Virus cases in Maryland, Virginia and D.C. top 60,000 as the region braces for a holiday weekend at home

Washingtonians began another spring weekend hunkered down in their homes, trying to prevent the spread of the coronavirus that leaders reported had killed 76 more people in the region as of Saturday morning. Graduation ceremonies at Howard University and American University were held online Saturday instead of filling the streets of the District with proud robed honorees and their photo-snapping families. D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) tweeted to remind residents that the next day would be Mother’s Day, even though she had noted at her news conference the day before that she, like thousands of residents, would be physically distant from her mother to avoid the potential for spreading the disease. The 2,106 new coronavirus cases reported by the District, Maryland and Virginia pushed the number of infections in the three jurisdictions past 60,000. As of Saturday morning, 2,752 people in the region had died. The District reported seven new deaths Saturday, spanning in age from a 35-year-old man to a 96-year-old woman. The city added 203 new positive cases, bringing its total to 6,102. Ward 4 has the most infections, reporting 1,203, and Ward 8 has the most deaths related to covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, reporting 68 as of Saturday. Maryland reported 54 new deaths and 1,049 new cases, bringing the respective totals to 1,614 and 31,534. Virginia reported 15 new deaths and 854 new cases, bringing its totals to 827 and 23,196, respectively. Even as infections continue to spread, without a cure or a vaccine, some looked cautiously toward returning to some level of normalcy. Maryland’s Ocean City boardwalk reopened on Saturday; crowds were light on a cold and windy day. Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) has put forward guidelines for a phased reopening that will begin May 15, leading businesses and organizations in the state to contemplate how they might open under the rules. The Catholic diocese of Arlington, which includes churches across a broad swath of Northern Virginia, announced late Friday that since the rules allow churches to hold services at 50-percent capacity as long as their local laws permit it, in-person Masses will soon resume again. Starting May 15, churches in the diocese can celebrate Mass for a limited number of participants. Bishop Michael Burbidge said that he will continue to grant a religious dispensation to anyone who stays home from Mass, and he encouraged people over 60 or in


As NBA practice facilities begin to reopen, the players are left with unanswered questions

for a return to play, nor a drop-dead date for making a decision whether to resume or cancel the rest of the season. In an interview with ESPN.com, Roberts raised questions about housing players at a single-site location and the mechanics of handling the testing process. Those topics went largely unaddressed during the call. After the call, one agent said there were “only so many answers [Silver] can give us because there’s so much uncertainty,” while another said “nothing new” was shared. For players accustomed to regimented schedules and concerned about their personal health, a frustrating wait continued. “When [Utah’s Rudy Gobert] tested positive, we just ended everything,” said an NBA player on the call. “The questions and the concerns are [about] what if another player tests positive. Are we going to take the same precautions? I think they’re optimistic that the season will resume. From a personal standpoint, I don’t think that it will be smart just to run the season back and there’s no vaccine.” Teams preparing to open their facilities next week, such as the Denver Nuggets, Orlando Magic and Toronto Raptors, have exercised maximum caution. In a statement Friday, the Raptors announced they would open only their practice court, leaving the rest of the facility, including the weight room, closed. Only one player and one coach would be allowed in the facility at a time, and the entire space would be thoroughly cleaned before and after every workout. Everyone entering the building would be subjected to temperature checks, and players would be required to wear masks during workouts. The NBA’s guidelines allow for teams whose local governments have loosened stay-at-home orders to open their facilities to as many as four players simultaneously as long as they maintain a proper social distance. Head coaches are barred from workouts, which are intended to be individual work rather than team activities. Silver reiterated on Friday’s call that workouts at team facilities are optional and that players should not feel pressured to attend if they are uncomfortable. While trepidation about the pandemic, which has claimed more than 76,000 lives in the United States, is widespread, at least one player was excited to return to work. Alongside an Instagram picture of the Cavaliers’ suburban practice facility, forward Cedi Osman wrote simply, “Great to be back!!!” Sign up for our weekly NBA newsletter to get the best basketball coverage in your inbox


This covid-19 misinformation went viral. Here’s what we learned.

In a crisis, people struggle collectively to make sense of a complex and frightening situation — and as a result, misinformation spreads. For several reasons, that’s been especially true during the novel coronavirus pandemic. Scientists are still trying to understand everything about the virus’s disease, covid-19, including how it spreads and which treatments work. Armchair epidemiologists are filling the Internet with their own interpretations of the emerging science. But partisan polarization interacting with social media and cable news have amplified this dramatically, quickly spreading problematic beliefs about covid-19. Here’s one key example. On March 20, Aaron Ginn wrote a Medium article titled “Evidence over Hysteria — Covid-19” and tweeted it out. He presented scientific findings and statistics related to the virus, arguing that the health risks were overstated and that social distancing would hurt the economy. This article was heavily criticized by experts (including our University of Washington colleague biologist Carl Bergstrom) for misrepresenting the science and promoting misunderstanding. About 32 hours after it was posted, Medium removed the article for violating its platform policies. Our research suggests that the article initially received little attention on Twitter. But on March 21 around 6:45 a.m. Eastern time, the article suddenly “went viral,” rapidly gaining visibility through tweets and retweets, surging to approximately 1,000 tweets an hour for several hours. Ginn’s number of Twitter followers quadrupled in two days, from 4,000 to more than 16,000. This burst of attention was short-lived — Medium removed the article about 13 hours after the article began to spread widely, while Twitter added a safety warning to the link, discouraging users from clicking on it. Our research team has studied how social media users, including those with initially small social networks, rapidly gain attention — and build potentially lasting audiences — during crises. Working with student Kaitlyn Zhou, we developed a way of depicting this. The graph below shows both the observed rate at which a piece of content is shared, and its resulting exposure through the different accounts that share it. Over time (measured by the x-axis), you can see the increase in the total number of tweets linking to the article (measured by the y-axis). However, the circles and diamonds also help you see how specific accounts with more than 10,000 followers help spread the word. The circles show regular tweets that link to the story, while the diamonds show tweets that quote content.


D.C. ties for most daily deaths as region sees 119 new coronavirus fatalities; Amtrak to restore Acela service June 1

The number of known coronavirus cases in the District, Maryland and Virginia was 58,726 on Friday, with 30,485 cases in Maryland, 22,342 in Virginia, and 5,899 in the District. The number of virus-related deaths reached 1,560 in Maryland, 812 in Virginia and 304 in the District, for a total of 2,676 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: • The District, Virginia and Maryland on Friday reported 119 new coronavirus-related fatalities and 2,128 new infections. The District reported 19 new deaths, the most deaths in a single day, matching the number seen April 30. Disparities persist in the latest death count, with 15 of the victims being black and 13 living in Wards 5, 7 and 8, the poorest and most segregated parts of the city. • D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) on Friday renewed alarms about prematurely reopening the city after her government disclosed the most covid-19 fatalities in one day and one of the biggest spikes in infections. Officials in Prince George’s County said hospitals are still experiencing an influx of critically ill patients, and the county is not yet ready to consider reopening, even if the rest of Maryland moves in that direction. • Amtrak will restore some passenger rail service between Washington and New York next month, bringing back its flagship Acela trains, in what would be the company’s first step toward returning to normal operations since the novel coronavirus lockdown. The Acela, the Northeast Corridor’s premier passenger rail service, will return to operations June 1, Amtrak said. • Landlords in Virginia have threatened tenants with eviction if they don’t at least make partial rent payments, an attempt to get around a state Supreme Court emergency order meant to keep victims of the covid-19 crisis from losing their homes, Virginia Attorney General Mark R. Herring’s office said. When might local restrictions ease?


Style Conversational Week 1383: Unpunning the puns

is a spooneristic take on I’m gonna take my horse to the old town road, the first line of “Old Town Road,” the runaway hit of 2019. There was plenty of “Man of La Mancha” setup to place Alex Steelsmith’s To march into hell for a heavenly clause into the context of “The Impossible Dream.” To march into hell for a heavenly cause is Joe Darion’s great line from the song in which Don Quixote tells of his, well, quixotic quest. Kevin Dopart set up his joke with “sand and hills and rocks and things,” another line from A Horse With No Name, the 1971 song by the band America that’s been called a description of taking heroin by someone who’s never taken heroin — to A course with yo’ name. Jonathan Jensen uses the name of a real restaurant, the famed Hyman’s Seafood in Charleston, S.C., to lend credence to his otherwise bogus story about Lucille Ball ending with “Lucy’s in disguise at Hyman’s!” which has no other connection to the 1967 Beatles song Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds. What did Jerry Lee Lewis say after reading the president’s Twitter feed? “Goodness gracious, great bawls of ire!” Jesse Frankovich on, duh, Goodness gracious, great balls of fire, from Lewis’s 1957 rock-'n’-roller. Jeff Shirley turned 42 bottles of beer on the wall, 42 bottles of beer — from about 57 verses into “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall,” as an inspirational call to defend the nation’s capital from the British in 1814, Fortitude battles our fear on the Mall. Fortitude battles our fear. Chris Doyle put Carrie Underwood and her real-life sister Shanna into an Italian restaurant to have Carrie plead, “Gee, sis, take the veal!” as a play on Underwood’s 2005 song Jesus Take the Wheel. Sarah Walsh, on the other hand, went far afield from “My Fair Lady” with her story on searching for oil fields with “Just Kuwait, when we dig in, just Kuwait” as in Just you wait, Henry Higgins, just you wait, from Eliza Doolittle’s revenge-fantasy song for her unbearable mentor. In the category of puns that just revel in their absurdity, Duncan Stevens got ink with a ridiculous list of chores — “Parse lease. Aid Roes. Marry in time” — to pun on the refrain “Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme” from Simon and Garfunkel’s setting of the folk song “Scarborough Fair.” (See


