The playbook is familiar as first-time candidate with military record gives GOP a shot at House seat

— and with no voting record in office, he became harder to hit on issues. In 2018, those first-time candidates fielded by Democrats had an easier time ducking accusations that they were too liberal or too close to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), and they found success in focusing their attacks on GOP incumbents for their votes on health care and other kitchen-table issues, steering clear of Trump scandals. Like many of the 2018 Democrats, Garcia was essentially a self recruit. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) had long-standing ties to Knight and, instead, Republicans lucked into having a more interesting candidate. But Trump may have created a last-minute headache for Garcia by injecting himself into the race with tweets over the weekend accusing Democrats of trying to steal the election by adding an additional in-person voting site. Democrats were hopeful that Trump’s intervention in the race would galvanize more liberal voters who have taken a passive view of the race. Democrats privately acknowledge Garcia has run a better campaign, but they also say that Republicans have not recruited enough similar candidates to truly put the House majority in play. And even where they do have good recruits, Republicans face a cash shortage that will make their campaigns difficult to launch. Republicans consider Wesley Hunt their prototype for the future: an African-American who attended the U.S. Military Academy and went on to fly Apache helicopters in the Army, before returning home to the Houston suburbs. But Hunt had to first fight through a GOP primary and emerged with less than $500,000 left in his campaign coffers, compared with more than $2.6 million held by Rep. Lizzie Fletcher (D-Tex.). Dave Wasserman, the House race analyst for the independent Cook Political Report, calculated the fundraising for 55 races initially targeted by the National Republican Congressional Committee, finding Democrats hold an average 6-to-1 advantage in cash. In a strange twist, Garcia and Smith have already won their party’s nomination for the regularly scheduled general election in November, so they will face off again regardless of Tuesday’s outcome. Which is why neither the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee nor the National Republican Congressional Committee will spend any time criticizing their candidate, if they lose, because they have to keep working with the candidate for another six months. Regardless of Tuesday’s outcome, Republicans expect to continue hitting that same theme throughout the fall, labeling Smith as


Trump-fueled suspicion of Wuhan lab ensnares New York nonprofit researching bat coronaviruses

An American nonprofit received millions of dollars from the U.S. government during the Obama and Trump administrations to identify unknown viruses in bats that could infect humans and cause a global pandemic. Now, as the world faces one such pandemic, the New York City-based EcoHealth Alliance has found itself at the center of a political maelstrom, with one of its major federal grants suddenly axed. The reason: Its longtime Chinese partner in identifying unknown bat viruses, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, is fending off allegations from President Trump and some of his top aides that the pathogen causing covid-19 escaped from its lab. The story of how EcoHealth became a target in the Trump administration’s effort to deflect criticism and focus blame on China illustrates the promise and perils of international cooperation on public health research between two superpowers that are increasingly at odds. Beijing has led an authoritarian crackdown on information about the initial coronavirus outbreak, while Washington has demonstrated a cavalier willingness to fuel theories about a Chinese lab accident without presenting any evidence. Caught in the middle are scientists from both countries, facing questions about their research and doubts about whether their years-long collaboration can continue amid escalating geopolitical tension. After a CBS News “60 Minutes” segment detailed EcoHealth’s research and defunding on Sunday, Trump accused the show of defending China. Anthony S. Fauci, who runs the part of the National Institutes of Health that awarded EcoHealth’s grant and later terminated it, could face questions about the matter during testimony Tuesday in front of a Senate committee. EcoHealth’s work in China first gained national attention during the pandemic when Trump, at a news conference in mid-April, pledged to pull its grant from NIH. Days later, the president’s personal attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, assailed the grant in a tweet. Neither Trump nor Giuliani mentioned the nonprofit organization by name, instead focusing on its partners in Wuhan. Late last month, NIH followed through on Trump’s promise and abruptly pulled more than $3 million in funding over five years that was awarded in 2019. NIH gave the nonprofit organization little reason for doing so, writing in a letter that the project didn’t align with “program goals and agency priorities.” “This idea that it doesn’t fit the goals and objectives — there must be more to it,” EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak said in a May 1 interview. “You can’t apply


a therapy for covid-19 patients. “Covid-19 is [the result of] a bat-origin coronavirus from China,” Daszak said. “Our grant is called understanding the risk of the emergence of bat-origin coronaviruses. The place we were doing it is China. We were right to be doing that.” EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s cooperation took their researchers to the front lines of infectious disease. Scouring China, the scientists hunted the rare bat virus that would infect humans and cause the next severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS. The hope: find the virus and develop a vaccine in advance. The quest led them to a remote bat cave in China’s Yunnan province. There and elsewhere, over many years, the researchers took blood and fecal samples from bats, used those samples to identify the genetic sequence of unknown viruses and experimented with the material in the Wuhan lab. Over the years, the collaboration yielded considerable results. In the aftermath of SARS, Daszak and Wuhan Institute of Virology scientist Shi Zhengli, now referred to in some Chinese media as “bat woman,” were among a group of scientists who in 2005 demonstrated that the virus most likely originated in horseshoe bats. Later, their researchers found evidence that bat coronaviruses could infect humans directly and don’t need other animals as intermediary hosts. The joint research involved risks. Researchers in protective equipment interacted with potentially infectious wildlife. Back in the lab, they cultured a live coronavirus from a bat on at least one occasion and tested its potential to infect human cells. Using what are known as “reverse genetics,” they took the spike proteins of new viruses that they identified and inserted them into a uniform SARS-like virus to understand which was most infectious to humans. Some experiments involved mice modified with human genes or cells to test infectivity of viruses, according to EcoHealth’s grant abstract. Theoretically, an accident during such activities could prompt an outbreak. If researchers, for example, had found SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes covid-19, and cultured the virus in the lab, it could have infected humans as the result of a mishap. No evidence of that nature has emerged. Shi has said SARS-CoV-2 wasn’t among the bat coronaviruses that her institute identified or possessed. Daszak dismissed such theories outright. “We have worked with this lab for 15 years,” Daszak said. “They didn’t have the virus. I have never heard anything suspicious from


next pandemic. The Trump administration declined to renew the program’s funding late last year. Its work has continued through an initiative called the Global Virome Project, for which Daszak is the secretary and treasurer. Critics of the “early-warning system” approach say it would be onerous and costly to identify all of the world’s zoonotic viruses, let alone figure out which ones will enjoy the exact alignment of circumstances to spill over and cause the next pandemic. Andersen said the scientific research that EcoHealth and its partners in China have been doing is very important to better understand coronaviruses and how they work — but he takes issue with the panacean rationale. “I feel the claim they are making that you can prevent the next pandemic by doing this type of work is preposterous,” Andersen said. “If you could, given they worked in Wuhan for so long specifically, you would have thought they could have prevented the current pandemic, and they didn’t.” Daszak, however, points out that one of his colleagues, Ralph Baric, a virologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, worked with Gilead Sciences to develop the antiviral drug remdesivir and used virus strains that EcoHealth and its Chinese partners identified in the process, putting the United States ahead of the curve. In a statement, Baric said that it is critical to learn what viruses exist in nature so potential drugs can be tested against them in a laboratory setting. His lab already had been working on bat coronaviruses, including at least one discovered by EcoHealth and the Wuhan institute, before testing remdesivir. “It is because of our early work that the United States was in a position to quickly find the first successful treatment for SARS-CoV-2,” Baric said in a statement. “It is unfortunate that research that could help humans prepare for and fight disease is now viewed as questionable.” EcoHealth and its partners regularly sounded alarm bells about a bat coronavirus spilling over into humans and becoming the next pandemic. The nonprofit said it found more than 700 novel coronaviruses during its work in China. Still, it did not identify or prevent the pathogen causing covid-19. Despite seeking to find “spillover-risk hot spots,” the virus emerged in the very city their partners worked. Shi told Scientific American that when the outbreak of a mysterious illness emerged in Wuhan late last year, she left a conference


Inmates tried to infect themselves with the coronavirus to get early release, Los Angeles County sheriff says

jail. “It’s sad to think that someone deliberately tried to expose themselves to covid-19,” Villanueva said at the Monday news conference. “Somehow there was some mistaken belief among the inmate population that if they tested positive that there was a way to force our hand and somehow release more inmates out of our jail environment — and that’s not going to happen.” He added, “It’s dismaying and disheartening.” The novel coronavirus continues to infect inmates in American jails and prisons at a staggering rate. A recent tally from the Marshall Project last month discovered more than 9,400 reported cases of coronavirus and over 140 deaths among inmates in the United States. The Federal Bureau of Prisons announced toward the end of April that 70 percent of inmate tests for the coronavirus have come back positive. In Los Angeles County, the jails have reduced their population from a maximum of 17,000 to less than 12,000 since the start of the outbreak. Around the start of the U.S. outbreak in March, the county announced it was releasing inmates with less than 30 days of their sentences remaining to be served to help minimize the spread of the virus. As of Monday, nearly 4,600 inmates remained quarantined as a precaution, Villanueva said, with almost 2,000 of them located at the jail where the videos were taken. But some maintain that Los Angeles County is failing its inmate population during the pandemic. A class-action lawsuit filed last month contends that the county jail system, like many across the country, lacks the space needed for social distancing and isn’t testing inmates when they show symptoms, the Los Angeles Times reported. Patrisse Cullors, an activist and lead plaintiff in the suit, accused the county of not providing enough soap or an easy way for inmates to dry off. She also described Villanueva’s actions during the pandemic as “an attempt to demonize incarcerated people,” according to the Times. While it’s unclear if inmates at North County Correctional Facility knew someone was sick when they were sharing water and a mask, the surveillance footage captured groups ignoring social distancing in an effort to try to get the coronavirus, the sheriff said. In the first video from April 26, an inmate is shown filling a bottle from a hot-water dispenser that’s usually used to cook ramen noodles or make instant coffee. After walking over to a group of about


