One person with covid-19 went to work in Oregon. Then, 7 people died and 300 had to quarantine.

passed the virus on to others. The county, which touches the Oregon coast and encompasses a large swath of the Umpqua National Forest, has reported 37 deaths and at least 1,315 cases since the start of the pandemic. The death toll from one of the outbreaks sparked by the infected worker accounts for nearly one-fifth of the county’s reported deaths since the start of the pandemic. Oregon has reported 1,347 deaths and 103,755 cases, and the number of new daily cases increased over most of November and December. Last week, the state declared Douglas County and 28 other jurisdictions to be at an “extreme risk” due to the spread of the virus. Oregon Gov. Kate Brown (D) recently extended a state-of-emergency order until March 3, 2021, which allows a number of executive orders to continue restrictions on indoor dining, large gatherings and many businesses. Oregonians must also wear masks in public under a statewide order. The restrictions put in place by the governor have drawn anti-lockdown protests, including one on Monday afternoon where demonstrators shattered a door and tried to force their way into the state capitol. Community spread of the coronavirus, including inside workplaces, has been a continuing problem across much of the United States. Many offices closed early in the pandemic, and employees have been working from home for months to stem the spread of the coronavirus. But as the pandemic has dragged on, some workplaces have reopened and some people have not been able to avoid going to work, including essential workers. To prevent the virus from spreading, companies that needed employees to return to in-person work put up plexiglass barriers, implemented daily temperature checks and required workers to wear masks while in proximity to others. Despite those efforts, the virus has still spread. Workplace outbreaks have hit meatpacking plants, warehouses, grocery stores, schools, nursing homes and hospitals. Courthouses and city halls have shut down as cases spread among government employees. And while “superspreader” events, like large weddings and holiday parties, have captured headlines, public health officials warn that people who choose to go to work sick are also driving outbreaks in their communities. “In addition to the super spreader events, we also have super spreader actions,” Dannenhoffer said in a statement. “The top of the list for super spreader actions are people who are unwittingly and unconsciously choosing to go to work when they are sick.”


Trump pardons Blackwater contractors convicted in deaths of 14 Iraqi civilians

The incident came during a particularly dark period of the Iraq War and led to outcries in Iraq and the United States that private contractors — many of them former military personnel — were unsupervised and given unaccountable power in war zones. U.S. refusal to allow the men to be tried in an Iraqi court led to a crisis in already-tense relations between the two countries. U.S. charges against them were dismissed in 2009 by a federal judge, who ruled that the Justice Department had mishandled evidence. Then-vice president Joe Biden, speaking at a Baghdad news conference, expressed disappointment and said the Obama administration would appeal the decision. “A dismissal is not an acquittal,” Biden said. In subsequent years, as the case continued, the contractors became known in conservative media as the “Biden Four.” In 2011, a three-judge panel of the D.C. Court of Appeals reinstated the charges, a ruling the Supreme Court declined to review. Lawyers for the four men maintained throughout that the incident should be treated as a battlefield encounter and not a criminal act, and that they had come under attack. When the case went to trial in 2014, a jury found that Slatten had fired the first shots and convicted him of first-degree murder, making him liable for a life sentence. The other three, convicted of voluntary manslaughter, were each sentenced to 30 years in prison. A U.S. appeals court threw out Slatten’s conviction in 2017 on grounds that he should have been allowed to separate his case from the others. It also ordered resentencing for Slough, Liberty and Heard, saying that the 30-year terms violated the constitutional prohibition against “cruel and unusual punishment.” Slatten refused a plea offer of manslaughter, maintaining his innocence. He was retried in 2018 and convicted of first degree murder for shooting Ahmed Haithem Ahmed Al Rubia’y. In August 2019, U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth in Washington sentenced him to a lifetime term. When a resentencing hearing was held for the other three a month later, Lamberth rejected defense requests to limit their sentences to the five years they had already served. He sentenced Heard to 12 years and seven months, Liberty to 14 years and Slough to 15 years. Campaigns urging that the four receive presidential pardons began in earnest last year, most arguing that the men were veterans still in engaged in quasi-military duties. In a Fox


Vaccine opponents outline online campaigns to sow distrust in coronavirus vaccine

third-party fact-checkers, and such stories are left up with a fact-checking label. Some of the tactics discussed during the online conference from the National Vaccine Information Center include coordinating a message, or “master narrative,” that the virus is not dangerous and that organizations that promote vaccines are not trustworthy, according to the report. That includes pushing misleading story lines — for example, focusing on instances when people experienced side effects from the vaccine and using those examples to argue dangerous side effects will be widespread. Another strategy is to target online health influencers with large followings and African Americans, playing on their historical skepticism of the medical community due to racist practices. In recent months Facebook removed two major groups opposing vaccination, including the 100,000-plus-member Stop Mandatory Vaccination, as well as pages belonging to several of the movement’s leading figures. The company did not ban the groups for misinformation, but for spammy and abusive behavior, such as using paid troll farms in North Macedonia and the Philippines to spread messages. Those bans, the CCDH says, resulted in 3.2 million fewer people who were members or followers of anti-vaccine pages and groups. But that number is small when compared with the way anti-vaccine groups have grown all year. Anti-vaccine conspiracy-theory accounts grew by nearly 50 percent over the year, starting at 15.5 million followers in 2019 and rising to 23.1 million by December 2020, the report said. Overall, the 425 anti-vaccine accounts on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter have 59.2 million followers, nearly 877,000 more than they had in June. Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center, said in a statement: “The modern vaccine safety and informed consent movement was launched in the U.S. in 1982 by parents of DPT vaccine injured children and it is stronger and more relevant than ever today, as experimental COVID-19 vaccines fast tracked to market are being distributed under an Emergency Use Authorization. NVIC’s Fifth International Public Conference on Vaccination … was a celebration of freedom of thought, speech and conscience. We stand by the 50 exceptional speakers who presented at our conference and will be making the evidence and informed perspective they provided on medical science, public health policy and law and ethics more widely available in 2021.” Facebook spokeswoman Andrea Vallone said in a statement: “We are committed to reaching as many people as possible with accurate information


Museum of the Bible considers suing D.C. mayor over virus shutdown, citing religious freedom claims

Art. But most museums in the Washington area have already chosen to close. The National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian in November closed the museums they had reopened, due to the rising number of cases in the region. The Phillips Collection, which reopened with limited hours Oct. 15, has closed as a result of the mayor’s restrictions. It will remain shuttered until February, when it plans to reopen with an exhibition celebrating its 100th anniversary. The International Spy Museum will close at the end of Wednesday for three weeks because of the mayor’s orders. The museum had adapted its experience by creating linear paths through its exhibitions, providing styluses to use on its touch screens and increasing its cleaning procedures. But it will follow the city’s guidelines. “We are watching everything the mayor says,” International Spy Museum spokeswoman Aliza Bran said. “Safety is a top priority for our staff, visitors and volunteers. We are happy to comply with what is going to be best for the community. We want to keep the community safe.” Like other institutions, the museum has moved most of its programs online, broadening its audience and its donor pool. Planet Word, the city’s newest museum, closed its facility in the restored Franklin School on K Street NW on Nov. 23, a month after its Oct. 22 grand opening. “Our overriding consideration continues to be the safety of our community,” Planet Word founder Ann Friedman said. “We don’t yet have an opening date to announce, and a decision about when to reopen will be based on guidance from government and public health officials.” The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum reopened Oct. 26 and closed again Nov. 23. During that month, it limited visitors to 250 a day. “The health and safety of our visitors, staff, and volunteers are the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s highest priority,” it stated. “The spread of the coronavirus is projected to continue to increase in the coming weeks, both locally and nationally.” The Museum of the Bible implemented “covid commandments” when it reopened in June, including more cleaning procedures. People above the age of 3 are required to wear face coverings and practice social distancing. Employees use masks and disposable gloves, and all staff and visitors have their temperature checked. The museum says it uses staggered entry for social distancing and contact tracing to track any possible virus cases. It has closed


U.S., Pfizer reach deal expanding American vaccine supply

be logged. Perna said 12 states began vaccinations in long-term care facilities this week, through a partnership with CVS and Walgreens, and another 13 states would begin next week. After an uproar from state leaders last week, who said their allocations had been cut without explanation, Perna said the federal government would ship 4.67 million vaccine doses to thousands of sites next week. Shots have been slower to begin in nursing homes and similar settings because of the process of getting consent, sometimes needing to involve residents’ relatives. The first vaccines are being given as the country faces a rapid surge in infections and deaths and some hospitals are exceeding their capacities. Over the past week, an average of 2,666 Americans died each day of covid-19, the illness caused by the virus — a record. More than 119,500 patients were hospitalized with the virus Wednesday, in another all-time high for the country. As of Wednesday, the coronavirus has infected 18.4 million people in the United States and killed more than 325,000. Adding to the unease in the midst of a burst of Christmas-related travel was the spread in Britain of new variants of the coronavirus. Britain’s top health official announced Wednesday that two cases of yet another new coronavirus variant were found in the country. Health Secretary Matt Hancock said the new variant spreads more readily and was first detected last week by scientists in South Africa. The variant comes on top of a different permutation of the virus that has been triggering a rapid rise of cases in Britain and prompted travel restrictions, which have stymied the movement of cargo and passengers between that country and Europe. Britain and France reached an agreement that would allow some passengers and all freight into France, as long as drivers provided negative test results for the virus. The military was managing testing sites where thousands of trucks have been stranded on the British side of the English Channel. Britain, earlier this month, was the first country to begin administering doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, while European drug authorities on Monday authorized its use. Between the products from Pfizer and Moderna, U.S. officials say they anticipate being able to deliver at least a first shot of the two-dose regimens to 100 million Americans by the end of February. Pfizer and Moderna have both promised that half of their doses will be available to


