D.C., Northern Virginia begin gradual reopening, but some businesses remain closed; coronavirus infects 100,000 in region

The number of known coronavirus cases in the District, Maryland and Virginia was 102,059 on Friday, with 50,988 cases in Maryland, 42,533 in Virginia and 8,538 in the District. The number of virus-related deaths reached 2,466 in Maryland, 1,358 in Virginia and 460 in the District, for a total of 4,284 fatalities. Here are some of the most significant recent developments as the region responds to the pandemic of the novel coronavirus, which causes the disease covid-19: • The District and Northern Virginia are taking steps to reopen today, gradually loosening stay-at-home rules that have been in place because of the pandemic, as business owners are stocking up on hand sanitizer and putting up signs requiring masks. • On Friday, 85 days after the novel coronavirus appeared in the Washington region, the number of known infections in D.C., Maryland and Virginia surpassed 100,000. That means six in every 1,000 residents have tested positive for the virus. At least 13,000 patients have been hospitalized, according to state data, and 4,239 have died. • Starting today, all passengers and visitors will be required to wear face coverings at Reagan National and Dulles International airports. Children under the age of 10 and people who have medical conditions that prevent them from wearing face coverings will be exempted from the requirement, airport officials said. • Maryland’s two largest D.C. suburbs will begin to lift shutdown restrictions Monday, the final pieces of a tentative reopening for the Washington area. Both Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich (D) and Prince George’s County Executive Angela D. Alsobrooks (D) said declining trends in hospitalizations for the coronavirus would allow them to ease the closure of nonessential businesses Monday. When will D.C. reopen?


In El Salvador, criminal gangs are enforcing virus-related restrictions. Here’s why.

deliver promised financial assistance, leading to long waiting lines and unrest outside citizen services centers across the country. In response, MS-13 and Barrio 18 have stepped up in parts of El Salvador where they have influence and control, threatening to punish individuals who don’t follow the shutdown orders. Their reputations for using violence and their detailed knowledge of those neighborhoods make them powerful enforcers. Gangs may have taken up this charge for several reasons. First, gang members live in the territory they control — and they don’t want to get sick. In interviews I did with human rights workers for my research, I learned that gang members tend to avoid hospitals and clinics, fearing that medical staff will report them to police. Gang members further suspect that they will be denied treatment if covid-19 overwhelms Salvadoran hospitals. Gang leaders’ decisions to enforce curfews and lockdowns could be seen as measures to preserve the gang members’ health. As a result of state-ordered business closures, some gangs decided to stop demanding extortion payments from local businesses and bus companies, their usual sources of cash. Some have negotiated agreements to reduce and delay extortion payments, given restricted mobility and fear of contagion. I came across similar measures when interviewing business owners during the gang truce. Gangs felt that flexible extortion arrangements would show good faith and help the relationship survive over the long term. Allowing similar arrangements now could ensure the gangs’ financial viability after the pandemic and enable them to build local legitimacy. Gangs may also be enforcing the stay-at-home order to forestall increased police presence in their communities. During the shutdown order’s first month, police and other security forces mostly patrolled main roads and avoided entering the narrow alleys of gang-controlled communities. However, after the spike in homicides at the end of April, Bukele deployed security forces to patrol gang-controlled communities and authorized them to use lethal force. Yet, reports suggest that gangs are still the ones enforcing stay-at-home restrictions and even distributing assistance. While the government and the gangs share the same objective in the fight against the virus, their motivations are different. Nonetheless, it illustrates the extent of gang control over communities that the central government fails to reach. Gaëlle Rivard Piché is a strategic analyst with Defense Research and Development Canada. She conducted field research in El Salvador between 2012 and 2015 as part of her doctoral studies.


The Health 202: The summer fight against the coronavirus will be a local one

This summer, the fight against the novel coronavirus will be a local one. Despite the country’s bungled response to the pandemic, coronavirus cases and deaths nationally are trending downward as Americans emerge from months of widespread lockdowns. Major U.S. cities with the biggest outbreaks — New York, Detroit, New Orleans — are flattening and even lowering their curves. The nation’s testing capacity has dramatically improved, and a larger share of cases are being caught. Yet as the virus “There isn’t going to be one curve. There are going to be many curves,” Marynia Kolak, a health and spatial data science researcher at the University of Chicago, told me. These localized outbreaks can be found across the nation, many in states that reopened earlier but also in some states that held back a little longer. According to a map put together by University of Chicago’s Center for Spatial Data Science, clusters can be found in nearly every area of the country except for the northernmost states and parts of the West. Kolak pointed to Montgomery, Ala. — part of the South’s “Black Belt” — where cases are suddenly surging. There are also hot spots in the state’s Tuscaloosa and Walker counties, along with several counties in central Mississippi. She’s paying close attention to a cluster of cases in southwest Kansas spilling over into the Oklahoma panhandle, which have been linked to outbreaks at a meatpacking plant. Nowhere are cases more concentrated than in the Navajo Nation, an American Indian territory that spans northeastern Arizona, southeastern Utah and northwestern New Mexico. There, leaders have imposed weekend and nightly curfews in an effort to stem the virus, which has infected more than 400 people out of every 10,000 Navajo Nation residents. These types of actions — expanding social distancing restrictions — is something every local official across the nation will have to consider if they start observing increased spread, experts say. That’s according to Max Henderson, CEO of Covid Act Now, a website providing coronavirus data. He’s working on a county-level scoring system that notifies policymakers and citizens when their region is about to become an outbreak area. “We really have to look at our data in our area and decide whether this is the right action specific to our circumstances,” Henderson said. It’s part of trying to find a new normal, where communities seek a sustainable way of living life even before


attack that began in January on the West Coast with the coronavirus introduced by travelers from China and continued in February as travelers from Europe brought the virus to the East Coast,” Lena and Joel write. “Most of the virus spreading in the United States can be traced to the introductions from Europe.” “Unlike doctors treating covid-19 patients, dentists are not considered front-line workers and until recent days had largely been left out of the nationwide triaging of personal protective equipment, according to interviews with leaders of several state dental associations,” Chelsea Janes reports. “They are retooling their offices to meet new and stricter health and safety guidelines.” Another issue dentists have to consider: Their tools can cause wide sprays of respiratory particles. The CDC and World Health Organization have suggested the respiratory droplets expelled by infected people are the primary way the coronavirus spreads. “Multiple dentists who were interviewed said that while they regularly wore more basic surgical masks when treating patients, they did not normally rely on the more protective N95 masks,” Chelsea writes. “Most dentists, many almost entirely out of work the last two months, did not budget for those upgrades, fueling fears some dentists will lose their practices.” Such a move by the United States, the single biggest financial contributor to the U.N. agency, will have an impact on the WHO’s budget amid the ongoing pandemic, Karla Adam writes. Jens Spahn, Germany’s health minister: “Trump said that the annual $400 million that the U.S. contributes to the organization will be redirected ‘to other worldwide and deserving urgent global public health needs’ without giving specifics,” Karla adds. In a joint statement, E.U. Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell called on the United States to reconsider. “Now is the time for enhanced cooperation and common solutions,” the statement said. “Actions that weaken international results must be avoided.” “Of the $893 million the United States sent in the 2018 and 2019 funding period, $237 million was an ‘assessed contribution’ — a type of membership fee that may prove hard to cut without congressional approval,” David J. Lynch and Emily Rauhala report. “At greater risk is what’s known as the ‘voluntary contribution,’ that is money provided to U.S. agencies for health efforts and then given to WHO programs.” Costs for these materials have skyrocketed. “The alcohol used in sanitizer has tripled in price since


The Technology 202: Protests, coronavirus and election present disinformation challenge for social media companies

Dorsey found. Amazon, which has reduced deliveries in some cities amid the protests, was one of the companies that released a statement in solidarity with the black community yesterday. (Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.) But civil liberties groups who have called out Amazon for its extensive work with the police and more recent mistreatment of black warehouse workers were quick to bring up the company’s past behavior: The American Civil Liberties Union: Fight for the Future: A new crop of proposals from an industry trade group includes billions in subsidies for a new chip factory, aid for states looking to attract industry investment and increased research funding, the Wall Street Journal reports. The push could find support from both the White House and bipartisan members of Congress who have seen strengthening the U.S. semiconductor industry at home as a key component to reducing reliance on Chinese hardware. ”The Trump administration is committed to ensuring the United States has a secure, vibrant, and internationally competitive high-tech ecosystem, supported by domestic chip production,” said Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. Last month the White House moved to make it harder for Chinese companies to use U.S. chip-making technology. But there’s disagreement within the industry over how potential subsidies should work, the Journal reports. And some smaller players are worried that some of the proposals being discussed would cause U.S. states to compete with each other instead of China. The company launched two NASA astronauts into space on Saturday and successfully docked them at the International Space Station yesterday, making it the first private company to do so in the history of space flight. It’s a success that few thought would be possible, Christian Davenport reports. The mission is just one step toward Musk's ambitious goal of sending humans to Mars. “I didn’t feel nervous. I felt like it was going to work,” Musk said on Saturday. It’s the kind of determination the company will need to actually make it to Mars, Christian notes. On Friday, a prototype test of the rocket SpaceX is building to send to Mars blew up in a test. BuzzFeed reporter Caroline Haskins breaks down the surveillance technology powering police in Minneapolis: The layoffs come as part of a push to rely more on artificial intelligence to pick news content displayed on MSN.com and in Microsoft news apps, the Verge reports. More views from SpaceX’s historic mission:


