Europe thinks it is past the peak of the first wave of the coronavirus

measures in Italy were necessary because the virus had raged for so long without any restrictions, and the country is still paying the price. Italy is still reporting as many as 600 deaths per day. More than 100 doctors in Italy have died. The country’s economy is forecast to shrink nine percent this year, and the political pressure to reopen — to keep up with countries hit less hard by the virus — puts it in danger of a second and third wave. In France, authorities cautiously announced a beginning of the end of peak infections. Jérôme Salomon, France’s deputy health minister, said this week that for the first time since the pandemic began, the number of covid-19 patients admitted to French hospitals decreased. Martin Hirsch, the director of the Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris, the largest public hospital system in Europe, announced that in the Paris region, the hardest hit by the coronavirus, the total number of cases had stabilized for the first time since the start of the pandemic. “We are now in what we’ve called the ‘high plateau,’ ” Hirsch said, “which is to say a stabilization at a very high level, and always with an increase in the number of cases in our geriatric units, which face difficult situations. But we can share several encouraging signs.” As Spain finished its first month of confinement this week, Fernando Simon, who heads the Emergency Health Response for the Health Ministry, said quickly adopting social distancing and personal hygiene measures following the WHO’s declaration of the pandemic brought down the spread of covid-19. “We changed our behavior and that is what affected the infection rates,” Simon said. The extensive testing and contact tracing used by German health authorities has been heralded as an example of how to contain the virus. Germany has recorded less than 4,000 deaths among a population of 83 million. That compares to almost 14,000 deaths in the United Kingdom’s 67 million people and 18,000 in France’s similarly sized population. In recent weeks, German health authorities have said that the rate of new infections has tapered off. “We have achieved something,” Merkel said in a news conference as she announced that small shops would open after the weekend, with schools gradually opening their doors next month. “Namely, that our doctors, our nursing staff and all those involved in medical hospital work, they were not overwhelmed,” the German


Some public safety agencies won’t say if workers have coronavirus

They make close-quarter arrests in a time of social distancing. They rush those sickened with the coronavirus to the hospital. They are responsible for guarding inmates in jails with covid-19 outbreaks. Police officers, firefighters, sheriff’s deputies and corrections officers are on the front lines of the pandemic. Many public safety agencies, including police and fire departments in the District, have announced when their members become ill. But others have taken the opposite stance regarding the number of covid-19 cases within their ranks: silence. In Virginia, the Fairfax County sheriff had declined to say whether any of her deputies tested positive after a coronavirus outbreak at the jail — until changing course this week. Alexandria and Arlington won’t disclose whether their employees, including firefighters and police officers, are sick with covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. Philadelphia has rebuffed requests for case tallies among its thousands of police officers and firefighters, despite a rising chorus of concerns, and Columbus, Ohio, stopped releasing such figures at the end of March. Officials cite a range of considerations, from worker privacy to avoiding creating panic, but an increasing number of critics say the lack of information could be putting the public and public safety workers at risk and is eroding trust in the agencies. Dave Statter, a former TV journalist who advises public safety agencies on communications, said departments could release the number of workers with covid-19 without violating anyone’s privacy, as many agencies are already doing. Statter said they have a duty to do so since these workers are coming into contact with the public in ways that could spread a contagious disease. He said they are also missing an opportunity to educate about the dangers these workers face. “The public — that’s who you serve — they should know what’s going on in the public safety agencies, particularly at a time of a crisis, like this pandemic,” Statter said. “The public does interact with you. They want to know, if you have people infected, how you are dealing with it. And most are dealing with it responsibly.” But cities and public service agencies said they have to walk a careful line between informing the public and protecting sensitive health information about employees. Philadelphia Managing Director Brian Abernathy said releasing the data might chill doctors’ willingness to report such information to the city and impede its ability to manage outbreaks. “Even in


