Three men wrongly imprisoned for 36 years to receive $2.9 million each from Maryland

recently told investigators. Mosby said she was seeking a law that would prohibit such questioning of juveniles by police without a parent, guardian or lawyer. Eventually, Kincaid and the police developed a story that all three teens had assaulted Duckett and stolen his jacket. Police found a Georgetown jacket in Chestnut’s closet. Though his mother produced a receipt for the jacket, Baltimore police arrived at each teen’s home at 1 a.m. on Thanksgiving Day and took them into custody. The witnesses told investigators from the Conviction Integrity Unit that they were then regularly coached by Kincaid and then-Assistant State’s Attorney Jonathan Shoup to coordinate their trial testimony. Their failure to identify the three defendants in photo lineups was concealed from the defense by Shoup, investigators found. A jury convicted the teens, and all three were sentenced to life in prison. They were each 17. Shoup has since died. Kincaid told The Washington Post he did not frame the three teens or coerce the witnesses. “No. Come on, no. Hell no,” the retired detective said in November. “I didn’t know those boys. I didn’t know them from Adam. Why would I want to do something like that?” Willis was slain in West Baltimore in 2002, at age 37. All three men said that when they became eligible for parole in recent years, they declined to accept responsibility for the slaying. “I can’t sit up there and tell somebody I killed somebody when I didn’t,” Watkins told The Post in November. Stewart said he had given up on ever being released from prison. But Chestnut did not. He kept writing letters and filing motions, and finally, in 2018, he unearthed the reports that showed the evidence pointing to Willis, and the reports showing witnesses repeatedly failing to identify him, Watkins and Stewart. He sent a handwritten letter to Mosby, who passed it to Lauren Lipscomb, the head of the Conviction Integrity Unit. The Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project was enlisted to coordinate representation for Chestnut, Watkins and Stewart. The three men became the seventh, eighth and ninth defendants released as a result of the prosecutor’s integrity unit. Mosby visited each man in prison three days before their release. She said she apologized. “The system failed them. They should have never had to see the inside of a jail cell,” Mosby said. She said her office would work to help re-acclimate them into society. And


Iran’s reaction to coronavirus has become a danger for the world

THE CORONAVIRUS poses a test for any government, challenging the ability of leaders to carry out necessary countermeasures while maintaining public trust. In China, trust wasn’t a high priority, but once the country swung into action, the containment effort was massive. Iran presents a different and worrying scenario: a government in denial, a people cynical and distrustful, and a burgeoning infection. Strictly from a health point of view, Iran has become a dangerous epicenter for covid-19, a hazard not only for its population but also the world. Iran’s leaders seem to have taken little personal precaution. A top Iranian health official, Iraj Harirchi, was telling people the situation was being dealt with while sweating and coughing on colleagues and his audience without wearing a face mask; he had contracted the virus. Then Mohammad Mirmohammadi, 71, an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, died after contracting the virus. Masoumeh Ebtekar, Iran’s vice president, then announced she is ill; according to Graeme Wood writing in the Atlantic, she met with President Hassan Rouhani and his cabinet last week, potentially exposing the entire senior leadership to the disease. According to state media, 23 members of parliament have already contracted the virus. Another negative sign is the lack of candor. The BBC Persian service has reported, based on medical sources, that deaths in Iran are six times higher than what Iran has been saying in public. As of Feb. 28, the BBC said there were 210 deaths when Iran was reporting 34. As of Tuesday, Iran reported 77 deaths and 2,336 infections. If that is true, it would indicate a much more lethal variant of the coronavirus, more than a 5 percent fatality rate, compared to 2 percent in China and less elsewhere. Much more likely, Iran has been underreporting and undercounting the number of nonlethal infections, which may be in the tens of thousands, and spreading through the notorious Evin Prison where westerners and Iranians both are held. As in China, the Iranian authorities were slow to raise alarms about the spread of the virus in February, perhaps because of the political calendar: The anniversary of Iran’s revolution was Feb. 11, and parliamentary elections were Feb. 21. These were critical weeks when rapid response to the virus should have been launched. The outbreak appears to be located in the ancient city of Qom, a center of Shiite learning that draws visitors


telling people the situation was being dealt with while sweating and coughing on colleagues and his audience without wearing a face mask; he had contracted the virus. Then Mohammad Mirmohammadi, 71, an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, died after contracting the virus. Masoumeh Ebtekar, Iran’s vice president, then announced she is ill; according to Graeme Wood writing in the Atlantic, she met with President Hassan Rouhani and his cabinet last week, potentially exposing the entire senior leadership to the disease. According to state media, 23 members of parliament have already contracted the virus. Another negative sign is the lack of candor. The BBC Persian service has reported, based on medical sources, that deaths in Iran are six times higher than what Iran has been saying in public. As of Feb. 28, the BBC said there were 210 deaths when Iran was reporting 34. As of Tuesday, Iran reported 77 deaths and 2,336 infections. If that is true, it would indicate a much more lethal variant of the coronavirus, more than a 5 percent fatality rate, compared to 2 percent in China and less elsewhere. Much more likely, Iran has been underreporting and undercounting the number of nonlethal infections, which may be in the tens of thousands, and spreading through the notorious Evin Prison where westerners and Iranians both are held. As in China, the Iranian authorities were slow to raise alarms about the spread of the virus in February, perhaps because of the political calendar: The anniversary of Iran’s revolution was Feb. 11, and parliamentary elections were Feb. 21. These were critical weeks when rapid response to the virus should have been launched. The outbreak appears to be located in the ancient city of Qom, a center of Shiite learning that draws visitors from all over the world. Iranian officials are now spraying disinfectant and taking countermeasures, but they are late. Mr. Rouhani said health recommendations should be followed “but we must all continue our work and activities, because it is one of the enemies’ plots to spread fear in our country and close down the country.” The strict sanctions imposed by the United States on Iran have been severely crimping its economy, and the outbreak ought to lead U.S. officials to look for ways to extend humanitarian relief and expertise in fighting the disease. As the world has seen, coronavirus unchecked anywhere is a danger everywhere.


U.S. Travel Association expects steep drop in international visitors due to coronavirus

A major travel industry advocacy group in the United States is predicting a plunge in the number of visitors from around the world over the next few months as the country imposes restrictions on travelers amid coronavirus fears. In its latest projection, the U.S. Travel Association said on Tuesday that it anticipates international inbound travel to the country will drop 6 percent between now and May, which it says would be the largest dip in global visitation since the financial crisis in 2007 and 2008. The forecast takes into account factors including hotel bookings, airline data and consumer sentiment data. About 79.3 million international visitors came to the country last year. “It is important to note that conditions are changing daily and the prospect for an even larger impact on travel should not be discounted,” David Huether, the group’s senior vice president for research, wrote in a report. Since the beginning of February, the U.S. government has not allowed foreign nationals who have visited China in the past 14 days to enter the country. U.S. airlines suspended all service to China as demand plummeted. Roger Dow, president and chief executive of the travel association, says the lack of tourists from China is a big factor in the projected decline. “If you take China alone, it has 3 million visitors to the United States annually,” he says. “When that 3 million for a certain period goes to zero, it has a pretty big impact.” A report released by Tourism Economics in early February warned that the number of visitors coming from China to the United States could drop by as much as 28 percent this year, potentially hurting states including California, New York, Utah and Oregon. Dow, who reiterated that there are no travel warnings for the United States, said the projected 6 percent drop could result in an economic hit of $2 billion to $3 billion. “The question is whether this will hold, or does it get any worse?" he said. Dow said uncertainty around the virus is having an effect on domestic leisure and business travel as well, as companies crack down on employee trips. Domestic travel is still expected to grow during the first part of the year, however. “My concern is we get this thing behind us," Dow says, as spring break and summer vacation seasons approach. “If citizens of the United States decide they don’t want


Zoo bison euthanized after breaking leg

Zora, the American bison named by Howard University students for the celebrated writer Zora Neale Hurston, was euthanized Tuesday at the National Zoo after she broke her left hind leg when she thrashed in her stall, the zoo announced. Seven-year-old Zora, who arrived at the zoo with another bison in 2014, was in a barn with the other female, being prepared for transport to breeding programs in other zoos. Veterinarians and keepers were getting ready to sedate the animals. But before the sedation, Zora turned suddenly in the stall and injured her leg, the zoo said. The staff could see that the injury was serious. Zora, who weighed about 500 pounds, could not put weight on the leg. She was anesthetized and the leg was examined closely. It was found to be broken. Bison, like horses, are not able to bear weight on fractured legs, the zoo said. Because of the “grave prognosis,” a decision was made to euthanize Zora, the zoo said in a statement. Zora was named by students at Howard for the author, who had attended Howard, the zoo said. Howard’s mascot is a bison. Zora and the other female had arrived at the zoo to great fanfare. In August 2014, as part of its year-long 125th anniversary celebration, the zoo introduced the two — the first the zoo had on exhibit in more than a decade, and the animal with which the zoo was founded in the 1880s. “These are very American animals,” curator Steve Sarro said at time. “And we’re bringing them back to the nation’s zoo.” The bison were donated that July by the American Prairie Reserve, a 305,000-acre tract near the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument in eastern Montana. Technically, the animals are called bison, and are the largest land animal in North America. Male bison can stand more than 6 feet tall at the shoulder and weigh 2,200 pounds. “Buffalo” live in Africa, the zoo has said, but both terms are accepted. The seeds of what would become the National Zoo were sown with bison in the late 1880s when taxidermist-turned-naturalist William Temple Hornaday gathered some for exhibit outside the Smithsonian Castle on the Mall. During the 1800s, the once mighty bison population of 30 million to 60 million that extended from the Appalachians to Alaska was slaughtered until just a few hundred animals were left. It was “a disgrace to


How bad will the coronavirus outbreak get in the U.S.?