The Energy 202: Coronavirus pandemic could give Democrats easier way to repeal major Trump EPA rules

ways to allow solar, wind and other alternative energy developers to continue to qualify for tax incentives even if construction is paused amid the pandemic. In Europe, a more than $800 billion recovery package includes a plan to move away from fossil fuels. China has allowed for the building of new coal plants but has “declined to set specific economic growth targets for this year, a move that came as a relief to environmentalists because it reduces the pressure to turn up the country’s industrial machine quickly,” the New York Times reports. In the United Sates, meanwhile, the Trump administration has “used the coronavirus pandemic to relax an array of environmental rules. Embattled Republicans and their allies have been testing the argument that climate friendly policies would kill jobs and crush an already ailing economy, though there is no evidence to support those claims. And, while the early United States aid packages have resisted calls to boost renewable energy, and fossil fuel companies have dipped into the relief money, the next rounds of government stimulus are still in play.” It’s not yet known whether dolphins and whales get covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, but they do get coronaviruses, neuroimmunologist Tracy Romano told E&E News. Her team at Mystic Aquarium in Stonington, Conn., wants to test the mammals to determine whether their immune systems can fight pathogens. It’s research that could benefit humans, as well. “Allison Tuttle, a veterinary scientist at Mystic Aquarium, said there has been evidence in the past of coronaviruses affecting marine mammals, including instances of pneumonia in seals in California, bacterial infections in seals along the Atlantic Coast and hepatitis in beluga whales,” E&E reports. Six out of nine workers who were evacuated from a Shell-operated platform in the Gulf of Mexico tested positive for the coronavirus, the Times-Picayune reports. “There have been about 100 known cases of COVID-19 among offshore workers in the U.S. since the pandemic began, according to the National Ocean Industries Association. That’s out of 25,000 workers who rotate offshore,” per the report. The company implemented mandatory coronavirus testing for all personnel traveling to offshore platforms earlier this month. “Prior to the mandatory testing, Shell workers were required to fill out a screening questionnaire before they were flown to offshore platforms by helicopter,” according to the newspaper. “The company also extended the length of stay on production platforms from 14


SpaceX launch of NASA astronauts provides a chance to compare the new and old

The Falcon 9 is a slim, slick rocket — a powerful beast, for sure, that unleashes a menacing roar at liftoff that reverberates across the Florida Space Coast. But it also provides a deceptively smooth ride, at least at first, when compared with the space shuttle. The Falcon 9’s second stage, though, packs a punch. That was the review of the first NASA astronauts to have flown on both Space X’s Falcon 9 and its predecessor, the space shuttle, manufactured for NASA by prime contractor Rockwell International. The Falcon 9 was smooth at first, then a bit of a rumble, “like driving fast over a gravel road,” said astronaut Doug Hurley, who with Bob Behnken offered thoughts of the rockets’ performance for reporters on Monday. The mission was a test flight, and their job was not only to fly to the International Space Station — a goal they achieved Sunday — but to assess how the rocket and spacecraft, which had never before flown humans, performed. Now that SpaceX has shown it can safely deliver people to orbit, the question became how its system, the first developed entirely by a private company to send NASA astronauts to space, compared to the rockets and spacecraft NASA had engineered before. Space enthusiasts finally have the beginnings of an answer to which system is better. Clearly, SpaceX’s vehicles look different. Even the astronauts’ spacesuits were sleek and form-fitting departures from their clunky, at times dowdy predecessors. Inside the capsule, SpaceX founder Elon Musk and his engineers simplified the control panels, banishing the dozens of switches that made the shuttle such a complicated vehicle to fly, and instead opted for large touch screens. The Dragon capsule’s chairs were inspired by those in racecars, with custom foam molds. Even the launch tower was revamped to look modern and sleek. And for this mission, NASA decided to bring back its “worm” logo from the 1970s, which was painted on the side of the Falcon 9 rocket. Taken together, the changes were not only a nod to the science fiction that inspired Musk as a child but a deliberate attempt to create an aesthetic and evoke a mood. “If you’re a member of the public … you don’t necessarily know that much about rocket design or how spacecraft work, but you know if it looks cool,” Musk said in a recent interview with The Washington Post. “And


Mexico begins to lift coronavirus lockdown, but officials say the country is still ‘in danger’

MEXICO CITY — Mexico on Monday lifted a 70-day coronavirus lockdown, but the federal and local governments replaced it with a contradictory patchwork of measures as the country struggled to contain the outbreak. The nation’s coronavirus czar, Hugo López-Gatell, took a hard line, saying that federal guidelines on opening businesses would barely budge. Only a few industries — construction, auto manufacturing and mining — would be added to the list of “essential” businesses allowed to operate, he said. "It's vital that society understands that the danger continues," he said. But several governors defied the federal government’s orders, allowing shops and hotels in their states to open at least partially. Meanwhile, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador resumed his travel around the country with a visit to the Caribbean coast. “We have to enter a new normality,” López Obrador told a news conference. “Our national economy, the well-being of our people need this.” Mexico has confirmed nearly 10,000 deaths directly linked to the novel coronavirus, with an unknown number of other people perishing without a test. The Mexico City region has been hit hardest. López-Gatell says it is starting to show signs of a decline in cases, but some scientists believe deaths could continue at elevated levels for weeks. Mexico has suffered the second-most coronavirus fatalities in Latin America, after Brazil, whose president, Jair Bolsonaro, has been a global outlier in downplaying the threat. Jesús Silva-Herzog Márquez, a political scientist at the Tecnológico de Monterrey, said López Obrador had failed to establish a coordinated national policy. “He’s far from the terrible denialism of Bolsonaro and the brutal lack of responsibility of Donald Trump,” he said. But “he’s a politician who hasn’t managed to fit together the pieces of his strategy.” The Mexican leader initially appeared to minimize the coronavirus threat, holding crowded rallies and saying he was protected by religious tokens. He then largely turned over management of the pandemic to López-Gatell, a respected epidemiologist and senior Health Ministry official. On March 23, Mexico ordered businesses, government offices and schools to shut down. Several governors broke with the federal government’s strategy from the start, saying it was too lax and imposing quarantines earlier. On Monday, some went in the opposite direction. In the northern state of Nuevo Leon, officials allowed breweries, hotels and shopping centers to resume some operations. In the western state of Nayarit, authorities permitted car dealerships, clothing stores and


New Ebola outbreak declared in Congo city that last saw the virus in 2018

NAIROBI — Congo's health minister confirmed the discovery of a new Ebola case in the country's Équateur province, which last saw an outbreak of the highly deadly virus in 2018, ultimately killing 33 people there. The province’s governor, Bobo Boloko Bolumbu, spoke on national radio earlier Monday, saying there were five likely cases and that four of those infected had already died. He said the cases were found in Mbandaka, the provincial capital, which is home to more than 1 million people and is an important port city at the confluence of the Congo and Ruki rivers, which are heavily plied for trade and transport. The World Health Organization’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said later on Monday that six cases had been identified by Congo’s Health Ministry. He said the WHO’s response was underway. No cases of the novel coronavirus have been confirmed in Mbandaka, although more than 3,000 have been confirmed across Congo. The coronavirus and Ebola are unrelated. Ebola, which is endemic to Africa’s tropical rainforests, is transmitted only through contact with an infected person’s bodily fluids and manifests as a hemorrhagic fever accompanied in severe cases by vomiting and extensive internal bleeding. Congo has grappled for almost two years with a separate Ebola outbreak in its northeastern provinces that has killed 2,272 people so far. In April, that outbreak, the country’s worst, had been just days away from being declared over when new cases were found. The same region is also home to the world’s largest ongoing measles outbreak. The worst outbreak of Ebola took place mainly across three West African countries between late 2013 and early 2016, when nearly 30,000 people were infected and more than 11,000 died. The new outbreak in Équateur would be Congo’s 11th since the virus was first identified in 1976. Experimental vaccines have proved effective in preventing the spread of Ebola, but no cure has been found. Different strains of the virus exist, and different outbreaks have had mortality rates ranging from 25 to 90 percent. Rickety health infrastructure and mistrust in governments and foreign aid organizations have impeded Ebola responses in Congo and West Africa. Locals have accused health officials and contracted suppliers of using well-funded responses to enrich themselves while imposing strict restrictions on movement and business. Congo’s government, however, has been lauded as quick to identify and contain Ebola in most previous outbreaks.


A flight to space. A fight in the streets. Americans search high and low for hope.

The Falcon 9 rocket pushed Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken into orbit at 16,000 miles per hour. The pepper pellet that hit Darrell Hampton’s face on Earth was traveling at about 1.4 percent that speed, fast enough to shatter the back of his cellphone before walloping his eye and showering his neck with an indescribable burning sensation. Up until that point, Hampton had marched peacefully with other Denver protesters Saturday afternoon, at around the same time astronauts Hurley and Behnken were flying toward the International Space Station. Then around 6 p.m., at West 14th Avenue and Lincoln Street, a masked policeman in riot gear hopped on a vehicle and, as it pulled away, casually squeezed his trigger. “First, it was shock,” says Hampton, who works in accounting. “And then fear of ‘What’s happening to my eye right now? Am I going to be able to open it again?’ I didn’t feel like the guy had any reason to do that, other than he was angry.” In cities across the country, crowds had gathered to protest state violence against black Americans days after a Minneapolis man named George Floyd died after spending nearly nine minutes pinned to the pavement under a police officer’s knee. And miles above the planet, in a capsule 13 feet in diameter, Behnken was weightless. He spun around and showed a floating toy dinosaur that he’d brought along at the request of his sons. “We’d like to thank the American people for the opportunity today,” Behnken said in video beamed back to Earth. “And we’re really proud of the entire team that was able to accomplish human spaceflight again from the Florida coast. Just a wonderful experience.” Over the weekend America watched a billionaire’s private company, under a $2.6 billion government contract, deliver two men into orbit with speed and elegance, and then watched its cities spasm with anger and chaos. The launch was a triumph of ingenuity and collaboration; the widespread unrest was the product of a systems failure: The recent deaths of Floyd, Breonna Taylor (shot by police in her Louisville home) and Ahmaud Arbery (hunted down by vigilantes in Georgia) caused the social fabric, threaded by generations of racism and frayed by the coronavirus pandemic, to catch fire and explode. The SpaceX rocket, meanwhile, took off from Cape Canaveral in a heave of fire and exhaust. Fort Lauderdale resident Rosie Nwanganga had hopped in


