National Security Inc.

in science and engineering laboratories, or in one of four separate intelligence centers. But it is the employees of 70 information technology companies who keep the place operating. They store, process and analyze communications and intelligence transmitted to and from the entire U.S. naval fleet and commercial vessels worldwide. "Could we keep this building running without contractors?" said the captain in charge of information technology. "No, I don't think we could keep up with it." Vice Adm. David J. "Jack" Dorsett, director of naval intelligence, said he could save millions each year by converting 20 percent of the contractor jobs at the Suitland complex to civil servant positions. He has gotten the go-ahead, but it's been a slow start. This year, his staff has converted one contractor job and eliminated another -- out of 589. "It's costing me an arm and a leg," Dorsett said. * * * Washington's corridors of power stretch in a nearly straight geographical line from the Supreme Court to the Capitol to the White House. Keep going west, across the Potomac River, and the unofficial seats of power -- the private, corporate ones -- become visible, especially at night. There in the Virginia suburbs are the brightly illuminated company logos of Top Secret America: Northrop Grumman, SAIC, General Dynamics. Of the 1,931 companies identified by The Post that work on top-secret contracts, about 110 of them do roughly 90 percent of the work on the corporate side of the defense-intelligence-corporate world. To understand how these firms have come to dominate the post-9/11 era, there's no better place to start than the Herndon office of General Dynamics. One recent afternoon there, Ken Pohill was watching a series of unclassified images, the first of which showed a white truck moving across his computer monitor. The truck was in Afghanistan, and a video camera bolted to the belly of a U.S. surveillance plane was following it. Pohill could access a dozen images that might help an intelligence analyst figure out whether the truck driver was just a truck driver or part of a network making roadside bombs to kill American soldiers. To do this, he clicked his computer mouse. Up popped a picture of the truck driver's house, with notes about visitors. Another click. Up popped infrared video of the vehicle. Click: Analysis of an object thrown from the driver's side. Click: U-2 imagery. Click: A history of


Several private high school leagues postpone athletics to 2021; WCAC mulling options

Three of the Washington area’s largest private school athletic conferences announced Wednesday they would be postponing sports until January as local districts continue to grapple with playing high school sports amid the novel coronavirus pandemic. The Interstate Athletic Conference, the Independent School League and the Mid-Atlantic Athletic Conference released similar statements online saying they had consulted with each other and planned to hold three abbreviated sports seasons beginning in January. The Washington Catholic Athletic Conference, the area’s highest-profile private school league, is discussing similar changes. The heads of school and athletic directors from the WCAC’s 12 full-time member schools are scheduled to meet Thursday about the sports schedule, and multiple scenarios, from postponing the fall season by a month to rescheduling it until spring, are set to be considered. The other leagues’ shortened calendars, a strategy adopted last week by the D.C. State Athletic Association, will feature winter sports from January to mid-February, fall sports from February to early April and spring sports from April to late May. “This delay will provide the flexibility necessary for schools to focus first on a safe return to school as well as a longer window to implement health guidelines and acclimate all students to physical activity,” the statements read. On Thursday, the Potomac Valley Athletic Conference announced it would also be postponing athletics to the second semester. The 14-school league will follow a similar calendar, playing winter sports in January followed by fall sports and then spring sports. “The [Athletic] Directors felt that this was the best course of action given the plans of our peer leagues in the DMV and will give our student-athletes the best opportunity to compete against both league and non-league opponents,” PVAC President Jesse Gaylord said in a statement. Ed King, the athletic director at DeMatha and the WCAC’s football commissioner, said he still maintains hope for some sort of fall football season. If the pandemic grows worse in the flu season of January and February, he reasoned, it could end up wiping out all three high school seasons. Private schools are in a gray area because, while they must follow state and local health guidelines regulating how many people can gather in one place, they are not bound by school systems or state athletic associations. Some Washington-area private schools, such as those in the WCAC, also have resources that public schools may not. At Good Counsel, conditioning


The Tokyo Olympics were supposed to open Friday. Instead, the city is facing a spike in coronavirus cases.

awake tomorrow to the opening day of the 2020 Summer Olympics. Instead, the city is grappling with a spike in coronavirus infections, with 366 new cases reported Thursday, a daily record. The rescheduled Summer Games are set for a year from Thursday. Japan marked the moment with a 15-minute ceremony held in Tokyo’s newly built Olympic Stadium, absent an audience. The 68,000-seat arena cost $1.4 billion. But a poll this week by Japan’s Kyodo News Agency found fewer than 1 in 4 people in Japan even want to host the Games anymore. A third of respondents said they should be canceled, while 36 percent expressed interest in postponing them for more than a year. “If current situation continues, we couldn’t” host, Tokyo Olympics Organizing Committee President Yoshiro Mori said Wednesday, according to the Associated Press. On Thursday, Japan recorded more than 830 new coronavirus cases, setting a new daily high for the country a day after beating the old record. Since January, Japan has confirmed more than 28,700 cases and 1,005 deaths related to covid-19. Japan lifted its state of emergency two months ago after containing an initial coronavirus outbreak. But under pressure to reopen the economy, the government has said it won’t return to major shutdowns even as cases in this second wave continue to rise. The numbers in Japan remain low compared to hot spots such as the United States and Brazil. The number of serious cases in the latest wave, at least so far, has remained small, with more aggressive testing in place. With so much uncertainty over the trajectory of the pandemic and the progress of vaccine efforts, it remains impossible to predict what life will look like in Tokyo in a year’s time. Publicly, organizers for the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics remain largely upbeat. But they have not commented on whether fans will be able to attend the rescheduled events or if there are plans to quarantine participants. “It would be too much for us to answer each of these hypothetical questions,” Mori said Wednesday. “I don’t think this situation will last for another year.” He added, “Whether the Olympics can be done or not is about whether humanity can beat the coronavirus. Specifically, to develop a vaccine or drug is the first point.” If the competition cannot not be held next summer, organizers said they would cancel it entirely rather than postpone once more.


A show of force in American cities

Dissecting the deployment of federal forces to American cities. The surprising effects of the coronavirus on wildlife preservation in Kenya. And baseball returns, with some changes.


Ocasio-Cortez dismisses Rep. Yoho’s apology, says his remarks are excuses for confrontation

we’re united and that we don’t air these in public.” McCarthy also played down the notion that House Republicans have a broader “woman problem,” pointing to greater numbers of women running for Congress this year than in the past. “So, if you want to measure it based upon that, I think we’re improving,” he said. “Do we have room for improvement? A hundred percent yes.” In a tweet hours earlier, Trump wrote: “Liz Cheney is only upset because I have been actively getting our great and beautiful Country out of the ridiculous and costly Endless Wars.” His dig came as several Republicans have accused her of disloyalty because she has bucked Trump on national security issues — including pulling U.S. troops out of Afghanistan and Germany — and has embraced public health advice and officials of whom Trump has been dismissive. Some of Cheney’s critics have called for her to be removed from her position as chair of the House Republican Conference. Trump did not advocate that himself, but he retweeted messages from some of the congresswoman’s most vocal antagonists, including Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), who have advocated for her replacement. Among the tweets Trump shared was one by Gaetz that said Republicans “deserve better” than Cheney. Trump also shared a tweet by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) in which Paul called Cheney’s opposition to Trump’s troop withdrawals “unacceptable.” In a television interview Wednesday, Paul accused Cheney of trying to “sabotage” Trump’s foreign policy and said, “I don’t think she’s good for the country.” Cheney, who warned in the past month of “a serious error” with “grave consequences” if troops were withdrawn from Germany, has sought to play down her differences with Trump as the rancor has become public. Asked Thursday about Trump’s tweet, she said it was “no secret the president and I disagree on some foreign policy issues.” But Cheney said that as a member of the House Armed Services Committee, her biggest obligation is to “provide for the defense of the nation.” She said she would continue to speak out on foreign policy issues. Hoyer was among a handful of male lawmakers who joined Ocasio-Cortez and other female lawmakers during the hour of speeches on the floor Thursday regarding the confrontation with Yoho. “This is an issue of who we are as a people,” Hoyer said. “Many women have spoken on this floor, but this is an issue


Four things to know about the U.S. decision to close the Chinese consulate in Houston

actions. Many Chinese commentators expect the Chinese government to close a U.S. consulate in retaliation. In this case, at a time when U.S. journalists have already been kicked out of China due to tit-for-tat restrictions on the media, the United States has far less insight into China’s authoritarian system than China does into the United States’ democratic system. As a result, a tit-for-tat closure of consulates may hurt the United States’ “eyes and ears” more than China’s — and do little to address Chinese intellectual property theft. What’s lost in such closures? Research has shown the value of face-to-face diplomacy for gathering information, maintaining networks, sending credible signals and assessing the intentions of adversaries. Fewer on-the-ground contacts and channels reduce the ways China and the United States can communicate and defuse friction — or worse, a crisis. Shuttering consulates and burning documents amid accusations of espionage has a Cold War feel. But as Joshua Shifrinson wrote here at TMC last year, there are many reasons the United States and China are not destined for a “new Cold War” — even if the Trump administration’s actions appear to be moving the two countries in that direction. Among other reasons, the Chinese Communist Party maintains a nationalist fixation on achieving its security, regional dominance and a global order that is safe for autocracy, rather than embarking on an ideological crusade to remake other countries in its image. As David Edelstein wrote at TMC about rising U.S.-China tensions in 2018, “It is easier to appreciate the rising tension between Washington and Beijing than it is to identify what exactly they are competing over.” This remains true even after two more years of “rising tensions.” One concern is that even if this is election-year politics — something China is familiar with when dealing with the United States — it may be difficult for the next U.S. administration to repair or reset relations, including salvaging the forms of engagement that still have value. In the midst of a pandemic, a major confrontation with China would appear far down the list of U.S. priorities. U.S. policymakers seeking to push back against China may find therefore find themselves with a Pyrrhic victory. The TMC newsletter has moved! Sign up here to keep receiving our smart analysis. Jessica Chen Weiss (@jessicacweiss) is an associate professor of government at Cornell University, a Monkey Cage editor and the author of


