The next two weeks will decide Africa’s fate on the coronavirus

such as childhood pneumonia and diarrhea are still a challenge to address. This makes it even harder for governments to be able to address the challenge of covid-19 and could make the situation much more dire if an outbreak emerges. Finally, the region does not have the financial resources to fight yet another pandemic. While the World Bank and International Monetary Fund have pledged tens of billions of dollars to help developing countries in their fight against covid-19, these financial stimuli pale in comparison with the hundreds of billions that China, Europe and the United States are capable of mobilizing for themselves. There is, however, a glimmer of hope. Africa’s currently low number of cases provides a window for containment. In addition, the newly established African Centres for Disease Control has started extensive preparatory measures for covid-19, and both governments and the public have heightened awareness about the virus and how devastating outbreaks can be. Some countries are taking the crisis seriously. Senegal, the hardest-hit West African country, has moved particularly quickly to contain this virus. While it has only 27 cases, the country has actively sought to track known cases and, anticipating testing shortages, is working to develop a cheaper diagnostic test that could be available to distribute quickly throughout the region. Several countries, including Senegal, Nigeria and Mali, have restricted travel from affected countries and limited public gatherings and school attendance. Given that many in the region rely on self-employment and unsteady income, it remains to be seen how these instructions are followed, but these are early signs of strong action. There are still many unknowns about this virus: how it will operate in a warmer climate, the genetic susceptibility of different populations and whether re-infection is possible. In the absence of more detailed information about the virus, we must use the window of opportunity that Africa’s low case number currently provides. Complacency kills in outbreaks — and, after Ebola, African governments know this all too well. Read more: Carl Bildt: The coronavirus is another test for Europe. Working together will be key. Mohamed Soltan: Don’t forget our loved ones, trapped in Egyptian prisons during this pandemic Jared Diamond and Nathan Wolfe: How we can stop the next new virus Scott Gottlieb and Caitlin Rivers: Quarantining cities isn’t needed. But a fast, coordinated response to covid-19 is essential. John M. Barry: Can this virus be contained? Probably not.


John Cornyn criticized Chinese for eating snakes. He forgot about the rattlesnake roundups back in Texas.

neither the 2012 MERS outbreak nor the 2009 swine flu epidemics started there. MERS, short for “Middle East respiratory syndrome,” reflects that the first human cases of the disease were first identified in Saudi Arabia in 2012, according to the World Health Organization. The largest outbreaks of MERS occurred in Saudi Arabia — where 80 percent of human MERS infections have occurred — as well as the United Arab Emirates and South Korea. When it comes to the 2009 swine flu pandemic, it started off, as its name suggests, infecting pigs in Mexico and the United States. The H1N1 virus jumped from North American pig herds to infect humans in the spring of 2009, with the first cases being recorded in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Cornyn also appeared to be off-base about the specific animals that pass other viral infections to people. None of the diseases he mentioned are linked to dogs and snakes, according to the CDC. Bats do carry coronaviruses, but another animal usually catches the virus from a bat before passing it on to a human. Scientists believe contact with civet cats, which had probably been infected with a coronavirus by bats at a live-animal market, caused the 2003 SARS outbreak in China, according to the CDC. And contact with camels is the likely reason for the MERS outbreak in Saudi Arabia, the WHO said. Experts don’t yet know the animal source of the virus that causes covid-19, but there is some evidence it is also linked to a Chinese “wet” market. Cornyn’s comment appears to capitalize on American taboos against eating certain animals, but the science does not support the suggestion that eating Chinese dishes that include bat, snake or dog meat have contributed directly to the spread of coronavirus, SARS, MERS or swine flu. And you don’t have to travel as far as China to eat snake meat. In Cornyn’s home state of Texas, several towns host annual festivals where residents milk rattlesnakes for venom to be used in antivenin and fry up filets of snake flesh as a novelty snack. Cornyn, who published a column last year on his Senate website titled, “The Texas Snake Man: Jackie Bibby and His Rattlesnake Roundups,” has recognized that some people in Texas chow down on snakes. “Festivals and roundups all across the state showcase daredevil handlers performing bold and dangerous


acts, demonstrations of milking the venomous snakes to produce the antidote, and fryers filled with fresh rattlesnake meat, seasoned with garlic and lemon for taste,” the column reads. Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.), who chairs the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, condemned Cornyn’s comment, calling it “disgusting.” “Disparaging an entire ethnic group and culture like this is bigotry, plain and simple,” she said in a statement Wednesday. “Over the past few days, Trump has repeatedly labeled this pandemic as the ‘Chinese virus,’ and his loyal Republican followers have come to his defense in increasingly hateful terms. Their words are inciting racism and violence against Asian Americans in the United States.” Cornyn is hardly alone in placing blame on China. Trump has repeatedly done so at news conferences and online in recent weeks. Early on, Trump dismissed concerns about the impending pandemic. He said the risk in the United States was limited to “one person coming in from China.” “We have it under control,” he said on CNBC in January. “It’s going to be just fine.” On Monday, the president’s tone changed. He acknowledged the coronavirus is a “real pandemic” and urged Americans to avoid gatherings of more than 10 people. As the president has adopted a more serious tone to discuss the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S., he has also increasingly turned to calling it “the Chinese virus.” He stopped using the words coronavirus or covid-19 on his Twitter account on Sunday. Since then, he’s exclusively referred to coronavirus as the “Chinese virus” in his tweets. “It’s not racist at all,” Trump told reporters Wednesday. “Not at all. It comes from China. That’s why. I want to be accurate.” Several GOP lawmakers, including Cornyn, have followed suit, even after the CDC and WHO rejected the label earlier this month and asked officials to use either “novel coronavirus” or “covid-19” to describe the disease. Some have argued the use of the term is a way to shift attention away from the Trump administration’s failures in addressing the covid-19 outbreak early on. Other critics have said blaming China fans anti-Asian American hate, reignites old racist tropes and increases the risk of hate crimes and xenophobic attacks. “The president’s view that the virus was a Chinese problem contributed to his failure to understand the importance of testing people domestically for the virus and of having enough medical equipment to deal with the outbreak,” Rep.


A failure of leadership in Latin America

IF LATIN America is hard hit by the coronavirus epidemic, as it now appears it will be, two of its political leaders will bear outsize responsibility. Presidents Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil and Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico govern the region’s two most populous countries by far, with more than 325 million people between them. Yet both have minimized the risk of the novel coronavirus and resisted — or even flouted — measures to prevent its spread. Mr. Bolsonaro mingled with supporters at a rally as recently as Sunday, even though his own health ministry recommended that he isolate himself because he has had close contact with infected officials. At a news conference Wednesday, he warned against “hysteria” and said no one should be surprised to see him ride a crowded subway in Sao Paulo or a ferry in Rio de Janeiro. This weekend he is planning a two-day celebration of his 65th birthday. Never mind that Brazil’s covid-19 case count had risen to 621 confirmed cases on Thursday, including the president of the Senate, national security adviser and other senior officials. Thanks to Mr. Bolsonaro, the federal government has taken few preventive measures, leaving borders, schools and businesses open. Though some state governors have stepped up and imposed closures, Brazil remains wide-open to the pandemic. No wonder hundreds of thousands of people in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo banged pots and pans from their homes on Tuesday and Wednesday in protest. Mr. López Obrador, a populist like his Brazilian counterpart, has been almost as heedless of the mounting threat. Mexico, as of Thursday, had 118 reported covid-19 cases, but the president was still resisting restrictions on travel and commercial activity. There are “pressures of all types,” he said Wednesday. “Close the airport, shut down everything, paralyze the economy. No.” He said his priority was to protect “all the people who work, who live by economic activity, by what they can get day to day.” The concern for ordinary workers is understandable, especially in a country with a large informal economy. But Mr. López Obrador, like Mr. Bolsonaro, has been cavalier in his personal response to the virus, rejecting his health minister’s recommendation that he abstain from hugs and kisses. “You have to hug,” he said at a news conference this month. “Nothing is going to happen.” Last weekend, he acted on his words, plunging into a crowd and


Adam Silver mulls NBA exhibition because fans ‘need a diversion’

it’s unfortunate we’re at this position as a society where it’s triage when it comes to testing,” Silver said. “And so the fundamental issue is obviously there are insufficient tests. I’d only say in the case of the NBA, we’ve been following the recommendations of public health officials. “[Last week in Oklahoma City] the Utah Jazz did not ask to be tested. The Oklahoma public health official there on the spot not only required that they be tested, but they weren’t allowed to leave their locker room, which was for at least four hours after the game where they had to stay, masks on, in the locker room. They couldn’t leave until health authorities had tested them. So that was our first case. And then what followed, when we then had additional positive tests the next day, [we followed] health officials’ and our doctors’ recommendations that we then looked at essentially that group of teams that were most proximate to the initial team that had tested positive and then the circle expanded from there. “Again, I understand from a public health standpoint why some people have reacted the way they did, but I’d say from an NBA standpoint, we were following directives.” Playing NBA games into July or August would have a profound impact on the league’s normal schedule, in which the summer usually the domain of the draft, free agency and summer league. Further complicating matters this year are the Summer Olympics, which are still scheduled to take place in Japan starting in late July with professional basketball players scheduled to compete. Should this season go late into the summer, Silver said delaying the start of the 2020-21 season — or even moving permanently to a December-August season, which has been proposed by at least one NBA owner as a way to cut down on overlap with professional and college football — could be an option. “Possibly,” he said. “Those are things we’re always talking about whether they’re executives at … ESPN or Warner Media, together with our regional sports networks. I will say that the conventional television calendar has changed so much, certainly since I got into this business. Prime time means something very different than it used to now that people in essence carry televisions around with them in their pockets.” Sign up for our weekly NBA newsletter to get the best basketball coverage in your inbox