The tainted polio vaccine that sickened and fatally paralyzed children in 1955

Hospital of Philadelphia. Roughly 40,000 got “abortive” polio, with fever, sore throat, headache, vomiting and muscle pain. Fifty-one were paralyzed, and five died, Offit wrote in his 2005 book, “The Cutter Incident: How America’s First Polio Vaccine Led to the Growing Vaccine Crisis.” It was “one of the worst biological disasters in American history: a man-made polio epidemic,” Offit wrote. In those days, polio, or infantile paralysis, was a terror. “A national poll … found that polio was second only to the atomic bomb as the thing that Americans feared most,” Offit wrote. “People weren’t sure how you got it,” he said in an interview last week. “Therefore, they were scared of everything. They didn’t want to buy a piece of fruit at the grocery store. It’s the same now. … Everybody’s walking around with gloves on, with masks on, scared to shake anybody’s hand.” “I remember my mother … wouldn’t let us go to a public swimming pool,” said Offit, 69. We “all had to go into one of those little plastic pools in the back so that we wouldn’t be in a public place.” The worst polio outbreak in U.S. history struck in 1952, the year after Offit was born. It infected 57,000 people, paralyzed 21,000 and killed 3,145. The next year there were 35,000 infections, and 38,000 the year after that. Many survivors had to wear painful metal braces on their paralyzed legs or had to be placed in so-called iron lungs, which helped them breathe. There was no vaccine and few treatments. (One bogus approach was to spray acid into the noses of children to block the virus. All it did was ruin the sense of smell.) Often polio victims were children, but the most famous affected American was President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who got polio and was paralyzed from the waist down in 1921 when he was 39. In 1951, Jonas Salk of the University of Pittsburgh’s medical school received a grant from the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis to find a vaccine. During intense months of research, he took live polio virus and killed it with formaldehyde until it was not infectious but still provided virus-fighting antibodies. When tests showed that the vaccine was safe, Salk told his wife, “I’ve got it,” Offit wrote. Word of his success soon leaked out. Public pressure grew for the vaccine and for a large-scale trial. In 1953,


College athletes are far from their mental health resources when they need them most

final decisions on players’ health, and although it doesn’t explicitly mention mental wellness, providers say the document effectively gave coaches permission to defer. “The athletics culture in general tends to be hypermasculine, even in a female sport. ‘Rub some dirt on it and go,’ ” Houle said. “That mentality has evolved.” Eventually, as the days passed, Tebbe Priebe spoke informally with friends in the mental health field, her own attempt at airing thoughts, and tried to disengage from the news. If there were quiet moments, she knew they were fleeting. Not just because her 7- and 5-year-old could burst in at any moment. If some of Iowa’s athletes truly were responding to being sent home with grief, shock and denial would eventually give way to depression and acceptance. She had been unnerved initially by the quiet of those first days, of how few people attended the online support groups, but she suspected a wave was coming. “Not only am I going through the brains of what everybody needs at this moment,” she said, “but two weeks down the line, what might this person need? This is not going to hit people for a while.” While she waited, Tebbe Priebe tried to reintroduce structure to her household routine and declutter her thoughts. She wasn’t alone. Bader, in Arkansas, told himself it was appropriate — if unpopular during chaotic periods — to admit he couldn’t answer every question. Auerbach, in Arizona, tried to ease anxieties by issuing reminders that — for better or worse — there was time. “We don’t have to solve all this today,” Auerbach found himself saying to athletes, and himself. Tebbe Priebe, though, ordered a desk for her husband and planned to set up a card table for herself in their master bedroom. She would need space, a locking door, something that felt more permanent considering what might lay ahead in how people were reacting to the coronavirus and its many wide-ranging implications. “We’re treading water because we can’t stop thinking about it, and, just — too many plans gets you anxious if you don’t follow through,” Tebbe Priebe said. “I do expect to have to reach out to student-athletes.” She paused, thinking about the coming weeks. “I just don’t know,” she said. “It’s so hard to say because the culture is so different with every day. I’m expecting, though, that we’re all going to stay very busy.”