The spreading coronavirus is shaping up as a pandemic of potentially historic proportions, possibly on the scale of the global outbreak of influenza in 1957 but unlikely to be as catastrophic as the Spanish flu of 1918, according to projections by infectious disease experts who are still struggling to understand this novel pathogen. The many unknowns about the virus impede efforts to predict its trajectory. Modeling new diseases is inherently uncertain, and scientists have at times overestimated the severity of epidemics, including in 2009, when the H1N1 flu (or “swine flu”) turned out to be milder than expected, and in 2014, when the Ebola outbreak in West Africa killed far fewer people than projected early in that crisis. But the coronavirus has spread at surprising speed. Most cases are mild; about 16 percent of confirmed cases in China have resulted in serious illnesses. The coronavirus has killed more than 3,000 people, the vast majority in central China. Most new coronavirus cases are now outside of China, with 72 countries reporting cases as of Tuesday. In the United States, where the death toll Tuesday stood at nine, the coming days, weeks and months could see social and economic disruptions as infections spread and public health systems try to cope with a surge of patients. Currently there are no travel restrictions and, outside some communities in Washington state, only scattered disruptions to daily life in the United States. How soon the virus may become common across the country is hard to predict, but events could unfold quickly. “It could be weeks to months. Certainly we’re hoping for months,” said Paul Biddinger, the chief of emergency preparedness at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. “Some of the spread across the world and across the United States has been faster than we might have predicted.” Infectious disease experts in recent days have said the coronavirus could create a pandemic on a similar scale to, or even surpassing, the 1957 influenza contagion. That pandemic was caused by a virus related to one found in birds that entered the human population somewhere in Southeast Asia and sickened a quarter-billion people. It killed more than a million, including 70,000 in the United States. The flu and the current outbreak are caused by different viruses. The ultimate impact of the new virus, officially named SARS-CoV-2, which causes the disease covid-19, depends on multiple factors that cannot be precisely calculated


spread and public health systems try to cope with a surge of patients. Currently there are no travel restrictions and, outside some communities in Washington state, only scattered disruptions to daily life in the United States. How soon the virus may become common across the country is hard to predict, but events could unfold quickly. “It could be weeks to months. Certainly we’re hoping for months,” said Paul Biddinger, the chief of emergency preparedness at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. “Some of the spread across the world and across the United States has been faster than we might have predicted.” Infectious disease experts in recent days have said the coronavirus could create a pandemic on a similar scale to, or even surpassing, the 1957 influenza contagion. That pandemic was caused by a virus related to one found in birds that entered the human population somewhere in Southeast Asia and sickened a quarter-billion people. It killed more than a million, including 70,000 in the United States. The flu and the current outbreak are caused by different viruses. The ultimate impact of the new virus, officially named SARS-CoV-2, which causes the disease covid-19, depends on multiple factors that cannot be precisely calculated at present. They include how widely and quickly it spreads, its virulence (the degree to which it sickens and kills people), and the ability of health systems to handle illnesses. It also depends on individual behavior — the extent to which people follow best practices for hygiene, stay home when they are sick, and avoid close contact with people who could be infected. “You may need to take a break from your normal daily routine for two weeks,” said Nancy Messonnier, the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in a news conference Tuesday. “Staying home when you are sick is really important. Don’t let the illness spread beyond you. Stay away as much as you can from other people.” The average number of new infections generated by each infected person has been estimated at roughly 2.3. That “reproduction number” is based on data from China when the coronavirus was circulating undetected; when people take protective measures, the number of infections can drop. For any epidemic to begin to subside, the reproduction number needs to fall below 1. Experts assume there are many more infections than what are officially


And that’s scary. It’s new. It has the ability to cause enormous social and economic disruption,” said Tom Frieden, a former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director, in a news briefing Monday in New York, where he is president and chief executive of Resolve to Save Lives, part of Vital Strategies, a global health organization. Infectious disease experts rely on forecasting models that take into account what is known of the viral outbreak so far and how past epidemics have unfolded. Public health officials need to prepare for “disease burden roughly 10X severe flu season,” according to James Lawler, the director of international programs and innovation at the Global Center for Health Security and a professor for the University of Nebraska Medical Center, in a presentation given to the American Hospital Association and obtained by The Washington Post. The CDC estimates that since 2010, between 12,000 and 60,000 people in the United States have died each flu season. Since the flu season began on Oct. 1 of last year, between 18,000 and 46,000 people have died among 32 million to 45 million illnesses, the CDC estimates. The Lawler estimate, based on data from China, suggests that fatalities from coronavirus could greatly exceed those flu totals, but he cautions that the number can be lowered through aggressive efforts to slow down and mitigate the epidemic. “We have tools that we can potentially use to impact this curve. This is not a fait accompli by any stretch of the imagination,” Lawler told The Post. The best protection against seasonal flu is the flu vaccine, and many labs around the world are working on vaccines for coronavirus, but one will not be ready in time to stop the current spread. “We have been saying, if everything moves as quickly as possible, the soonest it could possibly be would be one and a half to two years,” Hilary Marston, a medical officer and policy adviser at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases under the National Institutes of Health, said by video link at a Harvard event about the virus. “That still could be optimistic.” It is not certain that the virus will spread broadly across the United States, but there is a consensus that the country needs to prepare for that. “I don’t think we’re going to be able to control it, the same as we’re not able to control flu,”


Russia freezes bank accounts of opposition leader Navalny — and the rest of his family, including 11-year-old son

MOSCOW — The 11-year-old boy's Moscow bank savings card has a picture of a cute cartoon dog with its tongue hanging out, dark glasses and a yellow hat. He saved more than $400. But when Zakhar Navalny checked Monday, it was all gone. His family was about to find out that when it comes to opponents of Russian President Vladimir Putin, children are fair game. Alexei Navalny — Zakhar’s father and Russia’s main opposition leader — and his Anti-Corruption Foundation are under attack by Russian authorities, which last year designated the group a foreign agent and accused it of money laundering. “Someone took 30,000 rubles that I saved up from my account,” Zakhar messaged his father Monday. There was a similar message from his wife, Yulia. And his daughter. And his mother. Navalny announced Tuesday that authorities not only seized the contents of his bank account, but also those of his son, wife and daughter, Daria, who is studying at Stanford and found out about the problem when she tried to buy breakfast in a cafe. Navalny described those accounts as having been emptied and frozen. In addition, he said, his parents were informed that their account was blocked, two days before their pensions were due. “This is very unpleasant, frankly speaking,” Navalny posted on his website Tuesday. “My parents are elderly people, pensioners. Like anyone, they might get sick. They need to buy medicine and so on, and now what? How shall we pay for housing and utilities?” Navalny says the money-laundering case — which asserts that his foundation survives on “illegally laundered funds of illegal origin” — has no basis. The foundation subsists on donations from supporters, he wrote. “Putin is getting scared and vindictive. He’s just frozen all the bank accounts of Alexey Navalny, his elderly parents and even his children,” tweeted Bill Browder, a prominent Putin critic. Browder spearheaded a campaign that led to the 2012 Magnitsky Act, U.S. legislation that sanctions foreign officials involved in human rights abuses. It is named after Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian tax auditor who died in prison after he was jailed for exposing Russian corruption. On Monday, Navalny was informed that billionaire Oleg Deripaska, who has strong ties to the Kremlin, was suing him for unknown reasons. Navalny has been barred from running for election and has frequently been jailed and harassed. The latest actions against the family’s bank accounts


Trump administration moving to allow railroads to haul liquefied natural gas. Opponents say it’s a risk.

Florida would share tracks with the passenger service known as Virgin Trains, also connected to New Fortress. Virgin Trains run between Miami and West Palm Beach at a top speed of 79 mph, but the plan is to extend them to Orlando and, eventually, run them at higher speeds. Mehiel, of Vero Beach, primarily focuses on the dangers posed by the railroad’s many grade crossings and the more than 40 people who have been struck and killed by trains since the service began two years ago. But she argues that adding slower-moving LNG trains to the mix is asking for more trouble. “It’s a bad place for a fast train, for us,” she said. “It’s a bad place for an LNG train, for us.” A supporter of the new rule, Joshua Davidson, the editor of a trade publication called Atlantic Northeast Rails and Ports, says rail transportation of LNG would help prevent potential winter energy shortages in the Northeast, where pipelines are inadequate and millions rely on heating oil. It would also make it easier for industries to move away from coal and oil, he wrote in a comment, in favor of cleaner natural gas. That argument has alarmed local officeholders in New Jersey who worry about the hazards of LNG trains rumbling through their towns on the way to New York and New England. All the way across the country, another clean-fuel project, to supply natural gas to ships traveling from Puget Sound to Alaska, has the Puyallup Tribe, based in Tacoma, Wash., up in arms. The tribe has lobbied against a proposed liquefaction plant adjacent to their reservation — probably the most urban reservation in America — and now with the new rail rule, they worry the plant could be refashioned to produce LNG for trains as well as ships. Lisa Anderson, the tribe’s attorney, said she is concerned not only about LNG releases but also about the toxic byproducts that are used as refrigerants and are much more volatile. In proposing the rule without consultation, she said, the Transportation Department has violated the treaties between the Puyallups and the federal government, as well as executive orders governing relations with Native Americans signed by presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. “It impacts our culture, it impacts our members,” said Annette Bryan, a member of the Puyallup Tribal Council. “There’s a scientific component to this, and an emotional component.”