Live music is on an indefinite hiatus. Here’s how it’s affecting touring musicians and their crews.

out large theaters, were in the middle of the soundcheck for their March 12 Indianapolis show when it was canceled, one of the first casualties of Indiana’s ban on gatherings of over 250 people. “We’re trying to be responsible and good citizens, and balance out doing the right thing for everyone’s health and our fans, but we’re trying to figure out how we’re going to survive it, too,” says vocalist Patterson Hood. “As a small business that doesn’t exactly have a huge amount of reserves to fall back on, it’s a very scary, precarious time right now.” Legendary musician David Crosby had planned to be on the road most of the year, plans that are now in jeopardy. “I’m not trying to whine about my situation,” he says. “It’s happening to everybody. It’s happening to other people who can handle it even less well than I can, and I can’t handle it very well. I don’t have much in the way of savings or anything.” If he loses the lucrative summer touring season, Crosby worries, he and his family might lose their house. “If I have to sell some guitars, I will. That’s the only thing I’ve got, and I will sell some if I have to, to keep it.” In the early weeks of the outbreak, the patchwork nature of the government response, with bars and clubs open in one state and closed in the next, meant that no one was sure when it made sense to pull the plug on their tour. No one wanted to overreact to a situation that hadn’t happened yet, but no one wanted to find themselves trapped on the road on the wrong side of a containment zone, with no shows, and no way to get home. For some artists, merely making a decision for themselves proved comforting. Baltimore art rock band Horse Lords canceled the release show for their new album, “The Common Task,” and their entire tour along with it, hours before it was to begin. “To be the reason for people to come together and potentially spread this virus — we don’t want to be part of the problem,” says saxophonist Andrew Bernstein. “I feel like making the decision to cancel was incredibly difficult, but now that it’s made, it’s somewhat of a weight off of our shoulders. I feel like we made the right decision, and now we can


FDIC approves student loan servicer’s bid to become a bank

Nelnet, one of the largest student loan-servicing companies, is gearing up to become a bank, a prospect that has consumer groups concerned. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. this week approved the firm’s application to form an industrial loan company, a state-chartered bank that can operate nationally with minimal federal oversight. The decision clears the way for the launch of Nelnet Bank, which will operate exclusively online. According to the company, the bank will focus on education lending but also offer consumer loans and refinance options. “With a chartered bank, we will have a better opportunity to bring new borrower-focused solutions to market that leverage our superior customer experience, tuition payment plans, and education lending and servicing,” Nelnet President Tim Tewes said Wednesday in a statement. The charter would allow Nelnet to avoid the same level of Federal Reserve supervision as other bank holding companies while giving the firm access to federal deposit insurance. It also means that as a federally insured depository institution, the company can circumvent state interest rate limits, according to the nonprofit Center for Responsible Lending. This week, the organization sent a letter urging FDIC Chairman Jelena McWilliams to hold public hearings on pending charter applications, arguing that the agency was creating a pathway for loosely regulated online lending. The center and other advocacy groups also take issue with Nelnet’s track record of collecting student loan payments for the federal government. Although Nelnet has not faced the same level of legal scrutiny as its competitors, the company is routinely sued by borrowers over the processing of their payments or the accuracy of reports to credit bureaus. Nelnet is fighting a class-action lawsuit accusing the company of mismanaging the accounts of borrowers enrolled in student loan repayment plans tied to their income. The Omaha company has denied the allegations. “Allowing Nelnet to have a banking charter and originate loans while having trouble servicing their own student loan customers is dangerous — and it creates a huge conflict of interest, especially because banks are exempt from state student loan servicer laws,” said Whitney Barkley-Denney, legislative policy counsel at the nonprofit Center for Responsible Lending. “The FDIC shouldn’t be inviting more trouble than we already have with respect to student loan regulation.” Nelnet spokesman Ben Kiser said the company is structured in a way that will not exempt the loan servicing division from state laws. He said Nelnet Bank will


Sports are taking a timeout, but sports lessons are still timely

Sports teams hung out a big sign last week: Closed Until Further Notice. The National Basketball Association, National Hockey League, the NCAA college basketball championships, Major League Baseball and the Masters golf tournament: All canceled or postponed their games because of the threat from the novel coronavirus outbreak. The danger of spreading the virus makes it too risky to travel or gather in crowds. So playing sports has stopped. But just because sports are not being played does not mean that sports are finished. Most kids never become professional athletes or play at the college level. For most kids, sports are important because of the lessons they learn from playing on teams and competing. Those lessons may be important in the coming weeks and months as everyone tries to cope with this national health emergency. Here are timely lessons: Pay attention: Years ago I asked legendary coach Morgan Wootten of Maryland’s DeMatha Catholic High School what he looked for in a basketball player. One of the first things Wootten said was, “I look for a player who will listen. If a player doesn’t listen, he never gets better.” During this coronavirus crisis, everyone is going to have to listen to government officials and medical experts and follow their instructions carefully on the best ways to remain safe. We all have to pay attention. Be a good teammate: This coronavirus outbreak is going to make things tough for kids’ Number 1 teams: their families. Many parents will have to work in their house or apartment. Kids will be at home from school. No one will go out as often. At times like this, it’s important for kids to think of how they can help their group or their team. Maybe you can help by cleaning up your bedroom or playing with a younger brother or sister. Think about the team, not just yourself. Deal with disappointment: There will be disappointments during the coronavirus crisis. Maybe you were looking forward to your spring soccer or baseball season, and now the games are canceled. Or perhaps a family trip or party had to be postponed. This may be a time when you realize everything cannot turn out exactly as you wished. Sometimes you have to learn to live with disappointment and make the best of it. Sports events may be closed, but the lessons we learn from sports are still important. Maybe more


Gov. Hogan restricts BWI access to ticketed passengers and airport workers only

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) on Thursday restricted access to Baltimore-Washington International Marshall Airport to ticketed passengers and badged employees. No one else will be allowed inside the terminal. In the latest action responding to the coronavirus pandemic, Hogan also ordered Marylanders to stay off the state’s public transit, saying it is reserved for emergency personnel, front-line health-care providers and workers providing essential supplies and services. The number of novel coronavirus cases in the Washington region was at 225 midday Thursday. Maryland, with 108 cases, reported its first death Wednesday. “Earlier this week I strongly urged all Maryland citizens to avoid unnecessary travel and discouraged anyone from entering BWI Marshall airport, unless they are a traveling passenger or reporting to a job,” Hogan said. “That is no longer a recommendation." He said the Maryland Department of Transportation will restrict access to the BWI terminal starting Thursday. The only exception is those assisting travelers with disabilities. “No one else will be granted access,” Hogan said at a morning news conference, adding police will be “strictly enforcing this policy effective immediately." The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, which oversees Washington Dulles International and Reagan National airports, said they do not plan to limit access to their facilities. MWAA spokeswoman Christina Saull said the authority is following state and federal guidance regarding its operations and that will include any new direction from the office of Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D). Even though passenger traffic has slipped dramatically, officials have not closed any gates or concourses, she said. Signs are going up at public transit stations, Hogan said, alerting riders of new restrictions to use MARC commuter trains, Metro, Amtrak, buses or any other transportation asset in the state unless they are part of the emergency response workforce. Lori Aratani contributed to this report.


Fact-checking the Biden fracking fracas

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.): Former vice president Joe Biden: Sanders: Biden: — “There are 7.3M Americans whose jobs depend on fracking. Biden and Bernie would eliminate them.” — Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel, In this back-and-forth with Sanders, Biden indicated from the debate stage that he would ban all fracking in the United States. Critics pounced. Republican operatives cut a short video of Biden’s remarks, to use as a cudgel in races against moderate House Democrats. Sanders supporters accused Biden of misleading voters about his policy, which doesn’t ban fracking outright, as Sanders would. But the Biden campaign said that he misspoke and that his position was the same as ever: He would issue no new fracking permits for federal lands or waters, while allowing existing fracking operations to continue. Biden has proposed a $1.7 trillion plan that aims for net-zero emissions by 2050. The plan, which might be described as “Green New Deal-lite,” would end fossil fuel subsidies while continuing to rely on these energy sources during the 30-year transition period. Fracking, short for “hydraulic fracturing,” is a drilling technique that uses high-pressure water and chemical blasts to access natural gas and oil reserves underground. The technique has facilitated a boom in U.S. energy production over the past decade, but it has been controversial, the target of climate-change activists and many Democrats. For Biden, it’s a fine line to straddle. Pushing for a total ban could hurt his general election chances in the swing states where fracking has propped up the economy, such as Ohio and Pennsylvania. Anything less than a total ban could detract from Biden’s appeal among liberals and climate-change activists in the Democratic base. Biden’s campaign website avoids the words “fracking” or “hydraulic fracturing.” Instead, it says Biden would ban “new oil and gas permitting on public lands and waters.” That may be why his remarks at the debate caught so much attention. Biden seemed to be staking out a new position. When Sanders said, “I’m talking about stopping fracking as soon as we possibly can,” Biden said, “So am I.” A few beats later, Biden said “no more — no new fracking.” A Biden campaign official told us the former vice president was not adopting a new position. Biden meant to restate his previous pledge to ban “new oil and gas permitting on public lands and waters.” That’s the same clarification that reporters received


Why is the media accurately reporting my coronavirus actions just to be mean?