The coronavirus pandemic and loss of aircraft data are taking a toll on weather forecasting

operating the plane itself, such as determining its airspeed and motion relative to the ground, instruments on an airplane’s nose — they resemble pointy, metal needles sticking out of the fuselage, pointed forward, into the airstream — measure the characteristics of the air mass around them. This includes the wind direction and speed, air pressure, temperature and, in some cases, humidity as well. Government programs run in the United States, such as the efforts of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, along with international agencies and private companies have tapped into some of this data to pipe it into computer models that help meteorologists forecast the weather. This includes the National Weather Service’s Global Forecast System, or GFS model, and the world-leading European model, run by the European Center for Medium Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) in Reading, England. At the global level, networks that vacuum up data from planes flying in Europe, Asia and South America have helped to ensure an ever-growing flow of data that’s benefited modeling centers worldwide, boosting model skill and forecast accuracy. However, with the paucity of flights in the air now, the pandemic has disrupted that data flow, turning it from a fire hose to more of a trickle. Meteorologists don’t know exactly how much of an impact that’s having on forecast skill. In the United States alone, airlines are operating skeletal schedules and have opted to store much of their fleets rather than continuing to lose money by flying near-empty planes. According to the trade group Airlines for America, U.S. airlines idled 3,162 planes, which accounts or 51 percent of their fleet, as of May 10. Airports such as Tulsa International, Kansas City International and Pinal Airpark in Arizona have been transformed into parking lots for billions of dollars worth of jets. Meteorologists know that the aircraft data makes a measurable impact on forecast skill, but they’re not sure how big of a hit forecasts are taking right now. This uncertainty is potentially problematic, considering the start of what is expected to be a busier-than-average Atlantic hurricane season looms on June 1. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO), a United Nations agency, issued a statement May 7 expressing concern about coronavirus-related deteriorations in aircraft-based and ground-based weather observations. The WMO found that, globally, measurements from aircraft have fallen by an average of 75 to 80 percent compared to average, “but with very large regional variations.”


Will covid-19 lead to men and women splitting care work more evenly?

In 2020, the centennial year of the 19th Amendment that secured women’s right to vote, covid-19 is threatening to deny or abridge women’s economic and professional advancement. The pandemic has hit the female-dominated service economy especially hard. Moreover, inside hospitals, health-care workers are struggling as never before to care for the sick — with inadequate PPE and pressures to physically separate from their families — which has also disproportionately hit women: In the United States today nearly four out of five health care workers are women. In many states, covid-19 has sent children home for the rest of the school year, forcing parents to bear the double burden of a full-time job and full-time child care — something evidence suggests has affected women’s productivity significantly more than men’s. In this pandemic then, the face of care inside and outside hospitals is overwhelmingly female. History tells us why that is. Today’s female care force is a product of persistent gender stereotypes that declare women to be more caring than men. These stereotypes have helped to funnel women into essential but undervalued jobs in fields such as health care and education and they have helped to sustain women’s disproportionate burden of care in heterosexual couples, even when partners have verbally agreed to a “50/50” split. Such inequities have replicated across generations. In many ways, our 2020 gendered world of care is little different from that of 1920 or even 1820. In the 19th century, almost all care work occurred inside the home. Indeed, “to nurse” is defined as to nurture, to care and to raise, actions and qualities that Western societies have long assigned to mothers. When people got sick, their mothers, sisters, daughters, neighbors, hired domestics and enslaved women and girls hauled vomit-filled pots to and from sickrooms, soothed fevered brows, prepared soups and stews and sat for long hours by bedsides watching labored breathing for signs of impending death. In the mid-19th century, hospitals were for charity cases, like the hypothetical patient described in an 1886 speech dedicating Cambridge hospital in Massachusetts: a domestic servant girl whose mistress didn’t have time to nurse her. Middle-class Americans, by contrast, avoided the institutions at all costs. While today we primarily discuss end-of-life care in terms of access to modern sanitized hospitals and cutting-edge technologies, dying antebellum Americans yearned not for the touch of a stranger but for their female loved ones, for


Transcript: Leadership During Crisis: Va. Gov. Ralph Northam and Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson

and are they providing the country with enough information? GOVERNOR NORTHAM: You know, I don't know what the communication is like, there. Obviously, I'm not privy to that every day, but I will say that I really respect Dr. Fauci. He talks about the science; he talks about data; and he's a straight shooter. And that's what we need right now. People out there not only in Virginia but in this country, they need the truth. And that's what I'm trying to do as a leader in Virginia and I know a lot of other governors are doing that, as well. But Bob, we have been fighting a biological war with no supplies because there was no direction coming from Washington. And it's not unique to Virginia, but the governors have stepped up, we've become leaders, and we're in charge of this pandemic and we've come into it and we're going to get our states out of it. MR. COSTA: Governor Northam, thank you. We appreciate your time. GOVERNOR NORTHAM: Thank you so much, Bob, for all you're doing. MR. COSTA: Thank you. And in a moment, we will be joined by Arkansas' Governor, Asa Hutchinson. [Video plays] MR. COSTA: Hello. Welcome back and welcome to Governor Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas. Is he with us? GOVERNOR HUTCHINSON: I'm with you. It's great to be with you. MR. COSTA: Oh, I'm glad to see you. We're trying our best here, Governor, with all this Skype. Thanks for being here at Washington Post Live. GOVERNOR HUTCHINSON: Well, it's great to join you today, look forward to the conversation. MR. COSTA: You've been a former congressman, a federal official at the DEA at Homeland Security, now Governor of Arkansas, and you've drawn a lot of notice in your decision to not issue a stay at home order. How is that going in Arkansas? GOVERNOR HUTCHINSON: It's going very well. I think we made the right decision. And every governor has to make a decision based upon the unique circumstances of their state. But yes, I had enormous pressure from the national media, the national dialogue, that everybody had to shelter in place. And I talked to our public health professionals, and I soon realized we would be adding to the unemployment roll hundreds of thousands of more people and we still wouldn't be making a significant difference in the number of cases and


caseload, but they're being managed and we haven't seen that impact--the community spread. MR. COSTA: So, clearly, prisons are an area of concern. What's your strategy moving ahead with prisons, if they're possible outbreak hotspots in Arkansas? GOVERNOR HUTCHINSON: Well, the first thing that we did was to release those that were not sex offenders, that were not violent, inmates that were within six months of their release date. If they had a good parole plan, we've started to work through the release of some of those. I think over 300 have been released. And what that does for us is it frees up some of our prison space so that we can, if there's an outbreak in an area, it's easier to isolate, to separate. And so, we've done that. And then, secondly, our Department of Health has worked very, very carefully with our Department of Corrections to make sure we've got the right protocols health-wise in those other facilities. MR. COSTA: What are you seeing in struggling communities, particularly among African-Americans, in Arkansas? What's the data tell you about how this virus, this pandemic is affecting them? GOVERNOR HUTCHINSON: It is a higher proportion than what is reflected in the population. So, they are disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. There are going to have to be a lot of studies done as to why that is the case. Obviously, some of the underlying adverse health conditions that exist in the population does impact the outcomes, as well. But we'll have--but one of the things I hope that we can do and we plan to do is to use some of the CARES Act funding for specific research and addressing some of the minority health needs, particularly with COVID-19. One of the things that we're doing this month in testing is that we're using our Minority Health Commission and their mobile lab. We're equipping it for testing capacity to go into minority communities to make sure that we can do the testing necessary there. That will help give us good information for planning on the future, as well. MR. COSTA: What's your plan for this fall for schools, for high school football in Arkansas? GOVERNOR HUTCHINSON: Let's open up. Let's have school. That's the short answer, but our university--most of them have already announced that they intend to have classes as normal next year. We're working on a higher education


Tiny backpacks show scientists the amazing lives of bats

Nine years ago, Simon Ripperger was studying frugivorous — that is, fruit-eating — bats in Costa Rica. The Ohio State University researcher tagged 16 bats with radio transmitters to keep tabs on them. But figuring out how they were moving and what other bats they interacted with, was difficult. “I had to literally run after flying animals at night through the rainforest,” he says. “It took me five months to collect data.” Tiny GPS devices weren’t the solution. They couldn’t transmit in real time and needed to be removed from the bats to collect data. Instead Ripperger developed a “bat backpack” with eight engineers and scientists. This is an energy-efficient tracking system that runs on little batteries, weighs less than a penny and does not rely on GPS technology. It’s glued to a bat’s back and is so tiny it does not interfere with the bat’s ability to fly. It sends data on the bats’ movements to stations on the ground. It’s also designed to fall off after two weeks, because “bats are so smart and learn how to avoid you,” Ripperger says. That means it’s hard to capture them a second time to recover a backpack. Scientists collect fallen-off backpacks from bat roosts and reuse them. And Ripperger can tag 50 bats at a time to create a wireless network of backpacks, to collect even more data. Using the backpacks, Ripperger has discovered that vampire bats are highly social “and have lasting, humanlike friendships,” he says. Noctule bat mothers teach their pups where the colony’s roost is by guiding them while both are in flight. With long-tongued bats in Costa Rica, Ripperger put backpacks on bats and the flowers in which they forage for nectar. This showed him the strategies the bats use “for flying the shortest distance between flowers.” Ripperger is trying to understand how mouse-eared bats listen for their favorite meal, ground beetles, as they “rustle as they walk over dry leaves.” He says many scientists are interested in using the backpacks for their research. One study put them on small lizards in Germany to understand how they moved over and around train tracks. They can be used on birds, rodents and other small animals. Ripperger hopes the backpacks will help change people’s understanding of bats. So much knowledge about bats is hidden from humans “because [bats are] nocturnal and fast-flying,” Ripperger says. “Compared with birds, which