IOC president says he’s ‘fully committed’ to Tokyo Olympics despite coronavirus concerns

contested in empty stadiums. IOC President Thomas Bach told Japanese media in a conference call Thursday that the IOC is “fully committed to a successful Olympic Games in Tokyo starting July 24″ and refused to discuss any alternatives such as postponing, moving or canceling the Games. Those concerns were raised in an Associated Press interview this week by Dick Pound, a longtime member of the IOC, as he discussed a timetable for deciding the fate of the Games. The 121-day Olympic torch relay is set to begin March 26 in Japan, and it may be downsized. There are, however, no plans to cancel it. “Bringing spectators together in large numbers increases the risk of infection,” Toshiro Muto, the Tokyo Olympics CEO, said Wednesday. “Downsizing is among the approaches we can consider. ” Two pro golfers were reinstated at the last minute for this week’s Oman Open on the European Tour after being isolated to determine whether they had been infected. Edoardo Molinari and Lorenzo Gagli of Italy were to be roommates for the Oman tournament and began play Thursday after testing negative. Here’s a look at where things stand in global sports. With the outbreak rising in Italy, this weekend’s Serie A matches at Juventus, Udinese, AC Milan, Parma and Sassuolo will take place, but fans will be barred from attending. Matches at Lazio, Napoli, Lecce and Cagliari will proceed with fans allowed to attend. Italy: Serie A fixtures to be played with no crowds: Juventus-Inter; Udinese-Fiorentina; AC Milan-Genoa; Parma-Spal; Sassuolo-Brescia. Serie A matches to be played with fans: Lazio-Bologna; Napoli-Torino; Lecce-Atalanta; Cagliari-Roma. Champions League: China’s Super League: China’s national team: South Korea: Japan: Switzerland: Archery: Baseball: Badminton: Basketball: Lance Stephenson, a former NBA player who signed a one-year deal with the Liaoning Flying Leopards of the Chinese Basketball Association last summer, left China and is working out in Indianapolis. Boxing: Golf: Horse racing: Esports: Hockey: Motorsports: Rugby: Running: Sunday’s Paris half-marathon has been postponed, French authorities announced Saturday. Some 44,000 runners were expected to compete in the event, for which a makeup date has yet to be announced. Two people in France have died and there have been 73 confirmed coronavirus infections. France’s health ministry said Saturday that the country is preparing for an epidemic, and public gatherings with crowds of 5,000 or more have been banned. Skiing: Skating: Sumo: Table tennis: Tennis: Water polo: World Athletics Championships: X-Games:


Cherry trees’ peak bloom expected March 27; festival organizers monitor coronavirus

D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) assured those who gathered to hear the peak bloom prediction — a group that included foreign ministers, journalists, tourism officials and financial backers — that the city was closely monitoring the coronavirus. “D.C. at this stage has no confirmed cases,” she said. “We are open for business and we expect to welcome thousands of people to our city over the next few weeks. But just know this: We are a world-class city and we have world-class preparedness as well.” Festival President Diana Mayhew said the number of VIP tickets for the parade's grandstand seating is up this year compared with the 2019 festival. She said she’s optimistic that the event will go on with minimal disruption. Though some international visitors and vendors might skip the festival this year, Mayhew said 92 percent of people who come to the District to see the blooms are domestic travelers. No financial sponsors have withdrawn because of the global health crisis, organizers said. “We are moving ahead as planned,” Mayhew said. “This is still about showcasing Washington, D.C., so no matter when the blossoms are [peaking], we will have our four weeks of events to do just that.” City tourism officials for weeks have braced for a drop in visitors as a result of the coronavirus outbreak, particularly among the 1.9 million international tourists who come to the District annually, many of them from China. Several professional conferences planned in the District have recorded a dramatic dip in attendance, said Elliot Ferguson, president of Destination DC, the city’s tourism arm. Destination DC and festival officials said they will take cues from the mayor’s office, public health officials and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as they continue preparing for the festival. So far, no scheduling adjustments have been made, officials said. “One thing to remember is we may see stronger visitor numbers from the domestic community this year because those who want to travel may be rethinking their international travel plans,” Ferguson said. “We’re not being insensitive when we say D.C. is open for business, but D.C. is still a city that’s open for business and we hope individuals will chose to come here.” Hand-sanitizing stations will be set up at event entrances and throughout the festival, Ferguson added. Hotels vying for visitors during the festival have made an effort to underscore rigorous cleaning schedules to guests,


The Louvre and James Bond show us what coronavirus could cost us

In Italy and Japan, soccer and baseball games have played to empty stadiums; future matchups face cancellation. Seiko Hashimoto, the Japanese politician overseeing Tokyo’s preparations to host the Summer Olympics, said on Tuesday that the games could be postponed. Big cultural events and activities can’t bridge all of our divides, of course. You know that if you’ve ever argued with a friend about “Game of Thrones” or waded into Twitter combat about the latest Star Wars movie. If we can’t agree on whether Tony Soprano is dead, there is no superhero team-up powerful enough to end political polarization or reduce income inequality. But culture can get us talking, give us a set of reference points and help us realize, if only for a couple of hours, what we all value. Take the Olympics: Sure, it’s a bit silly that every two years, when the torch is lit, many of us pretend, in the name of national pride, to be experts on dressage or the gymnastics point systems. Still, at a time when patriotism in America is at best attenuated and at worst deformed, rooting for Team USA is an old-fashioned delight. And even as we maintain our home-country loyalties, the games provide an opportunity for viewers to encounter athletes from other nations — and to draw our collective attention to the conditions under which they compete. Pollution in Beijing or Brazil may seem comfortably distant, but seeing athletes struggle for excellence through dirty air demonstrates that the world’s biggest problems know no borders. The Olympics aren’t the only cultural event capable of spurring this kind of transnational sympathy. “Mulan,” Disney’s latest live-action remake of an animated hit, was set to be one of a few American movies to get a wide release in Chinese movie theaters — before Disney canceled its Chinese premiere in the face of covid-19. Attempts by a giant corporation to convert its intellectual property library into an even more valuable cash cow might not be the most obvious basis for an international dialogue. But Hollywood movies that are released in China often either are cut to appease the country’s censors or include extra material intended to appeal (or advertise) to Chinese audiences. The “Mulan” remake was trying to thread that needle to better effect, giving audiences in both countries a top-quality production informed by Chinese history and culture. American audiences will still get to see “Mulan.”


Coronavirus spread from China. Now, China doesn’t want the world spreading it back.

BEIJING — Health authorities in the prosperous province of Zhejiang had finally lowered the alert level from one to two after six weeks, satisfied their draconian measures to contain the novel coronavirus had worked. Once the hardest-hit Chinese province beyond Hubei, coastal Zhejiang had placed 30 million people under lockdown, but there were no new cases reported in nine days in the key export and manufacturing base. Then Wang, a 31-year-old waitress who had been working in the northern Italian city of Bergamo, came home to Qingtian county, west of the city of Wenzhou. She had developed a cough, headache and diarrhea about a week before the flight, but nevertheless went to Milan and boarded a plane for Moscow, settling into seat 22F. Traveling with five others from the same restaurant, she changed planes in Moscow and took off for Shanghai. This time, she sat in an aisle seat. When Wang, whom authorities have identified only by her family name, arrived in China, she was immediately put into quarantine. On Sunday, she tested positive for the novel coronavirus that causes the disease named covid-19. Seven others who worked in the Bergamo restaurant and flew back home were diagnosed this week, the Qingtian government said on its WeChat social media account. This is China’s new coronavirus challenge. Having largely contained the virus at home — the number of new infections reported each day has fallen to barely 100, almost all in Hubei province — China now faces the prospect of imported infections as the outbreak rages beyond its borders. China thought that once it had contained the epidemic, that would be the end of it, said Zhang Wenhong, director of the department of infectious diseases at Shanghai Huashan Hospital, affiliated with Fudan University. But now, more cases are emerging abroad than in China — and they’re starting to come back. “This is a bad sign and very worrisome,” Zhang told China News. “It will bring difficulties to China’s outbreak control.” More than 6,700 passengers had arrived in China with coronavirus infections by the end of Tuesday, and 75 were confirmed as infected, General Administration of Customs said on Wednesday. China’s Communist Party appears mindful that other governments might lack the techno-authoritarian tools to shut down the spread like it did. Authorities are taking measures to prevent people who have traveled to new hotspots — South Korea, Iran, northern Italy and Japan