They ought to say that I am doing wonderfully, taking things seriously, and being, in fact, a better president than three Roosevelts (Teddy, Franklin and then a bonus one). I have been displaying extraordinary leadership throughout and knew this was a pandemic before anyone! Even before the experts! That is why I called it a hoax in public, if you understand. (They do not understand.) Why, if the broken news media had just agreed with me earlier when I said there were only going to be 15 cases, which would disappear, miraculously — if they had only gone along with that, think how many people would be safely at work right now! Millions! A loyal media would not have accurately described the things I have been saying and doing for the past several weeks. This feels personal. They could make this go away at any time. I don’t understand why they won’t. I go to the podium and say things like, “Maybe we’re making a website!” and “Maybe the FDA has approved a specific medicine!” and then it turns out that sometimes those things are true and sometimes they are just fun things I made up in my head that sounded like what a president would say. It is always exciting to learn which! But they could all be true if people would just work with me. Just as everyone knows there are no roaches in a kitchen if you do not turn on the light, so, too, the media ought to be more careful about the things they are reporting. Stop suggesting that we do not have adequate respirators or are running low on basic equipment and that the CDC has been telling people to try using bandannas to address the mask shortage. You will make it so, and it will only be your fault! Please. I am tired of dealing with this and I just want it to go away. Sign up to receive Alexandra Petri’s columns by email as soon as they’re published Read more: No, I will not leave the bar simply because I am ‘on fire’ President Trump gathers friends to reassure him he is doing a good job with the coronavirus The coronavirus is under control. Correction: It is not. Submit a question for Petri’s March 24 live chat Read a transcript of Petri’s March 17 live chat More coverage of the coronavirus pandemic


Michel Roux, influential French chef in England, dies at 78

Michel Roux, the French-born chef who had a profound influence on elevating Britain’s dining habits, died March 11 at his home in Bray, England. He was 78. The chef had a long-standing lung condition, idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. His family announced the death. When he and his older brother, Albert, arrived in Britain in 1967, they brought their classical skills, particularly in pastry-making, to a restaurant scene that was widely considered to be old-fashioned. Their Le Gavroche, a showcase of haute cuisine, was frequented by a loyal clientele that included many visiting Hollywood celebrities and members of the British upper classes. In 1982, Le Gavroche became the first British restaurant to be awarded three Michelin stars. Though it lost one star in 1993, Le Gavroche, now run by Albert’s son Michel Jr., is still considered one of London’s most coveted places to dine. In 1972, Michel Roux set up the similarly popular Waterside Inn in Bray-on-Thames, west of London. In 1985, the restaurant received its third Michelin star, which it has retained ever since. His son Alain has been chef patron there since 2002, the same year Michel was awarded the Order of the British Empire honor by Queen Elizabeth II, along with his brother. The Michelin Guide said in a tweet that Mr. Roux was a “true titan of the hospitality industry” and that he “inspired a whole generation of chefs.” The British restaurant scene, it added, “would not be what it is today were it not for his influence.” Michel André Roux was born in the central French town of Charolles on April 19, 1941, and he spent his early years living over his grandfather’s delicatessen. In 1946, the family moved to a suburb of Paris, and it was in the French capital that his passion for cooking really began, and his reputation was cemented. One of his jobs in Paris included a stint between 1958 and 1959 at the British Embassy. Mr. Roux wrote several books on cooking and dedicated a large part of his final years to the Roux Scholarship, which is widely considered to be one of Britain’s top competitions for chefs, if not simply the top one. His first marriage, to Françoise Becquet, with whom he had three children, ended in divorce. His second wife, Robyn Joyce, whom he wed in 1984, died in 2017. His children and brother survive. obits@washpost.com


As coronavirus invades, emergency rooms look to keep people at a safe distance

have only two or three isolation rooms in their emergency departments. Many big-city hospitals have just one, posing dilemmas: where to house patients who may have covid-19 until they can be moved for treatment — and what happens when the next presumed positive comes in? “The ED is the gateway to the hospital,” said Lauren Sauer, director of operations at the Johns Hopkins Office of Critical Event Preparedness and Response, and a sign of how well the entire institution is functioning. Johns Hopkins has set up a large white tent on its ambulance ramp and plans to open a screening center in conjunction with the University of Maryland, much like the new facilities that sprang up in Seattle and Denver. Other cities, including New York, are looking into walk-through facilities that would similarly limit contact among patients and with hospital staff. “This is 21st-century forward triage,” said Carr, whose hospital is prioritizing telehealth. Many ER patients with respiratory infections are return visitors, Carr said. Once practitioners get a better understanding of where patients are on the risk spectrum, they can offer reassurance or, if necessary, send an ambulance or a paramedic, or encourage them to go to a testing center. “It’s not just added volume,” said William Jaquis, president of the American College of Emergency Physicians. “It’s seeing additional people who could be highly contagious.” Add to that what Christopher Greene, a professor of global health and international emergency medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, calls the “pandemic of fear.” It’s natural, Greene said, for people cut off from their usual social support network to say: “I feel ill. I need to go to the ER right away.” “But that’s a very dangerous thing to do,” he said. Using experience from the H1N1 swine flu epidemic in 2009, clinicians can assess patients’ symptoms and their risk of developing severe illness before they enter the ER. And keeping low-risk or mildly sick patients out is not only in their best interest but in the best interests of other patients. “There’s a high likelihood they could get infected or infect people who are not infected,” said Paul Kivela, former president of the American College of Emergency Physicians. The coronavirus crisis comes as many emergency departments throughout the country already struggle to keep up with the volume and variety of problems their patients present. The challenges are compounded by gaps in


This is who Americans trust about coronavirus information.

the pandemic was a hoax or a plot by Democrats to hurt Trump; not until this week did many Fox News personalities take the threat seriously. This probably helps explains why a recent poll found 72 percent of people who pay the most attention to national newspapers, like the New York Times or The Washington Post, are worried about the coronavirus, in contrast to 38 percent of those who pay the most attention to Fox News. The partisan framing probably means Republicans are less likely to seek out and follow expert health advice to help “flatten the curve” of transmission. In a March 8-10 poll, Republicans were less likely than Democrats to say they taking precautions such as canceling travel or working from home. This may change as the Trump administration continues treating the pandemic as a national emergency. A move away from partisan communication may increase public trust more broadly. The weekend before last, rather than sending out infectious disease specialists to communicate to the public, the administration sent Vice President Pence and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar to news programs. Our research suggests that when people are worried, they want to hear from doctors, not appointees whose job is to depict the administration’s response in the best light. Actual experts like Anthony S. Fauci are likely both to deliver greater insight and reassure the public more than overtly partisan figures. Don’t miss anything! Sign up to get TMC’s smart analysis in your inbox, three days a week. Bethany Albertson Shana Kushner Gadarian Read more: The Fed’s using all its emergency tools to prevent a coronavirus-prompted economic disaster. That means things look dire. Red states are finally starting to Google ‘coronavirus’ 3 ways the coronavirus could end Trump’s presidency The House moved quickly on a covid-19 response bill. These 4 takeaways explain what’s likely to happen next. Trump declared two different kinds of emergencies for covid-19. There might soon be 52. China and the U.S. blame each other for the coronavirus. But they both made similar mistakes. China is also relying on propaganda to tackle the covid-19 crisis Wuhan officials tried to cover up covid-19 — and sent it careening outward Covid-19 reveals how China’s internal politics now affect the whole world China’s early warning system didn’t work on covid-19. Here’s the story. Why China’s politics makes it easier — and harder — to control disease outbreaks


Bats, insects, coyotes, other wildlife make cities their homes. Urban communities are encouraging this.

The nation’s capital is turning drainage ditches into meandering waterways buffered by vegetation, making them more hospitable to birds, fish and reptiles. Instead of mowing the grass, it’s turning open green spaces into meadows filled with plants for pollinators. And it’s encouraging residents to plant milkweed, which has been a boon to monarch butterflies. The District is an urban paradise for many wild animals, and it’s at the forefront of nationwide efforts to make cities and suburbs better places for wildlife. Across the country, scientists and city planners are working to better understand the animals that call urban areas home, while working to design cities so residents and wildlife can coexist peacefully. Most research on urban wildlife has taken place only in the past 15 years or so, but scientists nationwide generally agree that more animals are moving into urban and suburban areas. As the country grows more urbanized, with nearly 90 percent of the U.S. population projected to live in urban areas by 2050, scientists say that making sure animals and humans can coexist in cities will grow increasingly important. “Generalist” species such as deer, coyotes and raccoons — that thrive in many different conditions — have found cities especially welcoming. Many have been forced out of their natural habitat by development, and an abundance of food and lack of predators make cities a good home. “Animals are just savvy, and they’re starting to adapt because development is pushing them into cities,” said Travis Gallo, who teaches urban ecology at George Mason University. The nation’s capital has more green space per capita than nearly any city in the country, said Tommy Wells, director of the District’s Department of Energy and Environment. And its river corridors, as well as long stretches of natural areas such as Rock Creek Park and the C&O Canal, give animals space to move freely through the city. Wells’s agency is working to increase the District’s habitat, planting 11,000 trees a year with the goal of reaching 40 percent coverage of tree canopy before 2032. The District also has enacted regulations restricting the use of coal tar and some pesticides, aiming to improve the water quality of the Anacostia and Potomac rivers. It has strict storm-water regulations, encouraging developers to plant trees and install green roofs. These efforts have paid off, Wells said. Shad runs have rebounded on the Potomac River, and the city may soon