World Baseball Classic likely to be postponed until 2023

The 2021 World Baseball Classic will be pushed to 2023 because of the novel coronavirus pandemic, according to multiple reports. The tournament was set to take place March 9-23, 2021, in Taiwan, Tokyo, Phoenix and Miami. No announcement has been made, but unidentified people familiar with the situation told ESPN Deportes, the Associated Press and USA Today of the impending decision by a board of directors that consists of representatives from Major League Baseball, the Major League Baseball Players Association, the World Baseball Softball Confederation, Nippon Professional Baseball and the Korea Baseball Organization. The tournament, which had been expected to expand from 16 to 20 countries, is part of the collective bargaining agreement between MLB and the MLBPA that expires in December 2021. The Miami Marlins were to host the WBC semifinals and final as well as two of the quarterfinals, with the other two to be played in Tokyo. The tournament has been held four times; Japan won in 2006 and 2009, the Dominican Republic won in 2013, and the United States won in 2017. The WBC is the only global tournament to feature major league players because the Olympics, where baseball will return for the Tokyo Games in its first appearance since 2008, are held in the summer. In March, a number of major leaguers, including Marcus Stroman, Eric Hosmer and Christian Yelich, were all in on the idea of putting together a WBC Dream Team. Bryce Harper of the Philadelphia Phillies took it a step further, expressing the wish that MLB players could participate in the Olympics. “[Major leaguers] have to do the Olympics every four years,” he said on a recent Barstool Sports podcast. “You want to grow the game? You want to really take it to different countries and different places? The 2021 Olympics are next year because of the coronavirus. Why not shock the world and put all your big leaguers back into the Olympics?” Fitting the WBC into a 2021 schedule that presumably will include domestic baseball seasons and the Olympics would be challenging. A six-team baseball tournament is set to be played at the Tokyo Games.


Turbulencias para aerolíneas como Avianca. Bukele, ¿dictador "millenial"? Política y Covid-19

Dialogamos con el ex presidente del gobierno español Felipe González; el presidente de Avianca, Anko van der Werff, y el editor sénior de The Economist Michael Reid


Fauci’s warning about reopening may have more influence over Americans than governors

It’s one of those moments that, even as it occurs, seems definitive. The country’s leading infectious-disease expert, Anthony S. Fauci, offering testimony before a Senate committee about a virus that’s infected more than a million Americans — but doing so remotely, because of his own contact with an infected individual. Speaking from quarantine, Fauci will offer a grim warning: Attempting to return economic activity to normal levels too quickly will “result in needless suffering and death” and itself result in negative effects for the economy. Fauci’s warning stands in obvious contrast to the assertions of his boss, President Trump. As he has so often over the course of the pandemic, Trump waves away questions about whether states are ready to resume normal economic activity, insisting that many places are ready to gear back up. His White House released a set of recommendations for doing so, recommendations to which Fauci will refer. But even as those recommendations were introduced, Trump undercut them. He quickly embraced anti-social-distancing protests in states with blue governors — states where things were not yet ready to return to normal. The recommendations espoused by Fauci (and, ostensibly, Trump) set an initial baseline of data that states should meet before taking even introductory steps toward reopening their economies. They’re centered on three categories benchmarks: coronavirus symptoms, actual cases and hospital capacity. The initial presentation from the White House explained how those benchmarks could be met: For the first two, we have publicly available data that allows us to evaluate how states are doing. In the case of demonstrated symptoms, the data are somewhat old, with the most recent metrics reflecting the week of May 2. What’s more, data on the number of people showing up to emergency rooms with symptoms reflecting possible covid-19 cases (the disease caused by the coronavirus) are compiled only by region. Nonetheless, we can get a sense for how many people in each place are showing symptoms as well as up-to-date information on the number of cases and positive tests in each state. The interactive below shows each metric: flu-like illness reporting, covid-19-like illnesses, new daily confirmed cases (as a seven-day average) and rate of positive tests (also as a seven-day average). By now, many states appear to meet the benchmarks on these two conditions. (Again, given the limits on the symptomatic data, it’s tricky to say how each fares in the moment.) A


meet before taking even introductory steps toward reopening their economies. They’re centered on three categories benchmarks: coronavirus symptoms, actual cases and hospital capacity. The initial presentation from the White House explained how those benchmarks could be met: For the first two, we have publicly available data that allows us to evaluate how states are doing. In the case of demonstrated symptoms, the data are somewhat old, with the most recent metrics reflecting the week of May 2. What’s more, data on the number of people showing up to emergency rooms with symptoms reflecting possible covid-19 cases (the disease caused by the coronavirus) are compiled only by region. Nonetheless, we can get a sense for how many people in each place are showing symptoms as well as up-to-date information on the number of cases and positive tests in each state. The interactive below shows each metric: flu-like illness reporting, covid-19-like illnesses, new daily confirmed cases (as a seven-day average) and rate of positive tests (also as a seven-day average). By now, many states appear to meet the benchmarks on these two conditions. (Again, given the limits on the symptomatic data, it’s tricky to say how each fares in the moment.) A number of states that have already begun to reopen, though, don’t. In Texas, for example, the number of new cases is up and the percent of positive tests is flat. In Georgia, the number of new cases is flat and the rate of positive tests has been variable. Both states are nonetheless reopening. Georgia’s been in the process of reopening for about three weeks, despite missing the basic benchmarks even when that process began. Gov. Brian Kemp (R) made a blanket determination that things could get back to normal, ignoring the sort of regionalized shifts that Trump himself has advocated. New York, the state hit hardest by the virus, has implemented a deliberate, region-by-region plan for reopening. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) has outlined seven different criteria in each region of the state before it can resume some normal economic activity (though not all). (Among those? A program sufficient to trace the contacts of individuals with newly confirmed infections.) As of Monday, only three regions met the seven conditions. New York City hit four of the seven. This is presumably how states are encouraged to reopen to avoid Fauci’s most dire predictions. It’s no guarantee that outbreaks won’t emerge, but


Which non-covid doctor’s visits should you make, keep, postpone or do by telemedicine?

In late March, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that non-emergency medical providers delay routine or elective visits from patients to preserve protective equipment such as masks and to mitigate the risk of spreading covid-19, the illness caused by the novel coronavirus. But there’s a gap between what’s elective and what’s not, with fear and misunderstanding filling the void. And there’s growing evidence that patients might not be visiting health-care facilities when they need to, avoiding doctors’ offices and emergency rooms, even in the most urgent cases, for fear of being infected with covid-19. Although the novel coronavirus has dominated the news, other health problems have not disappeared. So, when should you see your doctor? And should you do it through an in-person appointment or telemedicine? The first person to turn to for guidance is your primary care physician or relevant specialist. You can also check online for advice: Many medical organizations, such as the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology, have issued recommendations for practitioners and patients on their websites. Keep in mind that some states have rules about which appointments and procedures can proceed. These rules vary and will continue to do so as some states ease restrictions while others maintain stay-at-home rules. In addition to those resources, here are some general guidelines about how to proceed with your health care during the pandemic. Doctors across the country have noticed that patients with heart attacks, appendicitis and mild strokes are arriving later than they should to the emergency room. “We don’t want people to delay getting emergency care,” said Alyson B. Goodman, a pediatrician, medical epidemiologist and representative from the CDC’s At Risk Task Force in the covid-19 emergency response. You should go to the ER if you are experiencing symptoms that could be potentially life-threatening or cause harm if they are not addressed immediately. Examples of these symptoms include “chest pain, difficulty breathing, face drooping, arm weakness or speech difficulty, or acute injury or trauma,” Goodman said. Similarly, if you are in immense pain, you should not hesitate to call 9-1-1 or go to an ER. Perhaps you’ve noticed abnormal swelling in one of your limbs, pain in your abdomen, a strange lump or sudden weight gain. According to Goodman, ideally you should call your health-care provider for urgent symptoms that don’t require an ER visit. If you


As states reopen, here’s how you protect yourself from the coming surge

knows by now, the incubation period — the time between exposure and symptoms — is up to 14 days. It could take another week or two before people become ill enough to seek medical care, and another week or more for those who are severely ill to succumb to the virus. The danger here is that policymakers and the public will jump to the wrong conclusions if they don’t immediately see the numbers increasing. Instead of breathing a sigh of relief, they should prepare for the surge that will inevitably arrive a month or so from now: What New York went through at its peak will happen in communities across the country. Hospitals will become overwhelmed with ill patients. Staff will be forced to ration personal protective equipment. There will be shortages of intensive care unit beds and ventilators. The difference is that this time there will likely be numerous outbreaks at once. That will strain the nation’s capacity to respond. Also worrisome is that many of these outbreaks will occur in rural communities that already struggle with lack of hospitals and health-care workers. Our only advantage now is that we can easily see it coming a month ahead. The more people return to life as usual, the more hospitals should prepare for an influx. Elected leaders, public health officials and hospital CEOs should be urgently preparing for this expected surge. Now is also the time to fully implement pandemic response plans to shore up health-care capacity across the country. In addition, no state has yet set up the testing, contact tracing and quarantining needed to contain the virus. State and local officials should do their best to ramp up these public health capabilities as they call upon the federal government to put forth the national coordinated effort to secure needed supplies and staff. Second, stay safe for yourself and for those around you. Just because you now can go out in public doesn’t mean you should. This is not the time to plan family gatherings, dinner parties and play dates. Restaurants, retail shops and salons might be open, but is going worth the risk? Residents in reopening states should follow the same public health guidance as when they were under shelter-in-place orders: Stay six feet away from people. Wash your hands frequently. Wipe down surfaces that others are touching. If you must return to work, be an advocate for