TSA sees highest number of airport passengers screened since pandemic started

highest number of passenger volume since the pandemic started,” Lisa Farbstein, a TSA spokeswoman, said Monday. “People are traveling for the holidays, and it’s expected to be high Monday with a lot of people traveling home.” The low point of travel during the pandemic, which is stretching into its ninth month, was April 14, when 87,500 people flew nationwide. By comparison, Farbstein said, New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport or the Los Angeles International Airport would each have about 100,000 people a day flying through before the pandemic. One challenge for the TSA is trying to figure out staffing levels to meet the number of travelers. Many travelers are canceling their plans at the last minute because airlines are offering them a chance to rebook with no fees. “People are also booking at the last minute to see how low fares will go,” Farbstein said. And they are also waiting to see what “another state is requiring in terms of quarantining” before they make plans to travel. Once people get to their destinations, she said, officials are noticing that they are staying longer. “People are leaving early or staying longer because many are able to telework,” Farbstein said. “They realize if they made the effort to get there, maybe they should just stay there later.” As of Monday, TSA said, 743 of its employees had “active” cases of the coronavirus. Many of the infections were contracted not when the employee was at work but when they were at home, according to Farbstein. “We’re seeing a spike in cases where we’re seeing a spike in the community,” she said. “Anecdotally, we’ve heard that people who are getting covid are getting it while they’re not at work.” Farbstein said the TSA is stressing to its employees that they should follow the guidelines of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and take the same precautions at work as they do at home — wash hands, wear a mask, avoid crowds and maintain social distance. Larger airports, including in Los Angeles, Miami, Dallas, New York, Atlanta and Orlando, have had high numbers of employees with the virus, TSA officials said. Farbstein said the TSA has “taken lots of steps to reduce touch points,” including putting in systems that allow more contactless check-ins and using 3-D technology to verify items — without doing bag searches — when security alarms are triggered at checkpoints.


Brexit is done. What happens to ordinary Brits next week? Not much.

LONDON — So after years of toil and trouble, Britain and the European Union managed to boil up a Brexit deal, which will shape commercial relations for years to come. There are big changes coming, mostly behind the scenes, for bureaucrats, business traders, customs inspectors, port authorities, automakers, farmers, the fishing fleet, university researchers, and maybe for bankers and financial service managers, too. Michael Gove, the top minister in charge of seeing Brexit implemented, told the BBC on Monday, “I’m sure there will be bumpy moments, but we are there to try to do everything we can to smooth the path.” If the chaos at the English Channel ports last week was prologue — tripped by France closing borders because the newly mutated variant of the coronavirus was spreading “out of control” in Britain — then many expect to see some disruption in the cargo links between Britain and the continent. But more than four years after Britain voted to split — and after thousands of anxious, raging, nationalistic, infuriated headlines — what next for the ordinary bloke? The answers may be surprising. Things will happen. But will they be felt? Q: What does Brexit mean, practically, for the average Briton? A: As it appears now, not very much. Q: Really? What happens to “freedom of movement”? A: That is the big one. Freedom of movement is gone. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said “taking back control” meant taking back control of borders and immigration. Europe answered in kind. So starting Jan. 1, Britons will no longer be members of the European Union with all the rights and responsibilities, but members of a “third country.” Britons will no longer be able to freely pack up and move to Europe, as if there were no border, to find a job, rent a home, start a life or retire, without a stack of permissions. Nor will Europeans be able to do the same in Britain. For those who want to relocate and work, there will be visas and paperwork required. Q: What happens to the English holiday tourist just taking a week in sunny Spain? A: Nothing, really. British citizens will be allowed to stay in the E.U. for 90 days in any 180-day period without a visa. The same will go for E.U. citizens visiting Britain. By the way, the same rules apply to a U.S. citizen traveling to Britain or Europe.


Holiday surge in D.C. area virus cases feared as vaccine plans move forward

package of new legislative proposals for the General Assembly to consider that they hope will ease the upcoming wave of evictions expected when a federal moratorium expires in January. The bills include a ban on late fees during the pandemic, higher court filing fees for evictions and funding for landlords in exchange for them forgiving rent debts. “I sincerely ask legislators in the General Assembly to pass this act,” said Jeffrey Gray Gilliam, a tenant in Montgomery County who was laid off from his job as a foreman earlier this year. “This can’t wait any longer.” Maryland Attorney General Brian E. Frosh (D) said his office is backing an effort to increase the fees that landlords have to pay before filing an eviction. Maryland currently has one of the lowest fees in the country, which has led to “serial eviction cases,” Frosh said. “It’s a plague,” he added. “We need to help Marylanders keep things together.” Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott (D) said Monday that the city has seen the number of new coronavirus cases slow in recent weeks but warned Baltimore is “nowhere near out of the woods” and urged restraint amid the holidays. Scott asked residents not to throw large parties during New Year’s and to adhere to the requirement that no more than 10 people gather indoors. “Now is not the time to throw a big party or celebration,” Scott said at a news conference. Health officer Letitia Dzirasa said the city’s seven-day average case count of 208 represents a 23 percent decrease from four weeks ago, but is still higher than before the surge that began in November. The test positivity rate in the city decreased about 2 percent to 5.8 percent, she said, and hospital utilization rates are trending in the right direction. “These are encouraging numbers, but they are nothing to celebrate,” Scott said. In nearby Anne Arundel County, restaurants retained the right to offer indoor dining — at least for another day. Judges in Baltimore City, and Montgomery and Prince George’s counties, have denied requests from restaurants to shoot down local bans on indoor dining, but that question is still up in the air in Anne Arundel, where proceedings on a lawsuit are underway. After hours of testimony Monday, Anne Arundel Circuit Court Judge William Mulford said the hearing would continue Tuesday, adding that restaurants are allowed to serve patrons indoors during that time.


A Tesla Model S erupted ‘like a flamethrower.’ It renewed old safety concerns about the trailblazing sedans.

Robert Watson, 41, of Frisco witnessed black smoke and called 911. One of Watson’s sons started recording the fire, which was growing in intensity. “It looked like the back of a jet engine with the afterburner on coming out of that front passenger wheel,” recalled Watson, who works for a technology company. The firefighters had the blaze under control in about 10 minutes, witnesses recalled. But there was another issue. As he stood on the side of the road, Ahmad said, a firefighter asked how to get inside the cabin as they worked to douse the flames. Ahmad thought to try the key fob but knew it might be futile. The Model S uses retractable door handles that are electronically controlled, popping out when they detect a nearby fob. The firefighter “looked at me and he said, ‘You’re lucky you got out when you did because you could have gotten stuck in there,’ ” Ahmad said. It raised similar concerns to the Florida crash involving Awan. Keith Gall, battalion chief of administrative services for the Frisco Fire Department, told The Washington Post the fire involving Ahmad’s Tesla was deemed “unintentional,” though he did not elaborate. The car was destroyed, Ahmad said, and is sitting in an insurance lot. Now he is awaiting answers on the potential cause, though he said Tesla had not initially proved eager to investigate the fire. “I am assuming the battery exploded and caused the fire, but would like to request Tesla please look into this,” he wrote Nov. 25 to a Tesla service center representative, who later responded they were glad he was safe and would look into the matter. Since then, Tesla has repeatedly cited insurance hurdles. Once Ahmad files a claim, the parties will agree to jointly inspect the car, one Tesla representative told him. “Until this is done, there is no time frame,” the Tesla rep told him in an email shared with The Post. A month after Ahmad’s email to Tesla, the company and his insurance agency agreed to jointly inspect the car, Ahmad said. Ahmad said he wants to determine the root cause of the problem so this doesn’t happen to someone else. Ahmad fears for others who have the same model vehicle and even for his parents, whom he convinced to get a Tesla Model X SUV. “I don’t want anybody else to experience something this scary,” he said.


South Africa imposes strict new rules as it surpasses 1 million covid-19 cases

CAPE TOWN, South Africa — In an emotional address Monday night, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa reintroduced bans on public gatherings and alcohol sales, made mask-wearing required in public and lengthened a curfew as a second wave of coronavirus cases sweeps Africa's worst-hit country at "an alarming and unprecedented rate." Earlier this month, South African scientists discovered a new variant of the coronavirus, similar to one found in Britain. Ramaphosa said it was “well established” throughout the country at this point. Testing positivity rates have soared above 30 percent nationwide, up from just 5 percent two weeks ago. Cases of the South African variant have also been found in Britain, Finland and Switzerland, but Ramaphosa did not close the country’s borders as he had during its first wave. Only a handful of countries have banned travel from South Africa. South Africa’s health ministry pushed back against assertions that its new variant is more dangerous than Britain’s, saying there was “no evidence” to support that claim. On Sunday, South Africa passed 1 million coronavirus cases. More than 50,000 cases have been recorded since Christmas Eve — just under one case per 1,000 people nationwide. “I beg you all” to follow the new measures, Ramaphosa said toward the end of his address, with tears in his eyes. He also asked South Africans to join him in lighting a candle at midnight on New Year’s Eve in remembrance of the more than 26,000 who have died of covid-19. South Africa’s second wave will probably grow a great deal in the coming days. In some hot spots such as Cape Town, testing positivity rates have approached 50 percent. Researchers said the new variant is driving the surge. “We have very strong reason to believe that this variant is much more transmissible,” said Tulio de Oliveira, director of the KwaZulu-Natal Research Innovation and Sequencing Platform, which coordinates analysis of genetic samples of the virus. “This variant has grown very fast, which means it has a high transmission, because it is dominating most of the infections. It is very unusual.” Ramaphosa identified most of South Africa’s major cities as hot spots, including Johannesburg, Pretoria, Cape Town, Durban, Port Elizabeth and Polokwane. In the province of Eastern Cape, he said, the number of hospitalizations and in-hospital deaths had now surpassed the worst of the first wave, and most places in South Africa had yet to see the


People with coronavirus are still getting on planes. No one knows how many.