to the urban core,” she said. “It provides people this really unique experience to see wildlife in a city. You don’t really have to leave the city to have those experiences with nature.” Many wildlife agencies are shifting to a more hands-off approach to animals in urban areas instead of treating every sighting as a problem to be solved. Chicago, which has a large coyote population, won’t act on complaint calls unless an animal poses a threat to human safety. “If a call comes in about a coyote in a cemetery — well, leave it alone because it’s not interacting with you,” said Mamadou Diakhate, interim director of Chicago’s Animal Care and Control. “The excellent news about coyotes [is], they are very good at avoiding human, contact and they’re not aggressive most of the time.” Chicago has worked to educate people about living alongside coyotes, but rare moments of conflict — such as a January incident in which a young boy was bitten — can create the perception that the animals pose a threat. The city has received more than 1,000 calls about coyotes in the first two months of the year, nearly equal to the total from 2019. Diakhate noted that the city sends officers to respond to all calls about coyotes, but most prove to be a “sighting” rather than a “nuisance” that requires action. Scientists say coyotes have proven to be one of the most adaptable species, and they have taken up residence in many large cities, such as New York, Denver and Portland. Though coyotes occasionally prey on small pets left outdoors, researchers say they’re far less dangerous than most people tend to think. Not all urban animals make good neighbors. When the deer population skyrocketed in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in the mid-1990s, auto collisions with the animals became more frequent and vegetation in the city began to disappear. With no natural predators in town, there was nothing to check the spread of the deer. In 2005, the city began allowing hunting in town, crafting careful regulations for bowhunters who wanted to hunt on private property. Hunters must get permission from property owners and stay on large properties away from public areas. When a black bear was spotted in Berrien County, Mich., in 2016, the first sighting there since the Civil War, many locals were excited. But the bruin bent over bird feeders, tore through trash


Katie Ledecky, Simone Manuel among U.S. swimmers scrambling to find pools to keep training

You could work around it, you know, but knowing that two or three days has the potential to turn into two or three weeks. That’s the challenge.” The country’s other top swimmers were in the same situation, whether they normally relied on facilities at major universities in Indiana, Florida, California, Texas — everywhere, really. Over the past several days, the national team coaches and USA Swimming officials started to realize “that options were getting eliminated by the hour,” Meehan said, “as pools around the country closed — with the understanding they aren’t going to be opening up anytime soon. That’s the reality. I think we all know that.” And so Friday, Tim Hinchey, the chief executive of USA Swimming became the first national federation to appeal to the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee, advocating for a one-year postponement of the Tokyo Games. “The right and responsible thing to do is to prioritize everyone’s health and safety and appropriately recognize the toll this global pandemic is taking on athletic preparations,” Hinchey wrote. “It has transcended borders and wreaked havoc on entire populations, including those of our respected competitors. Everyone has experienced unimaginable disruptions, mere months before the Olympic Games, which calls into question the authenticity of a level playing field for all.” Saying “our athletes are under tremendous pressure, stress and anxiety,” Hinchey urged the USOPC “to use its voice and speak up for the athletes.” Hours earlier, USOPC officials participated in a conference call with reporters, in which they said they supported the International Olympic Committee’s measured approach and it was too soon to make any changes to the Tokyo Olympics schedule. No matter the sport, any break in training impacts performance, and Meehan said the interrupted training this week already was affecting swimmers. “Swimmers are routine-driven, and training is very much a part of their routine,” he said. “In a lot of ways, the consistency of our schedule is therapeutic. I worry about the stress and anxiousness right now of our best athletes with the uncertainty of where they’re going to be from day to day, knowing that they would potentially have to compete in an Olympics when they haven’t been able to prepare as maybe some others around the world have.” While Meehan’s Stanford student-athletes have returned to their homes, Ledecky and Manuel, who both compete as professionals, have stayed in Palo Alto. Since the U.S. Olympic Training


To weather the covid-19 storm, President Trump must offer better information

collapsed and London bankers had cut off credit to the United States — was actually good for minds and markets. The certainty ended people’s panics. As they calmed down, many wanted to forget their panicked actions. But they couldn’t undo them. Debtors and creditors negotiated settlements, but for the enslaved, the starving and the suicidal, the panic’s damage was already done, triggering seven years of misery. Access to accurate information might have saved families, property and lives. The United States was not the only place losing lives from the spread of information in early 1837. As Americans panicked over their finances, London buried thousands of influenza victims. In a time before running water and hand soap, the virus spread from desk to desk in the world’s financial center. Many bankers’ clerks died. The widespread acceptance of germ theory was still in the future, the flu vaccine and Tamiflu further still. People blamed disease on an unhealthy climate and an imbalance in bodily fluids: phlegm, two types of bile and blood. Rather than recommending social distancing or self-quarantine, doctors performed bloodlettings. Few in 1837 suspected that these fluids, especially phlegm droplets, were actually spreading the disease. Before telegraphs, telephones and text messages, accurate financial information could not travel without clerks’ crucial labor. Sick clerks in England coughed as they penned the loops and lines that conveyed American economic horrors. The news that ended American panic killed the London clerks in the process. Certainty is the scourge of panic. Amid the calls for flattening the curve and washing our hands, we must demand reliable information from our leaders. You should not need to scroll down your feed to find updates on the spread of the virus or the state of the markets. President Trump should convey accurate information daily, if not more frequently. University presidents and local officials should not leave people wondering whether schools, stores and even the department of motor vehicles will be closed. If we want to stop panic from becoming depression, we need to know when and how our government will replace lost incomes and extend credit to corporations. Certainty will cure the many panics of 2020. It will calm our markets and our minds. While the coming weeks and months may still be bad, with accurate knowledge they will be less bad. But while you are waiting for accurate information, you might want to clean your phone.


The Daily 202: Simulations before coronavirus foreshadowed infighting between agencies in pandemic response

With Mariana Alfaro Before Sept. 11, 2001, government planners had not considered the possibility that hijackers would fly commercial airplanes into the Pentagon and World Trade Center. There was no such failure of imagination ahead of this pandemic. Experts have not just warned for years about the inevitability of an outbreak like the novel coronavirus on American soil. They have also sounded the alarm about the risk of the kind of poor coordination between federal and local agencies that has characterized the initial U.S. response to covid-19. A simulation called “Crimson Contagion,” organized by a Trump-appointed assistant secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services from January to August in 2019, envisioned a respiratory virus beginning in China and infecting 110 million Americans Chunks of “HHS and DHS/FEMA’s use of disparate information management systems hampered their ability to establish and maintain a national common operating picture. Both HHS and DHS/FEMA submitted senior leader briefs to the White House National Security Council during the exercise, which caused confusion regarding the official source of senior leader briefs. … State, local, tribal, and territorial partners were unclear on the kinds of information they needed to provide … HHS’ regional staff lack clear guidance on the distribution of federal information management products to state and local partners. … Inconsistent use of terminology regarding vaccine types and stockpiles caused confusion among response partners at all levels of government.” The Times also posted “During such incidents, clarity of Federal roles and responsibilities and coordination across the Federal interagency are paramount. Little of this was present in Dallas,” Kirchhoff wrote. “Some had an expectation that CDC was going to help with healthcare delivery, yet healthcare delivery is not a function of CDC. CDC’s initial forward deployed team was built against a set of technical health requirements and was not equipped to manage the conflicts that developed between the hospital, state, and local authorities. … The CDC also was not equipped, and did not have clear authority, to perform incident command without being requested to do so by the state of Texas. The peculiarities of the local political environment meant that Dallas county and the state of Texas each set up parallel incident command structures that issued conflicting guidance, further confusing command and control.” As it relates to the coronavirus, a stream of fresh revelations underscores early mistakes and failures to appropriately coordinate among and between federal


been spelled out in our national conversation about flattening the curve: There will probably be more than one curve. If we’re lucky, the coming months will probably look less like a mountain and more like a string of bumpy hills, say epidemiologists. But if authorities ease some measures in coming months or if we start letting them slip ourselves, that hill could easily turn right back into the exponential curve that has cratered Italy’s health system and that U.S. officials are desperately trying to avoid replicating.” “Nowhere is this trend more pronounced than in Italy. Men make up nearly 60 percent of people with confirmed cases of the virus and more than 70 percent of those who have died,” Chris Mooney, Sarah Kaplan and Min Joo Kim report. “A study of 99 patients at a hospital in Wuhan, where the virus originated, found that men made up two-thirds of patients. … More recent figures from China’s Center for Disease Control, based on tens of thousands of cases, showed a strong gender breakdown of deaths, which were 64 percent male. … The gendered death gap was also seen in the smaller SARS and MERS outbreaks. … “These statistics could be a product of behavior, biology or both, scientists say. For one thing, demographic figures suggest many men have more health risks to begin with. … Women tend to live longer than men. … Men also drink and smoke more. … But there are also underlying biological differences between men and women that may make covid-19 worse in men. … Years of research have found that women generally have stronger immune systems than men and are better able to fend off infections. The X chromosome contains a large number of immune-related genes, and because women have two of them, they gain an advantage in fighting disease. … Studies have also found that estrogen was protective in female mice infected with the virus that caused the 2003 SARS outbreak.” “Biostatistician and infectious disease specialist Nicholas Reich from the University of Massachusetts is participating in the White House Coronavirus Task Force modeling efforts. He said the death rates from flu for people over 50 could be a good indicator of vulnerability for covid-19, though they are ‘probably not a perfect measure but a good place to start,’” Dan Keating and Laris Karklis report. “The push for social distancing and isolation make dense crowds and