Mortgage rates reverse course as 30-year climbs back above 3 percent

the coming week. “Many mortgage lenders are suffering from mortgage fatigue,” said Jeff Lazerson, president of MortgageGrader in Laguna Niguel, Calif. “If they can’t handle the mortgage loan volume as it is right now, there is zero motivation to drop rates further.” Koss agrees. “Lenders have been operating at the highest levels over capacity for the longest period of time, with no break,” he said. “Many simply cannot take on more business. … The burden is on the consumer to get their lender’s attention and to complete the loan paperwork in a timely fashion, so their lender knows they are serious.” But James Sahnger, mortgage planner at C2 Financial in Jupiter, Fla., predicts rates will continue to fall. “Until the virus starts to slow in growth or a vaccine or cure is discovered, it’s hard to imagine rates roaring back,” Sahnger said. “They should continue to dwindle lower. It’s not all covid-19, though. The [Federal Reserve] meets next week with lots to consider, including escalating China tensions, global economic slowdown and accurately predicting where we are going in the next several months as well as 2021.” Meanwhile, refinances fueled mortgage applications last week. According to the latest data from the Mortgage Bankers Association, the market composite index — a measure of total loan application volume — increased 4.1 percent from a week earlier. The purchase index was slightly higher, up 2 percent from the previous week and up 19 percent year-over-year. The refinance index rose 5 percent and was 122 percent higher than a year ago. The refinance share of mortgage activity accounted for 64.8 percent of applications. “Borrower demand has heated up as summer has progressed, with very strong levels of both refinance and purchase activity,” said Bob Broeksmit, MBA president and CEO. “Refinances are up over 100 percent from last year, and purchase applications … have now increased on an annual basis for nine straight weeks. Ongoing economic uncertainty and the resurgence of covid-19 cases in parts of the country present head winds for the housing market, but MBA is forecasting a 2.2 percent increase in home purchase originations in 2020.” More Real Estate: Shopping around can help lower your mortgage rate, report finds A rate reduction or lower monthly payment alone may not be reason to refinance What you need to know about asking for mortgage forbearance Accessing home equity in a tight economy has become problematic


Earthquake sensors record unprecedented drop in human activity due to pandemic

The coronavirus pandemic and the associated economic shutdowns led to an unprecedented drop in the seismic “noise” caused by human activity, scientists reported Thursday. The shutdown effect registered by seismometers is akin to that typically seen in the middle of the night and during holiday periods, only this one lasted from March to May and encompassed almost every corner of the planet — a stunning global quiescence never before seen in the history of earthquake science. The report, published in the journal Science, has an unusually vast set of authors: 76 scientists from 27 countries, ranging from Norway to New Zealand. The instruments tell a consistent story: The surface of the Earth became unusually calm and quiet as the virus raced across the planet earlier this year. Constrained by the coronavirus pandemic, human activity diminished when countries began shuttering their economies and urging people to engage in social distancing. “You wouldn’t expect a disease to show up on a seismometer,” said report co-author Celeste Labedz, a doctoral candidate in geophysics at the California Institute of Technology. The study gathered data from 268 research stations and saw a shutdown effect almost everywhere. Reports came in from Turkey, Chile, Costa Rica, Canada, Australia, Iran and even from tiny Luxembourg, as well as many other nations. Some of the seismometers are in crowded urban centers and college campuses; but others are in remote desert or mountain locations. The effect was most dramatic in Sri Lanka, where a station saw a 50 percent reduction in background noise. In New York City’s Central Park, the decrease at night was 10 percent. Remote locations did not see a shutdown effect because they don’t get pummeled by human activity normally. This new database could help scientists better distinguish faint natural tremors from those caused by human activity, the researchers wrote. Beyond that, it could be a tool for monitoring activity during pandemics. Cellphone mobility data provides a powerful way of monitoring the degree to which people are sheltering in place, social distancing and limiting their interactions. But that has raised privacy concerns, even though the data is anonymized. The seismic data is inherently anonymous because there’s no way to know who or what is generating the waves of energy. Such seismic monitoring can serve as a technique for monitoring human activity “with fewer potential privacy concerns than mobility data,” the authors write. “In addition, industrial activities may


Trump takes dig at Rep. Liz Cheney amid feud with other Capitol Hill Republicans

President Trump on Thursday chided Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) for her opposition to his troop withdrawals, adding his voice to an open feud between some of his closest congressional allies and the highest-ranking Republican woman on Capitol Hill. “Liz Cheney is only upset because I have been actively getting our great and beautiful Country out of the ridiculous and costly Endless Wars,” Trump tweeted. “I am also making our so-called allies pay tens of billions of dollars in delinquent military costs.” His dig at Cheney comes as several Republicans have accused her of disloyalty because she has bucked Trump on national security issues — including pulling U.S. troops from Afghanistan and Germany — and has embraced public health advice and officials of whom Trump has been dismissive. Some of Cheney’s critics have called for her to be removed from her leadership position as chair of the House Republican Conference. Trump did not advocate that himself, but he retweeted messages from some of the congresswoman’s most vocal antagonists who have advocated for her replacement, including Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.). Among the tweets Trump shared was one by Gaetz that said Republicans “deserve better” than Cheney. Trump also shared a tweet by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) in which he called Cheney’s opposition to Trump’s troop withdrawals “unacceptable.” In a television interview Wednesday, Paul accused Cheney of trying to “sabotage” Trump’s foreign policy and said, “I don’t think she’s good for the country.” Cheney, who warned in the past month of “a serious error” with “grave consequences” if troops were pulled from Germany, has sought to play down her differences with Trump as the rancor has spilled into public view. Asked Thursday about Trump’s tweet, she said it was “no secret the president and I disagree on some foreign policy issues.” But Cheney said that as a member of the Armed Services Committee, her biggest obligation is to “provide for the defense of the nation.” She said she would continue to speak out on foreign policy issues. Cheney has also drawn fire from fellow Republicans for defending Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease specialist, whose blunt talk and high profile have undercut his standing somewhat in the White House. Cheney has taken a forceful position in favor of wearing face coverings to curb the spread of the coronavirus — something the president has been reluctant to do — tweeting a photo in


These nearby beaches, breweries and wildlife preserves can ease your summer wanderlust

been to wineries where the views and the group-friendly setting are just as important (or much better) than what’s in the glass. Yet many of Northern Virginia’s best craft beers are made in not-so-scenic industrial parks. But that’s beginning to change. The two-year-old Bear Chase Brewing, in Bluemont, offers the mountaintop experience of a winery, with a terraced lawn and tasting room deck overlooking a million-dollar view of Loudoun Valley. Bear Chase began as a spacious bed-and-breakfast with an indoor pool and outdoor entertaining areas, but it’s become much more, thanks to a small brewery. Last fall, Bear Chase’s Oktoberfest was named the best German-style Marzen in America after a blind tasting at the Great American Beer Festival, and the only place you can taste Bear Chase’s beers, or buy cans to go, is on the mountain. It’s early for this year’s Oktoberfest, but on a recent visit, selections included a refreshing Helles lager, the juicy and hoppy Mornin’ Sunshine IPA and the easy-drinking Mr. Blonde blond ale, which would be a good choice for a pitcher on a hot day. On a weekend afternoon, the gravel parking lot was full of SUVs, customers were lining up at the food trucks out front, and birthdays were happening in the lodge, but the draw is the amphitheater-shaped lawn, which is dotted with adirondack chairs, tables and firepits, all facing a scenic vista that stretches for miles. Find the right group of socially distanced seats, close to one of the satellite bars, with room for kids to play or for a dog to stretch out, and this is a brewery that can give Northern Virginia’s destination wineries a run for their money. 33665 Bear Chase Lane, Bluemont. bearchasebrew.com. Open daily. If you make a day of it … Fields of Flowers Fields of Flowers It’s easier to spend much longer than planned at the Purcellville farm perusing the lush flower beds to find the right mix of plants, which are sold by size in $10 or $15 bouquets, or a splurge-worthy $30 pail. Everything about the place charms, from the sterilized snippers at the entrance to the payments, which are made on the honor system. (Bring cash, but you can also mail a check if you need to.) 37879 Allder School Rd., Purcellville. loudounfieldsofflowers.com. Open daily. Potomac Vegetable Farms stand Potomac Vegetable Farms Anne Arundel County has more shoreline than any other


Maryland county adds new restrictions to combat spread of coronavirus

for daily fluctuations. The city’s findings came on the same day Bowser issued an order that requires people to wear a mask when they leave the house and are likely to come into contact with others. The order indicates violators could be fined up to $1,000, but city officials say enforcement is likely to result in few fines. The greater Washington region recorded more than 1,500 new cases Thursday for the 10th consecutive day as the seven-day average caseload in D.C., Maryland and Virginia hovered near 1,800, twice the daily average of late June. D.C. reported 42 new cases and one death, that of a 24-year-old woman. The announcement of her death came one day after city health officials raised alarms that young people are making up a growing share of coronavirus cases. The woman was the city’s 12th virus-related fatality of a person under 40 since the beginning of the pandemic. Maryland on Thursday reported 664 new cases and four fatalities, while Virginia had 844 new cases and three additional deaths. After an upward trend in cases during much of July, the seven-day average caseload in Maryland and Virginia has held steady this week, even dropping the past two days in Virginia. The spike in Virginia was fueled by infections in the Hampton Roads region, where the number of cases fell Thursday for the fifth straight day. Elsewhere in the state, Virginia State Fair organizers announced the cancellation of this year’s event, which was scheduled to begin in September in Doswell, north of Richmond. Organizers said that “we considered countless scenarios and found that a lot of these options were not only not feasible, but under the severe restrictions, the annual fair would not be the traditional event that our community loves.” The pandemic continued to take an economic toll on the region. The Labor Department announced that jobless claims in the greater Washington area were up slightly last week compared with the previous week. Residents of the District, Maryland and Virginia filed 59,590 new unemployment claims for the week ending Sunday. D.C. residents filed 3,013 new claims, while Marylanders filed 16,389 and Virginians filed 40,188. More than 1.5 million people have filed for unemployment benefits in the region since mid-March. Nationally, the number of unemployment claims rose to 1.4 million last week — a sign that the job market is continuing to face troubles amid the prolonged pandemic.