United and Delta will require passengers traveling from the United Kingdom to the United States to present proof of a negative coronavirus test, the airlines announced on Thursday, following news of a fast-spreading variant in the United Kingdom. Neither temperature checks nor testing, of course, is perfect. Travelers could be asymptomatic or too recently infected to run a temperature. And someone could be infected but still test negative. Freedman notes that airline staff are supposed to refuse boarding to people who are displaying symptoms of covid-19, but “obviously they have no medical training, and this is hard to do in the rush of boarding.” Joshua Barocas, an epidemiologist at the Boston University School of Medicine, says that even if flight staff were vigilant about removing sick passengers, some would get through. “Individuals can be pre-symptomatic or entirely asymptomatic,” he said. “In both cases those individuals are still infectious, and the symptom screening tools are completely ineffective.” Barocas also says rising passenger volumes make clear that many people either still need to or are desperate to travel during the pandemic — and therefore could inaccurately self-report their health status. “In some cases, this is related to business, and in others it is simply because they have taken a calculated risk and the need to see friends and family outweighs the covid risk,” he says. “In all of these cases, it is clear that [their] self-reporting may not be effective.” Freedman says stringent mask-wearing on flights is an important tool because of this possibility, and that face coverings greatly reduce the risk of transmission if infected passengers are on board. Preflight testing can also help, he says, but it will not keep all infectious people off a plane, “especially when COVID is as rampant as [it is] now.” It’s impossible to say how many infectious people have taken flights, in part because those travelers may not have known they were sick. The CDC said in September that it had investigated 1,600 cases of people who flew while they were at risk of spreading the virus and identified almost 11,000 people who could have been exposed on those flights. Updated numbers were not available Wednesday, but the agency said earlier in the year that it had not been able to confirm a case of transmission on a plane. Katherine Estep, a spokeswoman for the industry group Airlines for America, said Wednesday that she


China beat back covid-19 in 2020. Then it really flexed its muscles at home and abroad.

China’s crackdown on Hong Kong’s freedoms also led the United States to impose sanctions against Chinese officials and spurred Britain to open its doors to Hong Kongers seeking refuge. China’s campaign against Muslim Uighurs intensified in 2020. Bolstered by the state’s high-tech surveillance powers, China expanded its detention camps and forced labor in the western Xinjiang region, and increased repression of other ethnic groups, including in Inner Mongolia. Amid growing alarm about the abuses, Western attention is focusing on forced labor in supply chains emanating from China. Beijing has in turn faced increasing resistance in Europe, whose leaders were long regarded by some China watchers as too passive about the Communist Party’s geopolitical intentions. At the same time, Muslim nations — top recipients of Chinese loans and coronavirus vaccine deals — have remained largely silent about the Uighurs’ treatment. As both the first country hit by the coronavirus and one of the earliest to bring it under control, China’s economy began to recover sooner than other major countries. Nationalistic state media trumpeted the economic revival and the successful virus fight as evidence of the superiority of China’s authoritarian system vs. the democratic West. But economic realities remain far less rosy. China’s vital export markets remain depressed, while growing bond defaults among state-owned enterprises point to signs of financial stress and looming trouble ahead. China is trying to address these risks by dialing back on state-backed industrial stimulus and refocusing the economy under a “dual circulation” strategy centered on domestic demand and self-sufficiency — but neither can be achieved quickly. In 2021, China will also have to contend with the new Biden administration and its own pledge to retool China-U.S. economic relations. A deadly clash in June between Chinese and Indian forces in the Himalayas escalated tensions between China and India. The deepening friction between the two regional powers led India to draw closer to the United States, as well as to its regional allies Japan and Australia through an emerging bloc known as the Quad. India additionally blocked dozens of Chinese-owned apps, including TikTok, inflicting hefty losses on China’s tech sector. The dicey India-China relationship remains poised for further problems in 2021. In 2020 Xi and other Communist Party leaders stepped up threats against Taiwan with a sharp rise in military incursions into Taiwanese airspace and increasingly menacing language about seizing control of the democratic island. China also reinforced its


The top wellness topics of 2020 — coronavirus and fitness

The biggest wellness story of the year, of course was the biggest news story of the year: the coronavirus pandemic. While almost all of our most-read articles were related to it, readers also displayed a strong interest in fitness. Here are the topics of our Top 20 stories (in some cases, there was more than one article on a topic — masks, for example). 1. Masks and covid-19 The face mask is the defining item of 2020. Early in the pandemic, when there was a shortage of N95 and surgical masks, articles about how to create homemade cloth masks, how to care for masks, including N95 masks that had to be reused, and whether it was advisable to use gaiters as masks were highly read and debated. We collected the best and most recent advice in an FAQ in late September, which is being kept updated. The article about how to treat maskne is also still relevant. 2. Mental health and covid-19 The global pandemic and the conditions it created has had almost as much of an impact on our mental health as on our physical health. Readers sought out stories to help them deal with anxiety (linked above), “toxic positivity,” seasonal depression, and the pressure to be productive. They also welcomed tips for building emotional resilience. 3. Whether to disinfect surfaces — and how to do so and how often — was a huge topic of conversation in the early months of the pandemic. But there’s no need to continue to quarantine mail or wipe down every item that enters the house, experts say. Research has shown that the risk of transmission from surfaces and objects is low, and that it’s best to focus on hand-washing, mask-wearing and social distancing. 4. Coronavirus symptoms Deciding whether a cough or sneeze was a sign of the flu, covid-19 or allergies was at the top of readers’ minds this year. Early in the pandemic, our story about the difference between symptoms of the coronavirus and those of spring allergies (above), was highly read. More recent advice that covers the flu, can be found here. 5. Mouthwash and covid-19 Some research suggests that covid patients can reduce the possibility that they will spread the disease by using oral antiseptic rinses. Experts greeted the results with “cautious optimism,” but noted that the lab studies might not be replicated in real-world situations and that no


America isn’t ‘hopelessly divided.’ It only looks that way because of our Constitution.

more than half a million votes nationally. One “solution” to the deep division problem, then, would be to junk the electoral college. A similar lack of majority rule gives Republicans control of the Senate, despite having support from a minority of the population. The disproportionate power of lightly populated states turns significant majority rule by Democrats into persistent minority rule by Republicans. Gerrymandering offers many Republicans a similar artificial advantage in their House seats. In other words, we have an enduring and significant majority in favor of Democrats nationally, but our constitutional system consistently hands that advantage over to a Republican Party that is increasingly radical, irrational and racist. (As The Post’s Dan Balz writes, “For Trump supporters, cultural preservation of an America long dominated by a White, Christian majority remains a cornerstone of their beliefs.” That is the definition of white supremacy.) We could get rid of the electoral college by constitutional amendment or through the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (which would instruct each state’s electors to cast their votes for the national popular vote winner). But there is an alternative answer, which is also a function of our constitutional system. One positive aspect of the Trump era is that it made many Democrats understand the value of federalism. State lawmakers and election officials prevented a coup by the Trump campaign. State attorneys general, over the course of 138 cases, also blocked Trump on an array of issues. As NBC News reported, this includes: “the ‘travel ban’; the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA; family separations at the U.S.-Mexico border; the ‘national emergency’ declaration to build the border wall; international student visas; student loan protections; clean water rules; transgender health care protections; automobile emissions; a citizenship question on the 2020 census; U.S. Postal Service operations; and Obamacare.” Federalism is not an unalloyed benefit to progressives, as we saw when states banned same-sex marriage, access to abortion and common sense precautions to prevent the spread of covid-19. But, if you combine the “laboratories of democracy” with local activism (which prevailed in one state after another on same-sex marriage) and a Democratic president’s persuasion, you might make real progress on everything from police reform to health care to education. The other benefit of pushing decision-making down to the states is that state governments are less polarized and more functional than the federal government. Democratic governors work with Republican


$2,000 vs. $600 stimulus payments isn’t the real issue

There are plenty of reasons to be unhappy with the covid-19 stimulus compromise President Trump signed on Sunday. Its shortcomings, however, are not the specific provisions that populists on both the left and right are complaining about. The biggest problem with the U.S. fiscal response so far is not the overall amount of aid nor the generosity of our nearly universal stimulus checks; it’s how inefficiently many of those dollars have been allocated. And expanding direct stimulus payments, as the House voted to do Monday, would only make this problem worse. Right-leaning critics have mostly griped about foreign aid measures, with the suggestion that Democratic globalists are helping foreigners at the expense of struggling Americans. “When your country’s COVID-19 relief bill includes $10 million in ‘gender programs’ for Pakistan, you know Congress is broken,” tweeted Rep.-elect Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.). This is, at best, misleading. The foreign aid measures had been drafted separately, as part of the annual budget bills that underwent separate legislative processes. And similar foreign aid provisions were in Trump’s own fiscal 2021 budget request. Ultimately, the omnibus spending bill and covid-relief provisions were bundled into a single vote because both faced must-pass deadlines around Christmas. Demagogues, including Trump, exploited this to mislead the public about which measures were intended for what purpose. They insinuated that Congress should have spent these foreign aid funds on the allegedly more righteous strategy of bigger stimulus payments for Americans. The populist left agrees. They have demanded that the new law’s $600 payments be increased to $2,000. Some advocates characterize the law as providing only this stimulus, with ubiquitous social media memes contrasting the supposedly stingy U.S. stimulus payments with generous aid in other developed nations. But these takes ignore the other hundreds of billions of dollars in critical aid that Congress has disbursed, including to small businesses and the unemployed. With this newly enacted relief package, the United States has spent the equivalent of about 18 percent of gross domestic product in fiscal relief. This places us ahead of Canada, Australia, France and other developed nations, and slightly behind Germany, Finland and a few others. Our issue is less how much the government is spending than how it is directing this aid. The economic crisis acutely affects a minority of Americans. These are predominantly service workers whose hours have been cut or jobs eliminated because of the pandemic. Tens of millions