product of behavior, biology or both, scientists say. For one thing, demographic figures suggest many men have more health risks to begin with. … Women tend to live longer than men. … Men also drink and smoke more. … But there are also underlying biological differences between men and women that may make covid-19 worse in men. … Years of research have found that women generally have stronger immune systems than men and are better able to fend off infections. The X chromosome contains a large number of immune-related genes, and because women have two of them, they gain an advantage in fighting disease. … Studies have also found that estrogen was protective in female mice infected with the virus that caused the 2003 SARS outbreak.” “Biostatistician and infectious disease specialist Nicholas Reich from the University of Massachusetts is participating in the White House Coronavirus Task Force modeling efforts. He said the death rates from flu for people over 50 could be a good indicator of vulnerability for covid-19, though they are ‘probably not a perfect measure but a good place to start,’” Dan Keating and Laris Karklis report. “The push for social distancing and isolation make dense crowds and public transportation in big cities seem like the deadliest environment. The pattern of flu deaths over the past five years, however, shows that big metro areas are not hot spots for high flu death rates. “Most of the deaths are among the large population in big cities, but the risk for any individual person goes up dramatically where homes are sparse. Very rural areas have a 60 percent higher death rate from flu than the big metro areas, according to analysis of CDC death records. Collectively, the 68 most rural counties of Kansas, for instance, have nearly 14 deaths per 100,000 people age 50 or older, well over double the rate for the county around Topeka (6.6), the state capital. And the rate around New York City (3.4) is around half of that. “The higher rates in remote areas may be due to difficulty getting health care. Rural residents have greater travel distances for more limited resources. … Flu mortality is very notable for low rates in the warmest states: California and the belt of states from Arizona to Florida. But as Reich said, the flu is not a perfect predictor for covid-19. It’s not known if warm weather will


The Olympics must be canceled or postponed

but it is completely ludicrous — no, make that completely irresponsible — that Olympic and Japanese officials are acting as if the Games can go on as the world battles what threatens to be a historic pandemic. The Tokyo 2020 Summer Games are slated to start July 24, and that apparently has inspired some magical thinking by the International Olympic Committee and the government of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. “We are committed to the success of these games,” IOC President Thomas Bach told the New York Times after a recent meeting of the executive board in which, he made clear, the words “postponement” or “cancellation” were not mentioned. “Our basic stance,” said organizing committee chairman Yoshiro Mori, “is to proceed with our preparation and to hold a safe Olympics.” With athletes coming from 200 countries around the world and expected spectators numbering in the millions, the Summer Games have all the makings of an incubator for the coronavirus that will lead to its further deadly spread. “You bring a lot of people together, and then you ship them back all over the world. That’s the perfect way to transmit,” warned Yvonne Maldonado, an infectious-disease specialist at Stanford University. Even if there is some breakthrough in combating the coronavirus in the next 4½ months — which science and health experts say is quite unlikely — there have already been disruptions in the athletic community that necessitate postponement of the Games. Global sports leagues have shut down. Olympic athletes have been unable to train. Qualification events and trials have been suspended. The South Korean national fencing team announced this week that three of its members have tested positive for the virus. So obvious is the need to postpone or cancel the Games that even President Trump has suggested they not take place as planned this summer. That Olympic and Japanese officials refuse to recognize this reality is rooted in the money and prestige that are at stake. Japan has made massive investments in building venues and improving infrastructure, and Mr. Abe has made the Games a point of national pride. The IOC is banking on billions of dollars in broadcast rights. Olympic officials have never been particularly forward-thinking or willing to put other interests, including those of their athletes, ahead of their bottom line. Surely, though, even they will — at some point — realize that the Games cannot go on.


Amid coronavirus clampdown, Americans urged not to travel abroad; Italy surpasses China in deaths

negotiations with Mexico have been stickier, because the volume of people crossing each day to shop, visit family members and conduct business is much larger. With nearly a million people crossing each day, the U.S.-Mexico land border is considered the busiest in the world. A Mexican official who was not authorized to discuss the talks publicly said the country’s government was working in close coordination with U.S. authorities to limit the spread of the virus, while urging the United States to take into account the potential impact for Mexico while defining what would constitute “essential travel.” The State Department raised its travel advisory for all international travel from 3 to 4, the most serious category, reflecting the difficulty thousands of Americans are having returning to the United States as borders close and airlines cancel flights. Passport offices are closing nationwide on Friday. “U.S. citizens who live in the United States should arrange for immediate return to the United States, unless they are prepared to remain abroad for an indefinite period,” the State Department advisory said. “Many countries are experiencing covid-19 outbreaks and implementing travel restrictions and mandatory quarantines, closing borders, and prohibiting noncitizens from entry with little advance notice.” Particularly high numbers of American travelers have been stranded in Morocco, Peru, Honduras and Tunisia, where some have complained that U.S. embassies have not provided adequate help in getting them home. Trump told reporters at the White House on Thursday that the United States is considering tapping the military to help stranded travelers, including hundreds of Americans in Peru, though he did not offer specifics. “We have a group of young people in Peru, and we’re working on taking care of that with the military,” Trump said. “We’re trying to get them out. They got caught. . . . It’s a large group, it’s about 300.” Countries across the globe are shutting themselves off to contain the virus. India barred incoming commercial flights for a week, and Australia and New Zealand closed their borders to everyone except citizens and residents. The United Arab Emirates went further, stopping expatriate residents from returning to the country. Domestically, the virus continues to upend the presidential race. Connecticut became the sixth state to push back its presidential primary. Gov. Ned Lamont (D) announced he will work with the Connecticut secretary of state to move the primary from April 28 to June 2. Lamont said the


In the hands of racist officials, the covid-19 pandemic may be a weapon

The outbreak of covid-19 has exposed how weaknesses in the social safety net make us more vulnerable to the spread of pandemic disease. But outbreaks can expose, and exacerbate, another fault line in society: racism. President Trump’s insistence on labeling the coronavirus a “Chinese” virus, for example, appears to be linked to an uptick in hate crimes. An outbreak of illness in Louisiana in the aftermath of the Civil War shows just how dangerous disease can be as a weapon in the hands of racist or incompetent officials — an essential lesson we must apply to the current pandemic crisis. In the spring of 1866, just after the federal government formally ended slavery with the passage of the 13th Amendment, Capt. Azor Howitt Nickerson served under the shadow of a looming epidemic. Nickerson was stationed in Bayou Sara, La., in 1866 as part of the Freedmen’s Bureau, a federal agency tasked with protecting the interests of freedpeople — African Americans who had, until very recently, been enslaved. Although instructed to prevent former enslavers from trying to resurrect slavery, Nickerson and many of his peers in the bureau were unsympathetic to black equality and cared little about the well-being of African Americans, and this informed their response to public health crises. When widespread smallpox and yellow fever outbreaks erupted in Louisiana in the aftermath of the war, it was in large part due to the racist neglect and incompetence of local and federal officials. Nickerson, for example, wrote that he was visited by an African American man who was “taken [horribly] ill in front of [my] house and was hardly able to return to the house from which he came.” Rather than offering help or treatment, Nickerson sent the man away in a panic. He was more concerned about being infected himself than making sure the sick man received treatment. To control the spread of smallpox, Nickerson met with both the ex-Confederate mayor of Bayou Sara and the town’s doctor, Patterson Whicher. Together, they hatched a plan to contain the disease by isolating the African Americans who were infected. Before emancipation, enslavers had theorized that enslaved African Americans were immune to diseases such as yellow fever and smallpox. After slavery, however, they argued that the susceptibility of black Louisianans to the diseases signified their racial inferiority. Although their logic seemed inconsistent, it reflected their fundamental belief that slavery was natural and


USA Swimming calls for postponing Tokyo Olympics one year

as maybe some others around the world have. “I think there’s an underlying mental health concern here for our best athletes and it’s put them in a place where postponement makes sense.” Earlier in the day, Hirshland said on a conference call with reporters that the USOPC has shared some of the concerns that have been expressed by American athletes about competing in Tokyo this summer, adding, “I can assure you there’s no circumstance when the USOPC would send our athletes into harm’s way if we did not believe it was safe.” The USOPC remarks come as athletes have started to publicly voice their reservations about competing this summer and pressure has increased on the IOC to reconsider holding the Tokyo Games on schedule. One day earlier, a member of the Japanese Olympic Committee became the first executive committee board member to break with the IOC in calling for a postponement. Kaori Yamaguchi, a bronze medalist in judo at the 1988 Olympics, said Thursday that the IOC is “putting athletes at risk.” Olympic hopefuls from several countries have expressed similar concerns about the safety of a Summer Olympics and have said their training has already been compromised. Earlier in the week, gymnast Colin Van Wicklen became the first athlete vying for a spot on U.S. Olympic team to publicly urge for a postponement, posting on Twitter, “We must put the pressure on the IOC to do the right thing.” “I don't think it's fair to the athletes who have dedicated their whole life to trying to make an Olympic team to have to deal with this,” Van Wicklen told The Washington Post in a phone interview Thursday. “We deserve to be at our best, to give it our best shot and have the best opportunity to make an Olympic team and have our dreams come true.” The IOC hasn’t wavered in its intention to stage the Tokyo Games on schedule and has urged athletes to continue training with the July 24 start date in mind. But as cities around the world have experienced heightened restrictions, athletes are having an increasingly difficult time finding the gymnasiums, swimming pools and practice facilities needed for training. “There are just a lot of mixed statements right now, and that really messes with your head,” Van Wicklen said. “You’re trying to do the best for yourself being safe and stay healthy. You want to listen


Venezuela’s broken health system is uniquely vulnerable to coronavirus. Neighbors are afraid the country will hemorrhage infected migrants.