Here’s what it’s like to fly from Turkey to the U.S. during the coronavirus outbreak

continued, including a commercial route from Istanbul through Minsk, Belarus, to a few European cities, and flights bringing home Turkish citizens from around the world. Last week, the U.S. Consulate in Istanbul helped arrange several Turkish Airlines flights back to the United States, including Flight 4096, to Washington Dulles International Airport, early in the morning on April 24. I took that flight. The sprawling Istanbul Airport, which opened a year ago and is one of the world’s largest, was mostly shuttered. Passengers, for 14 or so scheduled international flights, were processed through a part of the airport normally used for domestic travel, by a small army of airport employees wearing protective gear. Just inside the entrance, employees took the temperatures of arriving passengers. Elsewhere, check-in counters were roped off and covered in white fabric. A collection of luggage carts sat abandoned near passport control. Passengers milled around one cafeteria that was operating. At least 70 passengers boarded the Boeing 777 to Dulles. We were greeted by flight attendants wearing masks, gloves, plastic face shields and white hazmat suits. Most of the passengers wore face masks. I wore ski goggles as well. The wide-body plane was fairly empty, so I had my choice of seats. Most people sat far apart. Some vigorously scrubbed every surface around them with disinfectant wipes, then rigidly took their seats. A few people moved around the cabin frequently during the flight, seeming not to care who breathed on them, or what they touched. Apparently because the headphones that are normally distributed could not be disinfected, the entertainment system was disabled for the nearly 11-hour flight. The flight attendants handed out blankets wrapped in plastic, but no pillows. Meal service was different too. Instead of a tray full of food, passengers were handed plastic bags sealed with a sticker that said, “We will succeed together” in Turkish and English. Inside were sandwiches, juice boxes, and crackers and other snacks. The flight attendants never lingered, hurrying through the aisles. At Dulles, stickers on the floor at passport control reminded people to socially distance. Perched on the desks of the customs agents were large bottles of hand sanitizer. I was pulled aside for special screening. A customs agent assured me the gloves she was using to search my bags were new. Apologizing, she confiscated a banana I had brought as a snack. No one at Dulles took my temperature.


There’s a more accurate way to compare coronavirus deaths to the flu

that these numbers are very different from the CDC’s final official flu death estimates. For 2018-2019, for instance, the 7,172 confirmed flu deaths translated to a final estimate of between 26,339 and 52,664 deaths. Again, that’s because the CDC plugs the confirmed deaths into a model that attempts to adjust for what many epidemiologists believe is a severe undercount. Now, let’s add a bar for this season’s covid-19 deaths, which as of this writing stands at 63,259, and which will be even higher by the time you read this. Note the drastic change in the y-axis to accommodate the scale of covid-19 mortality. This year’s data are necessarily incomplete, as 22 weeks remain in the flu season. There are not likely to be many more flu deaths, as we are well past the worst of the season. But covid-19 mortality has plateaued at around 2,000 deaths per day. Where it will head next is anyone’s guess. Using an apples-to-apples comparison, we can say that the coronavirus and the disease it causes, covid-19, have already killed eight times as many people as the flu. By the time we get data for the entire season, the difference appears likely to be at least tenfold, or a full order of magnitude. The coronavirus, Faust writes, “is not anything like the flu: It is much, much worse.” One of the most challenging things about this pandemic is making sense of the profound uncertainty surrounding the many quantities that might appear, at first glance, to be rock solid. On the surface, comparing flu and coronavirus deaths seems like a simple proposition: dig up the official numbers of both and see which is greater. But that effort gets complicated as soon as you realize that flu mortality is not reported as a tally but as an estimated range, which is far different from the individual counts, based on testing and diagnoses, used for covid-19. And because we can’t test and diagnose everyone, those covid-19 deaths are probably undercounted as well. Soon, what once appeared to be a simple mathematical exercise turns into a mess of algorithms, estimates and uncertainty. People encountering that uncertainty for the first time, as many of us are during this pandemic, are likely to react in one of two ways. Some cherry-pick a single number that comports with their biases, creating an artificial certainty to score political points or avoid upsetting their


is anyone’s guess. Using an apples-to-apples comparison, we can say that the coronavirus and the disease it causes, covid-19, have already killed eight times as many people as the flu. By the time we get data for the entire season, the difference appears likely to be at least tenfold, or a full order of magnitude. The coronavirus, Faust writes, “is not anything like the flu: It is much, much worse.” One of the most challenging things about this pandemic is making sense of the profound uncertainty surrounding the many quantities that might appear, at first glance, to be rock solid. On the surface, comparing flu and coronavirus deaths seems like a simple proposition: dig up the official numbers of both and see which is greater. But that effort gets complicated as soon as you realize that flu mortality is not reported as a tally but as an estimated range, which is far different from the individual counts, based on testing and diagnoses, used for covid-19. And because we can’t test and diagnose everyone, those covid-19 deaths are probably undercounted as well. Soon, what once appeared to be a simple mathematical exercise turns into a mess of algorithms, estimates and uncertainty. People encountering that uncertainty for the first time, as many of us are during this pandemic, are likely to react in one of two ways. Some cherry-pick a single number that comports with their biases, creating an artificial certainty to score political points or avoid upsetting their preconceptions. That’s what the politicians and talking heads using faulty flu data to downplay the outbreak are doing. Others throw their hands up and declare the truth to be unknowable, indulging in the cynicism that believes you can “make statistics say whatever you want.” But rather than try to make sense of this uncertainty ourselves, there’s a third option: turning to the experts who’ve devoted their entire careers to these questions. We can listen to the epidemiologists and physicians, people like Faust and his colleagues, who are trained to draw the best possible conclusions out of uncertain data, understanding that those conclusions may have to be updated as new information comes in. And while the experts might not all agree on some points, something like a critical consensus emerges if we listen to enough of them. Then, that consensus can be used to inform policy that helps save lives and protect the economy.


For paratriathlete Melissa Stockwell, Tokyo postponement was a triple setback to training

On good days, such as the ones that were common just a few weeks ago, Melissa Stockwell might hop on her Trek for a long bike ride near her home in Colorado Springs, with the Rocky Mountains in the distance and the weeks dwindling until the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics, and feel her veins fill with a heady cocktail of adrenaline and gratitude. “It’s a great day to be alive,” she posted on Instagram one afternoon in early March, along with a shot of her next to the bike, in her helmet and USA Paratriathlon jersey, with nothing but blue skies above and smooth road ahead. That’s what training looked like before the world changed and the Tokyo Games were pushed back to 2021. Here’s what that same bike training session looked like a few days ago, well into this period of self-isolation amid the novel coronavirus pandemic: a stationary bike on her back patio, the dog a few feet away, the kids — Dallas, 5, and Millie, 2½ — playing in the yard. She was shooting for one solid hour, but then the interruptions started: “Mommy! Mommy! MOMMY!!!” By the seventh time, she gave up. “Typically my husband is around to help with the kids, but that day it was just me, the kids and the dog,” Stockwell, 40, said in a telephone interview. “That’s what we’re learning now. We’re all doing the best we can, and as badly as I want to get my workouts in, they’re not my priority now. My priority is making things seem as normal as possible for my kids and keeping them busy and also trying to help in the community.” Stockwell is a former Army first lieutenant — she was awarded a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart in the Iraq War, where she lost her left leg to a roadside bomb in 2004 — and her heart remains that of a first responder. As the coronavirus crisis deepened, she launched a neighborhood group that sends meals to hospitals for the doctors and nurses. It helps remind her of life’s greater purpose. Until just a few weeks ago, her life, in large part, was centered around training for Tokyo. After competing in the 2008 Paralympics as a swimmer, Stockwell switched to triathlon and won a bronze medal in 2016. Having decided to make one last go of it in Tokyo, she moved her


Coronavirus in the DMV: What you need to know

The number of known cases of the novel coronavirus in the greater Washington region has passed 35,000, with more than 1,500 deaths. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R), Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) and D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) have all outlined plans for how they will eventually lift the stay-at-home orders and restrictions on businesses that have stalled the region’s economy. But they warn that the shutdown won’t ease until the region meets key benchmarks, which so far has not happened. More than 2,000 residents and staff inside area nursing homes have now been infected. New data from Children’s National Hospital suggests children may be more susceptible to the virus than previously believed. Prince George’s County,Md., has been especially hard hit. Here are answers to frequently asked questions. Sign up for our Coronavirus Updates newsletter to track the outbreak. All stories linked within the newsletter are free to access. Officials encourage residents to contact their health-care providers first. The latest information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention can be found at cdc.gov/coronavirus. Virginia, Maryland and the District also have set up resources for residents. In Virginia, call 877-ASK-VDH3 (877-275-8343). The Fairfax County Health Department also has a public information line, 703-267-3511, for questions from county residents. For information about covid-19, visit the Virginia Department of Health website. Arlington County set up a hotline, 703-228-7999, to minimize the risk posed by covid-19. The call center is open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday. In Maryland, those worried about potential exposure to people with the virus can call the state Emergency Management Agency at 410-517-3720. For information about the state response, go to health.maryland.gov/coronavirus. For general questions, call 211. Prince George’s County has set up a hotline for questions, 301-883-6627, and directed residents to health.mypgc.us/coronavirus. The District is directing residents to coronavirus.dc.gov. Leadership in a pandemic: How Hogan, Bowser and Northam have taken charge The Washington Post has a detailed tracker of how many cases and deaths have been reported in the District, Maryland and Virginia, along with information on racial breakdowns and a map. You can see it here. Public health departments for Virginia, Maryland and the District update their surveillance and information websites on most weekdays, with the District and Maryland providing racial breakdowns. The District had reported 3,532 cases as of Friday afternoon, including 154 fatalities. D.C. officials announced Wednesday that they are