Climate News quiz: Zero waste and clam gardens

All right: Time to see if you’ve been paying attention to Washington Post coverage of the people, organizations and governments trying to mitigate climate change, found on our Climate Solutions page. If you have, this quiz should be an easy A. Answer: B. Answer: C. Answer: D Answer: B. Answer: D. Answer: B. Answer: B. Answer: D. Answer: D. Answer: C. 0 to 3 questions correct Climate novice: You still have a lot to learn about climate change. But that’s okay: We’ve got you covered. Have a question? Ask us here. 4 to 7 questions correct Climate curious: Hey, not bad! You know a thing or two about climate change. But there’s still more to learn, and we’ve got you covered. Have a question? Ask us here. 8 to 10 questions correct Climate expert: Well done! You’re super climate-literate. You probably already know that one of the most important things you can do as an individual to combat climate change is to spread the word. Go ahead: Brag a little, share this quiz with your friends, and find out who knows the most about climate change.


Coronavirus updates: Air travel hits pandemic high amid winter holidays

U.S. air travel hit its highest peak of the pandemic over the weekend, as Americans crisscrossed the country for the holidays despite a dramatic surge in cases and hospitalizations. The Transportation Security Administration screened a record 1,284,599 passengers on Sunday, spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein said. It was also the sixth time in the past 10 days that the daily volume exceeded 1 million — a milestone that had become somewhat of a rarity since March, when the coronavirus began upending travel. With more than 100,000 people hospitalized, the nation’s top infectious-disease expert, Anthony S. Fauci, told CNN he feared widespread holiday travel and gatherings could cause a “surge upon a surge.” As a year like no other draws to a close, the United States finds itself experiencing dueling realities: Vaccinations are underway, offering hope of an end to the pandemic, but infections, hospitalizations and deaths have reached record numbers. Nearly 16 million first doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines are scheduled for distribution over the next week, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The supply will cover almost 5 percent of the country and is enough for about three-quarters of the medical workers and nursing home residents and staff, according to Washington Post analysis. At the same time, around 200,000 new coronavirus cases have been reported daily in recent weeks, with a record high of 252,431 on Dec. 17. The nation’s overall caseload surpassed 19 million on Sunday. Hospitalizations have exceeded 100,000 since the start of December and hit a peak of 119,000 on Dec. 23. Deaths are averaging more than 2,000 per day; the deadliest day was Dec. 17, with 3,406 fatalities reported. Amid such a surge, Fauci said he believes the worst of the pandemic is still ahead, especially following the winter holiday season. He said an increase in cases could overwhelm already stressed health-care systems. “If you put more pressure on the system by what might be a post-seasonal surge because of the traveling and the likely congregating of people for the good, warm purposes of being together for the holidays — it’s very tough for people to not do that,” Fauci said. He added that he was concerned it “might actually get worse,” in the next few weeks, echoing comments from President-elect Joe Biden, who said last week that “our darkest days in the battle against covid are ahead of us, not behind


Flying with covid-19 isn’t just reckless — it’s potentially deadly, doctors say

Travelers boarding a flight during the pandemic might consider it unlikely that anyone sick with the coronavirus would make it onboard. But the reality is that travelers are boarding planes with covid-19, putting their fellow passengers at risk of contracting the illness. Beyond the danger those infected passengers are creating to the people around them, they also pose a sizable risk to themselves when they board their planes. Doctors say that flying is a high-risk activity for coronavirus-positive individuals because of low air pressure in the cabin and that multiple passengers have now died because of it. When a man infected with the coronavirus died of acute respiratory failure on a United Airlines flight from Orlando to Los Angeles on Dec. 14, he was not the first individual to die of covid-19 on a plane. In July, a Texas woman died of the disease on a Spirit Airlines flight that was diverted when she was found to be unresponsive and not breathing. In both cases, the passengers were given CPR on the plane but could not be revived. The likely medical problem in both these instances, doctors say, is that low air pressure — which is standard in plane cabins — creates dangerously low blood-oxygen levels in people with respiratory conditions. Covid-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, is a respiratory disease that often attacks the lungs and heart. Nicholas Hill, pulmonary chief at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, says there is “no question” that the air condition in plane cabins poses a risk to passengers with covid-19 and that flying was probably factor in the deaths of the passengers infected with the virus. “If you get on a plane with covid, or anything else respiratory-related, you are going to be at a considerably higher risk when you go to altitude,” Hill says. “This is not something unique to covid; it’s true of anybody that’s got an acute or respiratory condition. This change in oxygen from sea level can provoke crises in the air.” Plane cabins are pressurized so passengers are able to breathe at altitudes over 30,000 feet, but the air pressure is still about 25 percent lower in a plane cabin than it is at sea level. Flying has long given respiratory-troubled patients medical crises in the air. Covid-19 is no different. Flying with it can impact blood oxygen levels to a degree that requires immediate medical attention.


— creates dangerously low blood-oxygen levels in people with respiratory conditions. Covid-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, is a respiratory disease that often attacks the lungs and heart. Nicholas Hill, pulmonary chief at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, says there is “no question” that the air condition in plane cabins poses a risk to passengers with covid-19 and that flying was probably factor in the deaths of the passengers infected with the virus. “If you get on a plane with covid, or anything else respiratory-related, you are going to be at a considerably higher risk when you go to altitude,” Hill says. “This is not something unique to covid; it’s true of anybody that’s got an acute or respiratory condition. This change in oxygen from sea level can provoke crises in the air.” Plane cabins are pressurized so passengers are able to breathe at altitudes over 30,000 feet, but the air pressure is still about 25 percent lower in a plane cabin than it is at sea level. Flying has long given respiratory-troubled patients medical crises in the air. Covid-19 is no different. Flying with it can impact blood oxygen levels to a degree that requires immediate medical attention. David Freedman, an epidemiologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, says covid-infected patients are at the same risk as people with non-coronavirus lung and heart conditions that impact their breathing. Airlines are prepared for those kinds of respiratory emergencies with supplemental oxygen onboard. “The oxygen concentration [on planes] is much lower than on the ground, and all patients with severe lung or heart disease know this and know that they will need supplemental oxygen on board even if they don’t require it normally,” Freedman says. “All planes do carry an oxygen tank on board for emergencies like this.” Delta Air Lines says that respiratory emergencies make up about 10 percent of in-flight medical events and that all aircraft are equipped with supplemental oxygen. All airline flight attendants receive annual training in CPR, Taylor Garland, a spokesperson for the Association of Flight Attendants labor union, told The Washington Post in an email. Flight crew are also in close contact with medical services on the ground that can meet the aircraft in the event of an emergency landing. But those efforts all fell short in the July and December deaths. Hill says passengers do not necessarily need to be experiencing shortness


Investigators hunt for a motive in blast that shook Nashville

Investigators on Monday were hunting for a motive behind the Christmas morning blast that shook downtown Nashville, taking the life of the bomber and leaving behind a tangle of debris and questions. The fiery boom, which was foreshadowed by a countdown clock warning of the explosion to come, did extensive damage to nearby shops, severed communications in multiple states and injured three people. Authorities say it also incinerated the bomber, identified as 63-year-old Anthony Quinn Warner, a tech worker and recluse who did not appear to have left behind any explanation for his actions. Law enforcement officials acknowledged Monday that they may never know for sure what motivated him. “We hope to get an answer. Sometimes it’s just not possible,” said Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Director David Rausch. “The best way to find motive is to talk to the individual. We will not be able to do that in this case.” But even without an interview, there have been some early clues: Investigators are pursuing the possibility that distrust of 5G technology — and phone service in general — played a role in his thinking. Warner’s explosives-packed recreational vehicle was parked near an AT&T communications hub when it detonated. Conspiracy theories about 5G technology have proliferated online this year, with people trading unfounded claims that the relatively new system for mobile communication is also spreading the novel coronavirus. But authorities said they have also gathered evidence suggesting Warner’s interest in other unusual subjects, according to two people familiar with the investigation. They cautioned that someone who commits such an irrational act may not have a rational reason for doing so, and emphasized that the inquiry is just getting started. “We’re at the beginning stages of determining the motive,” said FBI Special Agent Jason Pack. “It could be weeks before we have a comprehensive picture.” Agents from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were among the investigators in hard hats on Monday combing through debris at the blast site. Authorities said evidence had been sent to Quantico, Va., and the FBI is analyzing it to determine what substance was used to cause the explosion. The explosion, and Warner’s role in it, stunned neighbors in Antioch, a middle-class suburb of brick, single-family ranches and duplexes where he had lived a quiet life, seemingly disconnected from others. Residents of his street said he seemed obsessed with home security