Good news: The economy usually recovers quickly once pandemics end

described both by Daniel Defoe and Samuel Pepys, was barely a hiccup on London’s ascent to being the hegemonic trading and financial center of Europe and the world. The standard account mentions the psychological, medical and literary impact of the plague but does not indicate any long-term negative economic consequences. As historian Carlo M. Cipolla explains, “From a purely economic point of view, war was a much greater evil than the plague … plague destroyed people, but not capital, and those who survived the onslaught of the disease usually found themselves in more favorable economic conditions.” Quarantines and forcible segregation of the sick helped Europeans domesticate the plague, reducing its economic impact. Other public health measures did the same for smallpox and cholera. Smallpox devastated the New World in the wake of Christopher Columbus, and in 18th-century Europe, it supplanted the plague as the continent’s major killer. But even before Edward Jenner invented vaccination in 1796, it did not derail the Industrial Revolution, and after vaccination was widely adopted, smallpox declined sharply. “King Cholera” hit Europe and North America in the 19th century, sowing fear and panic, but after John Snow discovered that cholera was waterborne, the construction of sewers allowed urbanization to proceed unimpeded. The flu pandemic of 1918 and 1919 killed 50 million to 100 million people worldwide, with the majority dying in fall 1918. If the higher estimate were correct, that would mean that about 5 percent of the world’s population died within weeks, making the 1918 flu pandemic the most lethal pandemic since the Black Death. The United States alone suffered six times the number of fatalities it recorded in World War I. The wish to prosecute the war caused the Allies to neglect quarantine measures in troop encampments, on troop ships and in shipyards, resulting in many more deaths than otherwise would have occurred. Yet, once again, war caused far more economic hardship than disease. The temporary recessions in 1920 were caused by the need to readjust from wartime to peacetime production, to recapture markets and so on, and not to the sudden disappearance of perhaps 5 percent of the population. There soon followed the Roaring Twenties in America and, belatedly, in Europe. One of the standard economic histories of the postwar period mentions the 1918 flu pandemic only in passing, claiming it had very little effect other than perhaps reducing unemployment in the following


Israel’s Netanyahu was a pandemic hero — until a second wave plunged him into crisis

JERUSALEM — In May, Benjamin Netanyahu was riding high. He had just started his fifth term as Israel's prime minister after surviving a string of near-death elections, had co-opted his main rival into a unity government and was enjoying a surge in popularity after successfully leading the country through the initial onslaught of the coronavirus. Just two months later, with Israel suffering a second wave of infections, the prime minister finds himself enduring a hot summer of collapsing poll numbers, swelling protests and dissenting lawmakers. Even some of Netanyahu’s fellow Likud party members have challenged his handling of the resurgence, a break in the ranks rare for Israel’s longest-serving leader. Netanyahu’s quick turn from dominance to defense is a further illustration of the pandemic’s power to upend governments and humble highflying leaders — as it has in the United States, where surging infections have imperiled the reelection of President Trump. By quickly sealing the country, closing schools and imposing a nationwide lockdown when the virus first erupted here in February, Netanyahu won plaudits for making Israel a coronavirus success story. Now, he is the focus of blame for rising cases and the crumbling of the economy, with unemployment soaring to 22 percent. Less than a third of Israelis now say they trust the prime minister to handle the pandemic, down from 56 percent in early April. “Most of his achievements have collapsed,” said political analyst Aviv Bushinsky, Netanyahu’s former chief of staff and media adviser. “It’s a 180-degree difference in the way he coped with the first wave of the virus.” Protests against the prime minister in Tel Aviv and outside his residence in Jerusalem have grown almost nightly, some turning unruly. Police used water cannons to disperse a crowd Saturday night, and on Tuesday they arrested 34 people during a protest by thousands of Israelis against a proposal to grant Netanyahu new emergency powers. Nor will the prime minister’s life get much easier in the months ahead as his trial on public corruption charges prepares to move into a new phase with testimony from witnesses and the review of other evidence. Anger against Netanyahu mounted after the virus roared back following the country’s reopening in May as he seemed to turn his attention to other issues, including a push to annex Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank. That proposal is now delayed. He also had a parliamentary committee


We can control covid-19 before a vaccine by focusing on ‘core groups’

who also have a larger number of sex partners. Occasionally, someone from the larger population interacts with someone from the core group and gets infected, but they rarely spread it to others. A core group is like a fire burning in the center of a building that heats the whole structure. If we can control or put out the fire, the entire building cools off. The same thing is happening with the spread of covid-19. There are core groups of individuals who — because of their occupation or living situation — have much higher levels of close person-to-person contact than the general population. Examples might include factory workers inside poorly ventilated settings, people living in crowded households and those incarcerated or living in long-term-care settings. The beauty of the theory is that once the groups who have high levels of close contact reach herd immunity, either through infection or vaccination, the virus’s ability to maintain an epidemic in the larger population collapses, and the fire goes out. Which means the bottom line for us is that we do not need to achieve a population-level immunity of 60 percent to 70 percent. We only need to reach immunity or, better yet, epidemic control within core groups to see the virus decline. The best evidence of how core theory may apply to the covid-19 pandemic is the recent data from Corona, Queens, where 68 percent of people tested had antibodies to the virus, suggesting recent infection, or in certain towns in Italy where 50 percent to 60 percent of residents had evidence of recent infection. In both cases, the regional or country-level positivity in those areas is much lower: In New York City, it’s 10 percent to 15 percent, and in Italy, it’s 5 percent. But both regional epidemics declined because the core groups were no longer fueling further infection in the larger population. The implications of such an understanding of how the epidemic spreads and maintains are profound. What it tells us is that we must target our resources — public health communication, requirements for mask-wearing, regular screening for symptoms, testing for asymptomatic infection, paid sick leave policy, social distancing and hygiene — to core groups, like those living in crowded households or working in dense indoor settings, and to people who move between core groups and those most vulnerable, like adult day-care workers or nursing home staff. We do not


bottom line for us is that we do not need to achieve a population-level immunity of 60 percent to 70 percent. We only need to reach immunity or, better yet, epidemic control within core groups to see the virus decline. The best evidence of how core theory may apply to the covid-19 pandemic is the recent data from Corona, Queens, where 68 percent of people tested had antibodies to the virus, suggesting recent infection, or in certain towns in Italy where 50 percent to 60 percent of residents had evidence of recent infection. In both cases, the regional or country-level positivity in those areas is much lower: In New York City, it’s 10 percent to 15 percent, and in Italy, it’s 5 percent. But both regional epidemics declined because the core groups were no longer fueling further infection in the larger population. The implications of such an understanding of how the epidemic spreads and maintains are profound. What it tells us is that we must target our resources — public health communication, requirements for mask-wearing, regular screening for symptoms, testing for asymptomatic infection, paid sick leave policy, social distancing and hygiene — to core groups, like those living in crowded households or working in dense indoor settings, and to people who move between core groups and those most vulnerable, like adult day-care workers or nursing home staff. We do not need to close all businesses, eateries, schools and beaches, but we do need to keep those most at risk protected by controlling the infection in core groups. We need to provide paid furloughs to those over 65 years of age and keep them out of classrooms, and remind younger people to stay away from the elderly without masks or social distancing. And we must have better and more available data on exposures and populations, so we know exactly where to target interventions. It also means that when a vaccine becomes available core groups need to be at the front of the line. The better we use our understanding of how and where the virus is spread, the sooner we can bring the virus under control. Read more: We ran the CDC. No president ever politicized its science the way Trump has. I work at Smithfield Foods. I’m suing them over putting our lives at risk for your dinner. Arizona reopened too fast. Epidemiologists knew it, but we couldn’t stop it.