U.S. health system is showing why it’s not ready for a coronavirus pandemic

The growing coronavirus outbreak in the United States is revealing serious gaps in the health system’s ability to respond to a major epidemic, forcing hospitals and doctors to improvise emergency plans daily, even as they remain uncertain how bad the crisis will get. As California announced its first coronavirus-linked fatality on Wednesday, bringing the U.S. death toll to 11, nursing homes were emerging as especially vulnerable to the virus, with more than a million residents, many of them frail. Many of the facilities have a history of struggling to contain even mundane infections. But the gaps are spread out across the country and affect medical facilities of all types. In Rhode Island, where two cases have been detected, doctors in protective gear were testing patients with mild symptoms in a hospital parking lot rather than allowing them to enter the emergency room. Officials said the emergency measure was being wound down Tuesday as the state’s testing capacity grows. Officials in King County, Wash., this week said they were purchasing a motel to house patients who needed to be placed in isolation. In rural areas of Texas and elsewhere, small hospitals do not have test kits, and central labs for testing samples are hours away. That means hospitals will be unable to conclusively determine whether they have people with covid-19 among their usual seasonal surge in influenza patients. “There’s not anywhere near a sufficient number of kits to confirm or deny virus, or quarantine or control all these patients,’’ said John Henderson, who heads the association for Texas’s rural hospitals. Ventilators and intensive care units, necessary to keep the most acutely ill patients alive, are largely limited to larger hospitals and academic medical centers in cities. Front-line providers are dusting off old protocols for handling previous global health threats including severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), H1N1 and Ebola. But the coronavirus is spreading rapidly and, with mild symptoms that mimic the flu, difficult to detect. Nationwide, worries are growing about a lack of hospital beds to quarantine and treat infected patients. Major medical centers are typically full even without a flood of coronavirus patients. “We just don’t have the capacity in the hospitals and health systems to deal with a massive influx of patients and keep them isolated,’’ said Gerard Anderson, a professor of health policy and management at Johns Hopkins University. Despite weeks of preparations,


As coronavirus spreads in Italy, tourists reluctantly cancel dream vacations

ROME — Italy is her favorite place on Earth, cobblestones and "magic," she said, so when Kara Kaefring booked her plane tickets last July, she set a countdown clock on her smartwatch and thought about everything that waited ahead: Exploring Rome and Venice with her 13-year-old son. Finding the best spots for gelato. Touring the catacombs and the canals. Rounding a corner, as she had done on a previous trip, and seeing the 2nd Century Pantheon come into view. “Compared to Italy,” she said, “everything else pales in comparison.” But then, as her countdown clock neared three weeks, and every day seemed to bring more bad coronavirus news, Kaefring, 42, of Klamath Falls, Ore., found herself imagining far different scenarios. What if she got sick in a foreign country with a teenager? What if the trip went fine but she had to quarantine herself upon return? And what if she was actually carrying the coronavirus? She has diabetes. She works in a hospital. She could not be “cavalier.” “I think Italy is canceled,” she finally told her son after days of deliberation, which included Googling a live cam of Venice’s main piazza and seeing crowds thin day after day to an eerie trickle. Italy has not shut down to visitors, and the spread of the virus has been limited largely to two northern regions. But as the country’s coronavirus death toll passed 100 on Wednesday, the government announced schools would close until mid-March. That follows warnings from the U.S. State Department that Americans should reconsider travel to Italy. So the virus has imposed sudden new limits on how world travelers can enjoy themselves and where they can dream of going. For now: probably not Italy. Normally a country full of vacationers and honeymooners, foreign students and Catholic pilgrims, Italy has become dramatically quieter — and emptier. Even regions nearly untouched by the virus, such as Umbria, have seen a 70 percent hotel cancellation rate. Angelo Carotenuto, founder of tour operator LivItaly, said he thought Italy could lose 50 percent of its visitors for the year — more than 30 million people. That includes Americans organizing destination weddings in Venice, Germans planning their spring breaks along the Calabrian coast and people like Kaefring, who has an antique map of Rome framed in her house, and who says it is only in Italy where her soul feels quite so good. “I could


At hearing on coronavirus, Senate panel learns that despite progress, gaps remain in aviation response to outbreaks

The government has improved its ability to respond to outbreaks that impact the flying public, but information gaps can hamper efforts to get information to the public and to quickly reach those who may be at risk of exposure, officials told a Senate panel Wednesday. Even as some lawmakers praised the Trump administration, saying the decision to restrict air traffic from China and bar non-U. S. citizens from affected regions from entering the country, they acknowledged that more work is needed. “I want to credit the staff at the state and local level for all the work they've done, but I have to share my frustration here because I can't believe that we’re having some of the conversations we're having now,” Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) said. “After having faced other global outbreaks such as H1N1 and SARs, did we not learn anything about processes and procedures from those previous diseases?” Duckworth said. “You know, Americans have been flying commercially for more than a century, yet today on the cusp of a global pandemic, the inability of the federal government to collect and share critical data effectively with U.S. airlines and local partners is really hindering our ability to stop the spread and fight this disease.” Duckworth’s comments, at a hearing of the Senate subcommittee on aviation and space, came as California announced its first coronavirus-linked death, bringing the death toll in the United States to 11, and as the House passed an $8.3 billion emergency spending package to respond to the outbreak. Witnesses at the hearing, which focused on the role of global aviation in containing the spread of infectious diseases, included representatives from the U.S. Transportation Department, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, all of which have a role. “I think we have improved since really — my own history is, begins with the mid-2000s,” said Stephen Redd, director of the Office of Public Health Preparedness Response at the CDC. “I think we’re far ahead of where we were at that point in time.” Redd said officials will use lessons from this experience to come up with strategies that will help with future outbreaks. Earlier Wednesday, U.S. airline executives met with Vice President Pence, who has been charged with leading the administration's response to the coronavirus outbreak. President Trump made a surprise appearance at the gathering, where airline executives emphasized their commitment


Expanded coronavirus testing may overwhelm lab capacity, say some experts

A day after Vice President Pence touted a new policy allowing “any American” to be tested for the novel coronavirus with a doctor’s order, some health officials and physicians expressed concern that people with mild symptoms might overwhelm the nation’s still-limited testing capability. During a White House briefing on Tuesday, Pence announced government testing guidelines were being loosened to emphasize that physician judgment — not other criteria, such as recent travel to China — would be the main driver in deciding who gets tested. The move drew praise from experts who said the previous guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were far too restrictive in the face of a virus that has spread to more than 75 countries and sickened more than 95,000 people. But other health experts warned the action might inadvertently send the wrong message, prompting a surge in demand for tests from people with mild symptoms who should simply stay home until they recover. They also noted that laboratory capacity for virus testing, while on the rise, is still lagging. Tests that can be done in doctor’s offices don’t exist. “This means that right when we need to be careful and methodical about this new testing capacity, we may be overwhelmed,” said Lauren Sauer, who runs emergency preparedness for Johns Hopkins Medicine and the university health system. Sixty public health labs are now running the just-fixed CDC test. In the next several days and weeks, testing capacity is expected to increase as more labs come online and private companies ship thousands of test kits. Pence’s announcement took many officials at the Department of Health and Human Services and the CDC by surprise, according to an HHS official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter frankly. On Thursday afternoon, the CDC added the new information to its guidelines for evaluating people who may have the disease, known as covid-19. Steven Hinrichs, chair of the Department of Pathology and Microbiology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, said if large numbers of people with colds were to seek testing, it could cause delays in emergency rooms for the seriously ill. During the 2001 anthrax scare, he said, people tried to have their pizza boxes tested because they saw white flour on the bottom. But state epidemiologists, who are on the front lines of managing the outbreak, said they were largely satisfied with


Sanders’s Super Tuesday ‘contrast’ with Biden

Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act. The complex law has been under fire ever since from the left as a giveaway to banks by making it harder to declare bankruptcy. Biden has argued that, while not perfect, the law benefited consumers by lowering interest rates and protected low-income households — and that he improved what could have been a worse bill in a Republican-controlled Congress and with a Republican as president. One of Biden’s fiercest critics during the long struggle to pass the bill was Warren. Sanders voted against a 2001 version of the bill and the 2005 version that became law. “We will not give tax breaks to billionaires when half a million Americans sleep out on the streets.” This is a favorite line, but the way Sanders frames it is exaggerated. His number came from a single-night survey done by the Department of Housing and Urban Development to count homeless people. For one night in January 2019, the estimate was that 568,000 people are homeless. But the report also says that two-thirds — nearly 360,000 — were in emergency shelters or transitional housing programs; the 210,000 others were “unsheltered” — i.e., on the streets, as Sanders puts it. The number has been trending down over the past decade. It was 650,000 in 2007. “[We ] will not allow 49 percent of all new income to go to the 1 percent when half of our people live paycheck to paycheck.” Sanders is citing a study by Emmanuel Saez of the University of California at Berkeley, which concluded that in terms of pretax income, the “top 1% families captured 49% of total real income growth per family from 2009-2017.” The study also does not include government benefits such as Social Security, Medicare, food stamps and the like, which are intended to narrow the gap. Some studies have found at least half of American workers live paycheck to paycheck. For instance, an online national sample of more than 1,000 adults released in February by the First National Bank of Omaha found “49 percent of U.S. adults say they expect to be living paycheck to paycheck in 2020, and 53 percent reveal that they do not have an emergency fund that covers at least three months of expenses.” (About our rating scale) Send us facts to check by filling out Sign up for The Fact Checker The Fact Checker is a verified


Will coronavirus cancel the Olympics and other big sporting events?