Diver Laura Wilkinson pursues comeback with four new training partners: Her children

the pool for three months. Wilkinson’s surgery set her back on her 2020 goals both physically and mentally. She has spent the past year getting her confidence back on the platform, retraining her muscles to dive without compensating for her injury and working toward the Olympic diving trials, which had been scheduled for June. Getting a little extra time to train was the silver lining of the postponement of the Games. “I am 42 and a mom of four. I didn’t think another year I’d be like — ‘Oh, sweet, another year!’ But I’m actually thankful, because I just came back from surgery and this gives me time to really get comfortable and confident again and work on those dives,” Wilkinson said. “I thought maybe I could [qualify for Tokyo], but I was kind of running out of time. So now I’m really grateful to have time to build a really solid foundation this year." With Wilkinson’s pool closed and home schooling in full swing, she has had to find time to fit in daily workouts and continue her rehab from home. She borrowed mats from her coach so she can flip and model her dives either in the backyard or in her garage. She also has daily 90-minute body-weight workouts, which target her legs and core, that she does over Zoom with the other 50 to 60 members of her local diving team. Most of the time, her kids work out right alongside her — or play while she does. Training for the Olympics with her kids has been another unexpected perk Wilkinson has discovered during the pandemic. She has shown her children her medals and talked to them about her career, but this is the first time they get to see the work behind the glory. “They’re starting to encourage me, like, ‘You’re doing a great job, Mom!’ as they’re playing next to me and I’m sweating bullets,” Wilkinson said. “When I do the flips they’ll come out, and my little one likes to coach me sometimes, tell me to add a flip or jump higher. It’s not really adding up in their brains right now, but I think it’s going to. They’ll start to realize, if you really want to do something, no matter what’s going on around you, you’ve got to figure out a way to do it. Hopefully we can always come back to that.”


Imagine if the coronavirus briefings went like this

Leana S. Wen is an emergency physician and visiting professor at George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health. Previously, she served as Baltimore’s health commissioner. For weeks, President Trump has held daily news briefings ostensibly to update the American people about covid-19 but typically focused more on unproven treatments and attacks against the media, other elected officials and doctors. Now, as the White House considers reconfiguring the briefings, here’s what I hope they will do. Until late February, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention held daily briefings during which it presented data from the United States and around the world. The CDC can resume these updates, starting with the latest numbers of infections, hospitalizations and deaths. It can identify trends, track the trajectory of disease in different states, and anticipate where the next hot spots will be. As states roll back social distancing restrictions and experiment with different ways to reopen their economies, these numbers will be particularly important. They will help state and local officials troubleshoot and provide early surveillance to predict resurgence of infections. If restrictions need to be imposed again, the data will show why and help determine where and how. Dozens of vaccine candidates and potential therapies are undergoing clinical trials in the United States and around the world. The institution that Anthony S. Fauci leads, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is widely admired as the leading source of information about covid-19 vaccines and treatments. Fauci and his colleagues can present a status update on the various trials, including any preliminary results, as he did on Wednesday regarding the anti-viral medication remdesivir. The Food and Drug Administration can add context on when such therapies could be expected to be approved and made available. The FDA can also provide ongoing clarification about testing. There are two main types of tests available: the PCR test that detects acute infection and the serology test that measures a patient’s antibody levels. Both have some problems with access and accuracy, and guidance is constantly changing about who should get what tests and how they should be interpreted. Instead of politicians arguing about whose fault it is that not enough tests are available, scientists can take time during the briefings to provide guidance on usage of these tests and what the results indicate. Every day, studies come out shedding more light on covid-19. The respiratory illness


candidates and potential therapies are undergoing clinical trials in the United States and around the world. The institution that Anthony S. Fauci leads, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is widely admired as the leading source of information about covid-19 vaccines and treatments. Fauci and his colleagues can present a status update on the various trials, including any preliminary results, as he did on Wednesday regarding the anti-viral medication remdesivir. The Food and Drug Administration can add context on when such therapies could be expected to be approved and made available. The FDA can also provide ongoing clarification about testing. There are two main types of tests available: the PCR test that detects acute infection and the serology test that measures a patient’s antibody levels. Both have some problems with access and accuracy, and guidance is constantly changing about who should get what tests and how they should be interpreted. Instead of politicians arguing about whose fault it is that not enough tests are available, scientists can take time during the briefings to provide guidance on usage of these tests and what the results indicate. Every day, studies come out shedding more light on covid-19. The respiratory illness now appears to affect multiple other systems, including the kidneys and the nervous system. On Monday, the CDC added additional symptoms to be watchful for, including loss of smell and taste. Reports are growing that covid-19 can cause strokes in previously healthy young people. Just last week, new research indicated that covid-19 was spreading in the United States weeks before we knew. Other studies are finding out more about the transmissibility of the virus, how long it stays in the body and whether there is immunity after acquiring the disease. It’s important for people to hear how the top scientists in the country process new studies and how new information changes the way they approach diagnosing and treating the disease. The CDC has guidelines for various types of businesses to help them reduce the rate of infection in the workplace. They can explain these guidelines to the public. Employers can better understand the rationales, and state and local officials can use the information to make regulatory changes. The briefings should also provide practical advice for employees to use to reduce their risks. Many people are anxious about returning to work, and getting the best, evidence-based guidance from experts will provide


It’s a scary time to be pregnant, but I’m still so grateful

of having worse outcomes because of it. However, pregnant people are considered medically vulnerable and should take extra precautions. There has been no documentation of covid-19 being transmitted in utero or through breast milk, but if a laboring woman were suspected of having covid-19, she would need to observe many safeguards — including being separated from her newborn — to avoid infecting the baby through respiratory droplets. When I lay out these facts, I am calm on the outside. On the inside, I am filled with worry. Even in the best of times, childbirth is a time of uncertainty and major life changes. Add to that a world thrown dangerously off-kilter by a public health crisis, and the rising stack of unknowns can feel close to toppling. Things are rapidly changing. My hospital used to encourage the whole family to be present at a birth. It will now allow only one person with me. Some New York hospitals are prohibiting visitors altogether. As the outbreak worsens, others might follow suit. If my hospital adopts this policy, I will understand the necessity. But I never imagined giving birth without my husband at my side. I also never imagined being induced early because of hospital capacity rather than medical need. As the epidemic raged in places such as China and Italy, laboring women had trouble finding facilities to take them. A woman in Austria wrote about her decision to induce labor to stay ahead of hospital crowding. I want to go through natural labor. But will it get to a point that induction is safer? If I were earlier in my pregnancy, I’d have other concerns. Many other women are confronting these right now. Because covid-19 is a new disease, there is no information about its effect in the first and second trimester. Given that pregnant women have suppressed immune systems, should they be exempted from certain types of work that have higher exposure risks? Should their partners? How can pregnant people otherwise reduce risks — including eliminating some in-person doctors’ visits? The concerns will not end when the baby is born. When I had my first child, he needed care for jaundice. In China and Italy, many clinics closed, and newborns couldn’t receive vaccinations or checkups. Could this happen here? To protect our family and to follow social-distancing best practices, my husband and I will not have visitors at home. But


Why Germany’s coronavirus death rate is so much lower than other countries’ rates

BERLIN — For weeks, virologists here have been asked a persistent question: Why, compared with other countries, are so few of the Germans who are diagnosed with the coronavirus dying? In Italy, 9.5 percent of the people who have tested positive for the virus have succumbed to covid-19, according to data compiled at Johns Hopkins University. In France, the rate is 4.3 percent. But in Germany, it’s 0.4 percent. The biggest reason for the difference, infectious disease experts say, is Germany’s work in the early days of its outbreak to track, test and contain infection clusters. That means Germany has a truer picture of the size of its outbreak than places that test only the obviously symptomatic, most seriously ill or highest-risk patients. “At the beginning, when we had relatively few cases, when it came to finding them and isolating them, we did quite well in Germany,” said Reinhard Busse, head of the department of health care management at the Berlin University of Technology. “That’s the major reason.” Other factors, such as the age of those infected and the timing of Germany’s outbreak, also play a role in the differing death rates. But testing widely has been key. Germany, with 31,150 cases at midday Tuesday, appeared to have a larger outbreak than France, with 20,149. But the higher death rate in France implies there were more undiagnosed cases there. France’s outbreak could be larger than Germany’s. Initially, at least, the country’s health authorities tracked infection clusters meticulously. When an individual tested positive, they used contact tracing to find other people with whom they had been in touch and then tested and quarantined them, which broke infection chains. Christian Drosten, a virologist at the Charité hospital in Berlin, said he’s “firmly convinced” that Germany’s high diagnostic capacity had “secured us an extreme lead . . . in the detection of the epidemic.” But he cautioned against complacency and said the death rate would increase: “We are no exception.” Epidemiologists say it’s important to look at Germany’s outbreak in two distinct phases. As community spread became prevalent, infection chains in some cases became impossible to trace. Some doctors said they had no choice but to send people seeking tests back home to call jammed coronavirus hotlines because they lacked protective equipment to conduct them safely. With cases growing exponentially, health authorities have moved on to ordering social distancing and banning mass events.