hospitalized in the state as of Friday. Bowser announced last week that school buildings in D.C. will remain closed through the academic year, and instruction will end late next month, rather than June 19. Northam issued a similar order, closing Virginia schools for the rest of the academic year. Schools in Maryland are closed through April 24, and officials have raised the possibility of remote learning in the fall. Extended school closures in the District could lead to significant drops in student proficiency in math and English, according to a report released April 7 examining the potential academic impacts of the school shutdowns related to the coronavirus, The Post’s Perry Stein reports. Fairfax County schools continued to struggle with distance learning Monday after reports of disruptive behavior last week led officials to temporarily suspend online instruction. Most jurisdictions are offering free meals to students and all children, and the federal government is allowing school districts to distribute meals “to a parent or guardian to take home to their children,” The Post’s Hannah Natanson reports. Here is a list of places to pick up breakfast and lunch in the District, Maryland and Virginia. Many colleges and universities have cleared their campuses, too, including American University, Georgetown University and the University of Maryland. A complete list of school closings can be found here. Most of the nation’s houses of worship have suspended in-person religious services and activities to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. The Episcopal Diocese of Virginia announced it will keep its 180 churches closed until at least May 8. Basically, yes. The National Park Service closed Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park after receiving a recommendation from the state Department of Health. All Smithsonian Institution museums and the National Zoo are closed temporarily, in addition to the National Children’s Museum and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. The Washington Nationals remain in limbo as Major League Baseball delayed Opening Day. The National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League suspended their seasons indefinitely, putting the Wizards and the Capitals on pause, too. The Post is keeping an updated list of canceled D.C.-area events. The White House, after weeks of reluctance to disrupt the gears of government, has instructed federal agencies to adjust their operations to focus on “mission critical” services to contain the coronavirus by limiting face-to-face interactions, The Post’s Lisa Rein, Kimberly Kindy and Eric Yoder reported. In a memo, the


From 760 miles away, a mother’s agonizing wait for a death or a recovery

anyway. No intimate family gathering in Wendy’s mother’s backyard in scenic, southern Utah — but a sort of drive-by wedding, in which a local bishop administers the ceremony to just the two of them, through the window of his parked car. The notion fades in a few days. There are so many other uncertainties, like whether Adam’s health insurance plan will cover all of his medical expenses, which so far are coming in at nearly $140,000, starting with the $2,400 bill for that first 14-mile ambulance ride to the hospital. The doctors tell Adam his recovery could take weeks; and the available science on the vulnerability vs. immunity of survivors is even less clear. Adam Schulte and Wendy Higgins hang out at an overlook at the Sandy Amphitheater in Sandy, Utah, as Schulte recovers from covid-19. (Kim Raff for The Washington Post) Erica Schulte King and her daughter, Lara Graber-Mitchell, take a walk with their dog by Lake Harriet in Minneapolis. The two take daily walks around the lake together. (Jenn Ackerman for The Washington Post) Alyce LaGasse takes in the view on her bike ride near Sellwood Bridge in Portland. (Mason Trinca for The Washington Post) By early May, Adam is in his third week back at work, from home, his computer and two monitors on a table next to his bed. Adam is still dependent on oxygen during the day and a CPAP machine at night. His insurance is going to cover all his costs. Wendy is still coughing, but she’s back at work, too, from home. One day Adam has a “virtual appointment” with a pulmonologist, and his ever-protective mother wonders how that works; how can they take his blood pressure through a screen? Once again, she contemplates driving out there. Now that he is recovering it should be safe, she thinks. But it might not be. Would it be worth going, worth the risk of spending the night somewhere along the way and potentially being exposed to the virus in some hotel? “And then I get there, and am I 100 percent positive that their immunity is enough that they’re not contagious?” she wonders. Is it worth going all that way just to be able to look at him through a window, just to see his face? She knows that Erica will say it again: “No, Mom, you’re the risk group!” Then again, maybe it would


and American University were held online on Saturday instead of filling the streets of the District with proud robed honorees and their photo-snapping families. D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser tweeted to remind residents that the next day would be Mother’s Day, even though she had noted at her news conference the day before that she, like thousands of residents, would be physically distant from her mother to avoid the potential for spreading disease. The 2,106 new coronavirus cases reported by the District, Maryland and Virginia brought the number of infections in the three jurisdictions past 60,000. As of Saturday morning, 2,752 people in the region have died. The District reported seven new deaths Saturday, spanning the age range from a 35-year-old man to a 96-year-old woman. The city added 203 new positive cases, bringing its total to 6,102. Ward 4 has the most infections, reporting 1,203, and Ward 8 has the most deaths related to covid-19, reporting 68 as of Saturday. Maryland reported 54 new deaths and 1,049 new cases, bringing the respective totals to 1,614 and 31,534. Virginia reported 15 new deaths and 854 new cases, bringing its totals to 827 and 23,196, respectively. Local leaders kept encouraging residents to stay at home. Bowser and Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) participated in a live-streamed celebration of the European Union’s Europe Day on Saturday morning, where Van Hollen told people on both sides of the Atlantic, “We are engaged in a great battle against a common foe the coronavirus.” They were joined by two Washington Wizards players who are European natives. Davis Bertans encouraged Americans and Europeans to donate to food banks, and Anzejs Pasecniks lamented the abrupt end of the basketball season but showed off his workout equipment at home, saying “This corner is my best friend right now.” Mei Powers, the chief development officer of D.C. nonprofit Miriam’s Kitchen, joined the live stream with a reminder that not everyone has a home to make staying home possible. “The basic protocols to wash your hands, to stay at home when you’re sick: Our guests are not able to do that,” she said about the people who are homeless who rely on the nonprofit’s services. She asked for donations to help the organization keep providing meals to people with nowhere else to turn. Read more: Local newsletters: Local headlines (8 a.m.) | Afternoon Buzz (4 p.m.) Like PostLocal on Facebook


Relationships strain between prisons and their host towns

banned visitors. Butner and Granville County officials say they don’t expect the covid-19 outbreak will alter appreciation for the prison as a local employer offering good-paying jobs. But correctional officers who live in and around Butner say they know some people fear them, said William Boseman, a retired Butner correctional officer and union representative for the officers. When people see the prison workers in their dark-gray uniforms walking down the street, they cross to the opposite side. In grocery stores, people scoot to the next aisle. “They are being ostracized,” Boseman said. “When people know you work at this place where there has been an outbreak, they treat you different. They treat you as if you are automatically contagious.” Chaos and panic The first covid-19 death of a federal inmate took place six weeks ago — on March 28 — at a prison in Oakdale, La. As of Friday, six more of the 1,800 inmates had died. There have been 115 cases of covid-19 among the prisoners and 26 among the staff. In the boot-shaped state of Louisiana, Oakdale sits just above the ankle. About 110 miles west of Baton Rouge, past the flooded rice-field crawfish ponds of the Cajun prairie, a meandering country road lined with towering Southern pines subtly opens into a meticulously planned four-lane highway that drops you into the town of fewer than 8,000 people. It only takes five minutes to drive from the center of town to the Oakdale Federal Correctional Complex. Along an access road to the complex, a long row of fluorescent pink and white signs with handwritten biblical psalms and motivational quotes flickers in the spring breeze: “Fear is a reaction. Courage is a decision.” Jane Willis and her husband, Greg Willis, are in their mid-50s and have been the pastors at the Christ Church of Oakdale for 15 years. They broke ground on a new church near the prison to house their growing congregation a few months ago, before the pandemic. As the news broke of the covid-19 outbreak at the prison, Jane Willis felt called to do something for the shift workers driving in and out of the prison complex, past their property each day. So she made signs. “I saw the workers going back and forth and it broke my heart for them,” she said. “I was thinking of a way we can encourage them as they go to


Cases flare up around the U.S. and abroad as social distancing rules relax

the best of governments,” Obama said. “It has been an absolute chaotic disaster when that mind-set — of ‘what’s in it for me’ and ‘to heck with everybody else’ — when that mind-set is operationalized in our government.” Amid the worst U.S. unemployment figures since the Great Depression and ongoing partisan finger-pointing, a stalemate continued between the White House and congressional Democrats on a new relief package. Separately, Trump announced $3 billion worth of dairy, meat and produce will be purchased from American farmers, as part of a larger aid package intended to help the farming industry. In a tweet, Trump said that products from farmers, ranchers and specialty crop growers will be redistributed, in a program he called “FARMERS TO FAMILY FOOD BOX,” to food kitchens. Last month, Trump committed $19 billion to the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program, “to provide critical support to our farmers and ranchers, maintain the integrity of our food supply chain, and ensure every American continues to receive and have access to the food they need,” according to a statement on the USDA’s website. The remaining $16 billion will go to direct payments to farmers and ranchers. According to an April report from the Food & Agriculture Policy Research Institute at the University of Missouri, the pandemic will have “broad implications across the agriculture sector.” The report projected a net farm income decline of approximately $20 billion. On the medical front, New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) said that three New York children have died of a mysterious inflammatory syndrome believed to be related to the coronavirus. The state’s health department is investigating 73 reported cases among New York children of the syndrome, which has symptoms similar to Kawasaki disease or toxic shock syndrome, Cuomo said during a news conference. The children tested positive for the coronavirus or had antibodies triggered by the virus, but they had not been hospitalized for respiratory symptoms, he said. “We were laboring under the impression that young people were not affected by covid-19,” Cuomo said. “We’re not so sure that is the fact anymore.” He said the CDC has asked New York to develop national criteria for other states and hospitals. The FDA announced that it has issued an emergency authorization for a new coronavirus screening, called an antigen test, that is conducted by a nasal swab and can quickly detect proteins found on or within the virus.