The burgeoning coronavirus epidemic is starting to wreak havoc with event scheduling and planning. As the World Health Organization recommends individuals in hot zones keeping a distance of about 3 feet between one another at all times to reduce the likelihood of transmission from person to person, MGM, Eon and Universal postponed release of the new James Bond movie “No Time to Die” to the fall, and Italy declared that all sporting events in the country will take place without fans present for at least a month. Speculation has swirled about even bigger events, ranging from the Democratic and Republican conventions to perhaps the biggest event of them all: the 2020 Summer Olympic Games set to take place in Tokyo. While the IOC insists the Games will go on as planned, there is precedent for canceling them. Soccer matches in Middlesbrough, England, were canceled in 1897 due to smallpox, and games in Blackburn, England, were postponed in 1965 to prevent the spread of poliovirus. In 2001, hand foot and mouth disease halted equestrian events and the Six Nations rugby tournament in England. And in 1918, while Major League Baseball played on to increase American morale as threats mounted due to influenza and global instability due to war, the season was eventually shortened, ending in early September. More recently, in 2016, Major League Baseball games were relocated out of Puerto Rico to Miami due to fears concerning Zika virus transmission. Sports especially bring tens of thousands of athletes and spectators together in a single location. And while, historically, concerns about disease over the past century remained localized, the emergence of new, more deadly infectious diseases has brought new people and institutions into the planning process. Decisions regarding large sporting events have shifted from event organizers to governments and international organizations, reflecting both a dramatic shift in organizational structures in sports and the global challenge of public health in the 21st century. Infections have been around since before the development of international sport competition in the second half of the 19th century. Yet the impact of infectious disease and sport on a large scale is a relatively new phenomenon. Consider, for example, the minimal impact that measles, one of the first described infectious diseases, had on sport. The measles vaccine was licensed and available in 1963, resulting in mass vaccination and greater immunity globally, and only rarely has the disease interfered with


sporting events. Only when participating athletes have not been vaccinated has measles posed a problem, such as at the 1991 Special Olympics Games, where 16 athletes were diagnosed with measles after participating at the event in Minneapolis. As vaccination rates have increased, the threat of measles has decreased, making it minimal today. Other disease outbreaks have, however, caused unanticipated challenges in the past few decades, and emerging diseases, notably those without a vaccine, pose a greater threat to international sporting events. In May 2003, four months before the FIFA Women’s World Cup was to take place in China, FIFA moved the tournament out of China because of SARS, even though none of the venues were in Guangdong province, where SARS first emerged. The decision stemmed from consultations between FIFA’s Sports Medical Committee and the World Health Organization. The 2014-2015 Ebola virus epidemic, with an estimated fatality rate of approximately 50 percent, also affected sport. Several countries expressed concerns over hosting qualifying matches for the Africa Cup of Nations, the premier soccer tournament on the African continent. Morocco, host of the final tournament, even asked for the event to be postponed for a year, fearing foreign fans would spread the disease. However, the Confederation of African Football refused to postpone the tournament because it did not expect many fans from Ebola-infected countries to travel. They instead expelled Morocco from the tournament. In 2016, the concern was Zika. While the fear of this disease did scare some travelers and athletes from attending the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, including the biggest names in golf, WHO focused its attention on recommending that pregnant women or women hoping to become pregnant stay away. With its rapid spread across the globe and seemingly high fatality rate, averaging 2.3 percent in most cases and about 15 percent in elderly patients, covid-19 has become the fastest-growing health threat that international sport has yet seen. One of the first sporting events affected by the outbreak, an Olympic qualifying tournament for women’s soccer, was originally scheduled to take place in Wuhan, the epicenter of the viral outbreak. The Asian Football Confederation initially relocated the event to another Chinese city, Nanjing, before moving it again to Sydney. Sport organizations are holding increasing conversations with local organizers to determine whether events should continue or be canceled. The LPGA Tour canceled its entire women’s Asian swing of three events. The Basketball Africa


Federal judge orders 9/11 victim attorneys to detail threats allegedly made against potential witnesses in lawsuit targeting Saudi Arabia

NEW YORK — A federal judge has ordered lawyers for 9/11 families suing Saudi Arabia to detail threats allegedly made against witnesses they may depose as part of their effort to prove the kingdom was involved in the 2001 terrorist attacks. The victims' attorneys have argued they need to protect for now the identities of potential witnesses, pointing to the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi as an example of the kind of danger faced by those who speak out against Saudi Arabia. Khashoggi, a contributing Washington Post columnist and outspoken critic of the Saudi crown prince, had been interviewed by an investigator for the plaintiffs in 2017. Lawyers for those suing Saudi Arabia — including survivors of the attacks and victims’ relatives — said at an emergency court hearing Wednesday that the October 2018 killing of Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul has heightened their concern for four potential witnesses. Those people, the lawyers said, have been in talks with the families about providing information on Saudi Arabia’s alleged role in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington. U.S. Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn said she was “troubled by the allegations” that witnesses were threatened and asked for a submission from the plaintiffs’ lawyers “documenting in greater detail the information that you have” by March 18. Netburn gave the attorneys permission to redact the names of the witnesses. The submission will initially be filed under seal and will not be available to the Saudi government’s legal team, the judge ruled. The issue of safety came up amid legal jousting over whether the identities of potential witnesses should be turned over to the Saudis’ legal team. The plaintiffs argued it was premature to turn over such information because it’s still unclear which of the potential witnesses will be deposed and testify. Attorney Andrew Maloney, a former federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, where the 9/11 case is pending, laid out in a previous court filing what he described as a pattern of harassment and threats against witnesses. He said the targeted individuals had reported the incidents to police or planned to do so. Maloney wrote in a Feb. 21 declaration that he has “spoken with several third party witnesses with personal knowledge relevant to the 9/11 terror litigation who have expressed to me their fears of testifying against the Saudi government.” One witness “had been


International Criminal Court approves investigation of possible war crimes in Afghanistan involving U.S. troops

KABUL — The International Criminal Court ruled that its chief prosecutor can open a wide-ranging investigation of possible war crimes in Afghanistan by the Taliban, Afghan government forces and U.S. troops. The ruling comes despite strong opposition from the United States, which does not recognize the court’s jurisdiction. Afghanistan has also opposed the investigation but is an ICC member state. This will be the first investigation opened by the court involving U.S. troops. The ruling comes less than a week after the United States and the Taliban signed a peace deal that calls for the full withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan within 14 months and for the Taliban to disavow terrorist groups. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday called the ICC’s move “a truly breathtaking action by an unaccountable political institution masquerading as a legal body. It’s all the more reckless for this ruling to come just days after the United States signed a historic peace deal on Afghanistan, which is the best chance for peace in a generation.” The United States will take all necessary measures “to protect our citizens from this renegade, unlawful so-called court,” he said in a news briefing. Chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda requested authorization to investigate possible war crimes in Afghanistan in 2017. Bensouda said there was reason to believe that members of the U.S. military and intelligence agencies had “committed acts of torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity, rape and sexual violence against conflict-related detainees in Afghanistan and other locations, principally in the 2003-2004 period.” The Trump administration has taken a strong stand against the court’s authority, describing attempted investigations involving U.S. forces as attacks on U.S. sovereignty that would subject Americans to unjust inquiries. In April, the United States revoked the entry visa of the court’s chief prosecutor, and last year, Pompeo threatened “economic sanctions, if the ICC does not change its course,” referring to the investigation of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. When the court later decided to abandon the inquiry, President Trump called the decision “a major international victory, not only for these patriots, but for the rule of law.” The ICC said it had decided that the lack of cooperation among the concerned parties made the chances of a successful prosecution remote. But in Thursday’s ruling, the court said in a statement that it “erred” in that decision and that the court should have considered only “whether there


Bolivia dismissed its October elections as fraudulent. Our research found no reason to suspect fraud.

of his closest competitor. If not, then Morales would be forced into a runoff election against his closest competitor — former president Carlos Mesa. Our results were straightforward. There does not seem to be a statistically significant difference in the margin before and after the halt of the preliminary vote. Instead, it is highly likely that Morales surpassed the 10-percentage-point margin in the first round. How did we get there? The OAS approach relies on dual assumptions: that the unofficial count accurately reflects the vote continuously measured, and that reported voter preferences do not vary by the time of day. If these assumptions are true, then a change in the trend to favor one party over time could potentially indicate fraud had occurred. The OAS cites no previous research demonstrating that these assumptions hold. There are reasons to believe that voter preferences and reporting can vary over time: with people who work voting later in the day, for instance. Areas where impoverished voters are clustered may have longer lines and less ability to count and report vote totals quickly. These factors may well apply in Bolivia, where there are severe gaps in infrastructure and income between urban and rural areas. Was there a discontinuity between the votes counted before and after the unofficial count? For sure, discontinuities might be evidence of tampering. In Russia, for instance, one allegation is that local election officials stuff ballot boxes to meet preset targets. If the OAS finding was correct, we would expect to see Morales’s vote margin spike shortly after the preliminary vote count halted — and the resulting election margin over his closest competitor would be too large to be explained by his performance before preliminary count stopped. We might expect to see other anomalies, such as sudden shifts in votes for Morales from precincts that were previously less inclined to vote for him. We didn’t find any evidence of any of these anomalies, as this figure shows. We find a 0.946 correlation between Morales’s margin between results before and after the cutoff in precincts counted before and after the cutoff. There is little observable difference between precincts in the results before and after the count halt, suggesting that there weren’t any significant irregularities. We and other scholars within the field reached out to the OAS for comment; the OAS did not respond. We also ran 1,000 simulations to see if the