From swabs to antibodies: How to understand your coronavirus test results

Americans are being swabbed by the thousands to learn if they have covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. It’s how many are determining their risk of contracting or spreading the virus to someone else. Experts say testing is a vital component to controlling the outbreak, but one test result still isn’t a green light to visit vulnerable friends or family members. The nature of covid-19, the time it takes for someone to develop symptoms and the varied ways the virus affects people make each test a snapshot in time more than a definitive answer. “I personally wouldn’t consider a single test a license to go see my parents, who are older and would be at higher risk,” said Carl Bergstrom, a University of Washington biology professor who studies infectious diseases. The viral swab tests, seen at drive-through clinics across the country, tell people whether they’re infected with the novel coronavirus on that particular day, said Lucy Wilson, an infectious-disease specialist and a professor at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. It takes time for the coronavirus to replicate to a critical mass for a swabbing test to detect it. The time this process takes varies from person to person and ranges from two to 14 days, experts say. “The problem is this virus is a strange virus,” Bergstrom said. “The timing varies a lot in people.” Imagine that you become infected today and are tested tomorrow; Bergstrom said “we have every reason to believe you’re going to test negative, even though you’re infected.” On average, people tend to show symptoms or test positive for the virus about five days after exposure, Wilson said. “It’s just like a pregnancy test,” Wilson said. A pregnancy test can detect only certain hormones after a certain number of days or weeks, but it doesn’t mean you’re not pregnant. If you do start developing symptoms, such as a fever, sore throat or loss of smell, experts say you should absolutely get tested for the coronavirus. Wilson said people need to determine whether the symptoms they’re experiencing are a result of the coronavirus or are another illness — such as strep or the flu. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advises anyone with symptoms to stay home and self-isolate as much as possible. If you’ve been in contact with someone who has covid-19 but you don’t have any symptoms, Wilson said, you should


consider a 14-day self-quarantine and discuss whether to get tested with your health-care provider. As the Atlantic reported last month, it’s still not clear how accurate viral tests are for people who haven’t developed symptoms. There’s a degree of uncertainty, even with a negative test result, and not a lot of data to determine exactly how early a swab test can start to detect the infection for a person showing no symptoms. On top of all this, the rising demand for more testing has led to week-long delays for results. An average of 685,000 people were tested per day last week, according to data collected by the Covid Tracking Project and reported by the New York Times. The White House aims to reach 1 million tests a day by the fall. Experts say the backlog in some parts of the country makes the results useless for efforts to control the spread of the virus. Generally, people who have the virus are symptomatic for around six days, Bergstrom said. If the results take five days to come back, there’s only so much a person can do to protect those around them. Bergstrom added the results become “absolutely useless” for efforts to quarantine or to trace contacts. This is why, regardless of testing, public health experts continue to stress wearing masks in public and physical distancing. In the absence of test results, or symptoms, keeping your distance from others helps in mitigating the spread of the disease. There are still not enough tests for everyone to be regularly screened for the virus, said Erica Stohs, an infectious-disease expert and professor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. Researchers at Harvard’s Global Health Institute say the United States needs to triple, if not quadruple, the testing capacity to contain the virus. The actual number recommended by the institute varies day-to-day because the methodology is dependent on a number of variables. One potential solution as grade schools and universities weigh reopening in the fall is pool testing, where swabs from a group of people are tested all at once to save time and conserve supplies. “If you wanted to do surveillance testing just to make sure there’s not a silent outbreak going on in a school, having pool testing would be helpful,” Stohs said. “I wish we were talking more about that.” People who think they already had covid-19 in the spring but did


Your wildlife sightings

Hello, and happy weekend. After I wrote in a newsletter last month about research that found stay-at-home orders may have spared thousands of wild animals from becoming roadkill, many readers obliged my call for pandemic-era wildlife sightings. As promised, I’m sharing a sampling here. Jack and Anne of Santa Fe, N.M., are seeing a broader diversity of butterflies on their one-acre property. “We get butterflies every year, but this year has been a bonanza in quantity and variety,” they wrote. “All other conditions at our property are the same as in earlier years.” A beaver appeared in the Takoma Park, Md. backyard belonging to Carlos, who said he’d before never seen one in 16 years living there. The cement porches of Fran’s neighborhood, in Alexandria, Va., became a regular resting spot for a young fox. The kit was seen “curling up and sleeping there — even in the daytime! I was wondering if he is lost or lost his family,” Fran wrote. And then there are the birds — which, as my colleague Darryl Fears wrote a few months back, are getting more notice these days. Susan, of Rockville, Md., saw a pair of Canada geese earlier this spring with a whopping 16 goslings. As of late June, she wrote, “all 16 of the goslings had survived to teenagerhood. They are nearly as big as their parents. They have lost their gosling fuzz, have proper Canada goose feathers and markings, and are pecking enthusiastically at the grass surrounding the pond. If they’ve made it to teenagerhood, they will probably survive and reproduce. We will have a lot of Canada Geese. (This is good news, I think.)” In Chandler, Ariz., Debbie saw a flock of Gambel’s quail and twice spotted a roadrunner in her neighborhood. Neither is rare in the area, she wrote, but she’d never seen them in her suburb. And Anna, of Santa Monica, Calif., is celebrating the return of birdsong, which seemed to vanish from her immediate area a half-dozen years ago. “Now, during the quiet of covid sequestration, we have a couple of very vocal night singers … They have a mid- to somewhat high range and the songs are somewhat melodic varying in pitch and length. They punctuate with clicking and clucking and occasionally seem to scold a little. They sing from dusk to dawn usually.” If you think you know what species Anna’s hearing, let


Singaporean consultant pleads guilty to acting as agent for China, targeting Americans for intelligence recruitment

name as a prominent U.S. public and government relations firm. Yeo received more than 400 résumés — 90 percent from U.S. military and government personnel with security clearances — and he forward some to his handlers, he told U.S. investigators, according to court documents. Yeo also mined a professional networking website — unnamed in court filings but confirmed as LinkedIn, a person familiar with the case said — to find individuals with promising résumés and job descriptions for recruitment. FBI Washington field office head Timothy R. Slater reminded U.S. citizens, “especially those holding security clearances, to be cautious when being approached by individuals on social media sites with implausible career opportunities.” Spokesmen for the Chinese Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment. A GWU spokeswoman confirmed that Yeo was a visiting scholar for six months in 2019 but had no employment or student relationship, nor did he receive any kind of funding from the university. Yeo used his time as a GWU fellow from January to July 2019 to network with individuals with lobbying firms and defense contractors at events and think tank talks, according to the statement of offense. Under the direction of Chinese intelligence, he said, he was instructed to spot targets in sensitive positions who were dissatisfied with their work or having financial difficulties. Just as Yeo was recruited by intelligence contacts who claimed to represent China-based think tanks and offered money in exchange for political reports and information, his contacts tasked him to approach his American targets for “scuttlebutt” about international political, economic and diplomatic matters. Yeo admitted paying $1,000 or $2,000 to one such State Department employee to write about a sitting U.S. Cabinet member in 2018 or 2019. Yeo also recruited an American civilian with a high-level security clearance who worked on the U.S. Air Force’s F-35B fighter program to write a report and discuss the implications of Japanese purchases, according to his plea. Yeo contacted him through LinkedIn, according to court records and the person familiar with the case, and the civilian confided to having money problems. Yeo paid at least $2,000 to a U.S. Army officer posted at the Pentagon who said he was traumatized by his military tours in Afghanistan to write a report about how the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan would impact China, according to plea papers. Yeo did not disclose that the work would be


After denying priest access to injured man, UMMS agrees to allow clergy to visit ill

The University of Maryland Medical System will allow clergy to visit hospital patients — including those with the coronavirus — during the ongoing pandemic, following a federal complaint last month claiming religious discrimination at its Prince George’s Hospital Center. The amended policy at the university system’s 13 hospitals requires “adherence to safety protocols” and a signed waiver acknowledging the risk by all clergy and other visitors, according to UMMS spokeswoman Jania Matthews. The previous, stricter visitor policy had been developed in response to the pandemic, “with the intent to adjust restrictions as necessary,” she said. “After we became aware of an issue regarding clergy visitation for a patient who was potentially nearing the end of their life, we engaged in extensive discussion with key stakeholders including legal counsel on how to best accommodate situations that require exceptions to our visitation policy while not compromising the safety of others,” Matthews said in a statement. “We have since amended our policy, with all individuals visiting a COVID-19 positive patient provided a form acknowledging the risk, and will allow clergy visits with adherence to safety protocols.” Susanna Marcus filed the religious discrimination complaint in June, saying Prince George’s Hospital Center initially denied her request to allow a Catholic priest to visit her critically injured husband, Sidney Marcus, as his health declined in the intensive care unit following a major car accident, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said in a news release. The priest was willing to wear personal protective equipment but was still turned away, the department said. Susanna Marcus could not be reached for comment Tuesday. Prince George’s Hospital Center allowed the priest to visit Marcus and perform the Catholic sacraments of Holy Communion and Anointing of the Sick after federal health officials contacted UMMS about the matter, and the hospital system changed its policy to resolve the complaint, the department said. The department announced the outcome of the case and the amended policy in a news release Tuesday. “The Trump Administration has made it a priority to defend Americans’ right to practice their faith, at all times and especially during this pandemic,” Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said. “As our work with the University of Maryland Medical System shows, we can deliver healthcare, combat COVID-19, and protect religious freedom all at the same time.” It’s unclear whether the other major hospital systems in Baltimore are adjusting