Nashville bombing is a potent reminder that communications systems remain at risk from attack

recover quickly — is avoiding a single point of failure, they said. “There’s a saying in security circles that if there’s no Internet ‘kill switch’ but you want to kill the Internet, kill the switching stations,” said Paul Rosenzweig, a former senior official in the Department of Homeland Security, referring to facilities that act as a node in a communications network, as the one in Nashville apparently did. Suzanne Spaulding, who previously led the department's efforts to secure critical infrastructure, said she was troubled by the disruption to 911 service in Nashville and surrounding communities. Local officials have given the public alternate phone numbers to call in case of an emergency, an indication that the system that routes all 911 calls to the appropriate local responder may have failed, Spaulding said. For years, federal authorities had been working with state and local governments to ensure the resiliency of the 911 system, particularly in the wake of a terrorist attack or natural disaster. “It’d be nice to think we were in better shape,” Spaulding said. Investigators are still trying to determine whether the alleged bomber, Anthony Quinn Warner, who was killed in the blast, targeted the AT&T facility. It’s not clear if Warner, who had worked as a computer consultant and was interested in technology, according to neighbors, understood that the building played an important role in the region’s communications network. Investigators are pursuing the possibility that distrust of 5G technology and phone service generally played a role in his thinking, but they cautioned they have also gathered evidence suggesting Warner’s interest in other unusual subjects. Without a declaration of his intent, law enforcement agents are trying to piece together an understanding of his thinking from witnesses and other evidence. Regardless of Warner’s motives, his actions have underscored how vulnerable communications infrastructure remains nearly two decades after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks focused the attention of government officials at all levels on protecting those systems and avoiding single points of failure. “These systems are fragile for a variety of reasons,” said Juliette Kayyem, a former senior DHS official who was involved in responses to various disasters, including the Deepwater Horizon oil spill off the Gulf Coast in 2010. For starters, facilities like the AT&T building on Second Avenue are exposed and make for easier targets, she said. Newer communications systems are often built atop older equipment, rather than scrapping everything and


Washington region records most daily virus deaths since start of the pandemic

The greater Washington region on Tuesday reported the highest number of confirmed coronavirus-related deaths in a single day since the start of the pandemic. Maryland, Virginia and D.C. reported 126 new fatalities, breaking the previous single-day record of 124 deaths on Dec. 15. The District reported four fatalities, Maryland reported 63 and Virginia reported 59 — that state’s second-highest daily total. Virginia Department of Health spokeswoman Tammie Smith said the state’s count was partially due to an increase in data entry Monday after offices were closed for the holidays. Virginia’s single-day high of 96 fatalities on Sept. 15 also was the result of a reporting backlog. The seven-day average number of new fatalities in the region stood at 76 on Tuesday. That’s down slightly from a week ago, but about four times higher than in early November. As caseloads hover at an elevated level, efforts continued across the region Tuesday to distribute vaccines to members of priority groups. Montgomery County received 4,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine from the state of Maryland that it will administer to health-care workers and first responders this week, officials said. The county is opening a vaccine clinic Wednesday at the White Oak Recreation Center, where officials hope to vaccinate 1,000 health-care workers, Health Officer Travis Gayles said. He said there is no established date for when the county will begin vaccinating those in the second phase of the highest-priority groups, but Gayles urged residents to be patient. “We’re moving as quickly as possible,” he said, adding that Montgomery expects to receive several thousand more doses from the state next week. New daily infections in Montgomery have decreased slightly over the past two weeks, with the seven-day average dropping from a high of 472 in mid-December to fewer than 400 on Tuesday. But officials warned against complacency. “It’s lower than it’s been, but not low,” said County Executive Marc Elrich (D). The county’s test positivity rate, he noted, is above 7 percent, nearly double what it was over the summer. Gayles said recent air travel in the region and nationwide has been concerning. The “unknown factor,” he said, is how people are behaving during and after they travel. If they adhered strictly to mask-wearing and physical distancing, for example, they might not contribute to community transmission in January. Maryland, Virginia and D.C. reported 6,193 new infections Tuesday. The seven-day average number of new cases has


2020 was the year of ‘traveling from home.’ These were our 10 favorite ways.

a toilet seat or washing machine will have to do. Social media users who missed flying got creative trying to replicate the experience and shared their efforts with the world. One man played a video of a plane landing through his washing machine, which was outfitted like an interior cabin. A woman gazing at the ocean out her plane window was actually looking at a YouTube video through a toilet seat. And another woman heading to the airport gate with her carry-on bag was, in reality, on a treadmill. Read more here. When she was a teenager, By The Way reporter Natalie Compton started a travel tradition of collecting wine (bought by her parents to save for when she was of legal drinking age) wherever they went. She thought she would open the bottles on special occasions, like wedding anniversaries or milestone birthdays, but the right opportunities never came around. Single and isolated, she decided the pandemic was the perfect occasion to crack open the improperly stored collection to relive her old travel experiences. Results were mixed. Read more here. Art lovers on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram rose to the Getty Museum’s challenge for people to re-create works of art from home. This was April, so we were all at home with pent-up energy to spare, meaning people really rose to the occasion. They used their kids, pets, cans of tuna, toilet paper and bonsai trees, among other props, to mimic famed artwork, and we loved scrolling through the results. Read more here. Chefs around the world had to pivot when coronavirus shutdowns meant fewer customers coming to their restaurants and cooking classes. Some, like Graciela Montaño in Mexico City, turned to Airbnb Experiences to share their lessons to students near and far over the Internet. Online experiences opened up opportunities for people to learn to cook dishes from their favorite travel destinations, interact with Olympians and more. Read more here. Oktoberfest, the annual two-week Bavarian folk festival that draws visitors from around the world, was canceled amid mounting global coronavirus cases in April. It was the first time since World War II that the festivities did not go on, but revelers still took to their backyards, living rooms and laptops to “prost” their favorite fall beers and eat traditional German foods. U.S.-based breweries, farms and restaurants offered pretzel kits, recipes, beer-tasting live streams and more for grounded travelers to


Covid-19 ‘not necessarily the big one,’ WHO warns

The coronavirus pandemic might not be the “big one” that experts have long feared, World Health Organization emergencies chief Mike Ryan warned at the global health agency’s last virtual media briefing of the year. Since the first reports of the coronavirus began circulating nearly a year ago, the WHO has repeatedly warned that the world must prepare for even deadlier pandemics in the future. “This pandemic has been very severe,” he said Monday. “It has affected every corner of this planet. But this is not necessarily the big one.” The coronavirus, he said, should serve as a “wake-up call.” “These threats will continue,” he said. “One thing we need to take from this pandemic, with all of the tragedy and loss, is we need to get our act together.” After the coronavirus emerged in China late last year, 2020 is coming to an end amid the rollout of new coronavirus vaccines. But case numbers are rising in some places, and public health experts are warning about a highly transmissible variant of the virus first detected in Britain in September and since documented in more than 20 countries. While the variant does not appear to be more deadly or vaccine resistant, it does transmit faster and is probably fueling outbreaks from England to South Africa. On Tuesday, German health officials said they detected a case of the British variant dating back as early as November. The elderly covid-19 patient ultimately died of the virus. The patient’s daughter had returned from Britain in mid-November, and the man’s wife was also infected with covid-19 but survived, Agence France-Presse reported. Germany is one of several countries to temporarily bar travelers from Britain to prevent the variant’s spread. Much of England is under a strict lockdown. India on Tuesday confirmed its first cases of the U.K. variant after finding it in six people who had recently arrived from Britain. Indian Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri told reporters Tuesday that the country was likely to issue a temporary ban on flights from Britain as a result. Countries across Europe, Asia and the Middle East have documented cases of the fast-spreading form of the virus. Canada on Saturday was the first to report it in North America. It is probably already circulating undetected in the United States, according to public health experts. The United States has the world’s highest count of coronavirus infections and fatalities. As


places, and public health experts are warning about a highly transmissible variant of the virus first detected in Britain in September and since documented in more than 20 countries. While the variant does not appear to be more deadly or vaccine resistant, it does transmit faster and is probably fueling outbreaks from England to South Africa. On Tuesday, German health officials said they detected a case of the British variant dating back as early as November. The elderly covid-19 patient ultimately died of the virus. The patient’s daughter had returned from Britain in mid-November, and the man’s wife was also infected with covid-19 but survived, Agence France-Presse reported. Germany is one of several countries to temporarily bar travelers from Britain to prevent the variant’s spread. Much of England is under a strict lockdown. India on Tuesday confirmed its first cases of the U.K. variant after finding it in six people who had recently arrived from Britain. Indian Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri told reporters Tuesday that the country was likely to issue a temporary ban on flights from Britain as a result. Countries across Europe, Asia and the Middle East have documented cases of the fast-spreading form of the virus. Canada on Saturday was the first to report it in North America. It is probably already circulating undetected in the United States, according to public health experts. The United States has the world’s highest count of coronavirus infections and fatalities. As the number of dead continues to rise, Russia on Tuesday said that 80 percent of the excess deaths it documented in 2020 were probably linked to the coronavirus, a recount that would more than triple the country’s official figure. Russia’s government officially reported more than 55,800 deaths from covid-19, but including the new data from excess deaths would raise the toll to more than 186,000 dead, according to the BBC. Russia’s statistics service, Rosstat, has documented 116,030 coronavirus-related deaths. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Tatiana Golikova said Tuesday that 13.8 percent more people had died in the first 11 months of 2020 than in 2019, according to the BBC. The mass rollout of vaccines offers hope that the virus could be brought under control, at least in some parts of the world, in the months ahead. But experts say the coronavirus will be around for a long time, and the next pandemic is a question of when, not if.