Anger and anguish across America

Post Reports is the daily podcast from The Washington Post. Unparalleled reporting. Expert insight. Clear analysis. Everything you’ve come to expect from the newsroom of The Post. For your ears. Martine Powers is your host, asking the questions you didn’t know you wanted answered. Listen online. Devlin Barrett on how police tactics may be exacerbating tensions. Shane Harris on the officials who are trying to blame outsiders. And Christian Davenport talks about a historic launch into space. Read more: How police are feeding into the violence that erupted over the weekend. Who is actually attending these protests? Also, over the weekend: The historic SpaceX launch. Subscribe to The Washington Post: https://postreports.com/offer


Montgomery, Prince George’s begin to reopen after virus shutdown

at the counter and bring it outside to a table, but no one had done so. At Tandoori Nights, staffers had measured the distance between tables with a tape measure, but no one was sitting at them. At a table in front of Philz Coffee, three graduating seniors from nearby Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School laughed and chatted, happy to be together again on a gorgeous sunny day. “It feels so surreal,” said 17-year-old Nithia Akineza. Before getting coffee, Akineza and her two friends had dropped off textbooks and picked up their caps and gowns from school. They had also received goody bags, complete with “Class of 2020” face masks. It was their first time gathering in person since the shutdown. “Everybody’s like, ‘How do you feel?’ ” Akineza said. “I’m like, ‘How am I supposed to feel? I’m graduating on a Zoom call.’ ” The coronavirus, though slowed, has continued to spread. The District, Maryland and Virginia reported a total of 1,396 new coronavirus cases on Monday. There were 39 new deaths reported in the three jurisdictions, bringing the region’s death toll to 4,412. Virginia reported 17 new deaths, with Fairfax and Loudoun counties each reporting four new deaths. Maryland had 20 new deaths, with four each in Montgomery and Prince George’s. The District disclosed 56 new coronavirus cases and two new deaths. D.C. city officials said they would announce criteria for lifting additional restrictions later in the week. LaQuandra Nesbitt, the city’s top public health official, said she was monitoring for a two-week decline in the spread of the virus starting May 29, when the city entered Phase 1 of its reopening plans. The consecutive nights of mass protests in the city, part of nationwide outrage over the death of George Floyd in the custody of Minneapolis police, has public health experts concerned about the potential spread of the virus and the possibility of a second wave of infections. Although the city excludes cases at confined facilities when calculating the community spread of the virus, Nesbitt said cases from mass gatherings would not be excluded. “As we ramp up our contact tracing, we will try as best as we can to link their exposure to having participated in one of these events, but it could be tricky to do so,” she said. “If people are going to work, if they are going to dine in at the outdoor restaurants


‘Fear, uncertainty and distance’: Life in Shanghai under covid-19

It seems like every time I sit down to write about a photographer’s work related to covid-19, the same thoughts propelled by similar known statistics keep tumbling out of my head. Fear, anxiety, dread, uncertainty. There’s a reason for that, though. The cause and treatment of the virus is still uncertain. And cases are still materializing; deaths continue to pile up. Everywhere. And then there is this push to open everything back up, which some experts say is being done too soon and will spark another wave of spiking cases. What do we know about where the virus came from? We think it was from China but are not 100 percent sure if it came from a wet market or a lab. The evidence seems to point to it coming from a wet market. And then there’s the idea that if enough people contract the virus and survive it, we’ll start to develop an immunity to it. But then there is also evidence that this isn’t the case — some people have actually now contracted it twice. At the tail end of April, The Post reported that the World Health Organization said there is not enough evidence to say that a person who has recovered from covid-19 is immune to a second infection. Some experts have cautioned that if everything is opened up again, we could see a second wave, maybe worse, in the upcoming flu season. Speaking before the House Energy and Commerce Committee recently, immunologist Rick Bright, a government whistleblower who alleges he was kicked out of his job after warning the Trump administration to prepare for the pandemic, said that America faces the “darkest winter in modern history.” Not long ago, The Post reported, “As many parts of the world, including the United States, explore ways to ease restrictions aimed at containing the spread of the coronavirus, countries that had already opened up are closing down again after renewed spikes in infections.” Those countries have included, so far, Lebanon, South Korea and China. So, we’re months into dealing with this virus and yet are still grappling with uncertainty and all that entails. And this is, partly, what motivated Raul Ariano to make the photos in the series presented here today on In Sight. Ariano, an Italian photographer who has been based in Asia since 2011, told In Sight that he was traveling to Chengdu when the virus


The Cybersecurity 202: Protest goes online in Minneapolis as city, police websites hit by cyberattacks

not disclose any victims of the hacking campaign, which targeted email servers, but said it began in August 2019. A fix for the bug the Russian hackers exploited was issued 11 months ago but hackers are still attacking systems that haven’t been updated with the fix, the NSA says. Kemp (R) accused the Democratic party of hacking the systems two days before the 2018 election. But an investigation found Kemp, who was the state’s top election official at the time, “ mistook planned security tests and a warning about potential election security holes for malicious hacking,” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and ProPublica report. The state investigator's report shows there was no "evidence of damage to (the secretary of state’s office’s) network or computers, and no evidence of theft, damage, or loss of data." The suspicious Internet activity Kemp’s office described was a scan by the Department of Homeland Security that Kemp’s office had agreed to three months earlier. The investigation also confirmed that the state’s voter information page had a significant security hole that Kemp’s office has never publicly acknowledged. Proposals from an industry trade group include billions in subsidies for a new chip factory, aid for states looking to attract industry investment and increased research funding, the Wall Street Journal reports. China hawks have pointed to the semiconductor industry as key to reducing U.S. companies’ reliance on Chinese hardware that could be used for government spying. The White House and lawmakers from both parties have introduced plans that would boost government spending on the industry. Last month the White House moved to block overseas sales of chips produced with U.S. technology to Huawei and other Chinese firms that represent national security risks. Pyongyang officials also accused the Trump administration of using the allegations as leverage in stalled denuclearization talks, Reuters reports. U.S. officials have accused North Korean government hackers of digitally stealing money from banks and ATMs in order to help fund the government. “We want to make it clear that our country has nothing to do with the so-called ‘cyber threat’ that the U.S. is talking about,” North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said. More international news: The state has not disclosed how much it paid on the claims from criminals who used stolen personal information, the Associated Press reports. More government and legal news: A silver lining from this weekend: SpaceX safely landed two astronauts on the International Space Station.


SpaceX’s success is one small step for man, one giant leap for capitalism

It was one small step for man, one giant leap for capitalism. Only three countries have ever launched human beings into orbit. This past weekend, SpaceX became the first private company ever to do so, when it sent its Crew Dragon capsule into space aboard its Falcon 9 rocket and docked with the International Space Station. This was accomplished by a company Elon Musk started in 2002 in a California strip mall warehouse with just a dozen employees and a mariachi band. At a time when our nation is debating the merits of socialism, SpaceX has given us an incredible testament to the power of American free enterprise. While the left is advocating unprecedented government intervention in almost every sector of the U.S. economy, from health care to energy, today Americans are celebrating the successful privatization of space travel. If you want to see the difference between what government and private enterprise can do, consider: It took a private company to give us the first space vehicle with touch-screen controls instead of antiquated knobs and buttons. It took a private company to give us a capsule that can fly entirely autonomously from launch to landing — including docking — without any participation by its human crew. It also took a private company to invent a reusable rocket that can not only take off but land as well. When the Apollo 11 crew reached the moon on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong declared “the Eagle has landed.” On Saturday, SpaceX was able to declare that the Falcon had landed when its rocket settled down on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean — ready to be used again. That last development will save the taxpayers incredible amounts of money. The cost to NASA for launching a man into space on the space shuttle orbiter was $170 million per seat, compared with just $60 million to $67 million on the Dragon capsule. The cost for the space shuttle to send a kilogram of cargo into to space was $54,500; with the Falcon rocket, the cost is just $2,720 — a decrease of 95 percent. And while the space shuttle cost $27.4 billion to develop, the Crew Dragon was designed and built for just $1.7 billion — making it the lowest-cost spacecraft developed in six decades. SpaceX did it in six years — far faster than the time it took to develop the space


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Trump campaign is creating an alternate reality online about coronavirus

nominee Joe Biden. And campaign officials spent the past four years rigorously building a digital infrastructure to connect with voters not only through on social media, but with online polls, email lists and rally registration forms. In other words, when the 2020 election went online only, the Trump team was ready. Trump and the White House often say they turn to social media because a hostile, left-leaning news media does not depict Trump’s achievements accurately. The Fact Checker video team analyzed thousands of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube posts and ads from Trump, his campaign and a long list of surrogates. The data revealed the backbone of a five-point strategy to tell their version of the coronavirus story: rewriting mistakes, highlighting achievements, deflecting blame, declaring victory and creating distraction. Spin is to be expected from any political campaign. So how has the Trump campaign leveraged its massive digital infrastructure during the national crisis? And just what is the coronavirus narrative that it is portraying? Let’s dig in. Nothing to see here In the first phase of the outbreak, Trump and his allies consistently played down the threat of the virus. Trump held eight campaign rallies between Jan. 21 (when covid-19 was confirmed in the United States) and March 2. His speeches focused on just about everything else — at one point referring to concerns about the coronavirus as the Democrats’ “new hoax,” akin to the Russia investigation and the Ukraine-related impeachment probe. The Fact Checker collected data of social media posts from Brandwatch, a digital consumer intelligence company, Crowdtangle, a social media analytics tool owned by Facebook, and Nick Monaco at the at the Institute for the Future’s Digital Intelligence Lab. The data shows that Trump’s conversation about the coronavirus online was minimal in late January and February, even though Trump in late January announced that he would impose some travel restrictions on non-U. S. citizens traveling from China. His campaign and surrogates echoed the same trend. Instead, analysis from Brandwatch revealed that Trump’s most talked about topics online included his impeachment trial, Nancy Pelosi, the Second Amendment, and 2020 Democratic primary candidates at the time such as former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Biden. “When he was getting the intelligence on this back in … January, (if he) took the same level of seriousness about it that other nations were starting to do, had utilized