A coronavirus vaccine can’t come at the expense of fighting the virus now

most striking public health success of the 1950s, the polio vaccine, was developed by a voluntary organization, the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, which had joined its Republican allies in Congress to blast the idea of federal spending on polio as a “totalitarian” idea. The savvy efforts of Mary Woodard Lasker broke this impasse. An ardent New Dealer and medical philanthropist, Lasker advocated for national health care and birth control and firmly believed that the government needed to assume responsibility for health care alongside other social welfare programs. Yet in 1948, Lasker and other activists failed in their campaign for national health insurance. Opposition from the American Medical Association and business groups defeated President Harry S. Truman’s national insurance plan. With the escalation of the Cold War, the political prospects of future bills also looked bleak. Faced with this setback, Lasker charted a new path: federal investment in biomedical research. She came to see medical research as a powerful means of fostering the nation’s health. The successes of polio vaccination and antibiotics lent credence to her ambitions and helped her avoid the politically fraught issues surrounding medical care. Her motto — “If you think research is expensive, try disease!” — echoed through the halls of Congress. Cancer, the most dreaded disease of the 20th century, provided Lasker with an ideal target. Most experts were hesitant to say that cancer could be cured, but Lasker embraced a new approach to treating the disease: chemotherapy. Unlike surgical or radiological treatments, chemotherapy suggested that drugs could be developed to eradicate cancer just as antibiotics attacked bacteria — cutting off cancer at is biological roots. When such work quickly overwhelmed charities and hospitals, Lasker pushed the government to get involved. Through astute lobbying that focused on boosting funding rather than building new government agencies, Lasker’s new coalition of legislators, administrators and doctors reshaped the National Cancer Institute in the 1950s. Although founded toward the end of the New Deal, the institute had taken a back seat to private anticancer efforts. Yet, by the end of the decade, Lasker and her allies had quintupled its budget and pushed it to the forefront of the nation’s cancer research effort. As Lasker's efforts proved politically successful, advocates for research on other diseases followed suit in demanding federal support. But legislators were not satisfied to support free-ranging scientific inquiry. They wanted results — and quickly. And although they


As cases surged in Prince George’s, the health department failed to contain an outbreak of its own

for health and human services, which she believes the county government has underfunded for decades. Glaros says the need for better funding of such services has been underscored by the coronavirus pandemic, which made its official arrival in Prince George’s on March 9 and has since spread rapidly, with infections in the majority-black jurisdiction leading the state. Officials have recently said they are concerned by a slight uptick in cases, after weeks of numbers trending downward. Rhonda Wallace, an employee in the health department’s family health services division, said the majority of the at least 22 agency employees who tested positive at the Cheverly Health Center contracted the virus in March and April. But she said there have been new cases more recently and that the department still — nearly five months in — does not have enough personal protective equipment. She said she was issued only one N95 mask and that she and other employees have resorted to buying their own masks. Wallace, who emphasized she was speaking in her capacity as local AFSCME president of health department supervisors, called for more transparency when it comes to reporting how many employees have tested positive for coronavirus and what is being done to protect those still coming to work. “I get that we have got to do our work — we want to do our work,” she said. “But how are we going to do our work if we are not valued?” Health officer Ernest L. Carter did not respond to questions about the outbreak or the union’s allegations. Prince George’s County Executive Angela D. Alsobrooks (D) said in a statement that she is heartbroken over Mack’s death. Alsobrooks said her administration has “begun looking into the circumstances surrounding her death to make sure we are doing all we can to protect the lives, health and well-being of each of our employees.” Mack, who worked in the clinic for sexually transmitted diseases, twice requested in March to work from home because of the pandemic, said union representatives. She was obese, making her more susceptible to complications from covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, and had struggled in recent years with other health issues, including back problems. Smith, the union president, said Mack’s requests were supported by her immediate supervisor. But they were denied by Diane Young, an associate director with the family health services division. When Smith tried


Man fatally stabbed near Anacostia in Southeast Washington

One man was killed and another injured when both were stabbed Thursday night during a dispute in Southeast Washington between people who knew each other, according to D.C. police. Police said the stabbings occurred shortly after 8 p.m. near Route 295 and 11th Street Southeast, near the Anacostia neighborhood. Courtney Jones, 54, of Hartford, Conn., died at a hospital, police said. The man who was wounded is from Baltimore. Police said he suffered injuries that did not appear to be life-threatening. A police report says he was treated and released from a hospital. Police said they arrested Kenneth Wayne Stewart, 58, of no fixed address, and charged him with first-degree murder while armed. Authorities did not say why the men had been arguing. At least five other people were shot and another man was stabbed Thursday night in incidents in Northeast and Northwest Washington. The victims included two juveniles. Police described all their injuries as not life-threatening. There have been 109 homicides in the District in 2020, an 18 percent increase over this time in 2019, which ended with a decade high.


She’s a veteran who killed seven other veterans at a West Virginia hospital. Their families want to know why.

kill him twice, according to the plea agreement. In March 2018, Edgell arrived at VA for an examination that would determine whether he should move to a nursing home for dementia, according to Dino Colombo, an attorney for the Edgell family. Some time during her rounds on the graveyard shift, Mays injected Edgell with enough insulin to cause his glucose levels to plummet, according to Mays’s plea agreement. Then the next night, the plea agreement said, Mays injected Edgell a second time, causing the same reaction. But this time, just days after walking into the hospital, Edgell died. An autopsy later found four injection sites on his body. Whatever her motive, Mays watched the veterans after she gave them insulin and sat by their bedsides as their organs shut down, said an investigator who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The deaths were drawn out over a period of several hours to a few weeks. When doctors arrived the next morning to find the patients’ blood sugar levels had plummeted, Mays would often linger in the room as they tried to counteract the drug’s effects, a health-care worker recalled, and would overhear physicians’ conversations with family members. Hickman wonders whether her grandmother saw the signs. Frances Edgell, Archie’s wife of 62 years, hardly left his side at the hospital. She permitted authorities to exhume her husband’s body, but she died a few months later of what the family is certain was a broken heart. School announcements in newspaper archives show Mays was a good student at schools in Maryland and Delaware. She attended Glenville State College in West Virginia from fall 1993 to spring 1994, majored in accounting, and did not graduate, a spokesman for the college said. Mays joined the West Virginia Army National Guard about six months after 9/11. She deployed to Iraq in 2003, joining about 500 other West Virginians in the 1092nd Engineer Battalion, where she was a chemical equipment repairer. Mike Greaver, a Clarksburg resident who was in the same unit, said he hardly saw Mays in Iraq, but about six months into their service, they were among a handful of West Virginians who flew back to the United States for a week of leave. Thriving in a combat unit of mostly men required a degree of toughness that Mays seemed


How California went from coronavirus success story to disaster — and how it can regain control

George Rutherford is a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California at San Francisco School of Medicine. In the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic, California seemed to be a success story. Today, however, the state’s case count is surging, recently topping 400,000 total and surpassing New York. Compared with levels around Memorial Day in Southern California and around the second week in June in Northern California, daily cases have increased fourfold. In recent weeks, the average number of daily deaths statewide has increased by 50 percent. What is driving this surge, and how can it be brought under control? California is a large and complex state, and our coronavirus challenge, too, is anything but straightforward. In fact, the best way to approach covid-19 in the Golden State is to think of it as a series of independent regional epidemics, each requiring its own solution. The most significant outbreak is among the state’s urban and rural Latino populations. Among cases where the patient’s race is known, 55 percent of California’s infections have been in Latinos, who make up just under 40 percent of the state’s population. Latinos and Hispanics are bearing the brunt of the pandemic not only in California but along the entire West Coast, including Oregon (38 percent of cases where the patient’s race is known vs. only 13 percent of the population) and Washington (44 percent vs. 13 percent). In California, the infected are predominantly low-income, densely housed front-line service workers. Leaving home to work each day, they are exposed to the virus. When they return, it spreads in their households, which are often multigenerational. The consequences are striking. In late April, professor Gabriel Chamie and colleagues from the University of California at San Francisco studied 3,953 individuals living in a single census tract in the Mission District of San Francisco. While the estimated prevalence of infection among non-Latinos in this population was 0.2 percent, for Latinos, it was 3.9 percent — nearly 20 times higher. Another of California’s sub-epidemics has been among people who, upon the state’s reopening, have failed to treat the virus as real and dangerous. They seem unable or unwilling to distance themselves from others and wear masks begrudgingly, if at all. From the beaches and bars of Southern California to backyard barbecues in the Central Valley to a fraternity house in Berkeley, failure to heed safety warnings has inexorably


which they are located, not only because of the potential for transmission from prison staff within their communities, but also because of the stress they put on local hospitals. Finally, homeless shelters and the homeless in general have been disproportionately affected. Significant outbreaks have occurred in both Los Angeles and San Francisco. Some of the risk to the estimated 151,000 homeless Californians has been mitigated by state initiatives such as Operation Room Key, which provides hotel rooms not only to homeless individuals in isolation and quarantine but also to the frail and elderly homeless with underlying conditions that increase their risk of severe infection. Still, more can and should be done. Given that California is faced with distinct epidemics, no one-size-fits-all statewide solution will be enough. Each outbreak calls for a tailored response. In the case of the homeless, housing, support services and testing are key. For people who choose to behave recklessly, the proper remedy may be stricter enforcement of anti-coronavirus measures. In institutional settings, regular and rapid testing must be a cornerstone of prevention. Everyone would benefit from education and media campaigns emphasizing the importance of mask-wearing, hand-washing, staying at home if sick and social distancing. But these messages must be culturally and linguistically appropriate for the state’s Latino population. And in order to be effective, disincentives to isolation and quarantine need to be addressed. Individuals need to be assured that while they remain in isolation or quarantine, they will still be able to pay rent, buy groceries and have jobs to return to once the danger has passed. Federal, state and local leaders should do everything in their power to provide these assurances. The Golden State’s swift and coordinated shutdowns helped control the virus in March and April. Now, state and local leaders will need to devise more creative, targeted solutions. As case numbers and deaths mount daily, Californians hope we are up to the challenge. Read more: Prison journalist Joe Garcia: Inside San Quentin prison, you sit and wait until covid-19 comes for you Podcast | New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham on U.S. covid-19 response: Erin Marcus: I’m a doctor in Miami. Here’s how I know Florida’s covid-19 outbreak won’t improve any time soon. Leana S. Wen: As the toll of covid-19 worsens, the U.S. has three options Letter to the Editor: Montgomery County’s Hispanic population is paying for decades of lax public safety oversight