From a restricted Italy, an artist’s eye on the coronavirus

Artist Emiliano Ponzi has been drawing and writing about daily life in Milan during the coronavirus outbreak. Since March 14, when he started documenting his experiences during lockdown, the number of virus-related deaths in Italy has risen to more than 30,000. Ayumi We use to go downstairs to smoke a cigarette for a break during the working days, and go to dinners and art openings at night or on the weekends. Born and raised between very different cultures, she has a unique gift. She can embrace the shape of the person she is talking to, moving through peaks and valleys of the other temperament, finding the right balance to make you feel comfortable and welcomed. Last August, her boyfriend was sent to Frankfurt, Germany, for a year for business, and she decided to share this new experience with him in a country where she doesn’t know the language or the culture. But she expected she could adapt to new situations as she already had in her other moves. They are living in an apart-hotel; it’s a popular accommodation for short- and mid-term rentals in Germany. They have a small apartment with a small kitchen in a building with similar units. Since the coronavirus pandemic started, they have spent their days in this tiny space: working eating, sleeping, fighting, etc. From her small balcony, she can enjoy the view of a communal garden with trees and grass. Hearing birds sing and children at play, off from school, helps her to feel a bit less lonely. Most of the apart-hotel guests moved out, and at night, only their room has the lights on, and sometimes she loses track of time. Germany has not been as strict as Italy with its stay-at-home directives, and so people are hanging out by the river. She sees few of them wearing masks. At the beginning of the outbreak, she still went to paint at her studio close to the Frankfurt station. She got a lot of hostile looks, and some people shouted slurs at her, and a few spit at her, singling her out as an Asian woman. After that harassment on the street, she decided she would not got outside. Now, she stays inside and waits for all this to go away. I asked her to do me a favor after our call: Take a deep breath, dress up as she used to when she


that time instead of waiting for all this to be over: This is a sliver of a silver lining of the crisis for her. Online lessons of meditation with a Shaolin monk that her agency offers for all employees every morning at 8:30. Online Pilates that her gym offers to all members. We know we are quite fortunate to have the money and freedom and flexibility with our work to explore these new experiences, with this bunch of new time we suddenly discovered. But having empty hours with no deadline also means boredom. While I’m writing, she is playing with her brand New PlayStation 4 Pro that just arrived. At the age of 37, she is learning for the first time what key R or L means on the joypad. Experimenting with all this brings some growth, alongside the tragedy. It means discovering new sides of our identity, making room for things we didn’t know we wanted to try or desire and, at the very end, it is giving us a fulfilling sensation to buoy us amid the sadness. My friend Gianluigi loves kids. In fact, he has four. He has a daughter, Alma, from a previous relationship. And he has two sons, Gioele and Lev, with his current partner, and she has a daughter, Rada, from a previous relationship. It sounds complicated, but it isn’t. Alma is eight and lives with her mother, but Gianluigi is used to seeing her every day. He drives her to school, brings her to check out books at the children’s library, and then they get ice cream. He is there for her in ways big and small, even if they don’t live under the same roof. “Quarantine” and “contamination” are words that are newly commonplace in Italy. They bring heartbreak to blended families. Quarantine is not just for the sick; it’s most important for everyone who changes location: country, city, home, workplace. Every environment we live in is made also by other people, and every move we make brings some potential contamination from the old place to the new one. To understand if a person shows signs of infection, he or she has to spend a certain number of days without changing risk factors or introducing different people. In Italy, this self-distancing is 14 days. Alma will soon move with her mother into her grandmother’s house, with different people around. Before that, to


We’re having a public health emergency. Now’s not the time for finger-pointing.

state government and commercial labs to produce their own tests. On Tuesday, the Senate held a hearing to hold the various entities within the Trump administration accountable; on Wednesday, President Trump blamed the delay on regulations passed during the Obama administration (an allegation that was quickly proven to be false). But let’s all keep in mind that this has been a rapidly evolving outbreak. In under three months, what we now call covid-19 has gone from a cluster of cases in one Chinese city to a near-pandemic affecting more than 70 countries. Public health officials have been working around the clock. A lot has been done rapidly, in extremely time-sensitive conditions, in an effort to contain the novel disease. Did mistakes happen? Certainly. Mistakes occur in public health responses just as they occur in medical care. Sometimes, they are unavoidable: The best decision was made at the time, but it resulted in an adverse outcome. Sometimes, mistakes are made and should have been prevented. If there are systemic problems that could cause similar mistakes to happen in the immediate future, we need to find them. Otherwise, we need to grant some grace as we acknowledge the extraordinary challenges of this extraordinary situation. At the very least, let’s not waste anymore time finger-pointing. There are many critical tasks at hand. The CDC says it now has enough of its tests for 75,000 patients. State laboratories are developing the capacity to run their own tests and, within a couple of weeks, commercial labs are expected to ramp up even more capacity. In the meantime, how will the limited number of tests be distributed? The CDC tests themselves are free, but seeing a provider to get the test is not. How can we help patients cover the costs of testing and afford their medical care if they have covid-19? More testing means that more cases of covid-19 will be detected. The global nature of the outbreak and the presence of person-to-person transmission in the United States means that there are likely many undiagnosed cases of covid-19 throughout our communities. Local officials are being faced with difficult decisions of imposing social distancing measures, such as closing schools and canceling mass gatherings. As medical centers prepare for the surge of additional patients, the public health and medical community must reassure the public and keep the “worried well” from overwhelming hospitals. These are the issues that


What President Trump should have said about coronavirus

Leana S. Wen is an emergency physician and a visiting professor at George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health. Previously, she served as Baltimore’s health commissioner. I watched President Trump’s news conference about the coronavirus on Wednesday. This is what I wish I had heard him say: My fellow Americans, I am here as your commander in chief to provide an important update about the new coronavirus, covid-19. If there were a terrorist threat to this country, I would be standing here with my top military leaders. This is a public health threat, so I stand here with my top public health officials. As soon as coronavirus became an epidemic in China, my administration took action. We implemented a quarantine — the first time the United States has issued a quarantine in more than 50 years. We put in place travel restrictions so that we can delay the virus from getting to our country. Some have said these actions are too aggressive. But I agree with my public health officials that when facing a potentially deadly disease, we must always act out of an abundance of caution. The health and safety of Americans will always be my number one priority. I have good news: My administration’s bold, aggressive actions have worked. Globally, there are more than 80,000 cases of covid-19. Only 15 have been detected in the United States. People are recovering; not one of the 15 has died. Our actions have succeeded in delaying the arrival of covid-19 in this country. That delay bought us time to start developing a vaccine, and we’re already making headway. We have started clinical trials on treatments. Also good news is that the fatality rate of covid-19 appears to be much lower than SARS and MERS. Some public health experts say that coronavirus could be much more like influenza — the flu. If that is true, we can expect financial markets to rebound, because we don’t close businesses and stop the economy every flu season. Here is the bad news: The past several days have seen a big change in other parts of the world. More than 40 countries across the Americas, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Australia have reported cases of coronavirus. Our containment efforts worked when the infection was limited to one country, but with this global spread, we can no longer prevent the virus from reaching the


The U.S. is actually doing a great job fighting the coronavirus threat

Leana S. Wen is an emergency physician and a visiting professor at George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health. Previously, she served as Baltimore’s health commissioner. First, there were no plans to quarantine people arriving from the center of the covid-19 outbreak; then the U.S. government imposed its first quarantine in more than 50 years. Passengers on the Diamond Princess cruise ship were ordered to stay on board for two weeks; then the government announced it would evacuate the Americans among them. The initial quarantine, which was due to end, was extended for two additional weeks. Critics have called these changing directives “chaotic” and an “about-face.” In fact, we should see the rapid adjustments by the U.S. government as indicative of a strong public health response. Covid-19 is This uncertainty can be unsettling, but it is actually normal and expected. By definition, outbreaks are quickly evolving situations. Outbreaks with novel diseases bring even more unknowns. An effective public-health response requires that those leading the response pivot when new information comes out and change course when unexpected circumstance arise. The decisions to quarantine returning Americans illustrate the agility of the U.S. government’s response. At the beginning of the outbreak, the exposure was concentrated in Wuhan, China, with no U.S. cases. As Americans started being repatriated from Wuhan, this was the opportunity to stop, or at least significantly slow, the spread of covid-19 to the United States by quarantining those with risks for exposure. Military bases were quickly repurposed for this use, and local health authorities coordinated closely with area hospitals and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to monitor, test and treat patients. Initially, those on board the Diamond Princess were undergoing a similar type of quarantine. When it became apparent that disease transmission was happening on the ship, the U.S. government decided to evacuate uninfected passengers. This made sense. Then, during the process of evacuation, positive tests came back for 14 asymptomatic Americans. This presented a dilemma: Should they be evacuated along with the others? Transmission of the virus appears to require close contact, and it’s not clear whether patients without symptoms can infect others. All of those being evacuated were already going to be quarantined in the United States for two more weeks, so there wouldn’t be additional risk to the American public either way. According to The Post, officials from different agencies disagreed, but


Governments need people’s trust to stop an outbreak. Where does that leave us?