From the Andes to Tibet, the coronavirus seems to be sparing populations at high altitudes

When tourists from Mexico, China and Britain became the first covid-19 fatalities in Cusco, Peru, it seemed as if the onetime capital of the Inca Empire might be headed for a significant outbreak. Nestled in a picturesque Andean valley, the high-altitude city of 420,000 residents, the gateway to the cloud forest citadel of Machu Picchu, receives more than 3 million international visitors per year — many from pandemic hot spots, including the United States, Italy and Spain. Yet since those three deaths, between March 23 and April 3, at the start of Peru’s strict national lockdown, there has not been another covid-19 fatality in the entire Cusco region, even as the disease has claimed more than 4,000 lives nationally. Infections have also remained low. Just 1,062 of Peru’s 164,000 cases come from the Cusco region, meaning its contagion rate is more than 80 percent below the national average. The relative dearth of cases and deaths in the internationally connected but high-elevation region has prompted speculation here that the novel coronavirus gets soroche, the Quechua word for altitude sickness. Similar results have been seen elsewhere in the Andes, and in Tibet. Scientists warn that the apparent pattern might not last, but the as-yet-unexplained phenomenon has them intrigued. Researchers are starting to investigate a possible relationship between the coronavirus and altitude. In one peer-reviewed study, published in the journal Respiratory Physiology & Neurobiology, researchers from Australia, Bolivia, Canada and Switzerland looking at epidemiological data from Bolivia, Ecuador and Tibet found that populations living above 3,000 meters (9,842 feet) reported significantly lower levels of confirmed infections than their lowland counterparts. They found that Tibet’s infection rate was “drastically” lower than that of lowland China, the rate in the Bolivian Andes was one-third that of the rest of Bolivia, and the rate in the Ecuadoran Andes was one-fourth that of the rest of Ecuador. Ecuador has suffered one of Latin America’s worst outbreaks, with more than 39,000 reported cases and more than 3,300 deaths, according to official figures. But it has been centered on the Pacific port of Guayaquil. Bolivia’s 9,982 cases have been concentrated in the department of Santa Cruz, a few hundred feet above sea level. But the department of La Paz, home to the world’s highest capital, has had 507 cases. The researchers hypothesize that populations living at high altitudes might be benefiting from a combination of an ability to cope


from a combination of an ability to cope with hypoxia (low levels of oxygen in the blood) and a natural environment hostile to the virus — including dry mountain air, high levels of UV radiation and the possibility that lower barometric pressure reduces the virus’s ability to linger in the air. Other experts question the role of the environmental factors, noting that most coronavirus infections occur indoors, making UV levels irrelevant. But they are calling for more research into high-altitude populations’ response to the coronavirus, including the possibility that when infected, they sicken less and are therefore less likely to seek medical treatment or testing. “The virus likes people. It doesn’t care about altitude,” says Peter Chin-Hong, who studies infectious diseases at the University of California at San Francisco. “But we’re still learning so much about this disease, and this does provide us with some good clues to try and understand its progression.” Just three populations in the world have been found to have genetic adaptations to altitude: Himalayans, Ethiopian highlanders and Andeans. Yet That could explain why the coronavirus is raging on Peru’s Pacific coast, particularly Lima, where most residents descend from Andean ancestors, while the country’s mountain communities have thus far at least avoided the worst. Cowl notes that prolonged exposure to altitude triggers a chain reaction in the lungs involving a protein known as ACE2 that might prevent pulmonary shunting, a problem common among covid-19 patients. Ordinarily, when a part of the lung is damaged, the body redirects the flow of blood toward healthier areas that are better able to absorb oxygen. Shunting stops that process of redirection, resulting in hypoxia. It is, according to Cowl, a common element among the roughly 30 percent of covid-19 patients who exhibit mild symptoms yet have unusually low levels of oxygen in their blood — and who sometimes take a sudden turn for the worse. But any benefits from altitude in coping with a coronavirus infection, Chin-Hong and Cowl said, would come only with full acclimatization, a process that typically takes three months. They both stressed that anyone suffering a coronavirus infection who traveled to a mountain area would normally see their symptoms worsen. “Otherwise, we could treat them with a hyperbaric chamber,” Cowl said. “From an epidemiological perspective, it is hard to know what this means. There’s likely to be a variety of factors, but it is truly interesting.”


Hong Kong Probes Cluster, Cuomo Warns on Protests: Virus Update

Hong Kong’s leader said authorities are concerned about a new cluster of cases that indicates transmission both at home and in the workplace, and will exercise caution in removing restrictions. Singapore is starting its phased return to work after the number of new daily cases outside of migrant-worker dormitories dropped to zero. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo warned that mass protests against police violence risked accelerating the spread of coronavirus and could undo weeks of social-distancing efforts. The state imposed an overnight curfew Monday even as deaths there fell to their lowest daily level since March. Gilead Sciences Inc.’s treatment remdesivir showed only a limited benefit in a large trial. Moderna started a phase 2 study of its experimental vaccine, while Eli Lilly dosed patients in a study evaluating a potential antibody treatment for the disease. Key Developments: • Virus Tracker: Cases pass 6.26 million; deaths exceed 375,000 • Lam says Hong Kong concerned about new cluster • Cuomo warns mass protests could accelerate virus spread • Singapore starts phased reopening as community cases fall to zero • Health-care businesses are top recipients of U.S. virus loans • Johnson readies major speech on post-virus policy for U.K. • Face masks for public can help contain virus, study shows Subscribe to a daily update on the virus from Bloomberg’s Prognosis team here. Click VRUS on the terminal for news and data on the coronavirus. For a look back at this week’s top stories from QuickTake, click here. Hong Kong to Move Cautiously After New Cluster: Lam (9:50 a.m. HK) Hong Kong authorities are still probing a new cluster of Covid-19 cases that may involve nine local patients, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam said at a briefing Tuesday. Her comments come after Radio Television Hong Kong reported that four new cases had been found in the same building as a couple earlier confirmed with the pathogen. The city will announce changes to social-distancing measures as soon as possible, but will be cautious about lifting restrictions in light of the new cluster, Lam said. The cases indicate the virus probably spread both at a residential building and in the workplace, Lam said. “It’s the first time that we have a health care worker who is infected at work,” Lam said. Moody’s Downgrades India Amid Virus Risks (9:32 a.m. HK) India’s credit rating moved one step closer to junk after Moody’s Investors Service


Experts dispute reports coronavirus is becoming less lethal

are reporting in Italy are entirely due to changes to medical treatment and in human behavior, which limit transmission and numbers of new infections initiated by large inocula — a larger dose of virus appears to be worse — rather than changes in the virus itself,” he said. All viruses evolve over time, and many infectious disease experts believe the novel coronavirus will eventually become less lethal to human beings, joining four other coronaviruses in causing common colds. But there is no solid evidence so far that it has changed significantly in the five months since it was first recognized among patients in Wuhan, China. “The virus hasn’t lost function on the time scale of two months,” said Andrew Noymer, an epidemiologist at the University of California at Irvine. “Loss of function is something I expect over a time scale of years.” In the United States, the pandemic has taken on a patchwork pattern with much of the Northeast seeing marked improvement. But some places in the South — Alabama, Texas and Virginia, for example — as well as Wisconsin, California and Washington state are showing increases in confirmed covid-19 cases, according to the coronavirus tracker of Johns Hopkins University. “Every place has a different epidemic, and it’s not because of the virus,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. Slight tweaks in the microbe’s genetic makeup appear in different places on the planet. Epidemiologists use those mutations to track the virus’s spread. Those changes are akin to stickers slapped on a well-traveled suitcase — markers of where the luggage has gone that don’t impart any functional change. Researchers Harm van Bakel, Emilia Sordillo and Viviana Simon at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, who have been focusing on the genetics of the novel coronavirus, said in an interview that they had not seen a dip in viral load among patients in that hospital system since March, nor have they detected any major genetic changes in the virus in New York City. People in the United States are collectively holding their breath, meanwhile, to see if there is an uptick in cases in response to the reopening of the economy, public gatherings over the Memorial Day holiday weekend and the eruption of protests against police violence in cities in recent days. Nuzzo pointed out that it usually takes around five days, and


Banks Have a Mountain of Deposits So They Don’t Need PPP Funding

ended up as deposits back at the banks. The Fed loans are pretty cheap at 0.35%, but then deposit costs have gone down considerably as well. Interest-bearing deposits cost JPMorgan Chase & Co. 0.52% in the first quarter, and Bank of America Corp. paid 0.47% while the average was around 1% for smaller lenders. Meanwhile, non-interest-bearing accounts made up about 30% of all deposits at the four biggest banks, giving them cheaper funding than the Fed’s rate. Among the top U.S. firms, only Citigroup Inc.’s name showed up on the list of 574 banks that used the Fed’s lending facility as of May 6. Citigroup has borrowed $1.3 billion from the central bank to fund some of the $3.3 billion loans it had made by May 1. It had the highest deposit cost among the four biggest banks in the first quarter at 1.1%, and the smallest deposit base. A Citigroup spokesman declined to comment. While the PPP loans stay on the banks’ balance sheets, they’re risk-free because the SBA guarantees payment -- and many will become government grants if companies meet certain criteria. Only a small portion are likely to mature to full term, KBW’s Klock estimates. Depending on how much of the loans are still outstanding and if liquidity gets tighter, banks can still access the Fed’s facility in the next two years. One deterrent to borrowing from the Fed is political. Many banks probably want to stay off the list of borrowers to avoid the impression of government support for the industry, according to executives and others familiar with their decision-making. ConnectOne Bancorp Inc., a regional lender in New Jersey, is among the top borrowers of the Fed facility, using $344 million of funds to cover about 75% of the PPP loans it has made. The bank has a 109% loan-to-deposit ratio. Small banks that are lending more than what they hold in deposits have to turn to other sources of funding, such as the Fed’s facility. Even if the Fed’s lending or buying facilities are underutilized, they provide a backup for the market, Bank of America Chief Executive Officer Brian Moynihan said. “The fact that those facilities aren’t all used is actually good news,” Moynihan said in a May 19 interview with Bloomberg Television. “That means you’re seeing stability in the funding structures.” For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com ©2020 Bloomberg L.P.