The pandemic has damaged the appeal of studying in the United States for some international students

hit,” said Thijs van Vugt, the director of analytics for Studyportals, a service that helps universities recruit globally. More than 1 million international students studied or conducted research at U.S. universities last year, or worked through a postgraduate visa program, according to the New York-based Institute of International Education. In March, when the coronavirus shut down much of the world, around 90 percent of those enrolled remained in the country. In the months since, President Trump imposed travel bans and stoked uncertainty through whiplash student visa policy changes as coronavirus case numbers continued to spike. It is still too soon to determine the pandemic’s full impact, as schools and education consultancies tend to aggregate enrollment data for the coming year in the fall or at the end of the year. What little evidence is available, however, points to a mounting trend: The number of enrolled international undergraduate and graduate students in United States has been declining, and that trajectory is set to steepen. (By some measures, the number of overseas students in the United States increased last year even as enrollment dropped because of participation in postgraduate work programs.) “This is a global market for international students, and the United States is losing the competition,” said Brad Farnsworth, the vice president of global engagement for the American Council on Education. Since March, Studyportals has tracked a 45 percent drop in interest in studying in the United States among its site users year-on-year — the biggest dip since 2017, the company’s earliest available data, van Vugt said. The top five English-speaking countries by number of foreign students — the United States, U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand — all saw a decline in demand in March, but the others largely bounced back. It is impossible to pinpoint the role of covid-19, van Vugt said, but the pandemic has had a “huge impact.” IDP Education, an international education company specializing in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Ireland, in April and June surveys of international students found the majority still wanted to continue with their courses abroad. But the United States ranked last among its English-speaking competitors for perceived welfare of international students and showed the highest rate of students hoping to defer. The United States could see a 25 percent drop in international enrollment in 2020, by one estimate, according to Rachel Banks, a senior director at


Sports are doing what they can to remain viable, just like the rest of us

intense competition, but it’s naive to think these athletes will compete like nothing else matters. Winning may be a priority, but it isn’t the priority. That will be the greatest oddity of experiencing sports during this time. These are survival games. It’s not survival in the sense that sports figures are worried about death. They have frequent testing, safety protocols and intense monitoring in place to ensure that players, coaches and team personnel feel as safe as they can during a pandemic. Because of these measures, they are likely to detect infected people early and treat them with the appropriate diligence to mitigate the seriousness of covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus that has claimed more than 140,000 American lives. But short of fatality, there is plenty of irreversible damage the virus can do to the body, which is a huge concern for anyone but especially for athletes whose careers depend on being in world-class physical condition. But for the most part, these are survival games because the leagues — with owners and players negotiating the terms — are similar to any other business, just trying to get through the crisis and stabilize their finances. Their motivations are understandable. I reserve my righteousness for amateur athletics, particular major college sports, where young people — without representation — will be asked, in essence, to fund someone else’s livelihoods by playing through the pandemic. A disturbing level of moral corruptness exists there. Fortunately, it seems colleges are moving toward an appropriate delay. Sports seldom have been so overtly about money as they are right now. The quest for dollars is normally masked better, but that’s the intriguing part about how we are living these days: All masks are off, even though we are literally wearing masks to protect ourselves. It should be easier to see things as they are while we all struggle, in some form, to salvage our way of life. Sports won’t be sports. That has been clear in watching golf, NASCAR, the UFC, MLS, the NWSL or any other games try to crawl through despair. In this form, there is little event, little spectacle, to them. It’s startling even for die-hards and purists. Before considering them warped, perhaps it’s better to look for meaning beyond the thrill of diversion. “Nothing is normal in 2020,” LeBron James told reporters this week. I’m actually starting to think watching the current


As the Smithsonian starts to reopen, a small team takes on a big question: how to keep coronavirus concerns from taking away accessibility?

designed, and how cultural and educational experiences are delivered. But even as people celebrate the progress that has been made under the law that was signed by President George H.W. Bush, a behind-the-scenes look at Ziebarth’s role at the Smithsonian shows the slippery nature of that progress. She and the two other people who make up her team are dissecting the difficult questions that may not even occur to others to ask. On Friday, the National Zoo and the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Va., opened to visitors. They are the first Smithsonian sites to do so since the start of the pandemic. Other museums are still working on their reopening plans, and Ziebarth says, some of those will involve reconfiguring or placing off limits the many touch screens, 3-D displays and exhibits that have allowed children and adults to learn through tactile experiences. That means when the National Museum of American History opens, the Spark!Lab that invites people to become inventors will probably remain closed. And when visitors return to the Deep Time exhibit that takes them up close to dinosaurs at the National Museum of Natural History, they likely won’t find the hands-on learning activities that were once offered. Ziebarth, who uses a wheelchair as a result of a spinal injury when she was a teenager, says she recognizes that these actions are needed to keep visitors and staff members safe at a time when a vaccine has not yet been made publicly available for the coronavirus. She also knows how for some visitors with disabilities touch is critical to their museum experience. “The main thing I’m hearing about and that I’m worried about myself is that we want to continue to have multisensory experiences,” she says. “We don’t want to go back to just glass cases with objects in them.” How different people use spaces are important considerations, not just for the Smithsonian, but for public places across the country that are right now putting together their post-pandemic plans. People who spend their days thinking about accessibility issues are having these conversations. They are doing the hard work. They are sounding the alarms. The rest of us just have to decide if we want to listen, or if we’re okay with allowing accessibility to fall victim to a virus that has already taken too much from us. “Over the past 50


Local digest: D.C. police fatally strike pedestrian with car in Southeast Washington

on Saturday afternoon, police said. Few details were immediately available, but Maryland State Police said they responded to a call at 12:30 p.m. and found both occupants of one car dead at the scene. The driver in the other vehicle, the sole occupant, reported no injuries. He is under questioning at the state patrol’s Forestville headquarters, police said. The cause of the crash is not known but is under investigation. Authorities initially said four people had died in the crash but later said only two were killed. — Patricia Sullivan Maryland’s prison system has received more than 2 million pieces of personal protective equipment since the coronavirus pandemic began, but advocates for workers and offenders say it’s not enough to stem the spread of the virus behind bars. The nearly 2.2 million items include gowns, gloves, hand sanitizer, surgical masks and other face and eye protections, state prison spokesperson Mark Vernarelli said. But Patrick Moran, council president for the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees, said it really isn’t that much because workers and inmates go through so much PPE in buildings where social distancing is virtually impossible. “Roughly 26,000 people are going through it every day, and some items are used daily or every other day,” Moran said. More than 1,100 coronavirus cases have been confirmed in Maryland prisons, according to the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services. Inmates tested positive in more than 600 of those cases. Eight prisoners and one correctional officer have died of covid-19, the illness caused by the virus, the department said. Maryland inmates have been placed in lockdown since early in the pandemic, which has frustrated them, according to their families and prison advocates. A car caravan in downtown Baltimore on Thursday ended in Towson at a rally demanding more attention on and resources in Maryland prisons. — Baltimore Sun VIRGINIA Police identified a man who was killed in an apparent shooting late Friday afternoon in Fairfax County as Jose Alexander Villa Lobo Guevara, 20, of Annandale. Fairfax County police said they found him in the 4100 block of Wadsworth Court in the Annandale area after a shooting was reported there. A possible assailant may have left the scene in a white van, police said. Police said they thought there was no immediate threat to public safety and the incident did not appear to be random. — Martin Weil


Fierce and protective, coronavirus victim Isidoro Armenta built a solid life in Maryland after emigrating from Mexico

Before Isidoro Armenta became a co-pastor of his Maryland church, known for his love of singing, he was a brawler — a 5-foot-4-inch fireplug of a man who, in his native Mexico, once slammed a guitar into the face of a rival who was trying to serenade the woman Armenta would eventually marry. That is how Armenta lived, passionately and ready for his next battle. And it’s how he died of covid-19 on May 21, fighting to regain his strength as he tried to assure his family that everything would be okay. Armenta was 73. “Literally, the man was my best friend,” said Marco Armenta, 40, his only child. “For him, it was always about family and God.” Isidoro Armenta grew up in the Mexican port city of Tampico, off the Gulf of Mexico, surviving his neighborhood’s sometimes unforgiving streets by taking up boxing, baseball and basketball. Other boys in town knew him as Mela’s fierce older brother, a reputation he earned through the hard glares cast at anyone who approached his sister at school dances, where brother and sister usually wound up dancing together. Tampico was still thriving when Armenta left school at 14 to help support the family, learning to become a welder. The lush tropical city of European-inspired buildings was also where he met his first wife, Maria de Carmen. They married shortly after the guitar-smashing incident. With Mexico’s economy souring during the late 1970s, the couple emigrated to Maryland’s Langley Park area to join Mela and Armenta’s other sister, Nina. Both had moved there after marrying U.S. servicemen based in the Washington region. Armenta landed a job as foreman for a Bethesda concrete construction company and became a U.S. citizen in the 1990s. He held that job for more than 30 years, which allowed him to buy a house in Wheaton and, during trips back to Mexico, the occasional pair of cowboy boots, which he wore proudly in suburban Maryland. Around the house, he constantly sang, playfully serenading his wife in slightly off-key renditions of old Mexican ballads, their son recalled. Or, he’d show Marco videos of his favorite boxing matches, marveling at the artistry of Mexican pugilists Salvador Sánchez or Julio César Chávez. One day, a co-worker invited Armenta to attend a service at his Pentecostal church in Silver Spring, Casa de Dios. Though Armenta grew up a devoted Catholic, he was hooked. “It was