Leana S. Wen When you learn you have a dangerous disease, you need to be able to trust your doctor. When entire populations face a dangerous public health crisis, they need to be able to trust their governments. The latest test of this trust is the outbreak of a previously unknown coronavirus in Wuhan, China. Coronaviruses are respiratory viruses that can lead to illnesses ranging from mild colds to life-threatening pneumonia. Like other viruses, they do not respond to antibiotics. This strain, called 2019-nCoV, is too new for any useful data on mortality (two other coronaviruses, severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, and Middle East respiratory syndrome, or MERS, have been reported to kill about 15 percent and 35 percent of infected people, respectively). But just since the first case of 2019-nCov was reported on Dec. 31, 473 people have been infected and 17 have died. This week, the virus arrived in the United States: It was detected Tuesday in a man who had flown from Wuhan to Seattle. The Chinese government issued a quarantine order for Wuhan, a city of 11 million people, to begin on Thursday. The World Health Organization convened an emergency meeting to decide whether the outbreak constitutes a “public health emergency of international concern.” A robust response from medical and public health practitioners has already begun. But for any response to be effective, people need to heed government officials’ orders, and for that, they must have faith that their leaders know what they’re doing and have the citizens’ best interests at heart. When there is a breakdown in public trust, public health measures fall apart. We saw this happen with Ebola in Congo, where residents suspicious of the government refused to cooperate with medical personnel, going so far as to attack Red Cross volunteers, halt construction of a treatment center, and help those quarantined to escape. In the past 18 months, more than 3,300 residents in Congo have fallen victim to Ebola; two-thirds of them have died. We’ve also seen this in the United States. Prior to the availability of the measles vaccine in the 1960s, tens of thousands of children were hospitalized and hundreds died from measles every year. The vaccine was so effective that by 2000, measles was declared to be eliminated in this country. Unfortunately, conspiracy theories linking vaccines to unrelated ailments have proliferated. Despite clear directives from the Centers for Disease


@pkcapitol | Paul Kane

Democrats in 2018, Smith has tried to turn Garcia into a Trump clone, particularly with the administration’s uneven handling of the health and economic crises. “I absolutely do support the president; I always have,” Garcia says in one of Smith’s ads, over a montage of news clips showing Trump boasting about his handling of the pandemic while the death toll skyrocketed. “I think Trump is a good president, yeah, I support the president.” Trump is not popular in a district where Hillary Clinton defeated him by seven percentage points in 2016, followed in 2018 by first-time candidate Katie Hill’s even larger victory over the GOP incumbent, Steve Knight. Following Hill’s resignation in the wake of an inappropriate relationship with a campaign aide, Garcia finished second behind Smith in the all-party initial ballot in early March, finishing well ahead of Knight, a career politician whose father also represented the region in Sacramento. Although he publicly supports Trump, Garcia has focused more on standard conservative issues such as cutting taxes — and with no voting record in office, he became harder to hit on issues. In 2018, those first-time candidates fielded by Democrats had an easier time ducking accusations that they were too liberal or too close to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), and they found success in focusing their attacks on GOP incumbents for their votes on health care and other kitchen-table issues, steering clear of Trump scandals. Like many of the 2018 Democrats, Garcia was essentially a self recruit. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) had long-standing ties to Knight and, instead, Republicans lucked into having a more interesting candidate. But Trump may have created a last-minute headache for Garcia by injecting himself into the race with tweets over the weekend accusing Democrats of trying to steal the election by adding an additional in-person voting site. Democrats were hopeful that Trump’s intervention in the race would galvanize more liberal voters who have taken a passive view of the race. Democrats privately acknowledge Garcia has run a better campaign, but they also say that Republicans have not recruited enough similar candidates to truly put the House majority in play. And even where they do have good recruits, Republicans face a cash shortage that will make their campaigns difficult to launch. Republicans consider Wesley Hunt their prototype for the future: an African-American who attended the U.S. Military Academy and went on to


Hogan joins Northam in allowing hard-hit localities to opt out of reopening

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan wears a mask with a pattern of the state flag of Maryland during a news conference on April 24. (Brian Witte/AP) Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan has told leaders of the Washington suburbs and other places hard-hit by coronavirusthat they will be able to opt out of a gradual reopening he plans to announce Friday, according to officials involved in the conversations. The discussions Tuesday came as Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam extended the lockdown of Northern Virginia until at least May 28, two weeks after he plans to start lifting restrictions on the rest of the state. Northam (D) intends to move most of Virginia into “phase one” of his reopening plan on Friday. An executive order he signed Tuesday will allow densely populated Northern Virginia to remain at “phase zero” until the number of new cases and other data related the outbreak in that region take a more positive turn. “Virginia is doing well,” Northam said in an interview Tuesday on Washington Post Live. “There are obviously some areas, to include Northern Virginia, [where] the numbers are not as good. While they’re trending in right direction … they don’t feel that they’re ready to go into phase one.” Asked how long he would let the state’s economic engine, resist reopening, Northam said, “As long as it takes. This is about safety.” Hogan (R) also has said he may lift his “stay-at-home” order later this week. But he told leaders of the state’s most populous jurisdictions Tuesday that they will be able to maintain the shutdown as they see fit, according to multiple people on the call. The county executives of Montgomery Prince George’s, Anne Arundel, Frederick and Baltimore counties, as well as Baltimore City Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young (D), conferred on Monday about the need to keep restrictions in place even if Hogan loosens them statewide. In a call with Hogan and other local leaders on Tuesday, several of those officials warned that — with testing still limited, hospitals in high demand and cases leveling off but not declining — they were not ready remove the strict social distancing measures that have been in place since early April. “I’ll do whatever I have the power to do to keep us safe,” Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich (D) said in an interview. “And I’m not alone in this.” A masked man rides a bicycle past a


The Daily 202: Governors who raced to relax coronavirus restrictions pay a price in new poll

being quarantined into a solitary confinement unit, even though her symptoms persisted. She was 43. (The Intercept) Unique Clay, a USPS worker in Chicago, died from the virus just days after giving birth to a baby girl. Clay tested positive when she went to deliver her third child last month but was later discharged. She started showing signs of the virus days after being home, where she died at 31. (CBS Chicago) Celso Mendoza, a Mississippi poultry worker and Mexican immigrant who fought for better pay and work conditions, died from the virus at 59. (Clarion Ledger) Richard Paul Thornell, a Howard law professor known for starting the first Peace Corps program abroad, died from the virus. Thornell, the second black graduate of Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School, was 83. (Tara Bahrampour) MLB owners have a plan to start the baseball season. They will present a proposal today to the players’ union that outlines a tentative midsummer start and features adaptable scheduling and rule changes designed to maximize a dwindling calendar. The plans include the staging of 78 to 82 regular season games beginning in July – without fans, at least at first – in as many home stadiums as possible. (Dave Sheinin) Ramped-up testing could also pave the way for the NFL season to go on. The season starts in about four months, at which point Fauci thinks it is at least “feasible” that fans could see football get underway as planned – though not from the stands, at least at first. (Des Bieler) Shot: Big food brands are seeing sales and stock prices jump thanks to stay-at-home snacking. “Packaged grocery brands that had run up against Americans’ growing preference for fresh and private-label foods are seeing a resurgence as iconic brands like Goldfish, Oreos, Campbell Soup and Doritos fill the pantries of homebound consumers in search of small pleasures,” Thomas Heath reports. “Major processed food companies such as General Mills, Conagra, Kellogg and Campbell’s are among suppliers whose snacks, canned goods and frozen food have taken off, often sending their stock prices along for the ride.” Chaser: School closings may spur childhood obesity. “Childhood obesity experts are worrying that children — who often gain weight during the summer when they’re home — will add even more pounds, escalating an already serious public health problem,” Marlene Cimons reports. “Research has found that children, especially racial and ethnic minorities, are


The days pass by in a blur, Dighavkar said, marked by a constant stream of phone calls — people calling with bad news, people calling for help, people calling to complain. ‘Sometimes not to think is the best option, only to keep working,’ Dighavkar said. He worries that there is no end in sight.” In France, communities that previously lamented their isolation have found that it spared them from the worst. “In December 2018, a handful of ‘yellow vest’ protesters walked 482 miles from Lozère, a district in southern France, to the presidential palace in Paris. They collected grievances from people they met along the way: people who felt isolated, forgotten by the government, socially and economically disconnected from the French capital,” James McAuley reports. “Now, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, isolation has become a means of survival, and the people of Lozère have found themselves at something of an advantage. As of Friday, only 20 people in the district had been found to have had the coronavirus, with just two of them hospitalized. Lozère is the only district in metropolitan France to count just one coronavirus death.” On Monday, France began relaxing its restrictions after a two-month lockdown. But while commuters crowded onto the Paris metro during rush hour, for most of the day, there was still an inescapable feeling of emptiness, James writes. Europe’s biggest airline, Ryanair, said it will begin flying in July. Passengers will be required to wear face masks at all times, both on the plane and in the airport. Temperature checks may also be conducted at the airport, and those who do not pass will be unable to fly. (Jennifer Hassan) Travelers will once again be allowed into Spain now that the country has eased one of Europe’s strictest lockdowns, but they’ll have to undergo a 14-day quarantine starting May 15. Incoming travelers, including Spanish nationals, must remain inside with outings only for grocery shopping and medical appointments. (Pamela Rolfe) South Korea’s LGBTQ community has been shoved into an unwelcome spotlight. “South Korea is in a race to contain a new coronavirus outbreak in a Seoul party district, prompting a return of social distancing just as the country was easing restrictions. Tracing who was there, however, runs up against the feelings of a gay community that prefers anonymity,” Min Joo Kim reports. “At least 79 cases have been linked to nightclubs and