with Paulina Firozi This summer, the fight against the novel coronavirus will be a local one. Despite the country's bungled response to the pandemic, coronavirus cases and deaths nationally are trending downward as Americans emerge from months of widespread lockdowns. Major U.S. cities with the biggest outbreaks — New York, Detroit, New Orleans — are flattening and even lowering their curves. The nation’s testing capacity has dramatically improved, and a larger share of cases are being caught. Yet as the virus “There isn’t going to be one curve. There are going to be many curves,” Marynia Kolak, a health and spatial data science researcher at the University of Chicago, told me. A coronavirus testing center at Barcroft Community Center in Arlington, Va. (Olivier Douliery/AFP/Getty Images) It’s the local — not national or statewide — curves of new cases and deaths that have epidemiologists most worried now. These localized outbreaks can be found across the nation, many in states that reopened earlier but also in some states that held back a little longer. According to a map put together by University of Chicago’s Center for Spatial Data Science, clusters can be found in nearly every area of the country except for the northernmost states and parts of the West. Kolak pointed to Montgomery, Ala. — part of the South’s “Black Belt” — where cases are suddenly surging. There are also hot spots in the state’s Tuscaloosa and Walker counties, along with several counties in central Mississippi. She’s paying close attention to a cluster of cases in southwest Kansas spilling over into the Oklahoma panhandle, which have been linked to outbreaks at a meatpacking plant. Nowhere are cases more concentrated than in the Navajo Nation, an American Indian territory that spans northeastern Arizona, southeastern Utah and northwestern New Mexico. There, leaders have imposed weekend and nightly curfews in an effort to stem the virus, which has infected more than 400 people out of every 10,000 Navajo Nation residents. Miss Navajo Nation Shaandiin P. Parrish helps distribute food, water and other supplies to Navajo families in Huerfano on the Navajo Nation Reservation in New Mexico. (Sharon Chischilly/Getty Images) These types of actions — expanding social distancing restrictions — is something every local official across the nation will have to consider if they start observing increased spread, experts say. County and even more localized data is crucial to discovering the hot spots and containing


testing centers shuttered on Saturday afternoon as Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti cited “safety worries across the city.” The Daily Beast's Sam Stein: Is there any precedent for having major protests in nearly every metro area in the middle of a pandemic. From an epidemiological perspective, how bad is this? — Sam Stein (@samstein) May 31, 2020 It remains to be seen whether these demonstrations lead to a spike in cases. In the meantime, there are precautions people can take. “Crowded protests, like any large gathering of people in a close space, can help facilitate the spread of covid-19, which is why it’s so important participants wear masks, eye protection and bring hand-gel,” Saskia Popescu, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government, told The Post in an email. OOF: Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, defended the agency’s failure to detect early the spread of the coronavirus in the United States. “Redfield was among three CDC officials who spoke with reporters Friday about a comprehensive analysis by the agency that found the coronavirus began spreading in the United States as early as the second half of January, eluding detection by public health surveillance systems that help monitor for early signs of novel contagions,” Lena H. Sun and Joel Achenbach report. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post) Redfield dismissed the idea that widespread diagnostic testing would have helped, had it been available, saying it would still have been like “looking for a needle in a haystack.” The new CDC analysis looked at public health surveillance data, confirmed cases of covid-19 and the transmission of distinct genetic strains of the virus. “The results are consistent with other scientific studies that have described a two-stage viral attack that began in January on the West Coast with the coronavirus introduced by travelers from China and continued in February as travelers from Europe brought the virus to the East Coast," Lena and Joel write. "Most of the virus spreading in the United States can be traced to the introductions from Europe.” OUCH: Some states are allowing dentists to resume treating patients. That means establishing a whole new set of safety protocols. “Unlike doctors treating covid-19 patients, dentists are not considered front-line workers and until recent days had largely been left out of the nationwide triaging


Health-care workers carry a coffin with a baby, suspected of dying from Ebola, in Beni in Congo’s North Kivu province, Dec. 15, 2018. (Goran Tomasevic/Reuters) NAIROBI — The province’s governor, Bobo Boloko Bolumbu, spoke on national radio earlier on Monday and said there were five likely cases and that four of those infected had already died. He said the cases were found in Mbandaka, the provincial capital, which is home to more than 1 million people and is an important port city at the confluence of the Congo and Ruki rivers, which are heavily plied for trade and transport. The World Health Organization’s regional spokeswoman for Africa, Saya Oka, said Congo authorities have informed the WHO of the new cases. No cases of the novel coronavirus have been confirmed in Mbandaka, although more than 3,000 have been confirmed across Congo. The coronavirus and Ebola are unrelated. Ebola is transmitted only through contact with an infected person’s bodily fluids and manifests as a hemorrhagic fever accompanied in severe cases by vomiting and extensive internal bleeding. Congo has grappled for almost two years with a separate Ebola outbreak in its northeastern provinces that has killed 2,272 people so far. In April, that end of that outbreak, the country’s worst, had been just days away from being declared over when new cases were found. The worst outbreak of Ebola took place mainly across three West African countries between late 2013 and early 2016, when nearly 30,000 people were infected and more than 11,000 died. A health worker prepares an Ebola vaccine to administer to health workers during a vaccination campaign in Mbandaka, Congo, Monday, May 21, 2018. (John Bompengo/AP) The new outbreak in Équateur would be Congo’s 11th since the virus was first identified in 1976. Experimental vaccines have proved effective in preventing the spread of Ebola, but no cure has been found. Different strains of the virus exist, and different outbreaks have had mortality rates ranging from 25 to 90 percent. Rickety health infrastructure and mistrust in governments and foreign aid organizations have impeded Ebola responses both in Congo and West Africa. Locals have accused health officials and contracted suppliers of using well-funded responses to enrich themselves while imposing strict restrictions on movement and business. Congo’s government, however, has been lauded as quick to identify and contain Ebola in most previous outbreaks. Etienne Masango in Mbandaka contributed to this report. Read more


We All Might Be Flying in Planes Again Soon

Covid-19 became a pandemic because airplane passengers carried the new coronavirus with them around the world. As that became clear, airlines grounded nearly all of their fleets, governments issued travel restrictions and mandatory quarantines, and tourist attractions and conferences closed down. With no reason to fly, a quick recovery for air travel seemed unlikely. Warren Buffett dumped his airline stocks, claiming that the “world has changed.” Passengers also wouldn’t feel safe packed inside a metal tube for hours, would they? Happily for the industry, if not for the climate, the seemingly insurmountable barriers to air travel have begun to look less daunting. “We believe the worst is behind us, and we’re on the uptick,” American Airlines Group Inc.’s boss, Doug Parker, said after a surge in travel over the U.S. Memorial Day holiday weekend. Investors have taken notice. The Bloomberg Americas Airlines stocks index has rebounded by almost one-third from the mid-May low, and European carriers have made similar gains. Shares in German tour operator Tui AG have risen too. Such optimism feels jarring when airlines, American Airlines included, are poised to cut thousands of jobs. Most are still burning huge amounts of cash. Deutsche Lufthansa AG needs a 9 billion-euro ($10 billion) bailout, and Latam Airlines Group SA joined Latin American peer Avianca Holdings SA in filing for bankruptcy last week. But Parker is probably right to expect a continued recovery, at least on domestic and short-haul routes. This won’t be enough to put debt-laden airlines on a secure footing, and a full demand recovery probably won’t happen for a couple more years. But, right now, a desperate industry will take any good news it can get. The rigorous hygiene measures airlines have announced should go a long way toward restoring passenger confidence. European budget carrier Ryanair Holdings Plc expects to operate at 40% of normal capacity from July, and the way bookings are shaping up suggests those planes will probably be at least half full. EasyJet Plc sees “encouraging” trends and notes that winter bookings are higher than usual for this time of year, although part of that may be because people have refund vouchers to use and are rebooking cancelled trips. Ryanair’s extensive summer flight schedule had seemed premature a couple of weeks ago, but the travel restrictions that kept Europeans from moving around the continent are being relaxed. Starting in July, Spain is set to drop