Coronavirus upends years of planning for international adoptions and surrogacy births

glad one of us is here,” she said. “I didn’t think it would come to this. I thought, ‘It will be all right; they cannot lock down everything.’ I never would have imagined this situation.” The sweeping travel restrictions, imposed with little advance notice, have interrupted plans for prospective new families around the world. The United States has imposed restrictions on travelers who have been in China, Iran and most of Europe, as well as Canada and Mexico. Nine of 10 people in the world live in countries that have closed their borders because of the covid-19 outbreak, narrowing international travel to a trickle. As a result, many people overseas with surrogates in the United States are either stranded thousands of miles away or stuck in the United States, unable to bring their newborns home. And Americans who were about to fly abroad for international adoptions cannot enter the countries where children wait for them, often in orphanages. “We literally had 15 families who had tickets purchased to leave the next day or in few days, and 10 families ready to purchase tickets,” said Susan Cox, vice president for policy at Holt International, an Oregon-based Christian organization that arranged more than 500 adoptions from other countries last year. “In some cases, their adoptions had been in process for two or three years. They were finally at the point where the child was ready to travel, and the adoption was ready to be completed. They were so close.” Thomas Mitchell and his wife, Callie, had been waiting for eight months to bring a 3-year-old boy home from an orphanage in northern China. Mitchell built him a bed that his daughters painted and decorated his room at their home in Chattanooga, Tenn., with a mural of pandas and pagodas. They had plane tickets to China in early February, but 12 days before their departure date, the adoption was put on indefinite hold. “At first, we thought it would be a couple weeks’ delay,” said Thomas Mitchell, a real estate transaction coordinator. “Then it snowballed. Now, nobody knows when we can go.” The Mitchells sent their son, whom they will name John Tao Mitchell, a new photo book and a letter explaining that they will come as soon as the airplanes can fly again, not knowing if that will be weeks or months from now. “It’s incredibly sad,” Thomas Mitchell said. “It’s incredibly


frustrating. We’re still very hopeful as well. I’d say if there’s an emotion out there, we’re probably feeling it.” Further complicating matters, the State Department has been swamped with arranging airlifts for tens of thousands of Americans and has curtailed most routine passport services. U.S. embassies and consulates have continued to issue passports for infants newly adopted overseas — if the parents can get there. But that has been no help for surrogacy births. When governments began imposing travel bans, no one foresaw the consequences for families created with the help of surrogates, said Nidhi Desai, a Chicago lawyer who specializes in international adoptions and surrogacies. Many foreigners who choose surrogacy come to the United States because family law in most states has established procedures and protections unavailable in their native countries. Typically, the prospective parents get a pre-birth court order declaring them the parents. They arrive in the United States a few weeks before the birth, take the court order to get a passport for the infant and return home a few weeks after the birth. The global pandemic threw a bureaucratic hurdle into the process. Anyone born in the United States is a U.S. citizen and must use a U.S. passport to exit the country. That includes babies born to gestational surrogates. So far, the State Department does not consider surrogacy a life-or-death emergency to make an exception to the passport pause, and won’t issue them. Without a passport for their baby, the parents cannot return home once air travel resumes. “Nobody thinks they should travel now,” said Desai, noting covid-19 health concerns in the United States as well as most other countries. “But they should be able to, the minute it’s safe to go back home.” Desai estimates about 100 sets of parents are ensnared in travel restrictions preventing them from coming to the United States for a surrogacy birth, or from leaving to go home. If the crisis continues for several months, several hundred more families will be affected, she said. The State Department is considering a policy change to address the situation. “We recognize that in addition to wanting to be present at the birth of their child, there may be medical decisions to be made and we want to be sensitive to that, so we’re examining ways in which these intending parents can travel,” a State Department spokesman said. Even parents who made it