As coronavirus spreads, dubious books about surviving the epidemic proliferate

As the highly contagious coronavirus spreads around the world, highly questionable books about the disease are spreading around Amazon.com. On Tuesday, more than 100 titles related to the coronavirus were for sale on the online bookseller’s site. You can buy the “survival guide,” the “complete guide” and even the “ultimate guide.” Many of these books claim to offer information about the source of the disease, methods of transmission, ways to avoid it and steps to reduce its symptoms. And don’t worry about how much this epidemic might cost you; there’s a book called “Surviving Coronavirus on Any Budget.” About half of these books are shorter than 50 pages, and the most common price is $2.99. (Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.) Many of these books appear to be self-published, which raises new challenges for sick or worried readers. Even as consumers are learning to be skeptical of information on social media, books still retain an aura of authority, a sense that whatever appears between the covers — or e-covers — must have been researched, considered, confirmed and edited. That unfounded faith provides an opportunity for quick, entrepreneurial authors who post titles for sale the moment major news stories break. Self-publishing platforms are easy and inexpensive to use, and books can be offered without passing through any independent review for accuracy or reliability. Despite dramatic scientific breakthroughs, the Internet has re-created the kind of caveat emptor culture for medical advice that existed in the 19th century. Some of the current coronavirus books for sale immediately raise red flags, such as Rexter Marqueses’s “Let’s Stay Away From Virus” ($1.99) Its Amazon page asks, Tarzan-like, “What is virus??? How can you stay away from them???” The title listed for Jacqueline Watson’s book contains two typos: “Coronavirus: The Birth of the Virus, It’s Expention Around the World and How to Avoid Being Infected.” But even the savviest consumers confront a confusing range of dubious publications. For instance, Dr. Sanjay Gupta currently has two virus-related e-books for sale on Amazon: “Coronavirus and Me” and “Coronavirus Is In/Near My Country.” Both titles are described as “part of a ‘Super-Simplified’ series in response to the ‘informational overload,’ that the web has inadvertently provided us.” But this author is not the Sanjay Gupta, the Emmy- winning neurosurgeon whom readers have come to trust from his years of reporting on CNN and CBS. This Gupta is described,


the most questionable — coronavirus books offered for sale are the diaries infected with a macabre sense of humor. There are several versions of “My Resilience Journal” subtitled, “I Ordered a Mask for Protection Against Coronavirus and Realised It Is Shipping From China.” Inside are about 100 pages to help you “express yourself.” Fear of potentially widespread disruption from the virus has also attracted the attention of “preppers” — people in a state of constant preparation for various potential disasters. In 2015, Cat Ellis published “Prepper’s Natural Medicine: Life-Saving Herbs, Essential Oils and Natural Remedies for When There Is No Doctor.” Last month, she released “The Wuhan Coronavirus Survival Manual,” which promises to explain “the current research in simple terms.” The challenge, of course, is that the current research on the novel coronavirus is rapidly developing. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases recommends that people seeking credible information about covid-19 rely on websites maintained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization. Amazon is not the only source of questionable books related to the current epidemic. They can be found on other online bookseller sites, too. For instance, Barnes & Noble’s website offers an e-book by Moxie Reader called “How to Fight Coronavirus with 4 Herbs” ($17.99). But Amazon’s extraordinary dominance of the e-book market means that its website is the place consumers are most likely to find these titles. Its policies exercise a disproportionate influence on the self-publishing industry. Amazon’s guidelines for authors and publishers state: “We reserve the right to determine whether content provides a poor customer experience and remove that content from sale.” Asked whether the company exercises any editorial control over these health-related books, an Amazon spokesperson said: “Amazon maintains content guidelines for the books it sells, and we continue to evaluate our catalogue, listening to customer feedback. We have always required sellers, authors, and publishers to provide accurate information on product detail pages, and we remove those that violate our policies. In addition, at the top of relevant search results pages we are linking to CDC advice where customers can learn more about the virus and protective measures.” If you really want to stay safe but feel you’ve got to buy something, try one of several coronavirus coloring books, “for relieving stress during the 2020 outbreak.” But wash your hands often — and don’t share your crayons. ron.charles@washpost.com


Grand Princess expects coronavirus test results Friday, but return plans are still unclear

did on the ship. “That was not a successful quarantine situation,” he said. Even as thousands of passengers waited uneasily onboard, public health officials on land were investigating a cluster of coronavirus cases among the roughly 2,500 people who had taken an earlier cruise on the same ship. One of those passengers, a 71-year-old Placer County man, has since died of covid-19, the respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus. The others include one person in Sonoma County, Calif., one in Canada’s Alberta province and two in Contra Costa County, Calif., who were announced Friday. The CDC said it was working with the cruise lines and partners in California to get in touch with passengers who were on the previous sailing to Mexico as well as the current one, which left San Francisco on Feb. 21 and visited Hawaii. It was originally scheduled to stop Thursday in Mexico and return Saturday to San Francisco. “CDC has notified states about the risk and management of passengers aboard the Grand Princess between February 11 and 21 who might have COVID-19 symptoms,” a CDC statement said. “Passengers on this initial cruise who have COVID-19 symptoms should call their healthcare provider and explain their symptoms and potential exposure from this cruise.” For those on the current sailing, the agency is working to provide tips on “how to reduce their risk for exposure while they remain on board,” the statement said. “All precautions will be taken as the investigation is underway to determine possible risk of spread,” the CDC said in its statement. Some who were on the Mexico sailing have said they have since gotten sick but don’t know whether they will test positive. Judy and Mark Cadiz stepped off the Grand Princess on Feb. 21 after a trip from San Francisco to Mexico. Six days ago, Judy Cadiz said in an interview, her husband, 65, fell ill with a cough. She had milder symptoms, she said. The Cadizes subsequently traveled all around California, she said. Judy Cadiz said she now worries that she might have unwittingly exposed numerous people to the pathogen, including elderly members of the Lodi Moose Lodge, where she keeps the books. “I would feel really bad if I was exposed and spread it,” she said. Cadiz said she is upset that Princess Cruises did not notify passengers that someone from their cruise had become severely ill with covid-19 symptoms. “I


Cruise ship with thousands awaits test results as coronavirus continues spreading around the country

wouldn’t have gone anywhere,” she said. She said she called her doctor, who referred her to San Joaquin County Public Health Services, which told the couple Thursday afternoon to stay where they are. She said she doesn’t know when or if they’ll be tested. As the troubled cruise ship remained isolated off the Pacific coast Thursday, the coronavirus continued its spread around the nation — and the world. Nevada and Maryland confirmed their first cases of covid-19, bringing the number of states with coronavirus patients to 19. The death toll in Washington state increased to 11, as health officials announced 20 new confirmed cases in King County, home to a severe outbreak at a nursing facility. The number of confirmed cases in New York doubled to 22, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) told reporters Thursday afternoon. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 970 points Thursday as the economic outlook for the coronavirus outbreak continued to worsen. The 3.6 percent skid canceled most of Wednesday’s rally and was in line with the punishing sell-offs that have dominated trading for weeks as the outbreak threatens economic growth. Meanwhile, the Senate on Thursday voted nearly unanimously to approve emergency spending to combat the coronavirus outbreak, sending the measure to the White House for the president’s signature. The unusually swift, bipartisan action by both chambers of Congress underscored the pressure lawmakers are feeling to respond after more than 150 confirmed cases around the country have led to canceled travel plans, closed schools and businesses, and heightened fears about a U.S. recession. But many questions remain about just how prepared the country is for an expanded outbreak. Vice President Pence, who on Tuesday said that any American with a doctor’s orders could get tested for the coronavirus, acknowledged Thursday that “we don’t have enough tests today to meet what we anticipate will be the demand going forward.” Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told lawmakers Thursday that the government will have shipped enough tests by the end of the week for 75,000 people to be tested. They will be distributed at more than 70 public health laboratories around the country, he said. Earlier in the week, the Trump administration said it could have 1 million tests ready by the end of the week . In Washington state, home of most of the U.S. deaths related to the outbreak, health officials scrambled to get more


Covid-19 reveals how China’s internal politics now affect the whole world

The official Chinese response to the covid-19 outbreak that began in Wuhan and has now spread across the globe is an almost perfect metaphor for China in 2020. An outbreak that began with local malfeasance in Hubei has become a worldwide crisis. Like the economy, China’s domestic political challenges have now become globalized. Here’s what this outbreak tells us about the politics and perils of Chinese domestic governance. Local fragmentation can have a far wider impact The epidemic shows how the most micro-level domestic fragmentation across functional and regional dimensions of the Chinese political system can affect people all over the world. In Wuhan, an unregulated local market, maximizing profit by dealing in exotic animals and cutting corners on health regulations, produced a novel coronavirus. Local officials, probably worried about their chances for promotion up the party ladder, quashed the news at a critical early stage and forced whistleblowers to retract and engage in Maoist self-criticism. These same local authorities did not cancel a gathering sponsored by the Baibuting neighborhood in which 40,000 families gathered to celebrate the Year of the Rat, and failed to act until after scores of migrant workers left Wuhan to return to home for Chinese Lunar New Year festivities. And the relatively low ranking of the medical bureaucracies in China’s administrative pecking order ensured that crucial decision-making at the initial stages of the crisis were lost in the mix. Chinese authorities have been quick to focus blame on these local leaders. The mayor of Wuhan, in turn, pushed back, arguing that he didn’t receive authorization from Beijing to spread “sensitive information.” Even after local officials informed Beijing about the problem, Chinese state-controlled media focused the world’s attention by breathlessly reporting on the creation of entire hospitals overnight and on China’s all-of-government approach to containing the outbreak. Beijing has sought to advance a narrative about China’s heroic and successful attempts to contain this lethal epidemic, echoing past political movements extolling model workers and revolutionary heroes. While some elements of this narrative may be true, they do not inspire confidence that any preventive measures for future outbreaks will be any more effective than what is already in place. All the world’s a stage For decades, students of domestic Chinese politics have analyzed the disconnect between continuous innovation in China’s economic reforms and the mixed success of its moribund political institutions to keep up, let alone manage these