The Health 202: Trump's coronavirus testing goal is on the low side of what public health experts recommend

according to interviews Monday with senators and aides.” Coronavirus latest Here are a few more stories to catch up on this morning: The Trump administration’s response: Trump was all set to visit a Pennsylvania factory that received national attention for its herculean efforts to produce raw personal protective equipment materials to help fight the coronavirus. But plant officials postponed the visit because of concerns about health risks, Carol D. Leonnig reports. In an op-ed in The Post, former vice president Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, chided Trump for providing coronavirus tests to White House staff while he tells Americans they’re not necessary. “Instead of once again seeking to divide us, Trump should be working to get Americans the same necessary protections he has gotten for himself,” he wrote. The hardest hit: The novel coronavirus has been particularly devastating to the Navajo Nation. “There’s a lack of running water, medical infrastructure, Internet access, information and adequate housing,” Robert Klemko reports. “And as of Wednesday, as the Navajo tried desperately to take care of themselves, the promised help from the U.S. government had, as usual, not yet arrived.” In the Washington region: Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) said Northern Virginia will be excluded from the initial reopening of the state this week, noting that a large majority of new coronavirus infections were concentrated in the D.C. suburbs, Michael E. Miller, Gregory S. Schneider and Fenit Nirappil report. A federal judge ordered the Prince George’s County jail to test more inmates for the coronavirus, Dan Morse and Spencer S. Hsu report, after an inspection found a limited number of tests had been conducted so far. D.C. officials unveiled a hospital overflow area constructed in the downtown Walter E. Washington Convention Center. The center can treat nearly 500 covid-19 patients with mild to moderate symptoms, but as the city is not close to needing it, Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) called it an “insurance policy,” Fenit writes. View this post on Instagram Photo by @salwangeorges — DC's Walter E. Washington Convention Center is converted into an alternate medical site is seen on Monday, May 11, 2020, in Washington, D.C. The conversion is to support the District’s coronavirus (COVID-19) medical surge response. #washingtondc #covid19 #healthcareworkers A post shared by Washington Post Photography (@washpostphoto) on May 11, 2020 at 12:53pm PDT Sugar rush h5{font:bold 24px/125% 'FranklinPro', sans-serif !important;text-transform: initial;margin-bottom:10px !important;}p + h5 {margin-top:32px !important;}blockquote


Nine Charts That Define Our New Covid World

As Covid-19 catalyzes an avalanche of new and urgent data — economic, social, epidemiological — so a number of chart shapes seem to be defining this scared new world, including the “ominous escalator” of pandemic deaths and the “green shoots” of tentative recovery. Below is an attempt to create a field guide to the chart shapes of coronavirus; readers are invited to nominate and name other distinctive curves they feel characterize this unprecedented time. This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. Ben Schott is a Bloomberg Opinion visual columnist. He created the Schott’s Original Miscellany and Schott’s Almanac series, and writes for newspapers and magazines around the world. For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion ©2020 Bloomberg L.P.


Live updates: Northern Virginia likely to be excluded from state’s initial reopening; region’s daily death toll second-lowest in two weeks

The number of known coronavirus cases in the District, Maryland and Virginia was 64,832 on Tuesday, with 33,373 cases in Maryland, 25,070 in Virginia and 6,389 in the District. The number of virus-related deaths reached 1,683 in Maryland, 850 in Virginia and 328 in the District, for a total of 2,861 fatalities. Here are some of the most significant recent developments as the region responds to the pandemic of the novel coronavirus, which causes the disease covid-19: • Gov. Ralph Northam said he expects to hold Northern Virginia out of the gradual “phase one” reopening of the rest of the state later this week. Of nearly 1,000 new coronavirus infections reported in the state Monday, almost three-quarters of them were clustered in the Washington suburbs, which account for about 40 percent of the state’s population. • Republicans in rural parts of Virginia have argued their areas are not as affected by the pandemic, and merchants in some tourist-heavy regions say their economies will be wrecked if they can’t start reopening as summer approaches. But dense Northern Virginia reacted with alarm last week when Northam suggested he might move toward easing restrictions. • The District, Maryland and Virginia collectively reported 55 covid-19 deaths Monday, one more than Sunday but the second-lowest tally in two weeks. There were 1,892 new covid-19 infections in the region. • D.C. officials on Monday unveiled a makeshift hospital overflow center at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center that will be able to treat nearly 500 covid-19 patients with mild to moderate symptoms, preserving hospital space for those who need to be in intensive care or on ventilators. When might local restrictions ease? | What a stay-at-home order means for you | Known coronavirus cases in the region | How to get tested | Have you tested positive for coronavirus? Share your experience.


Giving Up on Big Banks, Small Businesses Survive With Creativity

banks that already knew them. Some stumbled onto more unusual channels. Many did it while simultaneously reinventing how they conduct business under government lockdowns meant to slow the virus’s spread. The experiences may have a lasting impact on the reputations of big banks, even as they now pull ahead in arranging loans during the second round of the federal program. Cindie Feldman, owner of 29 Cooks Catering & Culinary Center in Emmaus, Pennsylvania, said she wasn’t able to get a PPP loan fast enough through Santander Bank NA, where she’s been a client for over 20 years. She was among entrepreneurs who arranged U.S. funding through PayPal Holdings Inc., which she’d used in the past for very small business loans. She has already made arrangements to move her bank accounts out of Santander. “I have to innovate when the world isn’t normal,” said Feldman, who has converted her catering and children’s cooking camp business into a restaurant that delivers locally. “I’m just trying to create something that sustains us, and sustains our employees.” Green Planet 21 Utility Services, a telecommunications company based in Oakland, California, got a loan from the Bank of Guam. It normally uses Wells Fargo but had a business relationship with the overseas lender that it was able to lean on, according to Megan Purdy, the company’s director of business operations. Suzanne Citere, owner of RealDance Studio in Lighthouse Point, Florida, said she plans to close her accounts at Wells Fargo after getting a loan through PayPal. “They made such a mess of things,” she said of the bank. Representatives of Wells Fargo, Santander and JPMorgan weren’t immediately available for comment. Struggling Tenants Some landlords found alternative channels to help struggling tenants get funding. At the Brooklyn Navy Yard, only eight of 500 tenants got access to PPP loans in the first round, said David Ehrenberg, chief executive officer of the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corp. That had implications for tenants’ ability to pay rent and retain their employees. Normally about 12,000 people work within the industrial park. Realizing that existing bank relationships weren’t coming through for tenants, the organization started referring them to so-called community development financial institutions including Pursuit, which received PPP funding from Goldman Sachs Urban Investment Group, as well as Carver Federal Savings Bank and Piermont Bank. At least 130 tenants have received loans in the second PPP round so far, Ehrenberg said.


Of Note

school professor from 1973 to 1990 who later directed a continuing medical education program for doctors in remote parts of Russia, died April 4 at a D.C. hospital. The cause was congestive heart failure, said his wife, Sarah Burger. Dr. Burger, a District resident, was born in Cleveland. From 1969 to 1976, he worked in the office of the president’s science adviser, including work on policies for biomedical research as well as federal environmental and regulatory programs. From 1997 to 2013, he directed the Eurasian Medical Education Program, which is supported by government and foundation grants. Eskander Firouz, Iranian official Eskander Firouz, 93, a former member of the Iranian parliament and a founding director of the Iranian environmental protection agency, died March 3 at a hospital in Bethesda, Md. The cause was multiple myeloma, said a grandson, Amir-Hussein Radjy. Mr. Firouz was born in Shiraz, Iran, and attended schools in Germany and the United States. He returned to Iran in the late 1940s where he was instrumental in the establishment of Iran’s national parks and wildlife program. He was jailed for six years after the 1979 Iranian revolution that deposed the shah. Since the 1990s, he had lived in Rockville, Md., and in Tehran. Evans Hayward, physicist Evans Hayward, 98, a physicist who retired from the National Institute of Standards and Technology in 1990, died March 2 at her home in Chevy Chase, Md. The cause was heart disease, said her caregiver, Sonia Clarke. Dr. Hayward was born Evans Vaughan in New Jersey. She joined what then was the National Bureau of Standards in 1950 and specialized in precision measurements of photoatomic cross sections. David Cooper, city official David Cooper, 88, who was the director of planning and development for the city of Alexandria, Va., from 1974 to 1979, died March 26 at a hospital in Alexandria. The cause was pneumonia, said his wife, Fay Menacker. Mr. Cooper, who had lived in Alexandria since 1974, was born in Paterson, N.J. He worked as a city planner consultant to the city of Falls Church, Va., until the mid-1980s and as a site selection consultant, helping banks and restaurant chains identify land for development, until his retirement in the late 1990s. He was a member of the memoir writer’s group at the Pozez Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia and a volunteer with the Alive! family assistance program. — From staff reports