Contamination at CDC lab delayed rollout of coronavirus tests

in Atlanta, he advised the CDC to discontinue manufacturing the kits, the regulatory agency said. In response, the CDC turned to an outside contractor to manufacture the remaining kits it had intended to make for public health labs. The CDC’s performance with the test kits marks an unparalleled low in its often-proud, 74-year history. “I was just saddened and embarrassed when this test didn’t work out,’’ said James Le Duc, a virologist and former CDC official who now is director of the Galveston National Laboratory in Texas. “It’s really a terrible black mark on the CDC, and the impact was devastating to the country.’’ On Jan. 12, Chinese authorities made public a vital piece of medical information: the genetic sequence of the new coronavirus that was raging in the metropolitan area of Wuhan, about 500 miles west of Shanghai. Because of the volume of global travel, cases would almost surely emerge in the United States. The genetic sequence was what scientists at the CDC needed to design a test kit for detecting coronavirus infections. At the CDC’s labs in Atlanta, scientists went to work. Officials there assigned responsibility for designing the test kits to the CDC’s Division of Viral Diseases, whose stated mission is to “prevent disease, disability and death.” Those familiar with the events said the design efforts were led by Stephen Lindstrom, an accomplished respiratory virus specialist who was a co-inventor of seven earlier CDC tests for strains of the flu. Lindstrom, who did not respond to a request for comment, was responsible for designing but not manufacturing the kits, scientists told The Post. For reasons that have remained unexplained publicly, the CDC scientists chose complexity over simplicity in the test’s design. The test kits featured two components that focused on separate regions of the virus’s genome, a standard approach. However, the CDC also outfitted the kits with a third component, a pan-coronavirus segment. That addition sought to identify a wider family of coronaviruses, of which covid-19 is the most recent strain to be observed in humans. Tests that were being developed abroad under sponsorship from the World Health Organization did not include this extra feature. With the additional test component, the CDC’s scientists may have hoped to bolster the kits’ reliability in distinguishing covid-19 from other coronavirus strains. One of them, severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, originated in China in 2003 and killed 774 people worldwide,


whose stated mission is to “prevent disease, disability and death.” Those familiar with the events said the design efforts were led by Stephen Lindstrom, an accomplished respiratory virus specialist who was a co-inventor of seven earlier CDC tests for strains of the flu. Lindstrom, who did not respond to a request for comment, was responsible for designing but not manufacturing the kits, scientists told The Post. For reasons that have remained unexplained publicly, the CDC scientists chose complexity over simplicity in the test’s design. The test kits featured two components that focused on separate regions of the virus’s genome, a standard approach. However, the CDC also outfitted the kits with a third component, a pan-coronavirus segment. That addition sought to identify a wider family of coronaviruses, of which covid-19 is the most recent strain to be observed in humans. Tests that were being developed abroad under sponsorship from the World Health Organization did not include this extra feature. With the additional test component, the CDC’s scientists may have hoped to bolster the kits’ reliability in distinguishing covid-19 from other coronavirus strains. One of them, severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, originated in China in 2003 and killed 774 people worldwide, though none in the United States. SARS jumped from an animal species to humans, as was the case with the novel coronavirus. The CDC test component also sought to detect coronaviruses that are carried by bats. The CDC’s extra test component was not essential to detecting the novel coronavirus and it complicated the test when speed was critical, many experts said. “Either the CDC didn’t know it was a crisis or they should have pulled the plug on that faster,’’ said Paul Keim, a Northern Arizona University geneticist whose institute is testing for the virus. “They didn’t have a test that worked.” Officials at the CDC chose to have the test kits manufactured in-house, instead of by an outside contractor. The CDC facilities are typically staffed by experienced microbiologists and technicians, and the labs had successfully made test kits for other pathogens. Producing reliable test kits requires rigorous quality control. The kits were developed in a specialty lab that focuses on disease research and were assembled at the CDC’s Biotechnology Core Facility Branch, located at the agency’s headquarters in Atlanta. On Jan. 17, five days after the Chinese made public the genetic sequence, Nancy Messonnier, director of CDC’s National Center


Leading model projects some states could reopen by May 4. Not so fast, say other modelers.