The Daily 202: Trump’s credibility gap complicates his response to the three crises enveloping his presidency

in the internationally connected but high-elevation region [of Cusco in Peru] has prompted speculation here that the coronavirus gets soroche, the Quechua word for altitude sickness," Simeon Tegel reports. "Similar results have been seen elsewhere in the Andes, and in Tibet. Scientists warn that the apparent pattern might not last, but the as-yet-unexplained phenomenon has them intrigued. Researchers are starting to investigate a possible relationship between the coronavirus and altitude.” Hong Kong police canceled the city’s annual vigil for Tiananmen Squarevictims for the first time in 30 years, citing coronavirus concerns. But that seems like an excuse. (Adam Taylor) China said it is sending 30 million testing kits a month to Africa, plus 10,000 ventilators and 80 million masks. (Teo Armus) The U.S. sent Brazil two million dozes of hydroxychloroquine for use against the virus, despite medical warnings about the risks of using the drug. The two countries will also conduct a joint research effort, and the United States will also send 1,000 ventilators to Brazil. (Reuters) Raising kids in a dilapidated Venezuela was already hard, and the pandemic made it worse. Nicolas Maduros’s government has imposed one of the world’s strictest lockdowns, and there’s no timetable for a return to school. (Mariana Zúñiga) A top Italian medical official said the virus is losing potency and, “clinically,” does not exist in Italy anymore. (Reuters) Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan tested positive for the virus but said he’s asymptomatic and will be working from home. Armenia, with a population of 3 million, has 9,282 confirmed cases and 131 fatalities. (Isabelle Khurshudyan) Manila ended a two-month lockdown with a ferocious traffic jam, caused by insufficient public transportation. Officials said limited transportation is necessary to curb the spread of covid-19, but critics are bracing for an even worse spike in cases from the clusters of stranded people. (Regine Cabato) Queen Elizabeth II was spotted outside for the first time since lockdown measures were implemented in Britain. The 94-year-old was photographed riding a black pony around Windsor Castle, where she has been isolating since March 23. (Jennifer Hassan) Social media speed read Biden canceled a scheduled (virtual) speech to the Maine Democratic Party and left his basement in Delaware to visit a protest site near his house: We are a nation in pain right now, but we must not allow this pain to destroy us. As President, I will help lead this conversation —


Is the Worst of the Coronavirus Behind Us Now?

that the virus has disappeared. Areas such as Latin America are still being hit hard. The World Health Organization says the strength of the virus in the developing world indicates we are globally still in the first wave, rather than past it. Nor does it make sense for all countries to lift restrictions to the same extent. Scientists in the U.K., where daily case growth has been higher than in neighboring countries, have expressed concern about curbs being eased too fast. It’s pretty unlikely we are anywhere near herd immunity, and if the virus is a seasonal one, a return in the winter months can’t be ruled out. Still, countries in Europe are proving they can return to some semblance of normal life while containing the virus’s spread, and this is a very positive development. We’re far better prepared to contain “super-spreader” events than at the beginning of the epidemic, when the virus thrived below the surface. Earlier this month, more than 100 infections were traced to a service in a German church, which closed its doors as a result. And economic activity is recovering, as captured by the quite rational rally in financial markets. Bank of America analysts expect key indicators to point to an expanding euro-zone economy by September at the latest. If infections from the novel coronavirus or another one like it do spike again, we will have had more time to keep researching existing drugs for possible treatments, as well as working on the more distant goal of a vaccine. The extra resources being poured into testing, medical research and hospitals should help us avoid the worst of both worlds — high excess deaths and blanket, economy-killing lockdown measures — even if cases climb. The scenario of this virus simply disappearing, perhaps in the way the 2003 SARS disease did, remains a dream. Pandemics usually end when there aren’t enough people left to infect, or when human intervention — through vaccines, or brute-force measures such as isolation or quarantine — scores a decisive victory. We’re not there yet. But the feeling of getting closer is palpable, and worth relishing. This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. Lionel Laurent is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Brussels. He previously worked at Reuters and Forbes. For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion ©2020 Bloomberg L.P.


page had a significant security hole that Kemp's office has never publicly acknowledged. The computer chip industry is using coronavirus tensions between the United States and China to push for billions in government funding. U.S. President Donald Trump and China's President Xi Jinping (not shown) make a joint statement at the Great Hall of the People on November 9, 2017 in Beijing, China. Trump is on a 10-day trip to Asia. (Photo by Thomas Peter-Pool/Getty Images) Proposals from an industry trade group include billions in subsidies for a new chip factory, aid for states looking to attract industry investment and increased research funding, the Wall Street Journal reports. China hawks have pointed to the semiconductor industry as key to reducing U.S. companies' reliance on Chinese hardware that could be used for government spying. The White House and lawmakers from both parties have introduced plans that would boost government spending on the industry. Last month the White House moved to block overseas sales of chips produced with U.S. technology to Huawei and other Chinese firms that represent national security risks. Global cyberspace North Korea called U.S. allegations it conducts cyberattacks a smear tactic. A directional sign showing the distance to North Korea's Kaesong city and South Korea's capital Seoul (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man) Pyongyang officials also accused the Trump administration of using the allegations as leverage in stalled denuclearization talks, Reuters reports. U.S. officials have accused North Korean government hackers of digitally stealing money from banks and ATMs in order to help fund the government. “We want to make it clear that our country has nothing to do with the so-called ‘cyber threat’ that the U.S. is talking about,” North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said. More international news: Germany Calls in Russian Envoy Over Hack Attack Germany's foreign ministry called in the Russian ambassador in Berlin on Thursday to complain "in the strongest possible terms" about a hack attack on the German lower house of parliament in 2015 and discuss possible sanctions against those responsible. Reuters Government scan Washington state has recovered $300 million in fradulent coronavirus unemployment benefit claims. In this May 27, 2020, photo, thermometers, gloves, and cleaning swabs sit on a table at the entrance (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren) The state has not disclosed how much it paid on the claims from criminals who used stolen personal information, the Associated Press reports. More government and legal news: Inside Twitter’s Decision


an NYPD squad car accelerated into protesters. Cars burned in Cleveland. City hall burned in Nashville. In the White House, the president wailed on Twitter about “FAKE NEWS!” and “LAW & ORDER!” but gave no formal address to the nation. The country seemed incapable of the care and precision that delivers people to orbit. The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket takes flight. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post) At her home in Charlotte, former astronaut Joan Higginbotham started watching the launch preparations at T-minus 20:00. She remembered the fat gloves and thousands of switches on the space shuttle Discovery, whose vintage bulk she rode to orbit in 2006 for a mission just shy of 13 days, as she looked at footage of the clean blue touch screens in the sleek SpaceX capsule. This was progress. Higginbotham was thrilled by the exquisite liftoff from American soil. But the television in her home had been turned off most of last week. She had seen the video of George Floyd’s last moments too many times. Floyd had complained he couldn’t breath and lay motionless on the ground for almost two minutes before the officer removed his knee. This was the opposite of progress. “For me, as an African American woman, it is just extremely exhausting and exasperating and it sucks the life out of me when things like this continue to happen in this day and age,” Higginbotham says. Ten miles away from Higginbotham that same afternoon, in downtown Charlotte, three black men of different generations converged on an overpass of Interstate 277, above East 4th Street. “I’m tired of this s---!” said a 45-year-old man in a white tank top. “We’ve been standing around, as the older ones, taking all this bulls---! . . . Ain’t nobody coming to protect us!” A 31-year-old man named Curtis Hayes Jr. brought over a 16-year-old protester, to make a point. “He’s 16!” Hayes shouted at the older man. “And they going to kill him next week,” the older man said. “At this point I’m ready to die for what’s going on!” Hayes, tears streaming down his face, pivoted to the 16-year-old, gripped his rib cage, and bellowed: “Let me tell you something. What you see right now is gonna happen 10 years from now. And at 26, you gonna be doing the same thing I’m doing! You understand that! Ten years! You’re gonna be right here too! So


sidewalk out front are there permanently, and he’s ordered food and brought back 30 percent of his staff. By noon, there were several restaurants along Woodmont Avenue with tables set out, but only a few diners taking advantage of them. At Fish Taco, you could order at the counter and bring it outside to a table, but no one had done so. At Tandoori Nights, staffers had measured the distance between tables with a tape measure, but no one was sitting at them. At a table in front of Philz Coffee, three graduating seniors from nearby Bethesda Chevy Chase High School laughed and chatted. “It feels so surreal,” said 17-year-old Nithia Akineza. Before getting coffee, Akineza and her two friends had dropped off textbooks and picked up their caps and gowns from school. They’d also received goody bags, complete with “Class of 2020” face masks. It was their first time gathering in person since the shutdown. “Everybody’s like, how do you feel?” Akineza said. “I’m like, how am I supposed to feel? I’m graduating on a Zoom call.” But she and her friends said they were happy to be together again on a gorgeous sunny day. Maryland and Virginia reported a total of 1,340 new coronavirus cases; the District had not updated its figures by midday. There were 37 new deaths reported in Maryland and Virginia, bringing the region’s death toll to 4,410. Virginia reported 17 new deaths, bringing its total number of fatalities to 1,392. Fairfax and Loudoun counties each reported four new deaths. Maryland had 20 new deaths. In Baltimore, there were 234 new cases reported, bringing that city’s total to 6,299. Montgomery and Prince George’s reported 115 and 133 new cases, respectively. Montgomery and Prince George’s counties each reported four new deaths. Montgomery has now had 616 deaths and Prince George’s has had 545. In Bradley Shopping Center in Bethesda, several people waited outside the barbershop for haircuts. “It was the first one I could get,” said 77-year-old Tom Newkirk, wearing an N95 mask ahead of an 11 a.m. The hairstylists inside the shop looked as though they could have been hazmat workers, wearing face shields and masks. Newkirk, a lawyer, said he’s been working from home but hopes maybe he’ll be able to get back to the office soon. He said he’s got that “cabin fever feeling.” But he doesn’t plan on outdoor dining at a