In 2021, will sports be fun again?

At the end of every show, Dan Patrick was exhausted. For four decades, Patrick has been talking about sports, analyzing their games and characters in some fashion on television and radio. But sports talk had never been like this. Health, safety and science would fill one segment, followed by discussions about protests and social justice after the commercial break. “I don’t know that I’ve ever been that tired,” said Patrick, host of an eponymous nationwide radio program. “It was the mental part. You want to get it right; you want to be fair; you want to be smart. It just felt like there was broken glass all around. And it wasn’t a matter of if you’re going to step on it but how deep is the cut going to be.” The year of broken glass and a shattered reality is finally coming to a close. As the final page from the 2020 calendar is eagerly balled up and tossed into the fire, it’s only natural to look ahead. A new year ushers in questions with hope, promise and uncertainty. After an unprecedented period of pain and fear, of postponements and cancellations, of hard truths and harder discussions, will sports be fun again — will they serve as the harmless distraction and social balm that once sustained so many? Or has too much changed — not just the games themselves but those who play and watch them? “I hope once we get into 2021, we sort of go: ‘Wow, we survived. Now what did we learn from 2020, and how does that make us better in 2021?’ ” Patrick said. “I hope we don’t go, ‘Okay, now let’s go back to normal.’ That’s not happening. The question is: Now it’s on us; how do we evolve?” In the past, sports have served as a welcome distraction through pain or trauma. But no game could blot out what was unfolding in 2020. It all blended together, the planet’s problems disrupting the sports world, along with everything else. The virus attacked athletes the same as everyone else. The social unrest that shook cities similarly rattled the sports landscape. Even when the games returned, television ratings were down almost across the board. Sports hadn’t been able to offer a respite for everyone. “It’s like watching somebody smoke for two hours on TV. Do you feel good about that?” said Jane McManus, director of Marist’s


Air travel hits pandemic record amid surging infections and hospitalizations

Despite weeks of increases in coronavirus cases and hospitalizations, U.S. air travel hit a pandemic record this weekend as Americans crisscrossed the country for the holidays — a sign, some public health experts warn, that yet another surge could be on the horizon. The Transportation Security Administration said Monday that it had screened 1,284,599 passengers Sunday. Travel is down 55 to 65 percent compared with before the coronavirus pandemic, but Sunday marked the highest number of travelers since mid-March and the sixth time in 10 days the daily volume exceeded 1 million. With more than 110,000 people hospitalized with covid-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN he feared the peril that could stem from widespread holiday travel and gatherings. “We very well might see a post-seasonal — in the sense of Christmas-New Year’s — surge, and as I’ve described it, a surge upon a surge,” he said Sunday. As a year like no other draws to a close, the United States finds itself experiencing dueling realities: Vaccinations are underway, offering hope of an end to the pandemic, yet infections, hospitalizations and deaths have reached record levels that could be exacerbated by holiday celebrations. Nearly 16 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines are scheduled for distribution over the next week, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The supply will cover almost 5 percent of the country and represents enough first doses for about three-quarters of the medical workers and nursing home residents and staff, according to a Washington Post analysis. At the same time, about 200,000 new coronavirus cases have been reported daily in recent weeks, with a record high of 252,431 on Dec. 17. The nation’s overall caseload surpassed 19 million Sunday, even as the holidays were expected to cause a lag in reporting. Hospitalizations have exceeded 100,000 since the start of December and hit a peak of 119,000 on Dec. 23. Deaths are averaging more than 2,000 a day, with the most ever reported — 3,406 fatalities — on Dec. 17. Fauci said he believes the worst of the pandemic lies ahead, especially following the winter holiday season. He said an increase in cases could overwhelm already stressed health-care systems. “If you put more pressure on the system by what might be a post-seasonal surge because of the traveling


Biden sounds like he has made a choice on China

when facing international challengers. The current administration, as Biden puts it, created an “enormous vacuum” by receding from the world stage and believing that the president could win over adversaries with his peculiar brand of personal diplomacy, which vacillated between fawning and frenetic bombast. Biden offers a clear-eyed view of our big-power adversaries. However, when coupled with rational analysis as to how we maximize our leverage, he might just succeed where the Trump administration failed. Wright made another sage observation: “Biden should use competition with China as a bridge to Senate Republicans.” Since many Republicans claim to be tough on China, he should seek their buy-in and define the contours of what a tough-on-China policy looks like. Biden’s approach, Wright suggested, should include enlisting Republicans to support when it comes to “pending legislation on investments in the semiconductor industry and 5G infrastructure, appointing assistant secretaries for Asia at the State Department and the Pentagon who can easily win bipartisan support, and showing that he is serious about using the Treasury and Commerce Departments to compete with China.” A robust response to China, Biden can explain to Republicans, includes some items already on his domestic agenda items: “targeted infrastructure investments, including clean technology; an industrial policy to compete with China on 5G, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence; a limited and strategic decoupling from China in certain areas; and bolstering the resilience of the U.S. economy to external shocks, which would include making supply chains more secure,” as Wright says. This approach to China may be a point of bipartisan agreement, despite Republicans’ campaign hysteria that Biden is somehow weak on China. If Biden and his team can find domestic investments that serve to improve our international position in relation to China, even right-wing Republicans might be hard-pressed to stiff him. The Biden administration’s first opportunity to sketch out his approach to China will come when his national security nominees appear for their Senate confirmation hearings. They would do well to use that setting to educate the Senate and the country as to their boss’s “reformist” outlook on big-power competition. Watch the latest Opinions video: Read more: The Post’s View: What is China trying to hide about the coronavirus? Marc A. Thiessen: The election is over. Can we finally blame China for the pandemic? The Post’s View: Zoom is complicit in Chinese repression Henry Olsen: Joe Biden is going to need a


Why the Nashville bomber warned people to evacuate

Early on Christmas morning, a man drove a recreational vehicle into downtown Nashville and detonated a giant explosive, killing himself and destroying portions of the town center. After parking the RV but before detonating the device, the man whom investigators have identified as Anthony Q. Warner set off an exterior sound system that blared a repetitive audio message to residents, shop owners and passersby. An automated voice warned: “This area must be evacuated now. If you can hear this message, evacuate now.” The audio loop was followed by a 15-minute countdown to the blast, which injured three people including a police officer. Warner was the only fatality. Why would an attacker alert Nashville residents and police before setting off an explosive device? If the goal of bombings is to kill and maim, why give up the advantage of surprise? Many terrorists, both lone actors and larger groups, have offered “fair warning” to potential victims. My research on terrorist threats shows that warnings make political sense: Terrorists trying to persuade civilians and garner local support for their cause cannot afford to look mindlessly bloody. They give warnings to allow civilians a way out, making themselves look more reasonable and legitimate in the public eye. Was it terrorism? Although the police investigation is ongoing, the Nashville bombing certainly looks like terrorism — defined in scholarship as politically motivated violence and threats to coerce or alter the perceptions of a broader audience. The attacker detonated a bomb that damaged buildings and destroyed AT&T’s local telephone infrastructure, disrupting phone service, the 911 system and service at Nashville’s airport. Police are reportedly investigating whether the bomber was driven by online conspiracy theories to attack 5G cellular phone companies falsely blamed for the coronavirus pandemic. Warner also died in the attack, making it look like a suicide bombing. (We don’t know yet whether Warner intended to kill himself, as in a true suicide attack, or whether his death was accidental.) Why do terrorists give warnings? Terrorists are not always trying to hurt or kill the largest number of people. Terrorist groups, particularly domestic organizations that hide among a civilian population, often limit their impact on civilians by alerting them before attacks. That was common among 1970s “New Left” groups like the Weather Underground or loosely affiliated individuals such as Sam “Mad Bomber” Melville, who mounted a destructive but nonlethal 1969 dynamite campaign against government buildings and


Nashville business owners say Christmas blast has left their future in doubt

extraterrestrials secretly living on Earth. It is not immediately clear what role such theories might have played in his decision to blow himself up. The people said Warner claimed to at least one person that he had recently been diagnosed with cancer. But officials are trying to determine whether that was true or merely a cover story Warner offered as he put his affairs in order before his death, these people said. Investigators have also looked at whether Warner’s distrust of 5G technology — and phone service in general — played a role in the attack. The blast occurred just outside an AT&T communications hub, and the impact disrupted service in multiple states. Many of the affected businesses, however, were not giants like AT&T. Sandy Lee said she had struggled to find a building owner who would rent to her because “we weren’t a famous name, a famous shop, or a famous musician.” But her two Second Avenue businesses — a fashion boutique called Ensemble and its sister store, Simply The Best $10 Boutique — had thrived. Until Friday, at least. Ensemble was completely gutted in the blast, Lee said. “The other store, the building is still standing, but we have no idea how stable it is,” she said Tuesday. She has not been permitted to visit, so she has had to make her assessments based on photos shared by others. Lee was with her family on Christmas morning when she heard a ping on her phone around 6:45 a.m. A friend texted to say there had been an explosion downtown, near her stores. She ran out to tell her husband, who was smoking a brisket. They were glued to the TV all day, trying to figure out what the impact might be. It wasn’t until the next day that she really realized the extent of the damage. She said her shops have been successful, and she loves the “quirkiness and individuality” of the street. But she worried that it could take years to rebuild, especially if the reconstruction has to meet historic standards. “We love Second Avenue North, but those buildings are all pre-Civil War and they kind of lean on each other,” she said. “Some of them, the structure, it’s literally a shell now. So what happens to the building next to it?” Nashville Metro Council member Freddie O’Connell, whose district includes the bomb site, said the attack