CARACAS, Venezuela — Inside one of Venezuela's largest hospitals, doctors wearing gloves and masks but no protective gowns tended to a suspected coronavirus patient. HIV patients languished in a room a few feet away. The door was left open, to allow air to circulate — the unit here at Caracas University Hospital has no working air conditioning. Running water, albeit with dark contaminants, came back three days ago. But doctors say it’s unlikely to last for long. As in many hospitals in this collapsed socialist state, even washing hands is a luxury. The hospital has run out of soap, leaving doctors to bring their own, when possible. None of the six X-ray machines works. Without cleaning products to disinfect surfaces — including those in the waiting room where suspected coronavirus patients are held — hospital infections are common. A shipment of gloves and masks arrived Friday; doctors say they had gone a full month without them. Current supplies, they say, will run out in one week. “If we start getting large numbers of patients, we will collapse,” said Maria Eugenia Landaeta, head of the infectious-diseases department at Caracas University Hospital. “Long lines of patients waiting, all beds full and patients we won’t be able to hospitalize. To sum up: total chaos.” Analysts say Venezuela, already struggling under a dangerous mix of gaps in clean water and soap, underequipped and inadequately supplied public hospitals and authoritarian red tape, is uniquely vulnerable to the pandemic. As the government of President Nicolás Maduro tries to roll out a historic response to a global challenge it is ill-equipped to confront, Venezuela’s neighbors increasingly fear that the country will become a petri dish for the novel coronavirus, hemorrhaging infected migrants and spreading the virus across hard-to-control borders. “An explosive number of cases would obviously surpass the ability of the Venezuelan health-care system, and will end up with many people demanding care in Colombia,” said Fernando Ruiz Gómez, Colombia’s health minister. “Intensive-care services will be most critical.” In a few days, South American nations from Brazil to Bolivia to Peru have emerged as some of the world’s most proactive states in seeking to control the virus, imposing curfews, deploying the military, closing borders and barring many, and in some cases all, international flights. But few were as early or aggressive as Venezuela. Maduro shut businesses and limited public gatherings last Friday. Soldiers and police have set


we won’t be able to hospitalize. To sum up: total chaos.” Analysts say Venezuela, already struggling under a dangerous mix of gaps in clean water and soap, underequipped and inadequately supplied public hospitals and authoritarian red tape, is uniquely vulnerable to the pandemic. As the government of President Nicolás Maduro tries to roll out a historic response to a global challenge it is ill-equipped to confront, Venezuela’s neighbors increasingly fear that the country will become a petri dish for the novel coronavirus, hemorrhaging infected migrants and spreading the virus across hard-to-control borders. “An explosive number of cases would obviously surpass the ability of the Venezuelan health-care system, and will end up with many people demanding care in Colombia,” said Fernando Ruiz Gómez, Colombia’s health minister. “Intensive-care services will be most critical.” In a few days, South American nations from Brazil to Bolivia to Peru have emerged as some of the world’s most proactive states in seeking to control the virus, imposing curfews, deploying the military, closing borders and barring many, and in some cases all, international flights. But few were as early or aggressive as Venezuela. Maduro shut businesses and limited public gatherings last Friday. Soldiers and police have set up roadblocks, limiting movement to people traveling to work, markets, pharmacies and hospitals. The streets of Caracas are now eerily quiet. The number of confirmed cases of covid-19 announced by the government has grown from two to 46 in less than a week (opposition officials say the real number of people infected is far higher). Maduro has ordered all citizens to wear face masks in public. Members of the SEBIN, his feared intelligence police, are guarding hospitals. “Either we quarantine, or the pandemic could tragically and painfully take down Venezuela,” Maduro told the nation this week. The response is complicated by the country’s political stalemate: In Venezuela, even the basic question of who’s in charge remains in doubt. Maduro, who claimed the presidency last year after an election widely viewed as fraudulent, has sought to use the crisis to demonstrate his de facto control of the country. Opposition leader Juan Guaidó is recognized by the United States and more than 50 other nations as its rightful leader. On Monday, the rivals issued dueling national messages to a fretting populace. Maduro, known for assailing international lenders as pawns of his enemies in Washington, took the extraordinary step Tuesday of asking the


International Monetary Fund for a $5 billion emergency loan to confront the crisis. The IMF dismissed the request, citing the question of his legitimacy. The World Health Organization has agreed to provide coronavirus tests, medical supplies and technical assistance, Vice President Delcy Rodríguez said in a televised address Wednesday. “As you well know, this is a special condition, because we are a country illegally sanctioned, criminally blocked,” she said. “In the middle of this global pandemic, whoever maintains a political agenda is really miserable.” More than 5 million Venezuelans — a sixth of the population — have fled poverty, hunger and spreading disease in recent years. Venezuelan migrants were identified as the source of a wave of measles that spread throughout South America in 2018, and they imported long-dormant diseases such as diphtheria to neighboring Colombia. Now fears that the coronavirus could ravage this underfed nation have led Colombian and Brazilian authorities to close their borders with Venezuela. In Colombia, that move came after authorities decided that the installation of heat-detecting cameras to identify migrants with fevers was insufficient to meet the threat. The Venezuelan government, Colombian authorities note, stopped sharing epidemiological information with neighboring nations in 2017. Critics say shutting the border might only encourage desperate Venezuelans to seek riskier passages to sanctuary: illegal and unmonitored crossings run by armed gangs. Maduro’s government, meanwhile, is militarizing the nation. Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López announced this week that all military branches and the national police were being deployed to enforce the quarantine. The black-clad officers of the SEBIN have guarded the entrance of Caracas University Hospital since the first cases were announced. Inside, the facility is falling apart. There are holes in the walls, water leaks and a broken elevator that leaves patients to walk up flights of stairs. The hospital has 1,500 beds, but only 350 are in service. The emergency room has one working ventilator; doctors say they need five. In a nation of about 30 million people, the Venezuelan opposition says, there are 81 fully functioning intensive-care beds. Maduro said last month that the Pan American Health Organization had donated “a significant number of kits to diagnose the coronavirus.” Julio Castro, a physician on a commission designated by the opposition-led National Assembly to respond to the coronavirus, said the government has only about 300 kits. “Do the math,” he said. Doctors for Health, a group created in


A runaway greenhouse effect turned Venus into ‘hell.’ Could the same thing happen here?

Is there a temperature rise number that will result in a runaway greenhouse effect sending the Earth towards the fate of Venus? -- Richard, New Boston NH Once upon a time, around small yellow sun, there existed a world with a rocky surface and a molten core. It harbored water and may even have been hospitable to life. Then the planet got hot -- really hot. Its atmosphere filled with heat-trapping gases. Water evaporated into its atmosphere and then was lost to space. Whatever mechanisms the planet may have had for balancing its climate were broken. Nothing, not even a robot, could survive there. This is not a scenario from a science fiction novel about climate change (or the director’s cut of Wall-E). It’s what scientists say really happened to a world in our own solar system: Venus. Human-driven climate change will never get quite as bad as that, said Giada Arney, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. But the story of Venus’s transformation from potentially Earth-like planet to the “closest thing to hell in our solar system,” she said, holds important lessons for people navigating a warming world. For the past 4.6 billion years, Earth has kept its climate in balance via a process known as the carbon cycle. Over time, most carbon in the atmosphere is taken up by the ocean, then locked into rocks in the form of calcium carbonate, or limestone. The movement of tectonic plates pulls those rocks into Earth’s interior, where carbon can be stored for millennia before it is belched back into the atmosphere by volcanoes. The carbon cycle is Earth’s thermostat, keeping temperatures from swinging too far toward either extreme. When volcanoes are particularly active, carbon builds up in the atmosphere, trapping heat the way a greenhouse roof does (that’s where we get the term “greenhouse effect"). But rising temperatures can lead to more rain, which wears away rocks, which releases material for making calcium carbonate, which locks up carbon in the form of seashells, limestone and other rock and cools things down again. Scientists suspect that Venus once had its own thermostat. Spacecraft sent to probe the planet’s atmosphere have found molecular remnants of water -- evidence that, at one point, the planet was able to keep its temperature under control. When the planet got too hot, water would evaporate and form clouds in the atmosphere that reflected