For Guatemalans in Florida, essential work leads to a coronavirus outbreak

LAKE WORTH, Fla. — The thousands of Guatemalan men who manicure the golf courses and gated communities of South Florida were deemed essential workers, so Alfredo continued taking the journey every morning, until almost everyone he knew was sick. At 6 a.m., the 39-year-old left his home here, on a quiet street in one of the largest indigenous Guatemalan communities in the United States. By sunrise, he’d be in Boca Raton or West Palm Beach or Miami, trimming trees in the wealthiest neighborhoods between the Atlantic Ocean and the Everglades. For the past 30 years, tens of thousands of men and women from northern Guatemala, descendants of the Mayan empire, have enabled one South Florida construction boom after another. Now, asked to work through the coronavirus pandemic, they are among the hardest-hit populations in the state, reporting more new cases each day than any other. “It’s a crisis within a crisis,” said Samuel Matos-Bastidas, an instructor at the University of South Florida now working as a contact tracer with the state health department assigned to the indigenous Guatemalan population. More than 30 percent of those tested in Palm Beach County’s Guatemalan-Mayan community — a population of around 80,000 — have been diagnosed with the novel coronavirus, three times the state average. Many believe the infection rate to be far higher. Of 130 families enrolled in an early-childhood education program through Lake Worth’s Guatemalan-Maya Center, for example, 80 have been infected. Alfredo saw how the virus made its way into the community. When he started feeling sick, the owner of his landscaping company sent him and eight close co-workers to be tested. Alfredo and five others tested positive. Within days, his 6-week-old daughter became sick, too, her temperature reaching 106 degrees, he said. She tested positive and was sent to intensive care. “My boss explained it to us. He said, ‘Landscaping is essential. We’re going to keep working,’ ” said Alfredo, who asked that his last name not be used because, like his co-workers, he lacks legal status in the United States. “By June, we were pretty much all sick, and we brought it back to our families.” The same thing happened in Indiantown, the mostly Guatemalan community 45 minutes west of Palm Beach, where many of Florida’s first indigenous Mayans arrived in the 1980s, fleeing their country’s civil war. Officially, 10 percent of the city has tested positive for the


Colleges dropping nonrevenue sports jeopardizes the U.S. Olympic model

The Opening Ceremonies — an event that ushers in another Olympic Games and, for many, commemorates their greatest athletic accomplishment — begin with hours of waiting. Athletes wait for the buses that take them from the village to the venue. They wait to enter the stadium. They wait to march. The process devours an entire evening, but it’s memorable and communal. During that wait at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Kawika Shoji, an indoor volleyball player, had time to meet his fellow Olympians, to understand their sports and hear about their journeys. That reminded him how many Olympians’ stories had a common thread: Stanford University. Twenty-nine U.S. athletes in Rio — including Shoji, swimmer Katie Ledecky and four members of the gold medal-winning women’s water polo team — had ties to Stanford. Those athletes combined to win 27 medals for the United States, more than any other university’s contingent. Four of those were won by athletes from sports among the 11 programs the school decided to cut this month. With the novel coronavirus pandemic threatening the revenue streams that flow into athletic departments — broadcast rights, ticket sales, donations, student fees and payouts from guarantee games — dozens of schools have axed programs. Stanford, long known for its success in nonrevenue sports, became the first school in the Power Five conferences to do so. Leaders in these sports worry that if other schools follow suit, the damage in this country may be irrevocable. “If you look at a lot of the athletes going to the Olympics, they are from some fringe sports that aren’t always in the public eye,” said Shoji, a 2010 Stanford graduate who won a bronze medal in Rio. “Nevertheless, they’re athletes that our country absolutely values and needs for a lot of different reasons.” The U.S. Olympic model leans on these college programs that serve as launchpads for athletic careers and an ideal space for high schoolers hoping to develop into elite competitors. Nearly 80 percent of the 558-member U.S. Olympic team in 2016 competed at the college level, representing close to 150 schools. The American system, in which sports are tied to school, differentiates it from those of other countries, but that model also has led to Olympic success. “I don’t even want to imagine what it’s like without college sports,” said Greg Earhart, the executive director of the College Swimming and Diving


Kids are abuzz with activities to help save bees

‘Where have all the flowers, vegetables and fruits gone?” It’s a question we hope never to ask. For many of these plant products to exist, however, we need pollinators such as bees. For several years, bees have been threatened by pesticides, habitat loss and disease. KidsPost talked to three kids working to help reverse that trend. Bees feed on nectar and protein-rich pollen from flowering plants, but attracting bees to his Reston home wasn’t an option for J.P. Mackey, 12. His dad is allergic to bee stings, so J.P. and his mom are growing native vegetables and flowers in a nearby community garden. Sitting on a tree stump, observing bees pollinating cucumber plants, J.P. said, “We wouldn’t have food without them.” Since December, J.P. also has raised more than $2,700 for Heifer International by creating and selling “bee bracelets.” Heifer is a charity that helps low-income people become more self-sufficient. J.P.’s family pays for his craft expenses, so 100 percent of each $30 bracelet sold at BumbleBracelets.com provides a beehive and training for a small-scale farmer, allowing them to increase crop production and earn extra money from honey sales. Although most native bees are solitary — nesting in ground tunnels or decaying wood instead of hives — working with honeybees allows kids to study bees up close, often sparking curiosity about other bees. Years ago, Maia Timm invented the term “bug-studyologist” when asked what she wanted to be. Now 12, Maia is raising honeybees in her Centreville backyard. Wearing protective clothing, she periodically opens hives, pulling out each frame to check on bee health and honey production. Each hive’s queen bee can be seen busily laying eggs in hexagon-shaped cells. As she works, Maia explains honeybee terms. “Royal jelly” is a protein secreted by young worker bees to feed developing bee larvae. The hive’s queen “bee bread” is protein-rich pollen mixed with honey and bee saliva and feeds the whole colony. Maia recently donated a hive to the 4-H ECO club and science department at Liberty Middle School in nearby Clifton, where she is a rising eighth-grader. Club members will care for the hive and educate students about the vital role bees play in our ecosystem and food supply, said science teacher Donna Stebner. For four years, Kaia Giffen, 10, helped with her family’s beehives in Darnestown, Maryland, frequently asking questions. Now she enjoys sharing her knowledge with others “so


Is this the beginning of an Israeli Spring?

At twilight, Paris Square in central Jerusalem was already packed late last week with more protesters than at the four previous demonstrations that had taken place there in little more than a week against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. A long banner hung on the side of a building, bearing a single Hebrew word that means, “We’ve woken up” — describing the protests, or possibly an entire generation of Israelis. Hundreds of people sat meditating in lotus position, as if to announce, “This is a peaceful protest.” Their ability to focus was astounding. The square, and the avenue leading toward the prime minister’s residence on Balfour Street, was awash in a tsunami of noise. A tall man beat a bass drum he wore on a shoulder brace, while another man, a head shorter, stood on the other side and also flailed it. A woman banged a kitchen pot with a steel spoon. People pounded the metal barricades that the police had dragged in to keep the crowd from Netanyahu’s residence. They blew whistles and plastic horns from under their masks. A man played long riffs on a shofar. Everyone wore masks. The distance between them, though, was two centimeters, not two meters. At two different places, people used amplifiers to give speeches that were impossible to hear. People chanted, “Capital! Regime! Underworld!” — meaning “Kleptocracy!” People danced. Their glistening faces were nearly all young. The gray-haired Israeli protesters of the past were absent, perhaps because of novel coronavirus fears. Another generation took their place, joyously angry. A dozen movements had come with printed signs. “You’re out of touch, we’re sick of you!” read one set. Another group’s said in Hebrew and Arabic, “Health! Livelihood! Hope!” A third set proclaimed, “Annexation never. Democracy now!” A man held a handmade sign declaring, “The Israeli Spring is already here.” A woman danced with a hand-drawn sign above her head, “I have no money, and no rich uncle,” referring to the sudden economic crisis brought on by the pandemic and the government’s feeble response. Some people carried black flags, symbol of a group that began protesting anti-democratic steps by Netanyahu after the Israeli election in March. Most of all, the air was full of Israeli flags. The babel of messages reflected the breadth of the ersatz, ever-growing coalition supporting the protests, from the veteran Israeli left to the newly unemployed and the owners of failing