South Africa coronavirus lockdown alcohol ban

South African Breweries beer on tap at a bar in Cape Town, South Africa. The company says it may have to destroy 400 million bottles of beer because of the country’s ban on alcohol sales. (Nardus Engelbrecht/AP) JOHANNESBURG — Only two other countries — Sri Lanka and Panama — continue to deprive their citizens of that most universal pleasure-giver and painkiller, though much larger India and Thailand recently lifted similar bans. On one side: Drinkers who say their rights are being impinged on, and bottle shop owners and liquor companies that are going broke. On the other: a public health system that is unburdened by thousands of monthly hospitalizations due to accidents and violence attributed to drunkenness. More than 9,000 fewer admissions to trauma units per week can be attributed to the alcohol ban, according to Charles Parry, director of alcohol research at the South African Medical Research Council. The council’s data also shows a decrease in excess deaths in South Africa, suggesting that the lockdown, with its alcohol ban and decrease in vehicle use, may have saved the lives of more South Africans than the 178 that covid-19 is confirmed to have killed so far. “Instead of patching people up with stabbing wounds, nurses can focus on training how to handle covid cases,” Parry said. “Based on our model, at least 15 people who would have otherwise died from alcohol-related traumas are being saved every single day.” Many countries, including the United States, are seeing a spike in excess deaths that outpaces even the confirmed number of deaths attributed to covid-19. South Africa’s top government officials are casting the ban, which they tout as a major success, as not only a coronavirus-related measure but also a social experiment that is providing feedback on how the country’s health-care system functions. “With coronavirus, we have an opportunity to examine issues that have been vexing us in this country for a very, very long time,” said Lindwe Zulu, South Africa’s social development minister. “Yes, the ban is drastic, but is this not a time for drastic measures?” South Africans drink more, get into more car accidents, and commit acts of domestic abuse at levels well above the populations of most other countries. Sixty percent of the drinking-age population consider themselves binge drinkers, according to a 2016 government report, and the country ranked 159 out of 175 countries surveyed for road deaths by


Triple shooting wounds three men in Southeast D.C.

Three men were shot in Southeast Washington on Saturday afternoon and police were looking for a white sedan with Maryland license plates in connection with the crime. About 4:23 p.m., police were called to the 1100 block of K Street SE. They found one shooting victim unconscious and not breathing, one victim unconscious but breathing, and a third victim conscious and breathing, said Officer Sean Hickman, a D.C. police spokesman. Police also issued a lookout request over Twitter for a “white sedan bearing Maryland tags 8DX0510.” Read more: Local newsletters: Local headlines (8 a.m.) | Afternoon Buzz (4 p.m.) Like PostLocal on Facebook


Risk Managers Did Not Ace the Coronavirus Test

One in five professional risk managers who had previously considered the risk of a global pandemic, or similar crisis, admit to doing nothing whatsoever to prepare for it, according to a survey by the Institute of Risk Management. The global poll of 959 chief risk officers, risk managers, risk consultants, and others also asked respondents how they rated their business’s crisis management and continuity in the first few weeks of Covid-19. 82% report being satisfied. Given that 59% of risk managers polled say they had given no consideration at all to the risk of a pandemic, it is a little surprising that 94% think that coronavirus will strengthen the future case for risk management. The survey was conducted between April 14 and April 22, more than a month after the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a global pandemic. The international death toll was well over 100,000 by that 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.


These towns love their federal prison. But covid-19 is straining the relationship.

So far, 45 inmates across the country have died. The Bureau of Prisons announced last week that 70 percent of tests of inmates for covid-19 have come back positive. As of Friday, 3,701 of the bureau’s roughly 140,000 inmates had tested positive for the disease. No prison staff have died but nationwide, 527 have tested positive, according to federal data. Residents in Lompoc and other prison towns, including Butner, N.C., and Oakdale, La., say having a prison with a high infection rate unnerves them, especially when they encounter unmasked and ungloved prison staff in grocery stores, pharmacies or restaurants. Lompoc Mayor Janelle Osborne poses for a portrait on May 5. Lompoc is known for its 36 murals found around the old town. (Karla Gachet for The Washington Post) Osborne attends a Lompoc City Council meeting. (Karla Gachet for The Washington Post) “We have people who come in with prison uniforms two to three times a week,” said Antonio de Jesus Rodriguez, owner of Floriano’s Mexican restaurant, which provides pickup orders to customers. “Some are wearing a mask, but some are without one. It’s kind of mind-boggling. As I’m taking their order I’m thinking, ‘You are in a hot spot; why aren’t you taking this more seriously?’ ” The Washington Post reported last month that the Bureau of Prisons allowed the virus to fester in dozens of prisons before taking action to stop its progress. It did not provide masks to correctional officers or inmates until after dozens of inmates were quarantined, and often after inmates had died. Prisoners with coughs and body aches continued to line up, just a few feet apart, for their meals and medication. And temperature checks, for both inmates and staff, did not become routine until the disease had permeated dormitory-style settings where 100 or more prisoners sleep and live within a few feet of one another. In a statement, the bureau said it began responding to the coronavirus threat as early as January, and is using “screening, testing, appropriate treatment, prevention, education, and infection control measures.” It also said that starting April 1, it began to minimize gatherings and that “inmate movement in small numbers” is being allowed for essential activities, such as visits to the commissary, laundry, showers, telephone and health care. [‘A recipe for disaster’: American prison factories becoming incubators for coronavirus] The Bureau of Prisons’ mishandling of the coronavirus threat prompted Rep.


banned visitors. Butner and Granville County officials say they don’t expect the covid-19 outbreak will alter appreciation for the prison as a local employer offering good-paying jobs. But correctional officers who live in and around Butner say they know some people fear them, said William Boseman, a retired Butner correctional officer and union representative for the officers. When people see the prison workers in their dark-gray uniforms walking down the street, they cross to the opposite side. In grocery stores, people scoot to the next aisle. “They are being ostracized,” Boseman said. “When people know you work at this place where there has been an outbreak, they treat you different. They treat you as if you are automatically contagious.” Chaos and panic The first covid-19 death of a federal inmate took place six weeks ago — on March 28 — at a prison in Oakdale, La. As of Friday, six more of the 1,800 inmates had died. There have been 115 cases of covid-19 among the prisoners and 26 among the staff. On the boot-shaped state of Louisiana, Oakdale sits just above the ankle. About 110 miles west of Baton Rouge, past the flooded rice-field crawfish ponds of the Cajun prairie, a meandering country road lined with towering Southern pines subtly opens into a meticulously planned, four-lane highway that drops you into the town of fewer than 8,000 people. It only takes five minutes to drive from the center of town to the Oakdale Federal Correctional Complex. Along an access road to the complex, a long row of fluorescent pink and white signs with handwritten biblical psalms and motivational quotes flickers in the spring breeze: “Fear is a reaction. Courage is a decision.” Jane Willis and her husband, Greg Willis, are in their mid-50s and have been the pastors at the Christ Church of Oakdale for 15 years. They broke ground on a new church near the prison to house their growing congregation a few months ago, before the pandemic. As the news broke of the covid-19 outbreak at the prison, Jane Willis felt called to do something for the shift workers driving in and out of the prison complex, past their property each day. So she made signs. “I saw the workers going back and forth and it broke my heart for them,” she said. “I was thinking of a way we can encourage them as they go to


¡Caray! Coronavirus shuts the Mexican beer industry down, and the country is running dry

A man emerges from a store in Hermosillo with a case of beer. The government shut down beer production in early April, calling it a nonessential activity during the country’s coronavirus outbreak. Now stores are running out of the beverage, and people are grabbing what they can. (Norte Photo/Getty Images) MEXICO CITY — A century later, it’s Mexican towns that are going dry. The government has largely shut down beer production, arguing it’s not essential during the country’s coronavirus outbreak. The last bottles of Tecate, Corona, Modelo Especial and Dos Equis for Mexican consumption rolled off the lines in early April. Now the country has a new black market — in beer. “Many people are desperately searching for beer,” said Raul Funes, head of a craft-brew association in Tijuana, just south of San Diego. “It’s like toilet paper.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/video/world/mexico-stops-brewing-corona-beer-deemed-nonessential-in-pandemic/2020/04/03/3237c72c-2bef-4cbc-b26d-0422d29430a2_video.html (Reuters) It’s not that Mexico has no booze. The wine industry is still open. But Mexican adults, on average, drink a quart of wine per year. They knock back 72 times as much beer. That’s 18 gallons a person. [From Mexico’s newest superhero to Iran’s most elegant hand-washer: Watch how countries are promoting coronavirus safety] “Beer is a symbol of celebration, of refuge, it’s something to cure depression, to have at a party, a wedding, to drink at home,” said Luis Alberto Medina, host of a radio show in the northern city of Hermosillo. “It’s always been present in Mexican culture.” Until now. The country’s biggest convenience-store chain, Oxxo, announced the doomsday news on April 30: it had only 10 days’ worth of beer left. Already, six-packs were becoming as rare as cruise ships off Cozumel. Panicked shoppers A beer and snacks store at La Marquesa National Park. (Hector Vivas/Getty Images) For the few beers left, prices have soared. One Twitter user reported buying a can of Modelo Especial for 27 pesos, or around $1.15. That’s more than the hourly minimum wage. “Yes, the world is coming to an end,” he wrote. In Tijuana, Facebook pages have sprung up to direct people to stores that still have beer, or to people willing to sell from their private stashes. “Where is there beer at a normal price?” anguished one user. Someone responded with an American flag emoji. Indeed, at a number of border crossings, beer is being discreetly carried south, even as illicit drugs flow north. Lupita Flores, 34, runs a corner