Americans have increasingly dismal views of the economy, but they don’t blame Trump

of right now, he hasn’t. The Nationscape data show no change in the percentage of Americans who approve of the job he’s doing: Trump has actually become slightly more popular since the summer, which is consistent with the pattern for incumbent presidents seeking reelection. Thus far, the coronavirus pandemic has not led to a clear decrease. One factor helping Trump is that evaluations of the president appear increasingly divorced from the economy. This was true for Barack Obama, and it has also been true for Trump. The graph below shows how the relationship between the public’s views of the economy was largely unrelated to approval of Obama and Trump: One reason for this gap is the increasing tendency to view both the economy and the president through a partisan lens. However, neither Obama nor Trump was tested by a full-fledged economic recession that started while they were president — until now. The big question is whether Trump’s approval rating will remain stable as Americans confront the impact of the coronavirus on their livelihoods, communities and the country as a whole. The answer to that question will likely determine whether Trump’s presidency can survive. Don’t miss anything! Sign up to get TMC’s smart analysis in your inbox, three days a week. Robert Griffin is a political scientist and research director of the Read more: Even with the coronavirus, some Americans deeply distrust experts. Will they take precautions? A coronavirus recession would hurt all kinds of Republicans — not just Trump. The CDC isn't favoring Trump states with coronavirus spending The Fed’s using all its emergency tools to prevent a coronavirus-prompted economic disaster. That means things look dire. Red states are finally starting to Google ‘coronavirus’ 3 ways the coronavirus could end Trump’s presidency The House moved quickly on a covid-19 response bill. These 4 takeaways explain what’s likely to happen next. Trump declared two different kinds of emergencies for covid-19. There might soon be 52. China and the U.S. blame each other for the coronavirus. But they both made similar mistakes. China is also relying on propaganda to tackle the covid-19 crisis Wuhan officials tried to cover up covid-19 — and sent it careening outward Covid-19 reveals how China’s internal politics now affect the whole world China’s early warning system didn’t work on covid-19. Here’s the story. Why China’s politics makes it easier — and harder — to control disease outbreaks


Suspected Russian hackers struck the last Olympics. Tokyo worries it could be next.

on the sidelines of international competitions. The cybersecurity firm FireEye and U.S. intelligence officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive investigations, have tied the PyeongChang cyberattacks to Russia’s military intelligence service, known as the GRU. The group has been accused by Western intelligence agencies and others of covert acts such as hacking into Democratic National Committee emails in 2016, crashing part of Ukraine’s electrical grid in 2016 and scrambling government websites in Georgia last year. Two years ago, the GRU was named in a U.S. indictment for alleged hacking into doping databases during the 2016 Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro. “There's a strong chance that we're going to see the same incident again [in Tokyo],” said John Hultquist, the director of intelligence analysis at FireEye. “Russia is obviously not going to have learned their lesson because nobody even bothered to blame them.” The Tokyo Olympics will have to safeguard 100 different systems, said Akira Saka, chief information security officer for the event. Organizers have already faced some cyberattacks. During a ticket lottery in September for Japanese citizens, 6,900 tickets were purchased through fake IDs. Those tickets have since been voided. “There are vulnerabilities that are known, but there are also vulnerabilities that are not evident,” Saka said. “So we’ve been sharing all sorts of information on this with related parties and government offices and Olympics-related agencies and service providers.” Attempts to hack the Olympics are not new. The 2012 London Games faced an estimated 165 million hacking attempts, the event’s chief information officer said at a cybersecurity conference in 2013, adding that most were trivial. But cyberattacks at the past two Olympics appeared to be motivated by the International Olympic Committee’s sanctions on Russia. According to the U.S. indictment, two Russian spies took separate trips to Rio and targeted the routers for wireless Internet access at a hotel chain where anti-doping officials were staying. The hackers used that breach to post private information about noteworthy U.S. athletes, including tennis stars Serena and Venus Williams, four-time gymnastics gold medalist Simone Biles, and women’s basketball standout Elena Delle Donne. “A new level of despicable action,” said Travis Tygart, the chief executive of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, one of the groups targeted. Tygart added that he is disappointed that the IOC has not condemned Russia for the incident. He also unsuccessfully pushed for a possible agreement: reinstatement of Russia


Why the spread of covid-19 in Venezuela is a particularly frightening prospect

SOME OF the most devastating impacts of the novel coronavirus pandemic could hit the Trump administration’s leading foreign adversaries. Iran is already being ravaged by the coronavirus, with more than 18,000 cases and 1,200 fatalities as of Thursday, including a dozen from among its political elite. No one believes North Korea’s claims to have escaped the epidemic; one South Korean report says hundreds of its soldiers have been killed by it and thousands of people are quarantined. Then there is Venezuela, whose authoritarian regime imposed a national lockdown on Monday after reporting 33 confirmed cases — and hundreds more pending. The apparently rapid spread of the epidemic there presents a particularly frightening prospect, given that the country’s health-care system already was in a state of collapse, its citizens have been fleeing to other Latin American countries at the rate of thousands per day, and its illegitimate and corrupt government is entirely incapable of meeting the new challenge. Hospitals in the United States and other developed countries worry they may not have enough respirators or intensive care beds to cope with the severely ill. But in Venezuela, according to one survey, more than 30 percent of hospitals lack power and water, and 80 percent lack basic supplies or qualified medical staff — many of whom are among the 4.8 million people who have fled the country. Humanitarian agencies have already been battling outbreaks of measles, diphtheria and malaria in Venezuela. Meanwhile, one survey of people older than 50 in September showed that 80 percent lacked adequate supplies of food, meaning the population most vulnerable to the virus is already weakened. The regime’s response to the crisis has been a familiar mix of repression and propaganda. After President Nicolás Maduro announced a national quarantine on Monday, the same security forces that have brutally suppressed opposition demonstrations were dispatched to keep people off the streets of Caracas and set up roadblocks along highways. Mr. Maduro then dispatched a letter to the International Monetary Fund requesting $5 billion from its emergency rapid financing instrument — an appeal he must have known would be turned down. Sure enough, the IMF swiftly issued a statement saying it could not consider the request, since it was unclear whether the Maduro regime is recognized by the international community; more than 50 countries have accepted the claim of opposition leader Juan Guaidó to be the acting president. Mr. Maduro


Trump’s clubs and hotels, including Mar-a-Lago, suffer from coronavirus fallout

President Trump’s company — significantly reliant on tourism, conventions and restaurant income — has been sharply impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, with at least four properties closing and three hotels laying off staff, according to people familiar with the company. In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) ordered all restaurants and bars in the state to close Friday and imposed special restrictions in a few places including Palm Beach County — home of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club. In a message to members about 6:30 p.m. on Friday, Mar-a-Lago said that in response to DeSantis’s order, it was closing the last parts of the club still in operation: the tennis club and the beach club. “We hope that this suspension is short-lived,” the club said. Mar-a-Lago is a wintertime club, which typically closes for the season around Mother’s Day. Previously, Mar-a-Lago had been partially open, offering limited sit-down service at its beachfront bistro, according to a letter sent to members. Before that, Trump’s hotel in Las Vegas was shuttered in response to a statewide order from Nevada’s governor. It will not reopen until April 17, the hotel told customers. Some employees at the hotel have already been laid off, according to a letter one employee received. In New York, Trump’s hotel on Central Park remained open Friday, but the hotel warned its investors that “we cannot predict the duration of this unprecedented event; however, the hotel expects a significant shortfall in revenues,” according to a letter obtained by The Washington Post. By late Thursday, 51 of the New York hotel’s 300-plus employees had been laid off, according to a person familiar with the Trump hotel’s operations. The person, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the organization’s operations. “Various facilities are temporarily closed given local, state and federal mandates,” Trump Organization spokeswoman Kimberly Benza said in a statement. “We anxiously await the day when this pandemic is over and our world-class facilities can reopen.” At the Trump International Hotel in Washington, the layoffs were even more drastic: 160 workers were let go, as the hotel’s occupancy rate plunged to about 5 percent, according to the union that represents the hotel’s employees. Trump’s D.C. hotel remains open, despite the bar and restaurant being closed by a directive from the D.C. government and almost no guests staying there. John Boardman, executive secretary-treasurer of the D.C. affiliate of Unite


The coronavirus pandemic is a test for celebrities. Some of them are failing.

“That’s been the story of life,” President Trump said on Wednesday, responding to a question about whether the rich, famous and otherwise well-connected were jumping the queue to get tested for covid-19. Trump’s offhand observation offered a stark reflection of the preexisting — and as Trump seems to believe, immutable — inequalities exposed by the pandemic. But that attitude is wrong. We don’t need to take these divisions for granted. And the people who have benefited most have a role to play in ending this profound unfairness. Stars who have cut the line to get coronavirus testing should be honest about how they managed to get screened. They should use their considerable cultural power to advocate expanding access to testing and treatment for their less-privileged fans. There are reasonable arguments for having certain famous people tested early for covid-19, even if they aren’t seriously ill. As National Basketball Association commissioner Adam Silver argued in response to criticism from New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, his league’s players are “young people who are working in close proximity to each other. They are traveling at great frequency. They are regularly in large groups, including the public. And the young cohort in particular, a large number of them are asymptomatic, and if they do have symptoms, they’re relatively mild.” If early testing convinced sports leagues to pause their seasons or their training sessions, then that line-cutting may have safeguarded public health in a way that goes beyond any individual player or team. The same is true for movie sets, at which an infected actor could potentially infect not just other famous people, but makeup artists, costume designers, caterers and a whole host of lower-profile workers who come into close contact with them. And there can be real value in awareness: Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson’s dispatches from quarantine undoubtedly helped their many fans around the world understand how widely covid-19 was spreading and encouraged audiences to take the pandemic seriously. Still, the public safety rationales can extend only so far now that sports seasons have been put on pause and movie and television production is shut down. The U.S. surgeon general may want Kylie Jenner and other influencers to sign up for a public relations campaign about the risks of the virus, but getting asymptomatic influencers tested is hardly a necessary condition of enlistment. Instead, if the very famous people who cut