by offering unconditional foreign aid. What was not being discussed were the ways in which Chinese companies acting on behalf of, or in concert with, local governments were spearheading actual BRI projects and — out of Beijing’s direct control — were undermining the goals of BRI by pursuing risky, short-term gains, to the benefit of subnational governments and state-owned enterprises operating in these BRI-recipient countries. This is not a new phenomenon, but one that dates to at least the 1970s. For example, Chinese domestic bureaucratic fragmentation undermined Beijing’s ability to provide foreign aid to its sole client state, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, as I found in my book, “Brothers in Arms: Chinese Aid to the Khmer Rouge, 1975-1979.” Nor is it uniquely Chinese. When discussing the role of the U.S. trade representative (USTR) with Chinese foreign policy elites, a frequent question is why the USTR throws the larger Sino-U.S. bilateral relationship under the bus to pursue the interests of trade-dependent U.S. companies. My response is that the USTR acts that way because it is institutionally mandated to do so, to “put Congress inside the Cabinet” and place parochial U.S. concerns onto the forefront of foreign policy, much to chagrin of the State Department and other U.S. foreign policymaking bodies, and not just Beijing. In a sense, what we are seeing with China is a similar, but far less manageable, magnification of its domestic institutional layout — with a multiplicity of competing and contradictory interests, strategies and power dynamics — playing out not simply in China’s remote provinces, but directly affecting the lives of people all over the globe. For better or worse, this is our world now. Don’t miss anything! Sign up to get TMC’s smart analysis in your inbox, three days a week. Andrew Mertha (@MerthaAndrew) is the George and Sadie Hyman Professor of China Studies and Director of the China Program at the Johns Hopkins Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. Read more: Does the World Health Organization have the freedom to do what it needs to do about covid-19? China’s early warning system didn’t work on covid-19. Here’s the story. The coronavirus is about to hit Africa. Here are the big challenges. Why China’s politics makes it easier — and harder — to control disease outbreaks Is China ready for this major global health challenge? China’s coronavirus outbreak has prompted some travel restrictions. That could backfire.


Why it’s so hard to pin down the risk of dying from coronavirus

Marc Lipsitch is a professor of epidemiology and director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. This week, World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stated an undisputed fact: 3.4 percent of people with reported covid-19 infections worldwide have died. Or the fact was undisputed until misinterpretations set in, almost immediately. Some in the news media mistook the statement as meaning an alarming 3.4 percent mortality risk for coronavirus infections overall. President Trump weighed in on Wednesday, saying of the WHO statistic, “I think the 3.4 percent is really a false number.” Yet the WHO director general was simply describing the percentage of those with reported infections who had died. The risk of dying if you become infected is another matter. For a variety of reasons that are common to epidemics, the covid-19 mortality rate remains elusive. My colleagues in infectious-disease epidemiology and I know the challenges of estimating fatality rates in the middle of outbreaks from almost two decades of experience, including with SARS in 2003 and H1N1 flu in 2009. To estimate risk, we need to know the infection-fatality rate, or IFR — the chances that a person who contracts the infection will die. Also useful is the so-called symptomatic case-fatality rate, or sCFR, the risk that a person who contracts the infection and becomes symptomatic will die. Contracting an infection is one thing; showing symptoms is another. An unknown number of people — unknown, but maybe considerable — might be infected with covid-19 without becoming symptomatic. There are two main sources of bias that make estimates of the IFR or sCFR so challenging early in an epidemic — and we are, alas, still early in the spread of covid-19. One source of bias arises because, initially, we tend to see the most severe cases. In Wuhan, China, where the epidemic began, care and testing were prioritized for the sickest patients. In other places, such as Iran, the first covid-19 tests were administered because individuals were unexpectedly dying of pneumonia. Either way, the cases we know about are not a random sample of all cases, but a sample of the sickest — so the risk of dying is higher in the people we know about than in typical cases. By contrast, the other source of bias can make us underestimate the risk of dying. At any moment in a


growing epidemic, most cases are people who were infected recently — that’s what it means for an epidemic to grow: There are more new infections this week than there were last week. Many of the people with these new infections will recover, and some will die. We don’t yet know the fates of those who were infected, say, just yesterday or the day before. To count appropriately, we need to know how many of the current cases will die, not just how many have died. Epidemiologists have devised statistical ways to estimate that number, to correct the simple calculation to reflect current and expected future deaths among the known cases. Another approach to avoid this problem is to use data from a population where the epidemic has subsided, and fatal case counts have had time to catch up with total case counts. The coronavirus infection-fatality rate — the number everybody wants to know — is still undetermined. First, we need to figure out the proportion of infected people who show symptoms. That will ultimately require performing serologic testing (blood tests measuring antibodies) in a large cohort of an exposed population. Once we do that, the infection-fatality rate can be estimated from the symptomatic case-fatality rate times the proportion of infections that are symptomatic. This is the most useful number, because mathematical models and prior experience with flu can give us estimates of how many people might be infected — and with this number, how many are likely to die. Serologic testing — to detect an antibody indicating whether a person is now or has been infected — is underway in some populations in China. That will help to give us a picture of the whole spectrum of covid-19 infection, from completely unrecognized, to symptomatic, to severe, to fatal. Several estimates have suggested that the risk of dying, for those infected with covid-19 and showing its flu-like symptoms, is around 1 or 2 percent. Elderly adults have a considerably higher risk of both becoming infected and dying, as do people with compromised immune systems. The estimates might change as new data arrive, but the range of 1 to 2 percent for fatalities among the symptomatic seems to be the consensus for now. The overall fatality rate for people infected with covid-19 will be lower — possibly much lower — when we know how many people are infected but asymptomatic. We’ve learned


The coronavirus edition

essentially punted on its effort to write regulations and deferred to Congress. The 2014 guidance was formally withdrawn before Trump took office. For the full fact check, click here. Enjoy this newsletter? Forward it to someone else who’d like it! If this email was forwarded to you, In a viral tweet, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) claimed that Trump “shut down 37 of 47 global anti-pandemic programs” and added that the president “made a choice to make us vulnerable … to this pandemic and the next one and the next one.” The tweet packed a punch. It got nearly 60,000 retweets and likes — and similar figures, though more carefully worded, appeared in news articles and opinion columns. Murphy’s staff said the source of its information was a Washington Post article from early 2018. That article said, “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is dramatically downsizing its epidemic prevention activities in 39 out of 49 countries because money is running out.” Similar articles appeared in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, all of which said the administration was planning to scale back or end activities in 39 out of 49 countries. Murphy’s staff did not explain why his numbers were slightly different. Nor did they explain why they were relying on an article from 2018 when, presumably, a senator or his staff could quickly find out whether the funding reductions occurred. Murphy jumped to conclusions and got Three Pinocchios. At issue was an initiative called the Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA), which sought to help countries prepare to detect and respond to infectious diseases. The U.S. contribution was largely funded by a supplemental package passed in 2015 after the Ebola crisis that provided about $600 million to the CDC for global-health security work — and the money was running out in 2018. But it turns out the shutdown likely did not happen — in large part because of the publicity from the articles and the work of advocacy groups. “The good news is that global health security programs have seen their numbers go up,” said health expert Carolyn Reynolds. For the full fact check, click here. We’re always looking for fact-check suggestions. You can reach us via email, Twitter (@GlennKesslerWP, @rizzoTK, @mmkelly22, @SarahCahlan) or Facebook. Read about our process and rating scale here, and sign up for the newsletter here. Scroll down for this week’s Pinocchio roundup.


San Jose Sharks advised by county to cancel game due to coronavirus. They refused.

to slow the spread of novel coronavirus, the County of Santa Clara Public Health Department is taking steps to protect our community,” a county official said in a statement provided to The Post. “This includes recommendations to postpone or cancel mass gatherings and large community events where large numbers of people are within arm’s length of one another. “We understand that some sports team in communities around the world making similar recommendations have decided to play to empty stadiums, rather than canceling their events. Event organizers must make their own decisions regarding how they will proceed in light of recommendations from public health officials.” As the coronavirus continues to spread, event organizers around the world are grappling with the fallout. Some college basketball programs in the United States have begun canceling road games, and the NCAA said Tuesday, “Today we are planning to conduct our championships as planned, however, we are evaluating the covid-19 situation daily and will make decisions accordingly.” The Sharks asked fans at SAP Center to observe the following guidelines: Thursday’s news conference in San Jose provided a lighter moment when Santa Clara County Health Officer and Public Health Director Sara H. Cody referred to a widely noted incident the day before. At a news conference on Wednesday, she had advised people, “Start working on not touching your face,” before almost immediately licking a finger to turn a page in her notes. “I want to acknowledge that it’s tough for me, too, to not touch my eyes, nose and mouth,” she said Thursday with a chuckle. “It’s hard, and that’s why we’ve been saying it’s something that we all need to think about, and we need to practice. It’s very natural for humans to touch our faces, and we each need to try not to do it.” Of the implications of the county’s recommendation to postpone or cancel large events, Cody said: “It’s a hardship, and this is going to be a change for our community and a change in our county. But it’s really important, and this is the time when we all need to take a deep breath and come together.” Read more: U.S. hockey star Hilary Knight will serve as inside-the-glass analyst for upcoming Caps game Ilya Kovalchuk, Brenden Dillon finding their way in Washington together Ryan Lochte, 35 and loaded with extra weight and plenty of baggage, has his sights on Tokyo Olympics