Cesar Aguilar/AFP/Getty Images) Tijuana boomed during Prohibition, the period from 1920 to 1933 during which the United States banned alcohol production and sales. Beer-deprived Americans flocked to “the longest bar in the world,” the 200-foot marvel at the city’s Mexicali Beer Hall. These days, though, Tijuana’s stores are nearly out of beer. And because of restrictions imposed after the coronavirus outbreak, it’s harder to cross the border. But residents with jobs in California can still make the trip and pick up a six-pack or two on their way home. [As coronavirus fears grow, doctors and nurses face abuse, attacks] Thanks to the commuters, “20 percent of the population has beer,” said Ricardo Ocampo, a professor of food science at the Technological Institute of Tijuana. Everyone else, he said, faces a dire situation. “We are talking about a very high percentage of people whose only option is craft beer.” Yes, craft beer — long dismissed by the Corona crowd as too hoppy, too cloudy, too pricey. Never mind that Mexico’s independent breweries were winning increasing respect. They’ve got plenty of beer, now that restaurants and brewpubs no longer offer dine-in service. “The outlook is bright for the craft brewers,” said Ocampo. “People will dare to try their beer.” Consumers aren’t the only victims of the beer shortage, of course. Empty refrigerators and freezers in a Monterrey store. (Julio Cesar Aguilar/AFP/Getty Images) Mexico’s beer industry, dominated by Grupo Modelo and Heineken Mexico, generates 55,000 direct jobs, according to the beermakers’ chamber, Cerveceros de Mexico. But counting everyone else involved — barley farmers, restaurants, stores — the number of jobs supported by the industry balloons to 650,000, the chamber says. “Beer accounts for 25 percent of exports of the agro-industrial sector,” Karla Siqueiros, the head of the chamber, said in an interview. “So we are an agro-industry.” That argument seemed to win the day with the Agriculture Ministry, which issued a letter on April 6 that appeared to allow beer companies to continue working. But then Mexico’s coronavirus czar, Hugo López-Gatell, got wind of the missive. “This is an error and will be amended,” he told reporters. The government was permitting only essential activities, he said. “And that doesn’t include the production, the distribution of beer.” The country has reported more than 27,600 cases of coronavirus and more than 2,700 deaths. [Coronavirus hits Mexico’s economy where it hurts most: Oil, tourism, remittances and


Cases top 60,000; 76 new deaths

A masked pedestrian walks by a shuttered business in the District’s Chinatown. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post) Washingtonians began another spring weekend hunkered down in their homes, trying to prevent the spread of the coronavirus that leaders reported had killed 76 more people in the region as of Saturday morning. Graduation ceremonies at Howard University and American University were held online Saturday instead of filling the streets of the District with proud robed honorees and their photo-snapping families. D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) tweeted to remind residents that the next day would be Mother’s Day, even though she had noted at her news conference the day before that she, like thousands of residents, would be physically distant from her mother to avoid the potential for spreading the disease. The 2,106 new coronavirus cases reported by the District, Maryland and Virginia pushed the number of infections in the three jurisdictions past 60,000. As of Saturday morning, 2,752 people in the region had died. The District reported seven new deaths Saturday, spanning in age from a 35-year-old man to a 96-year-old woman. The city added 203 new positive cases, bringing its total to 6,102. Ward 4 has the most infections, reporting 1,203, and Ward 8 has the most deaths related to covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, reporting 68 as of Saturday. Maryland reported 54 new deaths and 1,049 new cases, bringing the respective totals to 1,614 and 31,534. Virginia reported 15 new deaths and 854 new cases, bringing its totals to 827 and 23,196, respectively. http://www.washingtonpost.com/video/local/funeral-workers-balance-safety-compassion-as-coronavirus-deaths-increase-around-dc/2020/04/29/41c96b75-30ac-43a1-9253-4ae14794a3d5_video.html (REF:ribasjl/The Washington Post) Even as infections continue to spread, without a cure or a vaccine, some looked cautiously toward returning to some level of normalcy. Maryland’s Ocean City boardwalk reopened on Saturday; crowds were light on a cold and windy day. Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) has put forward guidelines for a phased reopening that will begin May 15, leading businesses and organizations in the state to contemplate how they might open under the rules. The Catholic diocese of Arlington, which includes churches across a broad swath of Northern Virginia, announced late Friday that since the rules allow churches to hold services at 50-percent capacity as long as their local laws permit it, in-person Masses will soon resume again. Starting May 15, churches in the diocese can celebrate Mass for a limited number of participants. Bishop Michael Burbidge said that he will continue


Foreign intelligence officials say attempted cyberattack on Israeli water utilities linked to Iran

Iran is being linked to an attempted cyberattack last month that authorities believe was aimed at disrupting water supplies in at least two locations in Israel as that country was seeking to contain a covid-19 outbreak, according to foreign intelligence officials familiar with the matter. The incident, which occurred on April 24 and 25, was quickly detected and thwarted before it could cause damage. But Israeli officials and analysts fear that it could signal a further escalation in hostilities between the two countries and that Iran is getting bolder in its efforts to sabotage key systems. “Cyberattacks that intentionally damage critical infrastructure shouldn’t be condoned,” said a senior Trump administration official, who declined to discuss any specific incident and who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the topic’s sensitivity. “We think they’re very destabilizing.” The hackers sought to cripple computers that control water flow and wastewater treatment for a pair of rural districts in Israel, according to two officials of a foreign government that monitored the attack in real time. Investigators found that the hackers routed their attempted attack through computer servers in the United States and Europe — a common tactic used by adversaries of the West. Officials at the White House, the National Security Agency and multiple other agencies declined to comment. The alleged Iranian link to the attack was first reported by Fox News. Spokesmen for the Israeli government and the Israel Defense Forces would neither confirm nor deny the report. An Iranian official denied that his country was involved in the attack. “The Iranian government does not engage in cyberwarfare,” said Alireza Miryousefi, spokesman for Iran’s Mission to the United Nations in New York. The foreign intelligence officials described the attack as coordinated, but not particularly sophisticated. The intruders targeted “programmable logic controllers” that operate valves for water distribution networks. The two affected districts serve a variety of residential, medical and commercial customers, providing fresh water as well as wastewater removal and treatment. At the time, much of the population was under lockdown because of the pandemic. The attack was initially detected by employees of the Israel Water Authority, who alerted Israel’s cybersecurity agency. Israeli government officials said the attack was quickly detected and defeated, causing no damage or harm to water supplies. Employees were instructed to change operational system passwords, the officials said. If Iran’s involvement is verified, it would not


Community deaths

years in the Army before retiring in 1993 as an aide to Powell. He then worked at the Pentagon as a military training program consultant to the office of the secretary of defense. He lived in Alexandria, Va., before retiring to Orrington in 2011. John Holbrook, 69, a mental health advocate who was a founder of the University of Maryland’s MaryPIRG (Public Interest Research Group) student lobbying organization, died March 22 at a nursing center in Rockville, Md. The cause was acute kidney failure, said a sister, Anne Trench. Mr. Holbrook, who lived in Greenbelt, Md., was a native Washingtonian. In the late 1990s, he volunteered, organized a newsletter and did lobbying work for On Our Own of Maryland, a wellness and recovery organization focused on mental health care. He was a member of Paint Branch Universalist Unitarian Church in Adelphi, Md., and the Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt Democratic Club in Greenbelt. Nicholas DeClaris, 89, a retired University of Maryland professor of electrical engineering who designed patient health-care information management systems and medical protocols for a trauma hospital in Baltimore, died March 28 at an assisted-living home in Ellicott City, Md. The cause was a blood-borne bacterial infection, said his son, John-William DeClaris. Dr. DeClaris, who lived in Fulton, Md., was born in Drama, Greece. He helped the Greek resistance against German occupiers in World War II, according to his family, and then immigrated to the United States. He worked at U-Md.’s College Park campus from 1967 to 2011 and also taught at its Baltimore campus. In the 1970s, he was recruited to help design the information network systems at what is now the R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore. Arthur Campbell, 96, a former deputy director of the Center for Population Research at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, part of the National Institutes of Health, died March 10 at his home in Ocean Pines, Md. The cause was a form of sepsis, said a daughter, Julie Phillips. Mr. Campbell was born in Brooklyn and moved to the Washington area in 1952 as a demographer with the Census Bureau. Later he was branch chief of natality statistics at the National Center for Health Statistics. He retired from NIH in 1994 after 26 years. In 2014, he moved to Ocean Pines from Bethesda, Md. — From staff reports


As coronavirus spreads in Egypt, Sissi sees opportunity to tighten his grip

CAIRO — Egypt's military-backed government is using the coronavirus pandemic to tighten its grip on the country, human rights activists say. In recent weeks, authorities have ordered up punishments, including prison terms, for anyone they accuse of contradicting official accounts about the pandemic. Political opponents have been linked to the virus and targeted. And under coronavirus-related restrictions, political prisoners are more isolated than ever from the world as the virus threatens them. On Friday, President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi approved amendments to the nation’s emergency law, giving himself and security agencies additional powers. The stricter measures, the government claims, are needed to address a legal “vacuum” and prevent the spread of covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. But activists say some of the measures open the door to more abuses of rights and freedoms. “President al-Sissi’s government is using the pandemic to expand, not reform, Egypt’s abusive emergency law,” said Joe Stork, deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa division of Human Rights Watch. “Egyptian authorities should address real public health concerns without putting in place additional tools of repression.” The government did not respond to a request for comment. Only five of the 18 amendments to the law clearly involve public health issues, Human Rights Watch said. For example, the changes allow Sissi to shut down schools, universities, courts and businesses, as well as quarantine people returning from overseas. Other amendments allow him to postpone tax and utility payments as well as provide economic support to affected communities and business sectors. But they also give Sissi the authority to ban or limit public and private gatherings, even in the absence of any public health emergency. Other amendments allow him to restrict people from owning, transporting, selling, buying or exporting any goods or services, as well as control their prices. “Some of these measures could be needed in public health emergencies, but they should not be open to abuse as part of an unreformed emergency law,” Stork added. “Resorting to ‘national security and public order’ as a justification reflects the security mentality that governs Sissi’s Egypt.” It’s the latest move by Sissi to dictate the social and political rhythms of the Arab world’s most populous nation. Since a 2013 military coup that he led ousted Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s only democratically elected president, Sissi has steadily consolidated his authority. He has jailed tens of thousands of opponents, especially