particular, a large number of them are asymptomatic, and if they do have symptoms, they’re relatively mild.” If early testing convinced sports leagues to pause their seasons or their training sessions, then that line-cutting may have safeguarded public health in a way that goes beyond any individual player or team. The same is true for movie sets, at which an infected actor could potentially infect not just other famous people, but makeup artists, costume designers, caterers and a whole host of lower-profile workers who come into close contact with them. And there can be real value in awareness: Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson’s dispatches from quarantine undoubtedly helped their many fans around the world understand how widely covid-19 was spreading and encouraged audiences to take the pandemic seriously. Still, the public safety rationales can extend only so far now that sports seasons have been put on pause and movie and television production is shut down. The U.S. surgeon general may want Kylie Jenner and other influencers to sign up for a public relations campaign about the risks of the virus, but getting asymptomatic influencers tested is hardly a necessary condition of enlistment. Instead, if the very famous people who cut the line to get tested without an urgent rationale want to avoid the torches and pitchforks, they might try penance and transparency instead. That the very rich have access to a parallel health-care system is true in good times as well as global pandemics. But that system is ordinarily invisible to the rest of us. Reporting on the pandemic has started to bring the health care available to the wealthy into clearer view. We’ve already seen stories about people trying to buy early access to covid-19 vaccines still in development and private ventilators, and most recently, about a concierge medicine service that got wealthy New Yorkers coronavirus testing at a time when the state was struggling to scale up capacity for the general public. The people who jumped the line already can’t make up for the potential damage they’ve done to public health by hogging capacity that could have been used to identify sick people and to trace their networks of contacts. But if they come forward to explain how and where they got tested, they could help the public and public officials understand where testing capacity is available. And if stars of sport and screen feel like doing penance


Japanese Olympic Committee member breaks with IOC, calls for postponement of Tokyo Games

A member of the Japanese Olympic Committee said Thursday that the International Olympic Committee is “putting athletes at risk” by continuing to plan on the Tokyo Games unfolding as scheduled, despite the global coronavirus pandemic. Kaori Yamaguchi, a bronze medalist in judo at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, became the first executive committee board member from this year’s host nation to break with the IOC, per reports, in calling for a postponement. “As far as I can tell from news reports coming out of the U.S. and Europe, I don’t think the situation allows for athletes to continue training as usual,” Yamaguchi told Nikkei. IOC President Thomas Bach stuck firm Thursday to his stance that, as of now, the Tokyo Olympics will take place from late July through early August. “Of course we are considering different scenarios,” Bach told the New York Times, “but we are contrary to many other sports organizations or professional leagues in that we are four and a half months away from the Games.” “The 206 national Olympic committees and the international sports federations expressed that the world in this extremely difficult and concerning situation needs a symbol of hope,” Bach added. “So for us, while not knowing how long this tunnel will be, we would like the Olympic flame to be a light at the end of the tunnel, and to send the message of peace, what we always do, but in this very difficult circumstances a message of hope and community of humankind.” Some would-be Olympic athletes, though, are wondering how responsible it is for the IOC to hold tight to its schedule when coronavirus-related fears and official restrictions in many countries make training difficult, if not dangerous. “The IOC wants us to keep risking our health, our family’s health and public health to train every day?” Katerina Stefanidi, who won the 2016 Olympic gold medal in women’s pole vault for Greece, said Tuesday on Twitter. “You are putting us in danger right now, today, not in 4 months.” Noting that France, where she has been training, is “in complete lockdown,” British heptathlon champion Katarina Johnson-Thompson said Tuesday in a message posted to Twitter, “The IOC advice ‘encourages athletes to continue to prepare for the Olympic Games as best as they can’ with the Olympics only four months away, but the government legislation is enforcing isolation at home, with tracks, gyms and public spaces


Millions of dollars are pouring in to help New York City arts groups. Will it inspire more?

a poet herself. There are regional efforts being started, whether an artist relief fund in Boston or TheatreWashington’s Taking Care Fund, but those are considerably smaller than the New York launch. As lawmakers discuss stimulus bills and bailouts, they’ve focused on airlines, the cruise industry and restaurants. But Ed Henry, president and CEO of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, knows that many arts workers don’t have benefits. “Like restaurant workers, they’re going to fall off the cliff immediately,” said Duke, whose foundation is also joining the New York effort. That’s already happened, with this week being particularly damaging. The Metropolitan Opera, with its $300 million annual budget, announced it would stop paying its orchestra, chorus and staffers after March. The Metropolitan Museum of Art estimated it could have a $100 million shortfall because of its closure. That same crisis is playing at smaller organizations throughout the country. On Wednesday, the Oregon Symphony, which has a $20 million budget, also announced layoffs. “It’s not just a show that got canceled. People’s lives got canceled,” says Benjamin Burdick, the producing artistic director of Boise Contemporary Theater in Idaho, which had to cancel its latest production. “Thirty people who were going to get a paycheck for a month and a half are not going to get that. We have a small and incredible staff that I wouldn’t trade for anybody in the world. I hope that two months from now, or a month from now, I don’t have to look at them and say we just can’t pay the bills.” That arts groups are scrambling should surprise no one. Many nonprofits depend on earned revenue from ticket sales to stay in business. With that gone, they have had to look at other options. “Maybe it’s changing the scope of the project, maybe they can’t just do it now,” said Mary Anne Carter, chairwoman of the National Endowment for the Arts. “Whatever it is, we are committed to working with them to find a solution that is agreeable to all.” That’s the case at the Hanover Theatre in Worcester, Mass., which canceled a slate of shows recently, including appearances by comedian Jerry Seinfeld, the Beach Boys and a screening of “This Is Spinal Tap” with director Rob Reiner. The Boston-based Barr Foundation had awarded the theater a $750,000, two-year grant that included support for an outdoor stage. With $250,000 still remaining in the grant,


Many Americans deeply distrust experts. So will they ignore the warnings about coronavirus?

the report was this quote, variously attributed to different people, as I’ll describe below: Some people in the group receiving populist rhetoric got a version of the story where that quote was attributed to Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), while others got a version in which it was attributed to someone of their party. Republicans read that Trump said it; Democrats and independents were told Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said it. My anti-intellectualism measure was twice as strong a factor in predicting who would or who would not be convinced by expert consensus information when respondents were exposed to populist rhetoric. Anti-intellectualism mattered less for those who read the piece of nonpolitical news instead. With populist rhetoric coming from both the political left and right, anti-intellectualism may shape public opinion more now than in the past. That could complicate messaging about the coronavirus. Recent research But my analyses suggest that may not work with everyone, and not just because of partisanship or ideology. Most Americans trust experts. But a sizable bloc — 20 percent to 25 percent — does not. In fact, those Americans may even be repelled by experts’ signals. For the pandemic, the challenge will be to find communication strategies that persuade these individuals to take the necessary steps to keep themselves and their communities healthy. Citizens will listen to those they trust. But, of course, who counts as trustworthy will vary from one person to another. To convey and reinforce public health messages, leaders may wish to ask that those messages be reemphasized by a wide variety of sources, including religious and community leaders, politicians, celebrities, athletes and others. Don’t miss anything! Sign up to get TMC’s smart analysis in your inbox, three days a week. Eric Merkley Read more: Red states are finally starting to Google ‘coronavirus’ 3 ways the coronavirus could end Trump’s presidency The House moved quickly on a covid-19 response bill. These 4 takeaways explain what’s likely to happen next. Trump declared two different kinds of emergencies for covid-19. There might soon be 52. China is also relying on propaganda to tackle the covid-19 crisis Wuhan officials tried to cover up covid-19 — and sent it careening outward Covid-19 reveals how China’s internal politics now affect the whole world China’s early warning system didn’t work on covid-19. Here’s the story. Why China’s politics makes it easier — and harder — to control disease outbreaks


9/11 swallowed U.S. foreign policy. Don’t let the coronavirus do the same thing.

crisis may finally be the moment that breaks America free from this counterterrorism fixation and forces us to view the world differently, precisely because, like 9/11, its impact will penetrate our collective psyche. Nearly all Americans will have, or are already having, their lives fundamentally disrupted: spending weeks at home educating kids; worrying about elderly parents and other vulnerable loved ones; (hopefully) avoiding bars and restaurants; or, god forbid, knowing someone who falls ill. And there’s collective uncertainty about the slow response of government at the highest levels. Because this crisis will probably affect all of us, it has the potential to fundamentally reorient our approach to the world. Already, the focus is changing. Last week, two Americans and one British citizen were killed in Iraq by Iran-supported militias. The United States responded with a series of strikes that barely broke through the news cycle. It was a sharp contrast to previous escalations over the past year, with Iranian attacks on oil shipping and a U.S. drone last summer, Saudi Arabian oil facilities in September and, most notably, escalation in Iraq during December and January that culminated in the killing of Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani and Iranian missile strikes on American bases that dominated news coverage. Sequences like this, which used to drive debate in Washington and with the public, probably won’t have the same resonance now that we’re confronting covid-19, and over time that will mean less political support for and policy focus on conflicts in the Middle East. But even after this crisis passes, its all-encompassing nature will result in meaningful changes to American institutions and society. There will probably be a coronavirus commission similar in scope to the 9/11 commission that could lead to a massive reorganization of our government to ensure we are ready to respond to future pandemics. Just as Arabic language and Middle East studies programs multiplied after 9/11, expect a surge of students to public health programs, and a surge of funding for epidemiological research. Public health experts like the Anthony S. Fauci of the National Institutes of Health will go from being unknown bureaucrats to recognizable figures like counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke did after 9/11. And like terrorism did after 9/11, public health will go from being a secondary issue to dominating the agenda in international forums such as NATO, the United Nations or the Group of 7. The covid-19 crisis is,