closed during an Ebola outbreak in West Africa. “Tremendous infectious disease is pouring across the border,” Trump claimed in 2015. The 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act limiting Chinese immigration into the United States was extended in 1904 amid racist depictions of Chinese people as a source of epidemics, including the plague. The law stayed on the books until 1943. And as the world grapples with a novel, 21st-century virus, old impulses to keep outsiders away remain. After their frantic drive to the Czech Republic, Ang-Canning and Marriott scrambled to fly back to Vancouver, tripping repeatedly over border restrictions inside and outside the European Union. They arrived home March 20, cutting their trip short by three months, and entered a self-imposed quarantine. Since then, more countries have closed their doors. In addition to policies limiting travel, xenophobia has flared, with ugly incidents in Australia, China and beyond. Kenny hopes for a quick return to global cooperation, which he and other experts say is more helpful than border controls for quelling pandemics. There’s no sign those border controls will lift anytime soon. But some digital nomads are itching to book when the frontiers loosen. As they follow the coronavirus pandemic in a borrowed Vancouver apartment, Ang-Canning and


Project and data on hospital capacity and influenza-like illness from the CDC. “It’s supposed to be the progress bar for the country,” Panchadsaram partnered with the groups United States of Care and Resolve to Save Lives, along with the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy, on the project. The organizers, who worked together on fixing HealthCare.gov during its flubbed rollout in 2013, spent the last few weeks pulling the data and organizing it into readable charts that allow states to be compared across a variety of metrics. The data include several key metrics for reopening laid out by the CDC and the White House. The CDC says that a state should see a “sustained reduction” of confirmed infections within a 14-day period before “proceeding to a phased comeback.” Or, testing should be ramped up enough that states should reduction in positive tests as a percentage of total daily tests. The new website details how confirmed new cases are trending and how many tests out of total tests are showing up positive. But because the officially released federal guidance is still vague, the creators had to make a number of their own calls about when to award a state red, yellow or green in particular categories. For example, a state gets a green rating if its daily confirmed cases have decreased more than 5 percent during the previous 14-day period. The rating is yellow if there’s less than a 5 percent change in either direction. And it’s red if the cases increase more than 5 percent. To make those calculations, the creators used the seven-day average of confirmed cases — a practice that helps smooth out the data and shows trends better than relying on incremental changes every day. The need for such a website underscores several distressing realities in the United States. Many states are still struggling to tamp down the virus even after people spent weeks avoiding workplaces, schools, churches and places of business. And many different factors play into how well states can contain the virus and protect their health-care systems after ending lockdowns. These factors include each state’s number of daily tests and how many hospital ICU beds are empty. It’s exceedingly difficult to measure and compare how all the states are doing on these fronts. The CDC had prepared more extensive and detailed guidance on the metrics states should use in reopening, but the White House never


when using dry nasal swabs, Carolyn Y. Johnson and Steven Mufson report. Abbott disputed that its test had any major issues and suggested the samples in the study may not have been tested correctly. It said the company’s reported false negative rate is 0.02 percent. There had been concerns about the Abbott test, which Trump hailed as a “whole new ballgame,” even before the NYU study. “Before a Senate committee last week, National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins testified that the rapid Abbott test had a 15 percent false negative rate, an apparent reference to unpublished data from Cleveland Clinic,” Carolyn and Steven write. Genetics giant 23andMe announced it will recruit the sickest covid-19 patients as it researches how genetics plays a role in coronavirus cases. The company will seek help from hospitals to expand the study that was launched last month, Stat News’s Rebecca Robins reports. The study previously only included individuals who have opted in to participating in 23andMe’s research. Now it wants to recruit up to 10,000 new participants who have been hospitalized with the disease to understand why some cases require severe measures. “The new arm of the company’s Covid-19 study will be limited to people who are not already 23andMe customers,” Rebecca reports. “… New participants will be mailed a spit kit so they can send 23andMe a sample of their genetic material, which the company can then analyze. They’ll also be asked to fill out the same survey about their symptoms and family members that 23andMe’s customers who participated in the research were asked to complete.” In the states: Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) announced the state will gradually reopen beginning this weekend. Barbershops and nail salons will be able to reopen, with some conditions, while non-essential stores and houses of worship will be allowed to open at 50 percent capacity, unless local governments find it unsafe, Fenit Nirappil, Erin Cox and Ovetta Wiggins report. Meanwhile, D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) announced the extension of the district’s stay-at-home order and closure of nonessential businesses through June 8. The Wisconsin Supreme Court struck down Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’s administration’s decision to extend stay-at-home orders, Colby Itkowitz reports. Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer backpedaled her remarks that the county’s stay-at-home order would continue for three months, Meryl Kornfield writes in The Washington Post’s live blog. New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham


The Daily 202: Steve King claims he’ll get committee positions back. Some House Republicans promise to fight him.

length. At this stage, they are still experimental approaches by doctors desperate to find ways to help gravely ill people and throwing everything they can think of at the problem,” Ariana Eunjung Cha reports. “The menu of treatment options, tried singly and increasingly in combination, includes the blood plasma of covid-19 survivors, a rich source of antibodies that may help neutralize the virus; drugs to suppress the body’s own immune response, which some believe goes into hyperdrive as it tries to fight an invader; anticoagulants, which decrease the risk of deadly clots, and finally, antivirals, such as remdesivir, the Gilead Sciences drug that recently won approval for emergency use from the Food and Drug Administration. Randomized clinical trials are necessary to confirm early anecdotal data, with the results probably months away. But doctors say they believe they are seeing some positive results from these and other things they have learned through trial and error these past 10 weeks.” Researchers are finding the virus in every part of the body. “Two separate reports suggest the virus goes far beyond the lungs and can attack various organs -- findings that can help explain the wide range of symptoms,” CNN reports. “For one study, Jie Zhou and colleagues at the University of Hong Kong wanted to see how well the virus can flourish in the intestines. They grew intestinal organoids -- lab dish versions of the organs -- from both bats and people. They showed the virus not only lived in these organoids, but replicated. … Separately, a team at University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf in Germany performed autopsies on 27 patients who died from Covid-19. They found the virus in a variety of organs. ‘SARS-CoV-2 can be detected in multiple organs, including the lungs, pharynx, heart, liver, brain, and kidneys,’ they wrote in a letter published in the New England Journal of Medicine.” A bamboo shortage is forcing the Calgary Zoo to repatriate two pandas. The Canadians are shipping the giant pandas back to China because disruptions in the global supply chain have made it increasingly difficult to obtain fresh bamboo to feed them. (Farzan) Russia’s health system is overwhelmed. At least 169 medical staff have died in the country, according to a memorial list created by local doctors in the absence of any official count. (Robyn Dixon) Mexico will start lifting its quarantine for hundreds of counties starting Monday and will gradually