A lesson from a Saudi doctor

steady stream of imprisonments of U.S. citizens. In addition to Fitaihi, Mohammed bin Salman has jailed two other Americans: Salah al Haidar, the son of a prominent Saudi feminist activist, and Bader al Ibrahim, another physician and respected writer. Both are still imprisoned. Egyptian ruler Abdel Fatah al-Sissi is holding at least five Americans; another, Mustafa Kassem, died in prison in January, 6½ years after he made the fateful mistake of identifying himself to police with his U.S. passport. Fitaihi himself is back at work at his hospital, which recently set aside two floors and 80 beds for covid-19 patients. But he is not yet entirely free. The judge has yet to issue a ruling in his trial; the proceedings have been repeatedly postponed, to the growing frustration of U.S. officials. In the meantime, he and seven members of his family, all U.S. citizens, are banned from leaving Saudi Arabia, and their Saudi assets are frozen. The Trump administration can’t be accused of ignoring Fitaihi’s case. It has lobbied for him repeatedly and at the highest levels. Before visiting Riyadh in February, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said publicly that he planned to bring up the doctor’s continued persecution. Presumably he did. But that’s just the point: Mohammed bin Salman regularly ignores appeals from Washington, whether about jailed U.S. citizens or oil production, even as he leans on thousands of U.S. troops dispatched by Trump to protect Saudi oil fields. Last month, Trump finally seemed to lose patience with this highhanded treatment. According to Reuters, he called the crown prince and threatened the withdrawal of U.S. forces unless the Saudis cut oil production — a demand that he and Pompeo had been unsuccessfully pressing for nearly a month. The Saudis complied, though only after oil prices had crashed below zero. Human rights cases don’t get the same presidential attention. Trump has never spoken out about Fitaihi or any other American prisoner in Saudia Arabia. He did nothing to free Kassem in Egypt even after the desperate American wrote to him personally. Fitaihi says he hasn’t given up on his mission. He said he’s working to open a new medical school connected to his hospital and is looking for a U.S. partner. “I would like to continue to be a bridge between the two countries,” he said. Yet as his own story shows, while Mohammed bin Salman rules, U.S.-Saudi partnership isn’t


Coronavirus flares as states and countries ease social distancing guidelines

On the medical front, New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) said that three New York children have died of a mysterious inflammatory syndrome believed to be related to the coronavirus. The state’s health department is investigating 73 reported cases among New York children of the syndrome, which has symptoms similar to Kawasaki disease or toxic shock syndrome, Cuomo said during a news conference. The children tested positive for the coronavirus or had antibodies triggered by the virus, but they had not been hospitalized for respiratory symptoms, he said. “We were laboring under the impression that young people were not affected by covid-19,” Cuomo said. “We’re not so sure that is the fact anymore.” He said the CDC has asked New York to develop national criteria for other states and hospitals. The FDA announced that it has issued an emergency authorization for a new coronavirus screening, called an antigen test, that is conducted by a nasal swab and can quickly detect proteins found on or within the virus. The antigen test, manufactured by Quidel Corp., can produce diagnostic results within minutes. The FDA said in a news release that the test is “important in the overall response” against the virus because it can be produced at a lower cost than other tests and can “potentially scale to test millions of Americans per day” once other manufacturers enter the market. The federal government has already authorized two other coronavirus tests. The first, called a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test, detects genetic material from the virus. The second is a serological, or blood, screening, which is not meant to diagnose an active case but to detect antibodies that signal a person was previously infected and has developed an immune response to the virus. The serological test is cheaper and faster than the PCR test, but is also less reliable, with positive results being “highly accurate,” but negative results not necessarily ruling out the presence of the virus. To backstop a potential false negative, the FDA said that negative tests should be confirmed with a PCR test. In terms of drugs to affect the course of the disease itself, a study published Saturday in the British medical journal Lancet, said that a triple combination of antiviral drugs has shown initial promise in the treatment of patients with mild to moderate cases. Scientists conducting a small trial based in Hong Kong found that patients


A lesson from a Saudi doctor

aside two floors and 80 beds for covid-19 patients. But he is not yet entirely free. The judge has yet to issue a ruling in his trial; the proceedings have been repeatedly postponed, to the growing frustration of U.S. officials. In the meantime, he and seven members of his family, all U.S. citizens, are banned from leaving Saudi Arabia, and their Saudi assets are frozen. The Trump administration can’t be accused of ignoring Fitaihi’s case. It has lobbied for him repeatedly and at the highest levels. Before visiting Riyadh in February, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said publicly that he planned to bring up the doctor’s continued persecution. Presumably he did. But that’s just the point: Mohammed bin Salman regularly ignores appeals from Washington, whether about jailed U.S. citizens or oil production, even as he leans on thousands of U.S. troops dispatched by Trump to protect Saudi oil fields. Last month, Trump finally seemed to lose patience with this highhanded treatment. According to Reuters, he called the crown prince and threatened the withdrawal of U.S. forces unless the Saudis cut oil production — a demand that he and Pompeo had been unsuccessfully pressing for nearly a month. The Saudis complied, though only after oil prices had crashed below zero. Human rights cases don’t get the same presidential attention. Trump has never spoken out about Fitaihi or any other American prisoner in Saudia Arabia. He did nothing to free Kassem in Egypt even after the desperate American wrote to him personally. Fitaihi says he hasn’t given up on his mission. He said he’s working to open a new medical school connected to his hospital and is looking for a U.S. partner. “I would like to continue to be a bridge between the two countries,” he said. Yet as his own story shows, while Mohammed bin Salman rules, U.S.-Saudi partnership isn’t likely to flourish. Read more from Jackson Diehl’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. Read more: The Post’s View: Mohammed bin Salman has learned nothing Jackson Diehl: Trump’s embrace of Mohammed bin Salman is now costing him dearly Fred Hiatt: Trump calls MBS his ‘friend’ — 18 months to the day after Jamal Khashoggi’s murder The Post’s View: The MBS paradox is on full display The Post’s View: The Saudi crown prince has learned he can persecute Americans with no pushback from Trump or Pompeo


In Egypt, a clampdown

now-banned Muslim Brotherhood. Any form of dissent has been stifled, including the shuttering of hundreds of websites deemed critical of his rule. Today, few aspects of political life and civilian spaces remain outside the control of the government, widely seen by critics as the most repressive in Egypt’s modern history. “I would describe what we’re seeing in Egypt as a window into how authoritarian power that has been consolidated for years can play out and be leveraged amid a moment of global emergency,” said Mai El-Sadany, managing director of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy. Medics check the temperature of travelers after a repatriation flight from Kuwait in Giza, Egypt, on Sunday. (Khaled Elfiqi/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock) Since April 2017, Egypt has been under a state of emergency. The government says it’s needed to combat terrorism and drug trafficking, but critics say these are pretexts to strengthen Sissi’s hold on the country. An update to a sweeping 2015 terrorism law ratified by Sissi in March is widely seen by U.N. officials and activists as potentially allowing even more human rights abuses. Now, they say, the pandemic is becoming the latest pretext for perpetrating abuses. “On one hand, what we are seeing is the culmination of the control that the Egyptian authorities under President Sissi, especially security forces, exert on Egypt,” said Hussein Baoumi, Egypt researcher for Amnesty International. “The government then used this control to manage the pandemic.” “That being said, we are seeing a shift in rhetoric, although not fully, in using the pandemic to justify some of these measures,” he added. In recent weeks, the government has targeted anyone critical of its efforts to tackle the coronavirus. Last month, the U.N. human rights office reported that 15 people were arrested for allegedly spreading “false news” about the virus. A doctor and a pharmaceutical worker were arrested for Facebook video posts complaining about a dearth of face masks. The regime has targeted journalists for suggesting that the government is undercounting coronavirus cases. In March, the government forced a Western journalist to leave Egypt after she published figures from experts that suggested that the rate of infected people could be at least 10 times the confirmed cases at the time. With a population of 100 million, Egypt has about 9,400 confirmed cases and at least 525 deaths — far fewer than countries with much lower populations. Authorities say that they are being


Of Note

He then worked at the Pentagon as a military training program consultant to the office of the secretary of defense. He lived in Alexandria, Va., before retiring to Orrington in 2011. John Holbrook, mental health advocate John Holbrook, 69, a mental health advocate who was a founder of the University of Maryland’s MaryPIRG (Public Interest Research Group) student lobbying organization, died March 22 at a nursing center in Rockville, Md. The cause was acute kidney failure, said a sister, Anne Trench. Mr. Holbrook, who lived in Greenbelt, Md., was a native Washingtonian. In the late 1990s, he volunteered, organized a newsletter and did lobbying work for On Our Own of Maryland, a wellness and recovery organization focused on mental health care. He was a member of Paint Branch Universalist Unitarian Church in Adelphi, Md., and the Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt Democratic Club in Greenbelt. Nicholas DeClaris, U-Md. professor Nicholas DeClaris, 89, a retired University of Maryland professor of electrical engineering who designed patient health-care information management systems and medical protocols for a trauma hospital in Baltimore, died March 28 at an assisted-living home in Ellicott City, Md. The cause was a blood-borne bacterial infection, said his son, John-William DeClaris. Dr. DeClaris, who lived in Fulton, Md., was born in Drama, Greece. He helped the Greek resistance against German occupiers in World War II, according to his family, and then immigrated to the United States. He worked at U-Md.’s College Park campus from 1967 to 2011 and also taught at its Baltimore campus. In the 1970s, he was recruited to help design the information network systems at what is now the R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore. Arthur Campbell, research director Arthur Campbell, 96, a former deputy director of the Center for Population Research at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, part of the National Institutes of Health, died March 10 at his home in Ocean Pines, Md. The cause was a form of sepsis, said a daughter, Julie Phillips. Mr. Campbell was born in Brooklyn and moved to the Washington area in 1952 as a demographer with the Census Bureau. Later he was branch chief of natality statistics at the National Center for Health Statistics. He retired from NIH in 1994 after 26 years. In 2014, he moved to Ocean Pines from Bethesda, Md. — From staff reports