Testing for the coronavirus might have stopped it. Now it’s too late.

to detect outbreaks early. The covid-19 outbreak is the largest acute infectious-disease emergency most of us have experienced. And we may have let it go undetected here for too long. For countries that are lucky enough so far to have been spared large covid-19 outbreaks, the way to handle the virus is simple: Strangle it at birth. If you detect it while there are still just a handful of cases, it is comparatively easy to chase down the contacts of the people who have it, isolate them quickly and halt transmission. If that fails, stopping transmission might take measures like the draconian restrictions imposed in China, which — while apparently successful — we should wish to avoid. Once infection starts spreading — as it clearly has in the United States, even though we haven’t been testing enough people to turn up a large number of cases — the virus has an expanding pool of potential hosts. As the numbers of infected people climb, it is ever harder to stop them before they fatefully join their family for dinner, head to work at a toy store or go to a soccer match. If you don’t diagnose the disease, it doesn’t go away. It keeps being transmitted without being noticed, and a thousand little fires spark. If we don’t start aggressively testing mild illness and contacts of contacts, we will lose all track of them. Bruce Aylward, leader of the joint World Health Organization China mission, put it bluntly: “It’s all about the speed.” We’re in a race with the virus, and if it wins, we only get more contacts to chase in an ever-growing chain reaction. Most cases of the disease are mild, which makes it more likely to spread undetected without a good testing regime in place. But every infected person is at risk of being one of the unlucky fraction — 10 percent or so — whose symptoms are severe. Some of them will die. Some of them already have. Testing for the virus is like turning on the light. If you don’t test, you cannot know where it is spreading. And if you don’t know where it is spreading, you cannot mount an effective response. How different countries affected by covid-19 have tested for it shows what can be done and the consequences of failure. Singapore enjoys an exceptional capacity for high-quality investigation, partly a legacy of the


away. It keeps being transmitted without being noticed, and a thousand little fires spark. If we don’t start aggressively testing mild illness and contacts of contacts, we will lose all track of them. Bruce Aylward, leader of the joint World Health Organization China mission, put it bluntly: “It’s all about the speed.” We’re in a race with the virus, and if it wins, we only get more contacts to chase in an ever-growing chain reaction. Most cases of the disease are mild, which makes it more likely to spread undetected without a good testing regime in place. But every infected person is at risk of being one of the unlucky fraction — 10 percent or so — whose symptoms are severe. Some of them will die. Some of them already have. Testing for the virus is like turning on the light. If you don’t test, you cannot know where it is spreading. And if you don’t know where it is spreading, you cannot mount an effective response. How different countries affected by covid-19 have tested for it shows what can be done and the consequences of failure. Singapore enjoys an exceptional capacity for high-quality investigation, partly a legacy of the 2003 SARS outbreak, which hit it hard. They take contact-tracing seriously there. The city-state was among the first international locations to report cases of covid-19 exported from Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, but investigators went further. If you test only people connected to known cases, you are just one missed infection from losing track of the transmission chain. Understanding this, in early February, Singapore authorities tested cases of respiratory disease that were negative for other viral pathogens, which meant they might have been the result of covid-19 transmission chains that had escaped detection. This aggressive testing almost immediately found four infections with no known contacts with other cases. Diligent contact tracing has managed to keep a lid on the outbreak, and, despite reporting its first case on Jan. 23, Singapore’s total as of Friday was only 130 cases, with no deaths (although seven people were in serious condition). This is a remarkable achievement. The coronavirus has caused large outbreaks, severe disruption and significant numbers of deaths in China, Iran, Italy and South Korea. South Korea now has the highest number of cases outside China — more than 6,200. But this reflects high numbers of tests: As of Friday, officials


As coronavirus spreads, the bill for our public health failures is due

Richard E. Besser, a physician, is president and chief executive of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in Princeton, N.J. In spring 2009, the H1N1 influenza virus surfaced in Mexico, swiftly evolving from “outbreak” to “pandemic” in just two months. As acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at the time, I led our work to issue preliminary warnings and evidence-based recommendations to help Americans reduce their risk of infection — very similar to what we’re hearing about covid-19 today. Schools were of particular interest given the role children can play in amplifying infectious disease transmission. To reduce that likelihood, our initial recommendation was that officials close schools for two weeks following their first confirmed H1N1 case. The thought was: Keep kids at home, reduce transmission risk — part of an approach called “social distancing.” Several days later, my phone rang. Your recommendations are nuts, said David Fleming, the head of public health in Seattle and King County. Social distancing wasn’t happening, he said. Parents without sick leave or affordable child care options were forced to drop their kids at malls, libraries or community centers rather than leave them unsupervised at home. In essence, the CDC had failed to consider that millions of Americans couldn’t comply even if they wanted to. What happens, for example, to the millions of children who get breakfast and lunch through programs at school if we close them? Crises such as H1N1 and covid-19 provide a mirror for our society and the actions we take — or fail to take. Today, the United States in that mirror is one in which the risk of exposure and the ability to protect oneself and one’s family depends on income, access to health care, and immigration status, among other factors. The failures of public policy and imagination have been stalking us for years, creating haves and have-nots: parents who don’t have paid sick leave from work (only 10 states and the District of Columbia mandate it); a lack of affordable childcare or sick child care; at least 28 million Americans living without insurance and nearly one-third of the population still underinsured; health protections that are not distributed evenly from region to region; and fear among undocumented immigrants regarding access to care. Even when structural failures could imperil every American, the greatest strains will fall on certain demographics because of their economic, social or health status. The


to consider that millions of Americans couldn’t comply even if they wanted to. What happens, for example, to the millions of children who get breakfast and lunch through programs at school if we close them? Crises such as H1N1 and covid-19 provide a mirror for our society and the actions we take — or fail to take. Today, the United States in that mirror is one in which the risk of exposure and the ability to protect oneself and one’s family depends on income, access to health care, and immigration status, among other factors. The failures of public policy and imagination have been stalking us for years, creating haves and have-nots: parents who don’t have paid sick leave from work (only 10 states and the District of Columbia mandate it); a lack of affordable childcare or sick child care; at least 28 million Americans living without insurance and nearly one-third of the population still underinsured; health protections that are not distributed evenly from region to region; and fear among undocumented immigrants regarding access to care. Even when structural failures could imperil every American, the greatest strains will fall on certain demographics because of their economic, social or health status. The elderly and disabled are at particular risk when their daily lives and support systems are disrupted. Those without easy access to health care, including rural and Native communities, might face daunting distances at times of need. People living in close quarters — whether in public housing, nursing homes, jails, shelters or even the homeless on the streets — might suffer in waves, as we have already seen in Washington state. And the vulnerabilities of the low-wage gig economy, with nonsalaried workers and precarious work schedules, will be exposed for all to see during this crisis. Ask the 60 percent of the U.S. labor force that is paid hourly how easy it is to take time off in a moment of need. The CDC is an evidence-based public health agency, but if the evidence used to make recommendations does not incorporate these health equity issues, we will fall short. The nation will not be prepared to weather what is becoming a pandemic. If systems and tactics that can help to control the spread of covid-19 — such as paid sick days, shown to reduce the spread of flu in jurisdictions where they are mandated — are not available to every American,


Two colleges close, another cancels classes and others brace for coronavirus impact on campus

Last week, Amy Morrison was planning for the possibility that coronavirus might affect her campus — a prospect facing college presidents throughout the nation. On Saturday, she abruptly learned her school was right in the thick of it: Lake Washington Institute of Technology students and faculty had visited a nursing home near Seattle. Cases of covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, had just been confirmed there. By Sunday, Morrison had announced the 6,000-student campus would close. On Monday and Tuesday, workers cleaned and disinfected the school, and the more than 20 students and faculty who had possibly been exposed were advised to remain in isolation for two weeks. The campus briefly reopened Wednesday — before closing again that night. A faculty member had tested positive for covid-19, Morrison announced, and the campus would close through the weekend. In New York, Yeshiva University’s president announced Wednesday that a student had tested positive for covid-19 and classes would be canceled at their Washington Heights and Midtown Campuses until after March 10. On Thursday, Everett Community College, near Seattle, closed and its president announced a student had tested positive for covid-19. Colleges and universities first confronted coronavirus as a problem overseas: They have shut down study-abroad programs, closed campuses in China and worried about the effects on international students and overseas research. But as the number of confirmed infections in the United States surged past 100 this week, with 11 deaths as of Wednesday night, many schools are ramping up planning on their campuses, bracing for the possibility of a more profound and direct hit. College leaders are crafting and revising contingency plans with an eye toward the effect the outbreak could have on students and employees, on research and on major events such as the National Collegiate Athletic Association basketball tournament this month. There is talk of canceling meetings, restricting travel and what to do if cases surface on campus. College health officials began intense work on preparations last month “like we were shot out of a cannon,” said Jean E. Chin, who leads an American College Health Association task force on coronavirus. On Wednesday, the group released guidelines for schools, warning the virus was a risk for colleges because of travel by people from schools and because of the potential for rapid transmission on campus. The group advised student health centers to quickly prepare for potentially infectious patients. Because colleges