This is what more than 330,000 coronavirus deaths look like

The steady death toll from covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus that arrived in the United States at the beginning of this year, has somehow become background noise. Each day, thousands of Americans succumb to the disease, as many per day of late as died in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Each day, thousands more deaths are recorded. Each is remembered separately; rarely are they remembered collectively. This week, the country passed a remarkable milestone: One out of every 1,000 Americans alive at the beginning of the year has died of covid-19. 2020 is poised to be the deadliest year in the country’s history — in part a function of our historically large population, but more directly due to the surge in deaths caused by the virus. As of this writing, more than 337,000 people across the country have died of the disease, a toll that makes up about one in every five recorded deaths from covid-19 globally. Over the past week, about one of every 120 deaths recorded globally since the pandemic began was recorded in the United States. It’s a toll that is hard to grasp, which is part of why we seem incapable of doing so. As we explained this month, the country is now seeing a death every 38 seconds or so — a rate that is almost certainly understated given the slowdown in death reporting that has accompanied the holiday season. The data has been spotty since the beginning. Although better now, there are still gaps in what we know about the virus’s toll. But we know a lot. We know, thanks to The Washington Post’s data-gathering and thanks to independent efforts like the COVID Tracking Project, how many deaths have been reported each day and where those deaths have occurred. We know that men are more at risk than women and that older Americans are much more likely to die of the virus than younger ones, though nearly 5 percent of deaths have been among people younger than 50. We know that non-White Americans are disproportionately at risk from the virus, and even how the virus has affected different communities in individual states. In an effort to convey the scale of the pandemic, we built an interactive that uses those data — and artificially generated photographs from This Person Does Not Exist — to display nearly 330,000 covid-19 deaths. The daily


one in every five recorded deaths from covid-19 globally. Over the past week, about one of every 120 deaths recorded globally since the pandemic began was recorded in the United States. It’s a toll that is hard to grasp, which is part of why we seem incapable of doing so. As we explained this month, the country is now seeing a death every 38 seconds or so — a rate that is almost certainly understated given the slowdown in death reporting that has accompanied the holiday season. The data has been spotty since the beginning. Although better now, there are still gaps in what we know about the virus’s toll. But we know a lot. We know, thanks to The Washington Post’s data-gathering and thanks to independent efforts like the COVID Tracking Project, how many deaths have been reported each day and where those deaths have occurred. We know that men are more at risk than women and that older Americans are much more likely to die of the virus than younger ones, though nearly 5 percent of deaths have been among people younger than 50. We know that non-White Americans are disproportionately at risk from the virus, and even how the virus has affected different communities in individual states. In an effort to convey the scale of the pandemic, we built an interactive that uses those data — and artificially generated photographs from This Person Does Not Exist — to display nearly 330,000 covid-19 deaths. The daily data per state (displayed when mousing over the image or, on a phone, pressing and holding) are accurate. The gender and race or ethnicities of the deceased are estimated from state-level racial data and national gender splits. In other words, while a Black man from New York may not have died on March 15, a New Yorker did — and the number of Black New Yorkers shown in the interactive is generally in line with the available data about the virus’s toll among racial groups in the state. Each of the images below represents an American who has died of covid-19 since late February. It’s a lot of deaths — meaning that your browser may be slow to load the images. But it isn’t all of them: using state data for each day we still miss thousands of deaths. The point is less the imagery than the scale. Let it sink in.


After 2020, we need to talk about how we talk about catastrophe

using scary, crisis-drenched language to talk about an immediate, in-your-face threat like covid-19 can be productive. In these situations, there is a relatively short-term time frame and a problem where individual action can reduce risks in real time — say by wearing masks, washing hands and limiting physical contact with people outside your household. So how should we talk about the long-term, seemingly intractable problems we face? Research by social scientists suggests multiple ways to tell more effective stories about the challenges before us. Here are four of them. First, avoiding overt crisis and catastrophe frames does not mean playing down the urgency of the challenge. After all, foregrounding the urgency of a problem is critical to building and maintaining engagement over time. Yet urgency comes not only from recognizing and trying to avoid negative consequences; it can also come from identifying the kind of world we want to live in and striving to make that world our reality. There’s a reason one of the most galvanizing orations of all time is the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech; “I Have a Nightmare” probably wouldn’t have been nearly as powerful, even if it would have more accurately portrayed the terrible truth of the moment America was living through. Second, communicators need to engage the full suite of human emotional responses, not just fear, despair and guilt. Research by psychologists and social scientists finds that people are motivated to take costly prosocial action by a wide array of emotions, including awe, pride and anger. Stoking negative emotions can call attention to an immediate challenge, but overreliance on this strategy neglects the critical role that positive emotions such as hope and gratitude play in sustaining participation in social movements over the long haul. Third, people need coherent explanations about how our problems became problems in the first place. Simply yelling “Panic!” in a crowded room doesn’t work when the challenge is complex, long term and counterintuitive — to say nothing of when powerful voices have a vested interest in misleading the public — or when the solutions are multifaceted and nuanced. Qualitative and experimental research on narrative framing and public engagement across many different topics — from early-childhood education to criminal justice reform — reveals that stories that lay out not only what is happening but also how and why those things are unfolding can help people process


The glimmers of hope that were overshadowed by a grim 2020

As 2019 came to an end, there appeared to be widespread optimism for 2020. “It’s gonna be a fantastic year,” said President Trump. Instead, the coronavirus pandemic turned 2020 into a year that will be remembered for the biggest health crisis in contemporary history. The coronavirus set the world back in many respects this year, leaving more than 1.6 million people dead, exacerbating global hunger crises, giving rise to conspiracy theories, and at some point disrupting the education of 9 in 10 students worldwide. As the first mass vaccination campaigns are underway, 2021 may offer some relief. If it does, however, it will also be because of some of this year’s positive changes that were largely overshadowed by the pandemic. Here are some glimmers of hope from 2020. The coronavirus pandemic forced a reckoning with urban life. There are numerous challenges associated with that shift, and 2020 put them on full display. Across Europe and Asia, millions spent weeks under lockdown and confined in their flats, as the virus spread particularly quickly in dense urban areas. Offices in prime locations were suddenly and eerily empty, and indoor bars, restaurants or museums had to be shuttered in countries around the world. This has come at a heavy cost — domestic violence and mental health problems have surged. But if there’s any silver lining to the shock of 2020, it may be that the pandemic is forcing residents, companies and authorities to rethink how urban life should look in the future. Cities around the world vastly expanded bike lanes and pedestrian areas to allow for social distancing this year, curbing vehicle emissions and decreasing pollution, at least temporarily. More flexible work-from-home arrangements decreased commuter traffic, and some could be extended beyond the pandemic’s end. As rents dropped and tourists stayed away, some local authorities seized on the developments to address long-standing problems. Portugal’s capital Lisbon launched a program to turn empty accommodations for tourists into apartments for poor families. Germany, which has been faced with a declining population and rural flight, had long sought to make villages more attractive to young people. The pandemic appears to have done the trick. Demand for houses in rural Germany soared this year. Even though the international community remains far from its environmental and climate goals, there were some major advances in 2020. Despite that progress, 2020 wasn’t all positive. Yes, the pandemic did ground flights


The biggest questions facing the gaming world in 2021

reporting (“this game is worth $60”) and calling a spade a spade (“releasing this game put undue physical and mental stress on the people who made it”) are reconciled in some fashion? Will esports teams face a budget crunch if the pandemic continues to curtail revenue opportunities? While the positive impact on the video games industry was obvious, its effect on esports is much murkier, largely because of the opaqueness around esports economics. For years skepticism has endured around an esports “bubble,” as investors have infused millions into organizations that have often struggled to produce returns. Pretty much any question around a potential payday from those investing in the area will return an answer that includes the phrase “the long game.” Covid-19 eliminated a live audience from just about every major esports competition held after March 2020. Those that did carry out live events with an audience, like the League of Legends World Championship held in Shanghai, saw markedly reduced attendance. The reduction of such live events stings in several ways, starting simply with gate revenue — a major component of overall revenue generation for the likes of teams in the Overwatch League (OWL) and the Call of Duty League (CDL), both anchored around the idea of franchises hosting competitions from designated home markets. And with no live competitions, there are also fewer sponsorship opportunities as signage and promos are worthless when no one is there to see them. In the cases of the OWL and CDL, 100 percent of the revenue from those local live events and sponsorships goes directly to the host team. Eliminating that money is a huge blow to individual organizations, even if the cancellations also alleviated the costs of paying for such events. For teams, that leaves apportioned money from leaguewide sponsorships as a primary revenue driver, along with broadcast rights. While more esports leagues earned airtime on networks like ESPN that were searching to replace canceled traditional sports events, it’s unknown what kind of revenue such deals produced. Broadcast rights in general have never been a major moneymaker for esports. Newzoo, an oft-cited data analysis site that has often touted bullish projections on esports, scaled down its estimates for the esports market in 2020 following the impact of covid-19. A pre-2020 estimate of over $1 billion was revised down to around $950 million globally, a 0.8 percent decline from 2019. Still, even as revenue