U.S. Olympic bobsledder Pavle Jovanovic dies by suicide at 43

included a suicide attempt. Jovanovic, a native of Toms River, N.J., missed the 2002 Olympics because of a contested positive drug test and, after a two-year ban, won a bronze at the 2004 world championships. He finished seventh in the two- and four-man events in the 2006 Winter Olympics as a push athlete on driver Todd Hays’s sled. “Pav, I can’t believe another one of these needs to be written,” Steve Mesler, an Olympic teammate, wrote on Instagram. “I can’t believe it’s you I’m writing this about. My personal legend — the athlete that set the standard for focus, dedication, meticulousness, and drive — tragically took his own life at the age of 43.” Mesler called Jovanovic the best bobsledder on the planet for six years and “the best teammate anyone ever had. He knew your success would mean his success. He taught me that. He taught me to care about my teammates’ sleep, nutrition, therapy, [and] work ethic in the gym and behind closed doors just as much as I cared about my own. “He taught me about the need for being mentally healthy — not for life, but for athletic success. And that may have been part of his downfall. What happens when the person who is best known as being 150 percent focused or nothing finds the nothing becoming what they become 150 percent focused on?” Jason Dorsey, a former teammate, echoed that on Facebook (via USABS), writing, “You never know what people are going through from outward appearances. We have to talk to them and listen more. I’m going to work on that going forward.” Clayton Meeks, another former bobsledder, replied to Dorsey: “To me, Pav exuded that super confident athlete, who could back up his brashness. You never know what’s going on in someone’s head.” Mesler promised to “make sure” Jovanovic’s parents and siblings “know the person and athlete you were” and spoke of a larger problem in the sport. “Pavle was King. He WAS the standard. Today we mourn the second bobsled Olympian in the last three years. Today I mourn the second of the six men I competed at the Olympics for my country with to be laid to rest too soon. ‘Bro’, that’s a problem.” More Olympics coverage from The Post: How U.S. Olympians are training at home Olympic cyclist Kelly Catlin could do it all. Until it all became too much.


Immigrants — essential, ignored, persecuted — are committed to the U.S. Where’s our gratitude?

back to countries that aren’t remotely ready to deal with an outbreak. In the meantime, Stephen Miller, President Trump’s de facto nativist czar, has continued to restrict immigration, making it harder to obtain legal residency in the country. In such a hostile environment, it would be hard to fault the immigrant community if it simply chose to leave, turning its back on a country that, as journalist (and former farmworker) Alfredo Corchado recently put it, “wants to be fed” but also “wants to demonize the undocumented immigrants who make that happen.” Perhaps, given the evident injustice laid bare by the pandemic, immigrants could decide to quit on the United States and its ungratefulness. In fact, quite the opposite seems to be happening. In March, with the coronavirus pandemic in its early but already quite worrying stages, Mexicans in the United States defied the odds and sent home more than $4 billion in remittances, the largest amount since 2003. “This growth in remittances is hard to reconcile with the labor market in the United States,” Alberto Ramos, a Goldman Sachs executive, told Mexican newspaper El Financiero. Indeed, most analysts had forecast that remittances would fall to $2.7 billion. Perhaps, Ramos said, Mexican workers in the United States anticipated a steeper recession and decided to capitalize now rather than later. That is indeed possible, even likely. But there’s another, far more relevant lesson: Undocumented immigrants are not going anywhere. I host a daily news magazine on the radio in Los Angeles. Over the last few days, I have asked the audience whether they have considered leaving the United States and returning to their countries of origin to escape the pandemic and its risks. Not one person has said they are planning to leave. On May 4, Jorge, a caller from Santa Ana, told us he had faced tremendous hardship to come to America and had no plans to go back. His only son had been born in the United States and it was here that he had built a life over decades of hard work. “I am not going back,“ Jorge told me. Marcela Celorio, consul general of Mexico in Los Angeles, said that rather than asking for assistance for a potential return, the county’s Mexican community is doubling down on its deep attachments to the United States. Of the roughly 7,500 calls the consulate has received on its dedicated line for


How accurate is Trump’s rosy picture of the spread of the coronavirus?

President Trump on Monday morning offered an assessment of the coronavirus pandemic that’s in keeping with his insistent — and at times inexplicable — optimism about the situation. “Coronavirus numbers are looking MUCH better, going down almost everywhere,” Trump tweeted. “Big progress being made!” A few minutes earlier, he’d claimed he and his administration were getting “great credit” for the response to the pandemic, save from the media. This is in keeping with his assertion last week that other countries see the United States as the “world leader” on fighting the virus, a claim that defies evidence or, frankly, logic. Nonetheless, Trump’s claim is one that can be evaluated based on the data we have at hand. Is it true the “numbers” on the virus look much better? Well, it depends on which numbers you look at and the period over which you look at them. Let’s say we want to look at the most obvious metric for judging the accuracy of Trump’s claim: the number of new daily cases in each state. Let’s consider that figure over the past two weeks, using a daily seven-day average of new cases since there’s a lot of variability in the day-to-day figures. By that metric, it’s not the case that the numbers are “going down almost everywhere.” In fact, the seven-day average of new cases is up in 28 states and D.C. since April 27. The map below shows the change relative to April 27 for the week before that date and the two weeks following. States highlighted in blue have seen the average number of cases drop in the past two weeks. Those in gray have seen an increase. An important consideration here, though, is that the number of tests being conducted have also increased in many of these states over the same period. Test more and you will get more confirmed cases. Trump’s complained about this in the past, arguing that testing more makes the United States “look bad,” since it means an increase in confirmed cases. Of course, testing more also allows authorities to better track the spread of the virus and, then, to better contain outbreaks. It was South Korea’s early, frequent testing, for example, which probably helped it tamp down the virus much better than did the United States. We can remove the influence of the increase in testing on the question introduced by Trump by looking


The Energy 202: GOP lawmakers accuse Wall Street of ‘discriminating’ against fossil fuels during coronavirus pandemic

already occurring for short periods of time at a few weather stations,” Andrew Freedman and Jason Samenow report. “These tend to occur in parts of the Persian Gulf shoreline and coastal southwest North America, where sizzling lands border sultry seas, as well as in northern South Asia, where extreme heat and humidity combinations overlap just before the annual monsoon season begins.” Unless humans make moves to adapt to such heat, some highly populated regions could become uninhabitable sooner than previously thought. The Minnesota-based owned of the 1,151-megawatt Coal Creek Station in North Dakota announced it is closing the plant in the second half of 2022, years ahead of schedule, the Bismarck Tribune reports. Great River Energy said it plans to add 1,100 megawatts of wind power by the end of 2023, and the “added wind power would effectively replace the 1,100-megawatt capacity of Coal Creek.” The California Air Resources Board is working toward two research projects to assess indoor air pollution in multifamily housing and disadvantaged communities, analyzing how stove types contribute to cooking pollution, Bloomberg News reports. “Researchers have been studying risks associated with gas cooking emissions for about 40 years,” per Bloomberg. Advocacy groups also tell Bloomberg the pandemic-related stay at home orders add urgency to the issue of cooking pollution, as more people spend time inside. House Natural Resources Chairman Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.) introduced a bill to pay for eradicating the invasive hornet that captured headlines this month, and for restoring bee populations that may have been affected. The Murder Hornet Eradication Act sets aside $4 million a year to grant to states with the Asian giant hornet, such as Washington state, where they were spotted last year. The “murder hornet” could find a more suitable environment as climate change worsens. “Previous research has found that honeybees — a main target of the hornets — are threatened by climate change as environmental stress decreases their ability to ward off infection and forage for food,” E&E News reports. “And the Asian giant hornet can more easily adjust to a changing climate than honeybees because it makes its nest underground, limiting the hornets’ exposure to extreme temperature changes.” “This hornet can exist in temperate regions anyway, simply broadening its range,” James Carpenter, a curator of wasps at New York City’s American Museum of Natural History told E&E. “It would be allowed by a warming climate to do that.”