About 4,000 federal employees say they contracted the coronavirus at work — and 60 have died

and front-line medical and public health personnel as at the highest risk of contracting the virus while at work. For those occupations, the program “will accept that the exposure to COVID-19 was proximately caused by the nature of the employment and will only require medical evidence that establishes a diagnosis of COVID-19, such as a positive COVID-19 test result,” it said. Those in other types of positions must show that the disease was employment-related, as with any other type of injury or illness claim. Employees of three departments with high concentrations of jobs deemed to carry the highest risk of exposure — Homeland Security, Justice and Veterans Affairs — accounted for most of the 4,011 claims filed through July 23. Of those, 1,623 had been granted, fewer than seven denied, 25 withdrawn and the rest were waiting to be adjudicated — including all of the death claims — according to data provided by the Labor Department that are more current than those in the inspector general report. The government does not keep a central count of how many federal employees have remained at their regular workplaces through the pandemic vs, those working remotely or on paid leave. However, the number of those in the types of positions the FECA program deems high-risk would be in the hundreds of thousands, even excluding the Postal Service, where relatively few jobs lend themselves to telework. Nor is there a central count of the numbers of infections and deaths among federal employees. However, reports from just some of the largest agencies show nearly 19,000 infections and nearly 100 deaths, with both figures continuing to rise. As of Friday, the largest, the Defense Department, reported 5,096 total infections among its roughly 750,000 civilian employees dating to March, of whom 257 were currently hospitalized and 1,841 recovered, with 32 deaths. Separately, the department reported nearly 24,000 total cases and three deaths among uniformed military personnel. The second largest agency, Veterans Affairs with some 380,000 employees, reported 452 active cases among its employees and 2,896 convalescent cases. Veterans Affairs reported 40 deaths. Several of the biggest subagencies of the third largest department, Homeland Security, report data individually: Customs and Border Protection a total of 1,590 cases among its 60,000 employees and eight deaths; and the 64,000-employee Transportation Security Administration, 1,315 cases and six deaths. The Bureau of Prisons, part of the Justice Department, reports 397 current cases


States with stricter covid-19 restrictions watch lax neighbors warily, knowing the virus does not respect borders

with a highly fragmented national response to a virus that knows no boundaries. “I’ve said from Day 1, it would have been a lot easier for the decision-makers if everyone would have been on the same page, and we’d have shut down this or that type of business in our county and state, and the bordering states would have done the same. That’s the only sure way of doing it,” said Herb Simmons, emergency management director in St. Clair County, Ill., which sits across the Mississippi River from Missouri, where restrictions are lower. “What we needed is a national-level plan.” Public health officials in Las Cruces, N.M., know from contact tracing and investigation that some cases had roots in El Paso, the Texas city about 45 miles south, said New Mexico Health Department spokesman David Morgan. As coronavirus weariness sets in, he said, it’s hard to get people to refrain from crossing the border to engage in behavior allowed in Texas but not New Mexico. In May, New Mexico’s human services secretary warned that such travel would “absolutely, unequivocally” lead to more covid-19 cases and hospitalizations. “We ask, ‘Did you travel recently?’ They’ll say, ‘No, but I went to El Paso to have my hair cut.’ Well, that’s travel and that counts,” Morgan said. Hair salons opened a month earlier in Texas. “If they can’t get the service they want in one state, it’s just natural that they seek it in the state where they can,” Morgan said. “But the consequences are greater than a lot of people appreciate.” Leaders in many places have adopted strategies aimed at thwarting the virus’s roving, borderless nature. In the United States, states including Connecticut and New York now require many travelers entering the state to quarantine, and some regions, including Native American reservations, have set up checkpoints or turned away visitors. In Europe, where residents are accustomed to traveling without passports between countries, many nations closed their borders to outsiders. Nationally, cellphone data indicates trips across state lines have tripled since the shutdowns of March. As reopening began this spring, blocs of states in the West, Midwest and Northeast banded together to coordinate plans. In an announcement about its formation, the five-state Western States Pact — which was joined by Oregon but not Idaho — noted the “virus has preyed upon our interconnectedness” and “doesn’t follow state or national boundaries.” States in the


American Samoa has succeeded in fighting covid-19 while the U.S. government failed

To date, American Samoa remains the only place in the United States without a confirmed case of covid-19. In contrast to the uncoordinated federal response to the novel coronavirus, the territorial government in American Samoa acted quickly and decisively. On March 18, Gov. Lolo Matalasi Moliga (I), declared a public health emergency across the entire island territory. While President Trump’s national declaration of emergency on March 13 included few concrete steps to control the virus, Moliga’s declaration less than a week later had an immediate impact. Schools were closed, travelers from affected countries faced full quarantine upon arrival, and all public gatherings were suspended until further notice. Citing the territory’s limited health facilities, Moliga warned that “inordinate challenges expose the Territory of American Samoa to epic vulnerabilities subjecting all its residents to unprecedented health, economic, and social risks.” A subsequent declaration from June 1 prohibited crew members of cargo and fishing vessels from disembarking in American Samoa. Recent virus outbreaks — including Zika in 2016, dengue fever in 2017 and 2018, measles in 2019 — had prepared most American Samoans to be vigilant and follow official health guidelines. In fact, Moliga’s declaration continued the state of emergency that had been put in place following a measles outbreak in fall 2019 that had killed 83 people in neighboring independent Samoa and added a separate state of emergency for the new coronavirus. But more strikingly, the U.S. territory in the South Pacific has been so successful in keeping covid-19, the coronavirus’s disease, at bay because policymakers remembered the islands’ extraordinary escape from a previous global pandemic, just over a century ago. During the influenza pandemic in 1918 and 1919, American Samoa, then administered by the U.S. Navy, established a year-long quarantine and managed to keep the deadly flu out of the islands. While neighboring Western Samoa, occupied by New Zealand troops, suffered one of the worst proportional mortality rates in the world, no American Samoan died. Located halfway between Honolulu and Sydney, the Samoan Islands emerged on the maps of U.S. policymakers in the years after the Civil War. In 1872, a U.S. Navy commander negotiated a treaty with Samoan leaders that guaranteed the right to build a coaling station in the harbor of Pago Pago on the small eastern island of Tutuila. By the 1880s, several empires were scrambling for control over the Pacific: Great Britain and France with long-standing interests,


New York has flattened its curve. The Sun Belt has been flattened by it.

the country — the No. 1 travel destination for foreign travelers in North America. Covid-19 spread far and wide before anyone knew what was really happening. As of late June, about 1 in 4 of those tested for covid-19 antibodies in New York City tested positive. To add to our misfortune, we are located in the United States of Trump rather than in a rational place such as Canada or Europe. There has been no national lockdown, no national mask mandate, no national testing-and-tracing program. States such as New York have been on their own. Given those constraints, I’d say New York has done a laudable job of dealing with the worst public health emergency in a century. We have emulated the example of developed countries, such as Italy, France and Spain, that managed to get their pandemics under control — while the rest of the country is emulating developing countries such as Brazil, South Africa and India, where the disease continues to rampage out of control. There is no secret about New York’s recent success: It is a product of social distancing, mask-wearing and testing. In every store you enter, everyone is masked. If the rest of the country followed our example, it could swiftly get the coronavirus under control. But it hasn’t, because in the red states there is far more suspicion of government and of science than in our liberal metropolis. New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) has made his share of blunders, including the decision to return patients with covid-19 to nursing homes, but he has gotten the big things right. He has mandated masks, he has told the truth, and he has been properly cautious about reopening. Even now, restaurants and bars in New York City are closed for indoor dining and drinking. Movie theaters and gyms are shuttered entirely. Perhaps because we have been hit so hard and scarred so deeply, we treat the coronavirus as a merciless foe worthy of respect. In the rest of the country, far too many people are only now awakening from an inexcusable slumber to a danger they should have seen months ago. There are way too many people such as Arkansas state Sen. Jason Rapert — a Republican, of course — who spent months railing against “draconian” mask mandates and shutdowns before contracting covid-19 himself. Red-staters should have learned from New York’s example, but somehow they


‘Disgraceful, plain and simple’: Couple wearing Nazi flag masks at Walmart filmed in viral clash

Raphaela Mueller was strolling through Walmart on Saturday morning when a brief glimpse of two other shoppers in the Marshall, Minn., store stopped her dead in her tracks. Fighting through disbelief that nearly rendered her speechless, Mueller, 24, who was born and raised in Germany, turned to her partner and blurted out a single question: “Wait, are those people wearing swastikas on their masks?" When the young couple again encountered the man and woman, who were indeed sporting bright red facial coverings that resembled the Nazi flag, Mueller had no trouble finding her voice. Together with her partner, Benjamin Ruesch, Mueller confronted them, capturing the tense exchange in a now-viral video that has drawn widespread condemnation, including from prominent politicians such as Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D). The older pair, who were not formally identified, have since been banned from all Walmart stores for at least a year, the company confirmed to The Washington Post. “Disgraceful, plain and simple,” Walz tweeted Sunday, sharing a news article about the clash. “Thank you to the bystanders who stood up to this unacceptable, hate-fueled behavior.” Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) similarly denounced the pair for flaunting the hate symbol associated with the Nazis, tweeting, “This isn’t us. This isn’t the Minnesota I love.” (The video below contains explicit language.) Saturday’s incident unfolded on the first day that Minnesota’s mask mandate took effect, requiring face coverings to be worn in businesses and indoor public spaces in an effort to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus. The start of statewide enforcement came more than a week after Walmart and several other large retailers announced masks would be mandatory in all U.S. stores. As of early Monday, Minnesota had more than 51,000 reported coronavirus cases and 1,574 deaths, according to The Washington Post’s tracker. Unlike in other cities, where explosive confrontations in stores or other businesses have stemmed from patrons refusing to wear masks, this time the fight centered on the message on the Minnesota couple’s face coverings, which Ruesch said created “an environment of terror for other citizens.” “That this couple made it in [the Walmart] is appalling,” Ruesch, 29, told The Post late Sunday. “I identify as Christian, but if I were Jewish and I saw someone wearing a swastika, I can only surmise that I might feel that my life was in danger.” When Ruesch and Mueller headed to Walmart in Marshall, a