not find data that could be used empirically. Instead, they decided to use the 1 infection per 1 million cutoff with the assumption that, at that low level, states would be more readily able to do the necessary testing and contact tracing. Many epidemiologists and modelers have expressed growing concern over the IHME model. While it is one of the only models that offers projections state-by-state on exact dates for projected peaks and national forecasts on deaths, its projections have often clashed with other models. Its projections for equipment shortages and deaths are often below other models. The White House has at times used the model’s more-optimistic estimates to deny equipment requests. On Friday, a few hours before the IHME announcement, a consortium at the University of Texas at Austin released a model that takes the IHME forecast as a starting point but tries to correct what the Texas researchers see as flaws. One of the biggest flaws the Texas experts point out is that the IHME model claims more certainty as it moves further into the future, with a shrinking margin of error. That runs counter to how most models work, because the future almost always becomes increasingly uncertain in long-range forecasts. In weather forecasts, for example, predicting rain tomorrow is easier than predicting rain a month out. “The motivation for creating our model was a concern about the certainty people may be attributing to the IHME model,” said Lauren Ancel Meyers, who led the Texas team of researchers. Other critical differences: The IHME model predicts the United States already passed its peak of deaths this week. The Texas model takes a different approach, attaching probabilities to dates. There is only a 17 percent chance that the peak has already passed, it found, and an 80 percent chance the peak will happen by May 7. The Texas researchers’ paper also included analysis of IHME’s past predictions compared with actual deaths per day and found, for example, that the model underestimated deaths in Italy and Spain. The number of deaths in recent days, in fact, did not fall within IHME’s projected margin of error. Meyers said the IHME model has much value and pointed out her model would not exist if Murray did not create the IHME model. “This is not a competition. We’re standing on their shoulders,” she said. “But like many modelers, we are continually trying to improve


World Digest: April 18, 2020

CHINA The United States on Saturday called on China to stop “bullying behavior” in the South China Sea and said it is concerned by reports of Beijing’s “provocative actions” aimed at offshore oil and gas developments in the disputed waters. Three regional security sources told Reuters that a Chinese government survey ship was tagging an exploration vessel operated by Malaysia’s state oil company Petronas in those waters. The vessel Haiyang Dizhi 8 was earlier this week spotted off Vietnam, where it had last year conducted suspected oil exploration surveys in large expanses of Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone. “In this instance, (China) should cease its bullying behavior and refrain from engaging in this type of provocative and destabilizing activity,” the U.S. State Department said in an emailed statement. China’s actions threaten regional energy security and undermine the free and open Indo-Pacific energy market, it added. — Reuters CHINA Hong Kong police arrested at least 14 veteran pro-democracy lawmakers, activists and a media tycoon on Saturday on charges of joining protests last year. Among those arrested were 81-year-old activist and former lawmaker Martin Lee and democracy advocates Albert Ho, Lee Cheuk-yan and Au Nok-hin. Police also arrested Jimmy Lai, who founded the local newspaper Apple Daily. The protests in the semiautonomous Chinese territory against proposed extradition legislation exposed deep divisions between democracy-minded Hong Kongers and the Communist Party-ruled central government in Beijing. While the protests began peacefully, they increasingly descended into violence after demonstrators became frustrated with the government’s response. — Associated Press Israel accuses Hezbollah of 'provocative' activity: Israel is accusing the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah of "provocative" activity along the Lebanese-Israeli frontier and says it will complain to the U.N. Security Council. In a statement, Foreign Minister Israel Katz accused Hezbollah of multiple attempts to breach the border Friday night. He said Israel "thoroughly condemns" the incident and expects the Lebanese government to prevent such threats. On Friday night, the Israeli military fired flares along the volatile frontier after signs of a possible border breach. It said it later found damage to its security fence, just inside Israeli territory, in three locations. Flooding in eastern Congo claims 25: Earthquake rocks Japanese islands: — From news services


Maybe you’ve noticed more wildlife around you lately. The reasons might have less to do with animals than people.

But my family has seen foxes in our yard before, including one I wrote about after its mysterious death, so I didn’t give the sighting much thought or consider why I felt compelled to share a video with people I have never met on a site I rarely use. I only started thinking more about that — and calling experts to discuss what is happening with wildlife in this region — after I saw another animal video uploaded on that same site a few days later. That one was titled “Beaver sighting” and showed a large animal swimming in Four Mile Run near a park in Arlington. That post also drew more than 175 responses and exuberant comments. Across the world, there have been unexpected sightings of animals that are now venturing into new places as people stay inside to avoid spreading the novel coronavirus that has caused a global pandemic. Washington Post foreign correspondent Terrence McCoy wrote an article that captures some of the surprising sightings: boars in Barcelona, goats in Wales, a mountain lion napping in a tree above a normally busy street in Colorado. Wild animals in the Washington region have no doubt also noticed quieter streets with fewer wheels on them to dodge. That has probably caused some to grow bolder and venture out farther than they might have otherwise. But conversations with local wildlife experts point to other reasons people in this area might be seeing more wild animals than they have during past years — and those reasons have less to do with those animals than with us. “People are out and about at times of the day they weren’t out before,” Jennifer Toussaint, the chief of animal control at the Animal Welfare League of Arlington, says when I call her. “They were sitting in an office somewhere, so they didn’t notice that three deer come through their backyard at 11 o’clock each day.” Animals spend years creating set paths that they follow to stay safe, she says. They probably haven’t changed their routines, but people have. And as a result, people are now getting to see what has always been happening around their neighborhoods. They are also, as a result, helping to save animals. Toussaint says animal control officers in Arlington have been able to successfully release animals and send additional ones into rehabilitation because people are finding them in distress sooner. Several