The Technology 202: Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt takes on new role in coronavirus response

area of focus for his commission. “Eighty percent of the visits to doctors are right now in telehealth,” he said. “People have been wanting this to happen for years. Now using remote monitoring, we can actually measure everybody and do it remotely. And then only if you have to, you go in to see the doctor.” The surge in unemployment requests has exposed how ill-prepared government computer systems were for an economic crisis. Schmidt says the problems underscore the need for an overhaul, especially as state and local governments will need more advanced systems to tackle new challenges such as transportation planning in a pandemic. “They’re still using COBOL systems, which is a system I programmed in 45 years ago,” Schmidt said. “And those systems, you know, the programmers are no longer with us.” Schmidt says the current crisis has underscored that global supply chains are not as resilient as once believed. He thinks that will cause more companies, especially high-tech manufacturers, to bring those operations back to American shores. His comments come as the Wall Street Journal reports the Trump administration and companies such as Intel are growing more concerned about relying on factories in Asia. “We have better control,” he said. “It’s important from a standpoint of- of our own economics. It’s also important for national security. We want to make sure that our critical infrastructure is owned and controlled by America, right? Never bet against America. We are the innovators in our world. We should be able to do this well. ” The company is seeking an injunction that will allow it to continue to operate its Fremont manufacturing plant. The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleged that the county where its manufacturing plant is located violated the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, my colleagues Faiz Siddiqui and Tony Romm write. Earlier on Saturday, Tesla chief executive Elon Musk unleashed a series of erratic tweets saying he planned to move Tesla’s headquarters and future programs to Texas and Nevada. He said it’s possible the company would maintain some operations in Fremont depending “on how Tesla is treated in the future.” Tesla said Saturday it would resume production at its facility, with social distancing measures and on-site temperature screenings in place. The company said the county’s rules are inconsistent with guidance at the state level,


The Daily 202: Infections and isolations of top government officials undercut Trump’s coronavirus messaging

life, and risk five?’ he asked.” Celia Marcos was working in the ward she oversaw at Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center when a man with covid-19 stopped breathing. “Marcos’ face was covered only with a thin surgical mask, and obtaining a more protective N95 mask before entering his room would have wasted valuable time,” the Los Angeles Times reports. “The 61-year-old charge nurse knew the chest compressions and other breathing treatments the patient needed would likely spew dangerous virus particles into the air that could land on her face and clothing. She would be at high risk of catching the coronavirus. Marcos raced into the room. Fourteen days later, she was dead. … In one version of her story, she is a selfless caregiver who chose her patient’s life over her own by rushing into his room without an N95. But staff at Hollywood Presbyterian say the reality is much bleaker. As charge nurse, Marcos was required to respond to patients who stopped breathing, but she wasn’t provided an N95 mask at the beginning of her shift, her coworkers say. The masks are scarce, and staff who do get them are often asked to reuse them over multiple days, they said.” Nearly three-quarters of Americans (74 percent) say they have avoided small gatherings in the past week, but this figure has gradually fallen by 10 points since late March, Gallup found. Their new poll also found that Republicans have become much less likely to avoid small gatherings – 86 percent of Democrats say they’ve avoided such events, a drop of 4 points since late March, while 60 percent of Republicans say they’ve avoided small gatherings, a drop from 76 percent in late March. “After a month of staying home, with Florida much better off than many of the models predicted, the governor is feeling bold. He has been getting credit for how he has handled the crisis from people such as Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, who has praised the state’s covid tracking website on national television, and pointed to Florida’s early targeted testing of vulnerable communities in an Oval Office news conference. He has been traveling around Florida on what, at times, looks like a victory tour, missing only a giant banner that says: ‘They said we would be the next Italy, but they were wrong,’” Ben Terris and Josh Dawsey report. “Still, it’s unclear exactly how


This photographer shows how the covid-19 pandemic has changed life in one Virginia neighborhood

It is almost impossible for photographers to do their work without being where the action is. To be sure, there are photographers who have explored remote work, photographing through surveillance systems and so forth. And some photographers are making portraits through videoconferencing tools such as Zoom. But photographers, especially photojournalists, are still mostly having to put themselves as close to their subjects as possible to tell stories effectively. The Washington Post’s photographers are no exception. As covid-19 started to disrupt lives abroad and here, The Post’s Matt McClain wondered how the spread of the novel coronavirus would affect the simple celebrations and daily activities we may have taken for granted pre-virus. McClain also thought about how we might find alternative ways to accomplish daily tasks and mark life’s milestones. He came up with the idea to “concentrate on a small community that would serve as a microcosm to what was happening around the world and photograph daily life there.” McClain didn’t have to go far to find what he was looking for. He ended up choosing his own neighborhood of Cardinal Forest in Springfield, Va. As it turns out, McClain’s neighborhood has an active Facebook page that made it easy for him to reach out and connect with people for this project. McClain told In Sight he was unsure what kind of response he was going to get, but he “made a post on a Sunday afternoon explaining who I was and what I was looking to document ... in this surreal time we were living in and especially during Virginia’s stay-at-home order.” Much to his surprise, the responses came pouring in. McClain told In Sight what happened after that: “Over a period of a couple of weeks, I had nearly 60 comments to my post. Many of the day-to-day activities and personal celebrations I was told about were things I never would have found out otherwise. Some of these included a home prom celebration, a Cub Scout virtual campout, high school band practices, home haircuts, virtual fitness classes, and a car parade to help celebrate a birthday, just to name a few. Personally, It was inspiring to witness people finding ways to help support their neighbors and find creative ways to hold on to a piece of the world we had not too long ago. ” Much work has been done about the pandemic already, and there will be


Big food brands, some out-of-favor for years, see sales and stock prices jump on stay-at-home grazing

Add food habits to a list of societal and economic changes wrought by the coronavirus lockdowns. 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. 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. “We are seeing significant market share gains for the most dominant brands,” said analyst Chris Growe at Stifel. “The consumers have come back to those brands.” After the global outbreak shut down much of the nation’s business and social activity earlier in the year, consumers famously began stocking up on hand sanitizer, household cleaners and toilet paper in anticipation of long stretches of home confinement. While they were at it, they snapped up soda, chips, cookies and other snacks that would make it bearable. “You had pantry-loading by half of the people preparing for Armageddon,” Growe said. “The other half decided, ‘I am going to eat at home now for almost every meal.’” Americans had been steadily migrating toward private label brands — from ice cream to salad dressing to cheese and dairy — that were made locally in small batches and promoted freshness and natural ingredients. That cut into sales for the processed and preservative-laden offerings made by the giant food brands typically found in grocery stores’ less-visited “center aisles." With the lockdowns sharply curtailing dining-out options, many consumers shifted to making most or all of their meals at home. The research firm NPD Group, for example, noted that nearly 80 percent of the kitchen electric categories it tracks showed year-over-year growth in March as the pandemic took hold, and that more than two-thirds grew by double digits for such gadgets as hot plates, waffle irons and sandwich makers. “There is a lot of out-of-home consumption that has now shifted to in-home,” said Dirk Van de Put, chairman of Mondelez International, in a recent earnings call. “And in-home, there is more grazing, more continuous eating, and snacking takes up a much bigger role,” particularly with cookies. De Put, whose company makes Oreos, Triscuits, Ritz and Chips Ahoy, said snacking is a natural outlet. “Sharing a snack with your


4 tips to help you get the most out of that farm box or CSA share produce

I’ve long been a devoted farmers market shopper. I’m also someone who appreciates control, at least in the kitchen. So I’d never taken the plunge into community-supported agriculture, what most of us refer to as CSAs. That changed once our local markets reopened to comply with health regulations in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Out went shoppers poring over tables of overflowing produce. In came prepackaged boxes, which I now purchase on a week-by-week basis, and limited grab-and-go items. I’m not the only one who pivoted, according to the co-owner of Spring Valley Farm and Orchard, the source of my box. Eli Cook estimates that more than 90 percent of the business he and his wife’s, Misty, farm has been doing in boxes is from first-timers. The Cooks had never done a CSA-style system before, so they quickly scrambled to build it out from scratch. They went from zero customers to several thousand in just a few weeks. “We’ve gotten a ton of really good feedback,” Cook says. “A lot of it is people enjoy the challenge of seeing what they got and what they can do with it.” Part of the challenge is ensuring you can use everything in a timely, delicious way. Here are some tips. Unpack everything. At the very least, take everything out of the box so you can start to inventory. Cook says you should make sure to separate ethylene-producing produce (apples, bananas, melons, stone fruit) from ethylene-sensitive ones (cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, greens) to keep the latter from accelerated ripening and therefore rotting. Transfer food to airtight containers as needed, and put it in the right place, whether that’s your fruit or vegetable bins in the fridge or a cool, dark place for your onions and potatoes. Focus on what needs to be eaten first, such as berries, more delicate greens and asparagus. Storage crops (potatoes, onions, apples) and heartier greens (kale and spinach) can wait at least a few days. Ditto tomatoes and zucchini. If you notice something is already less than ideal, try to use it right away, Berens says. Wilted greens can be revived in cool water for a salad that night, and apples you might not want to eat out of hand can go into pie or a fruit compote, she says. Prep some ingredients to last. You can also blanch vegetables (boil briefly and dunk in ice water) so


The crucial difference between the 1918 flu and covid-19

Scientists and scholars have spent the last few months scouring the past for precedents to offer suggestions for how to safely and successfully respond to the covid-19 crisis. The result has been almost daily references to the global influenza pandemic of 1918-1919, with its massive ramifications across the globe, including in the United States. While we can draw many useful lessons from the 1918-1919 experience in terms of how to minimize cases, we must be cautious about an imperfect analogy. During the 1918-1919 pandemic, upward of 500 million people were infected (about 30 percent of the global population), and conservative estimates count 50 million deaths. While our data on the number of cases and deaths from covid-19 are very likely too low because of continued limited testing, it is still unlikely that we will reach such catastrophic levels of loss today. Why? Because unlike the influenza pandemic a century ago, the world is not at war. The first cases of the 1918 flu pandemic most probably occurred in early March 1918 at Camp Funston in Kansas, where 54,000 U.S. soldiers were gathered for basic training before their deployment to Europe. Within the month, 1,100 of these soldiers were admitted to the hospital with influenza. The pandemic then followed the movement of these and many other soldiers around the globe as the Allies rushed to deploy American troops to Europe to stop the last German offensive in the spring of 1918. While the number of soldiers who contracted an “offseason” summer flu was considerable, most patients recovered quickly, leading doctors to describe this as nothing more than a “three-day fever” worthy of little cause for concern amid the ongoing war. In late August, however, the flu came back, beginning its far more deadly second wave almost simultaneously in Brest, France (Aug. 22); Freetown, Sierra Leone (Aug. 24); and Boston (Aug. 27) — all major military port cities. The Great War kept soldiers in close, infectious quarters and constant movement around the globe, carrying the pandemic with them. Hospitals were overwhelmed and operating with very limited medical personnel thanks to the many deployed in the military medical services. The remaining civilian doctors and nurses could not keep pace with the volume of influenza patients. Permelia Murnan Doty, the executive secretary of the New York Nurses Emergency Council, described in late 1919 how nurses had been responsible for at least double their usual