Oil�Won’t Get a Post-Virus Lift From Public Transport

severe acute respiratory syndrome swept through Hong Kong. Public transport usage certainly dipped during the outbreak’s peak months, but soon resumed its upswing. Until last year’s protests and the latest coronavirus put a dent in things, patronage on the Mass Transit Railway was running at around double pre-SARS levels. You saw a similar picture after terrorist attacks on rush-hour public transport in Madrid in 2003 and London two years later. Ridership dipped temporarily, but cars failed to capitalize on the shift. In London, cycling and overground rail were probably a greater threat to the Underground’s share. The sarin gas attacks in Tokyo in 1995 made barely any perceptible difference to public transport use, even in the short term. That shouldn’t be very surprising. People don’t pack themselves into crowded commuter carriages for the pleasure of it, but because it’s by far the most convenient way of getting around most cities. Finding a substitute for public transportation is so difficult that closures of Hong Kong’s MTR last year were occasionally enough to shut down anti-government demonstrations by stopping protesters from getting there. Many cities actively discourage cars. In some, you have to get on a waiting list or pay handsomely for a license to own a car, or find yourself restricted to driving on particular days of the week. It’s far easier to put on a face mask and take care to wash your hands than to change the shape of your daily commute. To the extent that personal work habits change at all, it’s far more likely that the millions currently working from home will find ways to avoid rush-hour travel altogether. That should be troubling for oil producers. As my colleague Julian Lee has written, there are more and more signs that oil demand is approaching a peak far sooner than the dates in the 2030s used by most analysts. Royal Dutch Shell Plc Chief Executive Officer Ben van Beurden, for one, thinks we may have already passed that point. In rich countries, oil demand peaked all the way back in 2005, and the International Energy Agency expects consumption of gasoline, which makes up the largest slice of the barrel, to peak in the late 2020s even under current policies. If anything, we’re likely to see more people switch away from driving in the near future. A greater distance of metro rail is being built in the decade through


Arkansas Gov. Hutchinson on coronavirus outbreaks in correctional facilities

Arkansas currently has 803 active covid-19 cases; 278 are in correctional facilities. When asked whether he sees more prisoners being released in the coming days and weeks to help slow the spread, Gov. Hutchinson said the state has put other measures in place, including testing and making sure facilities have room for isolation. “These are not inmates where you can say, ‘Well, you ought to go home.’’


Arlene Chesley, who charted a new life after a brain aneurysm and stroke, dies of covid-19

[Too few masks, tests and workers: How covid-19 spread through Maryland nursing homes] “She wasn’t ready to go when this coronavirus took her,” said Chesley, who is among family members who say Sagepoint failed to protect their loved ones or communicate what was happening at the facility. Chesley, 55, said that when he demanded to visit his mother at the nursing home in late April — donning full personal protective gear — he could see the many of the rooms that usually had two residents only had one. Behind closed doors, he said, he could hear people groaning. “That was the eeriest feeling I had ever had in my life,” he said. “It was stifling.” Sagepoint did not respond to requests for comment. Chesley was born in Philadelphia and moved to La Plata after the first grade. After high school, she went to cosmetology school and became a licensed cosmetologist, doing hair for a living. Later in life, she also became an assistant special education teacher, her son said. She raised him and his brother as a divorced single mother. He said she loved cooking, planting flowers and, after he and his brother had children, seeing her grandchildren. Even though she never regained the ability to speak, Chesley was protective of her fellow residents at Sagepoint, he said. She would often instruct her son to wheel her around the facility to check on them. “She would keep pointing, and we would get to someone’s room on the other side of the nursing home, and she would sit there and look at them to see how they were doing,” he said. “She was persistent. She cared about others more than she did about herself.” He said he knows that he wants justice for his mother and the other Sagepoint residents who died, even though he is not yet sure what that looks like. Mostly, he knows that he wants them to be remembered. “I want to make sure that my mother and the other 34 people who died do not become forgotten ghosts,” he said. Read more: Report details deficiencies at Maryland nursing home with highest covid-19 deaths Too few masks, tests and workers: How covid-19 spread through Maryland nursing homes Md. nursing home with most deaths to be fined $10,000 a day since March 30 Local newsletters: Local headlines (8 a.m.) | Afternoon Buzz (4 p.m.) Like PostLocal on Facebook


He woke from a coma to find the virus had taken his wife. Then it took him, too.

examiner’s office said she posthumously tested positive for the coronavirus. Once Lawrence Nokes found out, his breathing grew raspy again, recalled his stepdaughter, Carrie Kelley. He asked medical staff to let him sign a “do not resuscitate” order indicating that he did not want to receive CPR if his heart stopped. He also asked to stop further medical treatment and to be transferred to hospice. “He was brokenhearted,” Kelley said. “He did any and everything for my mother, so this — it took its toll.” Over five days, Nokes called his children and grandchildren, giving them instructions on what to do with his belongings and telling them that he loved them. When stepdaughter Chaunda Stewart called him, he kept apologizing, she said, because despite what his loved ones told him, Nokes felt partly responsible for his wife getting sick. He died on April 15, eight days after Minnette. As of Tuesday, he is one of 11 nursing home employees in Maryland who have lost their lives to the virus. “I’m still angry at Pleasant View, still confused at how quickly we lost them both,” Kelley said. “Junior was a good person to so many people. They both were.” Lawrence Nokes was raised in Union Bridge, Md., a small Carroll County town of about 1,000 residents where “everybody knew everybody,” said Paul Jones, a childhood friend. When Nokes grew older and moved away, he still called himself a “country boy,” his relatives said, and still carried himself with the same laid-back, mellow attitude of a man who grew up running free in wide, green fields. Minnette Nokes was born in Baltimore and could not have been more different, her daughters said, chuckling. She was passionate and funny, often the life of the party — and knew it. Every year, she celebrated her birthday like it was a milestone, Kelley said. For her 70th, nearly two years ago, her children threw her a surprise party, inviting the many friends and family members who loved her. Kelley remembers her mother sauntering down the stairs to greet the hundred or so people packed into the house. She had a twinkle in her eye, Kelley said, and a smile that said, “Yes, you should be celebrating me.” At the party, Lawrence Nokes stood tall in a corner, gazing at his wife. “She was the light,” Kelley said. “For all of us, but especially for him.”


For some world leaders, popularity grows along with coronavirus case numbers

The coronavirus pandemic has put world leaders to the test. Some have addressed the crisis head-on while others have floundered or equivocated. Some have presided over successful efforts to contain the virus while others have seen massive outbreaks bloom on their watch. Infection and mortality numbers — insofar as they are accurate, given limitations on testing, data collection and sometimes transparency — might seem to tell a clear story about which leaders should expect to win recognition for their responses and which should not. Effective crisis management has improved or resurrected some leaders’ reputations. But in some cases, approval ratings do not correspond with infection rates, and tell a different story altogether about perception of national responses. In countries that contained outbreaks quickly, some leaders gained or regained the trust of voters. In South Korea, Moon faced mounting calls to resign last year amid slowing economic growth and mounting political scandals. Hundreds of thousands of people signed a petition calling for his impeachment. Meanwhile, Merkel responded to pressure to step down, saying the term set to end in 2021 would be her last, after what would be more than 15 years in office. When the coronavirus crisis hit, both Moon and Merkel faced initial criticism for their responses. For weeks, Merkel hesitated to impose major restrictions. But when both leaders began to act decisively, they emerged as role models in their regions. South Korea pursued a relentless testing and contact tracing strategy, which Germany also adopted. Germany’s death toll is only one-fourth of Italy’s, although Germany is more populous. Meanwhile, South Korea has confirmed at least 259 deaths, compared with more than 80,000 in the United States, the country with the highest number of confirmed cases. Both Merkel and Moon used testing and contact tracing to avoid full lockdowns. Merkel’s approval ratings have surged to 68 percent in May, up from 53 percent in February. Some 67 percent of Germans said in a survey earlier this month that they approved of her government’s coronavirus approach, according to Infratest dimap. Meanwhile, Moon’s government won a landslide victory in parliamentary elections last month, after a campaign that focused on the government’s pandemic response. In New Zealand, where Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern implemented a strict lockdown to stamp out the virus at the end of March, pollsters have marked a similar boost. For several days last week, there were no confirmed new cases.


Isolation isn’t new for those with intellectual disabilities. But covid-19 still poses a threat.

Timothy Shriver is chairman of Special Olympics and a co-founder of No one needs to tell people with intellectual disabilities about social isolation. Special Olympics, which I chair, began more than 50 years ago as a rebellion against the unjust separation and institutionalization of millions of people around the world. Many of our athletes and their families had been mocked, isolated or locked away — not for weeks but lifetimes. Novel coronavirus lockdowns touch something deep among our community. “Isolation isn’t new to me,” Loretta Claiborne, a Special Olympics pioneer and chief inspiration officer, said during “the Call to Unite,” a recent live stream unifying leaders around the globe. “I’ve dealt with it my whole life.” She was speaking about things that people with intellectual disabilities have fought for generations: social marginalization, public ridicule, segregated education, inadequate health care. The covid-19 pandemic hasn’t lessened these struggles. It has, however, clarified that ending the pandemic of disease requires also ending the pandemic of division and inequality. Covid-19 is a viral threat that knows no labels and respects no social norms. Unless everyone is treated, the disease can’t be eradicated. No exceptions. What our society looks like after this crisis depends on our collective understanding of the threats posed by inequity — and the work we do to address them. Let’s start by recognizing that people with intellectual disabilities are among those most vulnerable to the novel coronavirus. This is partly because about a quarter of adults with intellectual disabilities in the United States live in group homes. The risk of infection and death in these environments is staggeringly high. A recent study of group homes and similar facilities in New York City estimated that residents are around five times more likely than the general population to develop covid-19, and that those who get it are about five times more likely to die from it. For a host of reasons related to being a medically underserved population, people with intellectual disabilities already suffer disproportionately from preventable disease, chronic pain and premature death. We have yet to resolve inequalities in our health-care system that are causing death, illness and emotional trauma to those who were already marginalized. Health-care providers and support staff must be trained to work with people who have intellectual disabilities — not just during the pandemic but all the time. This kind of training has long been lacking. More than