Masters tickets delayed, Indian Wells pushed back by coronavirus repercussions

attend, the club offered to defer those badges to 2021. Tickets to practice rounds Monday through Wednesday are given in a lottery every spring, and those, too, were deferred to 2021. With those already sold, the club must determine what to do in the likelihood that a smaller number of spectators are allowed on site in April. In tennis, the 2020 Australian Open was held as scheduled before the pandemic began, but organizers of the 2021 tournament moved it to Feb. 8-21 earlier this month to allow players and officials to quarantine for 14 days after arriving in Australia. The BNP Paribas Open, the annual Indian Wells, Calif., event, was postponed from March to “later in the year,” officials announced Wednesday. “Alternative dates are being assessed for the tournament to potentially take place later in the year,” the ATP Tour said in a statement. Tennis was shut down for five months in 2020, starting with the Indian Wells tournament in March. In late October, the 125th running of the Boston Marathon was moved from its traditional spot in April to the fall of 2021, an addition to an already busy racing calendar. Organizers said they were working with state and local government officials, as well as other stakeholders, to see if a fall date next year was “feasible.” The marathon is traditionally held on the third Monday in April, which is celebrated as Patriots’ Day in Massachusetts. It was postponed this year before eventually being staged in September as a virtual event. “Prioritizing the safety of participants, volunteers, spectators, and community members,” Tom Grilk, CEO of the Boston Athletic Association, which stages the event, said in a statement at the time, “we continue to assess all elements of the race including a potential reduced field size or weekend date.” The race is one of running’s six major events and one of three, along with the Tokyo and London marathons, that take place in the late winter or spring. Tokyo and London have already moved their 2021 dates to the fall, when the Berlin, Chicago and New York City marathons take place. Here’s how the schedule looks at the moment: Berlin, Sept. 26; London, Oct. 3; Chicago, Oct. 10; Tokyo, Oct. 17; and New York City, Nov. 7. The postponement of the Tokyo Olympics also means that the Games’ marathon, which will take place in Sapporo, will be held Aug. 8.


What you need to know about vaccine passports

With several coronavirus vaccines now in circulation, travelers can’t stop talking about the Yellow Card. The Yellow Card, or Carte Jaune, is a medical passport issued by the World Health Organization. It’s an official record that some countries require for entrance, and it can document vaccination against diseases ranging from cholera and yellow fever to such childhood illnesses as rubella. Will there soon be a similar card for covid-19? And will it allow you to travel any sooner? The short answer to both questions is: maybe. Several organizations are working on a vaccine passport. Australian airline Qantas has already announced that it will start requiring coronavirus shots for all passengers on its international flights. But, as with most things during this seemingly unending pandemic, the long answer is complicated. There is no widely accepted digital immunity passport yet. Travelers remain divided on whether to get vaccinated for the coronavirus. And there’s no agreement on whether proof of having received the coronavirus vaccine should be required to travel. At the moment, there’s no Yellow Card equivalent for covid-19, and since the vaccines are so new, it would be impractical. In the United States, vaccine recipients receive a small white card called a covid-19 vaccination record card that documents inoculation. “Given this void in the market, there are a number of vaccine passport programs,” says Bruce McIndoe, a senior adviser at WorldAware, a risk-management company. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) is promoting a vaccine passport called the IATA Travel Pass. The system, billed as a digital platform for passengers, would inform them which tests, vaccines and other measures they require before traveling. It would offer the ability to share test results and vaccinations in a verifiable, safe and privacy-protecting way. Travel Pass is still under development. The World Economic Forum and the Commons Project Foundation, a Swiss nonprofit group, are testing a digital immunity passport called CommonPass. It’s a system that would enable travelers to access lab results and vaccination records and consent to have that information used to validate their covid-19 status without revealing other personal health information. CommonPass would be accessible from your phone. Late in 2020, IDEMIA, an online identity-management company, unveiled a broader technology solution called Augmented Borders that would allow you to scan the chip in your passport and use your mobile phone as a proxy passport. Such a system could also contain your immunization records,


Japan’s suicide rate highlights the other health challenges stemming from the pandemic

Michiko Ueda, a professor at Tokyo’s Waseda University, studies suicidology and suicide prevention. By some measures, Japan has managed the covid-19 pandemic relatively well. Compared with other major countries, Japan has seen fewer infections, hospitalizations and deaths. But the country is facing another serious public health crisis — an alarming rise in suicide deaths, whose number now far exceeds the direct toll of the pandemic. In October alone, more people died by suicide (2,158) than the nation’s total of coronavirus deaths registered by the end of the month (1,765). The numbers reversed a recent trend that had seen Japan’s suicide rate fall to a 40-year low in 2019. During the initial phase of the pandemic, Japan experienced a decline in suicide deaths. In April and May, when a national state of emergency was in place, the number of suicides in Japan was approximately 20 percent lower than the same period over the past three years. However, the declining trend reversed direction in July, when the first wave of the pandemic had been brought under control and many in Japan had returned to a somewhat “normal” routine. By October, the total number of suicide deaths was 30 percent higher than the 2017 to 2019 average. While this sharp increase in suicides is worth noting on its own, even more remarkable is that the profile of those taking their own lives has changed. The main source of the increase was suicides among women; the number of women killing themselves was approximately 70 percent higher this October compared with the three preceding Octobers. In particular, the largest increase in suicides was found among relatively young women, those less than 40 years old. In addition to these trends among women, students took their own lives at a notably higher rate in August and September than in past years. The potential causes of this change in suicidal behavior are diverse, and we must be wary of oversimplification, but among the likely factors are the economic consequences of the pandemic and school closures. The economic impact of the pandemic in Japan was particularly felt in sectors where many women work, such as the service, retail and travel industries. In addition, employers were more likely to fire or reduce the hours of nonpermanent workers — precarious positions that women are more likely to hold. Additional evidence comes from monthly online surveys of the Japanese population that my


research team has been conducting since April. We found that young female workers were more likely than any other group to have experienced a job or income loss in recent months. We also found that more than 30 percent of young women could be classified as depressed in October. Schools in Japan closed in early March, and elementary to high school students had to stay at home for almost three months. Most universities in Japan switched to online teaching when the new academic year started in April, and largely stayed online during the fall semester. About 30 percent of the adult students in our surveys were classified as depressed, equivalent to the prevalence of depression symptoms among those who had lost their jobs. Suicides by young women significantly increased after the end of school closures; it is possible that the increased burden at home during the school closure negatively affected some individuals. The situation in Japan may shed light on suicide trends in other countries. Based on our observations, we might expect a temporary decline in the number of suicides during the peak of the pandemic to be followed by a surge during the “recovery” period, when infection risk becomes less important and individuals focus on other daily concerns, such as making a living or taking care of family. Notably, the sudden increase in suicides at the end of Japan’s state of emergency came despite the fact that the Japanese government did not introduce strict lockdown measures or movement restrictions. Thus, the impact of the pandemic on suicide risk in countries with more rigid restrictions could be larger. Containment of the coronavirus must be the first priority, but we should also keep in mind that the causalities of the pandemic might include individuals who take their lives in the face of increased economic and psychological stress. Policymakers should pursue policies that might reduce these concerns. The Japanese government should offer targeted financial assistance to those in need, including struggling single parents, in a more aggressive manner. At the same time, they should make it easier for contingent workers who have lost their job to find a new position by assisting them to learn new skills. The government should also identify the impact of school closures on schoolchildren, university students and their caregivers, and provide proper care to prevent tragic deaths by suicide. We will defeat the current pandemic at some


Today in D.C.: Headlines to start your Wednesday in D.C., Maryland and Virginia

Good morning — it’s Wednesday. Grab your coffee or tea. The year is almost over. Here’s a review of the biggest events in 2020, as told by reader comments. One programming note: We will be away tomorrow and Friday for a holiday break. Today in D.C. will be back Monday, Jan. 4. Today’s weather:


How the pandemic changed six cities in 2020, according to locals

In March, the coronavirus pandemic changed the world as we knew it. As cases climbed and countries went into lockdowns, we checked in with a handful of By The Way City Guide writers to see how they were coping with their own quarantines and the “new normal.” With the year now coming to a close and new lockdowns across the globe, we’re revisiting our writers to see how their cities have changed in nine months; how they persevered through a challenging year; and what their hopes are for 2021. The situation is critical. The number of infections is higher than this summer, and after Christmas, the number went from 3,500 cases to more than 8,800 patients that tested positive for the coronavirus. Restaurants, movie theaters and public spaces like fitness centers are still closed except for the shops and supermarkets. They are supposed to open on the 20th of January. However, the decision remains: The new coronavirus variant that appeared in the U.K. may change the situation and threaten a lockdown in January. Every small business has been obliged to change its habits. Restaurants propose deliveries and takeaway, but most of them receive aid from the government (up to 10,000 euros, which is around 12,300 dollars, or a percentage based on the previous turnover). It’s still early to know which establishments will close definitely or not. Customs and traditions changed a lot because restaurants, bars and cafes are an essential part of the Parisian culture: sitting, chatting long hours, etc. It’s been challenging to banish it after a summer where everything seemed back to normal again. However, it’s pleasant to see how Paris became an outdoor city. Last summer it was impressive to see this amount of terraces improvised on parking lots and pavements. Even during fresher and shorter days, people are more outside, strolling in parks, (re)visiting some monuments like the Sacré-Coeur or unknown areas of the city, usually crowded with tourists. I’ve seen more cafes and bars offering coffee to go than ever before — even warm wine and waffles/crepes as you can usually find in Christmas markets during winter. It has been a lovely part of the creativity toward the [pandemic]: the city seems different, somehow more likable, and now invested by its people, more groups and families enjoying the natural spaces. I’ve been writing (a book), working, reading, watching TV shows, movies and (re)decorating my space