Coronavirus Canada Nunavut Inuit First Nations

Pond Inlet, Nunavut. (Picture Alliance/Getty Images) Michael Patterson was concerned — then stumped. A resident of Pond Inlet, a hamlet of about 1,600 people in the vast, mostly empty Arctic Canadian territory of Nunavut, had tested positive for the novel coronavirus. The individual hadn’t been outside the territory, which had sealed itself off to most outsiders and enacted strict travel restrictions for residents. Within 24 hours, contact tracers isolated 20 people in the mostly Inuit community on the northeastern tip of Baffin Island who might have been exposed to the infected resident. Thirteen were swabbed for the virus. They tested negative. “We were a little bit confused,” said Patterson, Nunavut’s top doctor. So he had the original swab retested. Again, it was negative. The territory announced the false positive, the population of 39,000 scattered across an area slightly larger than Mexico breathed a sigh of relief, and Patterson revised the total number of confirmed covid-19 cases back down. To zero. More than a month after the false alarm, Nunavut remains the only state-level jurisdiction in North America not to record a single case of the virus that has sickened millions and killed more than 370,000 people worldwide. Every other Canadian province and territory and every U.S. and Mexican state has coronavirus cases. “There are still no confirmed cases or probable cases of covid-19 in Nunavut,” Premier Joe Savikataaq announced during a news conference last week. “And I’m always happy to say that.” [The world’s indigenous peoples, with tragic history of disease, implore outsiders to keep coronavirus away] Keeping it that way is vital — and has meant making some tough decisions. The territory’s remoteness — its 25 hamlets and capital of Iqaluit are connected to one another and the rest of Canada only by air — might help reduce the risk of the virus arriving. But it also makes it one of the most vulnerable places in Canada were the virus to spread. Nunavut’s one hospital, in Iqaluit, has 35 beds. Most Nunavummiut leave the territory for medical attention, from chemotherapy to diagnostic imaging to childbirth. There are no intensive care beds, and only a dozen ventilators. A chronic shortage of housing in a territory where average temperatures are far below freezing most of the year means several generations typically live under one roof, making social distancing difficult. Nunavut also struggles with food insecurity and outbreaks of tuberculosis, a respiratory


The Energy 202: Coronavirus pandemic could give Democrats easier way to repeal major Trump EPA rules

up the country’s industrial machine quickly,” the New York Times reports. A coal-fired heating station in Heilongjiang province of China. (Jason Lee/Reuters) In the United Sates, meanwhile, the Trump administration has “used the coronavirus pandemic to relax an array of environmental rules. Embattled Republicans and their allies have been testing the argument that climate friendly policies would kill jobs and crush an already ailing economy, though there is no evidence to support those claims. And, while the early United States aid packages have resisted calls to boost renewable energy, and fossil fuel companies have dipped into the relief money, the next rounds of government stimulus are still in play.” A team of scientists is trying to develop a coronavirus test for marine mammals. It’s not yet known whether dolphins and whales get covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, but they do get coronaviruses, neuroimmunologist Tracy Romano told E&E News. People wearing face masks watch a dolphin performance near Tokyo. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara) Her team at Mystic Aquarium in Stonington, Conn., wants to test the mammals to determine whether their immune systems can fight pathogens. It's research that could benefit humans, as well. “Allison Tuttle, a veterinary scientist at Mystic Aquarium, said there has been evidence in the past of coronaviruses affecting marine mammals, including instances of pneumonia in seals in California, bacterial infections in seals along the Atlantic Coast and hepatitis in beluga whales,” E&E reports. Oil check Shell evacuates workers from offshore platform. Six out of nine workers who were evacuated from a Shell-operated platform in the Gulf of Mexico tested positive for the coronavirus, the Times-Picayune reports. “There have been about 100 known cases of COVID-19 among offshore workers in the U.S. since the pandemic began, according to the National Ocean Industries Association. That's out of 25,000 workers who rotate offshore,” per the report. The company implemented mandatory coronavirus testing for all personnel traveling to offshore platforms earlier this month. “Prior to the mandatory testing, Shell workers were required to fill out a screening questionnaire before they were flown to offshore platforms by helicopter,” according to the newspaper. “The company also extended the length of stay on production platforms from 14 days to 21 days. Those who work on drilling rigs will now stay offshore for 28 days, instead of 21 days.” Russia has no objection to an early meeting date for OPEC and its allies.


The Technology 202: Protests, coronavirus and election present disinformation challenge for social media companies

about unsafe warehouse conditions-Forming more than 1,000 Ring doorbell surveillance partnerships with police departments -Selling racially biased facial recognition software to cops https://t.co/xaTIExSCXp — Fight for the Future (@fightfortheftr) May 31, 2020 The semiconductor industry is lobbying for billions in funding to bring manufacturing to the United States amid coronavirus-related tensions with China. President Trump returns from the SpaceX Falcon 9 launch. (Patrick Semansky/AP) A new crop of proposals from an industry trade group includes billions in subsidies for a new chip factory, aid for states looking to attract industry investment and increased research funding, the Wall Street Journal reports. The push could find support from both the White House and bipartisan members of Congress who have seen strengthening the U.S. semiconductor industry at home as a key component to reducing reliance on Chinese hardware. "The Trump administration is committed to ensuring the United States has a secure, vibrant, and internationally competitive high-tech ecosystem, supported by domestic chip production,” said Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. Last month the White House moved to make it harder for Chinese companies to use U.S. chip-making technology. But there's disagreement within the industry over how potential subsidies should work, the Journal reports. And some smaller players are worried that some of the proposals being discussed would cause U.S. states to compete with each other instead of China. SpaceX founder Elon Musk has his eyes on Mars after the company's first successful human launch mission. SpaceX founder Elon Musk jumps in the air after the manned SpaceX Falcon 9 Crew Dragon Demo-2 mission. (Erik S. Lesser/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock) The company launched two NASA astronauts into space on Saturday and successfully docked them at the International Space Station yesterday, making it the first private company to do so in the history of space flight. It's a success that few thought would be possible, Christian Davenport reports. The mission is just one step toward Musk's ambitious goal of sending humans to Mars. “I didn’t feel nervous. I felt like it was going to work,” Musk said on Saturday. It's the kind of determination the company will need to actually make it to Mars, Christian notes. On Friday, a prototype test of the rocket SpaceX is building to send to Mars blew up in a test. Rant and rave BuzzFeed reporter Caroline Haskins breaks down the surveillance technology powering police in Minneapolis: There's a couple scoops here: The Minneapolis PD, the


Future: The semiconductor industry is lobbying for billions in funding to bring manufacturing to the United States amid coronavirus-related tensions with China. A new crop of proposals from an industry trade group includes billions in subsidies for a new chip factory, aid for states looking to attract industry investment and increased research funding, the Wall Street Journal reports. The push could find support from both the White House and bipartisan members of Congress who have seen strengthening the U.S. semiconductor industry at home as a key component to reducing reliance on Chinese hardware. ”The Trump administration is committed to ensuring the United States has a secure, vibrant, and internationally competitive high-tech ecosystem, supported by domestic chip production,” said Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. Last month the White House moved to make it harder for Chinese companies to use U.S. chip-making technology. But there’s disagreement within the industry over how potential subsidies should work, the Journal reports. And some smaller players are worried that some of the proposals being discussed would cause U.S. states to compete with each other instead of China. SpaceX founder Elon Musk has his eyes on Mars after the company's first successful human launch mission. The company launched two NASA astronauts into space on Saturday and successfully docked them at the International Space Station yesterday, making it the first private company to do so in the history of space flight. It’s a success that few thought would be possible, Christian Davenport reports. The mission is just one step toward Musk's ambitious goal of sending humans to Mars. “I didn’t feel nervous. I felt like it was going to work,” Musk said on Saturday. It’s the kind of determination the company will need to actually make it to Mars, Christian notes. On Friday, a prototype test of the rocket SpaceX is building to send to Mars blew up in a test. BuzzFeed reporter Caroline Haskins breaks down the surveillance technology powering police in Minneapolis: Microsoft is laying off dozens of journalists employed by its news arm. The layoffs come as part of a push to rely more on artificial intelligence to pick news content displayed on MSN.com and in Microsoft news apps, the Verge reports. The House Homeland Security Committee will host a panel “Election Security and Integrity During a Pandemic” at 3 p.m. today. George Washington University’s Institute for Data, Democracy, and Politics will host a virtual forum


coronavirus-related tensions with China. A new crop of proposals from an industry trade group includes billions in subsidies for a new chip factory, aid for states looking to attract industry investment and increased research funding, the Wall Street Journal reports. The push could find support from both the White House and bipartisan members of Congress who have seen strengthening the U.S. semiconductor industry at home as a key component to reducing reliance on Chinese hardware. ”The Trump administration is committed to ensuring the United States has a secure, vibrant, and internationally competitive high-tech ecosystem, supported by domestic chip production,” said Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. Last month the White House moved to make it harder for Chinese companies to use U.S. chip-making technology. But there’s disagreement within the industry over how potential subsidies should work, the Journal reports. And some smaller players are worried that some of the proposals being discussed would cause U.S. states to compete with each other instead of China. SpaceX founder Elon Musk has his eyes on Mars after the company's first successful human launch mission. The company launched two NASA astronauts into space on Saturday and successfully docked them at the International Space Station yesterday, making it the first private company to do so in the history of space flight. It’s a success that few thought would be possible, Christian Davenport reports. The mission is just one step toward Musk's ambitious goal of sending humans to Mars. “I didn’t feel nervous. I felt like it was going to work,” Musk said on Saturday. It’s the kind of determination the company will need to actually make it to Mars, Christian notes. On Friday, a prototype test of the rocket SpaceX is building to send to Mars blew up in a test. BuzzFeed reporter Caroline Haskins breaks down the surveillance technology powering police in Minneapolis: Microsoft is laying off dozens of journalists employed by its news arm. The layoffs come as part of a push to rely more on artificial intelligence to pick news content displayed on MSN.com and in Microsoft news apps, the Verge reports. The House Homeland Security Committee will host a panel “Election Security and Integrity During a Pandemic” at 3 p.m. today. George Washington University’s Institute for Data, Democracy, and Politics will host a virtual forum on covid-19 and social media disinformation on June 16 at 10 a.m. More views from SpaceX’s historic mission:


Mexico begins to life coronavirus lockdown, but officials say the country is still ‘in danger’

workers at Flex, a company that makes specialized harness products for the automotive industry, adjust their protective face masks while waiting to enter the plant in Ciudad Juárez on Monday, the first day of a gradual reopening of the economy for industries deemed essential. (Jose Luis Gonzalez/Reuters) MEXICO CITY — Mexico on Monday lifted a 70-day coronavirus lockdown, but the federal and local governments replaced it with a contradictory patchwork of measures as the country struggles to contain the outbreak. The nation’s coronavirus czar, Hugo López-Gatell, took a hard line, saying that federal guidelines on opening businesses would barely budge. Only a few industries — construction, auto manufacturing and mining — would be added to the list of “essential” businesses allowed to operate, he said. “It’s vital that society understands that the danger continues,” he said. [Coronavirus on the border: Patients from Mexico overwhelm hospitals in California] But several governors defied the federal government’s orders, allowing shops and hotels in their states to open at least partially. Meanwhile, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador resumed his travel around the country with a visit to the Caribbean coast. “We have to enter a new normality,” López Obrador told a news conference. “Our national economy, the well-being of our people need this.” President Andrés Manuel López Obrador speaks at a news conference Monday at the facilities of the X Military Region in Isla Mujeres, Mexico. (Alonso Cupul/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock) Mexico has confirmed nearly 10,000 deaths directly linked to coronavirus, with an unknown number of other people perishing without a test. The Mexico City region has been hit hardest. López-Gatell says it’s starting to show signs of a decline in cases, but some scientists believe deaths could continue at elevated levels for weeks. Mexico has suffered the second most coronavirus fatalities in Latin America, after Brazil, whose president, Jair Bolsonaro, has been a global outlier in downplaying the threat. [Coronavirus outbreaks at Mexico’s hospitals raise alarm, protests] Jesús Silva-Herzog Márquez, a political scientist at the Tecnológico de Monterrey, said López Obrador had failed to establish a coordinated national policy. “He’s far from the terrible denialism of Bolsonaro and the brutal lack of responsibility of Donald Trump,” he said. But “he’s a politician who hasn’t managed to fit together the pieces of his strategy.” People pass the time on benches in Mexico City on Sunday. (Rebecca Blackwell/AP) The Mexican leader initially appeared to minimize the coronavirus threat,


SpaceX launch of NASA astronauts provides a chance to compare the new and old

The Falcon 9 is a slim, slick rocket — a powerful beast, for sure, that unleashes a menacing roar at liftoff that reverberates across the Florida Space Coast. But it also provides a deceptively smooth ride, at least at first, when compared with the space shuttle. The Falcon 9′s second stage, though, packs a punch. That was the review of the first NASA astronauts to have flown on both Space X’s Falcon 9 and its predecessor, the space shuttle, manufactured for NASA by prime contractor Rockwell International. The Falcon 9 was smooth at first, then a bit of a rumble, “like driving fast over a gravel road,” said astronaut Doug Hurley who with Bob Behnken offered their thoughts of the rockets’ performance for reporters on Monday. The mission was a test flight, and their job was not only to fly to the space station — a goal they achieved Sunday — but to assess how the rocket and spacecraft, which had never before flown humans, performed. Now that SpaceX has shown that it can safely deliver people to orbit, the question became how did its system, the first developed entirely by a private company to send NASA astronauts to space, compare to the rockets and spacecraft NASA had engineered before? Space enthusiasts finally have the beginnings of an answer to which system is better. Clearly, SpaceX’s vehicles look different. Even the astronauts’ spacesuits were sleek and form-fitting departures from their clunky, at times dowdy predecessors. Inside the capsule, SpaceX founder Elon Musk and his engineers simplified the control panels, banishing the dozens of switches that made the Shuttle such a complicated vehicle to fly, and instead opted for large touch screens. The Dragon’s chairs were inspired by those in racecars, with custom foam molds. Even the launch tower was revamped to look modern and sleek. And for this mission, the first flight of NASA astronauts from United States soil since the space shuttle retired in 2011, NASA decided to bring back its “worm” logo from the 1970s, which was painted on the side of the Falcon 9 rocket. Taken together, the changes were not only a nod to the science fiction that inspired Musk as a child but a deliberate attempt to create an aesthetic and evoke a mood. “If you’re a member of the public, … you don’t necessarily know that much about rocket design or how spacecraft work,


Montgomery, Pr. George’s ease open

It was their first time gathering in person since the shutdown. “Everybody’s like, ‘How do you feel?’ ” Akineza said. “I’m like, ‘How am I supposed to feel? I’m graduating on a Zoom call.’ ” The coronavirus, though slowed, has continued to spread. The District, Maryland and Virginia reported a total of 1,396 new coronavirus cases on Monday. There were 39 new deaths reported in the three jurisdictions, bringing the region’s death toll to 4,412. Virginia reported 17 new deaths, with Fairfax and Loudoun counties each reporting four new deaths. Maryland had 20 new deaths, with four each in Montgomery and Prince George’s. The District disclosed 56 new coronavirus cases and two new deaths. Shivani Miglani, manager of Tandoori Nights on Woodmont Avenue, and server Charchid Karki measure the distance between tables Monday outside the restaurant. (H. Darr Beiser for The Washington Post) D.C. city officials said they would announce criteria for lifting additional restrictions later in the week. LaQuandra Nesbitt, the city’s top public health official, said she was monitoring for a two-week decline in the spread of the virus starting May 29, when the city entered Phase 1 of its reopening plans. The consecutive nights of mass protests in the city, part of nationwide outrage over the death of George Floyd in the custody of Minneapolis police, has public health experts concerned about the potential spread of the virus and the possibility of a second wave of infections. Although the city excludes cases at confined facilities when calculating the community spread of the virus, Nesbitt said cases from mass gatherings would not be excluded. “As we ramp up our contact tracing, we will try as best as we can to link their exposure to having participated in one of these events, but it could be tricky to do so,” she said. “If people are going to work, if they are going to dine in at the outdoor restaurants and we do a complete interview of all the activities that they participated in, we may be able to link their activity or participation to one of these protests.” Across the Potomac River from the District, the National Harbor resort in Prince George’s was largely quiet on Monday. Parking spots were plentiful. Most stores were shuttered, with new signs announcing new rules allowing curbside pickup. Many restaurants were preparing for reopening later in the week. Laura Castro was among a


The Big Number

Telltale signs of asthma — coughing, wheezing, shortness of breath — afflict about 25 million U.S. residents. That includes 19.2 million adults and 5.5 million youths, or roughly 8 percent of the population, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Asthma symptoms, also known as an asthma attack, are the result of a person’s airways becoming inflamed, narrowed and mucus-laden, restricting the flow of air to and from the lungs. However, asthma can vary greatly from person to person, with differences in severity and frequency of attacks as well as what triggers those attacks. For some, it’s exposure to allergens such as dust, pollen or pet dander. Cigarette smoke, smog or the smell of paint or perfume may bring on attacks. For others, triggers may be exercise, especially in cold air, or sudden changes in the weather. Though no cure exists for asthma, which is a chronic condition, symptoms usually can be controlled, starting with avoidance of known triggers. Treatment options include quick-relief inhaled medications, which ease attack symptoms by swiftly relaxing muscles around the airways to allow better air flow, and long-term control medication, which can help prevent attacks or at least make them fewer and milder. Most asthma medicines are taken by breathing them in, via an inhaler or nebulizer, a method that gets the medication quickly to the lungs, but some medicines are taken as a pill. Working closely with your doctor on a treatment plan is advised for anyone with asthma because severe symptoms, or untreated ones, can be life-threatening. The CDC reports that asthma causes 9.8 million doctor visits each year, as well as 1.6 million trips to the ER. — Linda Searing Read more Battling asthma can get harder, and scarier, as you age Keeping kids who have asthma healthy


What If We Can Avoid a Second Wave?

The story of Covid-19 has been pretty bleak, from the scale of the novel coronavirus’s death toll to the pain of draconian lockdowns imposed by, in many cases, unprepared and under-resourced governments. But several weeks after the tentative lifting of tough stay-at-home restrictions in several major European countries, there are reasons to be optimistic about the risk of a second wave of cases — with a dose of appropriate caution. In France, the government is forging ahead with the reopening of bars, restaurants, museums, parks and cross-country travel after the first phase of “deconfinement” went much better than expected. The daily increase in cases here averaged around 0.5% last week, according to Bloomberg data, and the virus’s basic reproduction rate is below 1, according to the French government and other estimates based on hospitalizations. Elsewhere, Italy, Germany and Spain have also avoided serious flare-ups in cases and deaths as restrictions are eased. It’s similar in Austria and Denmark, which lifted lockdowns back in April. Weekly confirmed cases show the continuation of a declining trend. That’s despite people going out and about once again, albeit with face masks and hand gel, and a stay on big-crowd events for now. Retail and recreational footfall in these countries, which was near zero during the lockdown, has recovered to around 50% below the pre-crisis baseline, according to Google data. In parks and public spaces, it’s back to normal. Consumers are even booking flights again. Visions of a radically new society emerging from the rubble of Covid-19 may have to be rethought. There’s no consensus yet on why things are going relatively well. Some experts say the virus itself may have changed, possibly weakened by the summer heat or mutating into a more benign form. Society has changed, too. More social distancing, more hand-washing and more tools such testing and contact tracing are proving their worth. Whatever the reason, doctors are increasingly voicing relief and optimism. “Of course, we shouldn’t lower our guard...But right now, it’s as if the epidemic was behind me,” French medical professor Frederic Adnet said last week. On Friday, Christian Drosten, a virologist at the Charite University Hospital in Berlin, told Der Spiegel he was confident the outbreak could be kept under control without another lockdown: “There is theoretically a possibility that we can forego a second wave.” None of this means that the virus has disappeared. Areas such as Latin