days ago, one animal control officer responded to a call about a raccoon stuck in a bag in a trash can. When the officer arrived, she removed the raccoon and discovered two baby raccoons had also been trapped. Another call this month involved a fox kit that was found under a car with its head stuck in a peanut butter jar. The resident who found the fox put on thick gloves and removed the jar, Toussaint says. Toussaint checked the fox, gave him fluids and reunited him with his mom and dad, as foxes co-parent. That call was received about 10:30 in the morning. Toussaint says if no one had been home at the time, and no one had seen that fox, he would have suffocated. Bill McShea, a Smithsonian wildlife ecologist who uses camera traps to study animals in the area, describes the Washington region as rich with wild animals that are good at staying hidden. “They just usually, except for the squirrels and rats, keep to themselves,” he says. “This is the chance to see who we are sharing the world with, and that is an upside to this whole thing.” Another upside, he says, is that people are now paying attention in a way they weren’t before. “We’re staring out and watching the woods and watching the birds,” he says. Before, he says, we were rushing past. “We were too busy to see it.” That’s true. But what is happening now also goes beyond that. We aren’t just noticing animals more. We are also seeking out more to see. We are worrying about the humans in front of us and marveling at the creatures around us. “Viewership of the webcams at the National Zoo is up about 1,000 percent,” says Brandie Smith, the zoo’s deputy director. What that means is that millions of people across the world are clicking on the zoo’s webcams to watch elephants, pandas and naked mole rats go about their days. “People need this right now,” Smith says. “I think in times of stress, people need moments of joy and beauty and awe.” Just as watching the news can cause us to feel stressed, she says, watching animals releases hormones that can make us feel happier. “You’re not imagining it,” she says. “You’re actually feeling better.” On the zoo’s Facebook page are several videos of animals, along with the hashtag #NatZooZen. One of


Coronavirus tracking apps meet resistance in privacy-conscious Europe

concern all the same. “Usually the privacy professionals, the activists, are the people who are saying it’s crazy what you’re doing, think about it twice,” said Max Schrems, an Austrian privacy lawyer who successfully sued Facebook over its data practices but who has embraced his country’s tracking app. “I sense that the public is often more afraid of these things than the privacy professionals right now,” he said. “If you have a proper design, it’s hard to misuse, but that’s something that in daily life people do not differentiate.” The Austrian app uses the Bluetooth transmitter on users’ phones to monitor other phones that come near to them. It keeps that information on the phone. If a person later suspects he or she has come down with covid-19 or has received a formal diagnosis, that information can be uploaded from the app to alert others, anonymously, that they may have been exposed. If users want to stop being tracked, they can simply delete the app and the data. No central database exists. Germany, France, the Netherlands and Britain are among those exploring apps that work along the same lines: opt-in rather than mandatory, with data kept anonymous, and no GPS information going to governments or telecom companies. The approach could appeal in the United States, where many citizens are likewise distrustful of government snooping. Google and Apple announced this past week that they would collaborate to build a similar system that could work on iPhones and Android phones. Earlier in the outbreak, many countries looked at anonymized GPS data to assess how well their lockdown orders were working and how many people were still moving around. But policymakers and engineers like Bluetooth for contact-tracing, because it is more accurate than GPS in dense urban settings — even though it doesn’t pick up certain kinds of indirect contact, such as when someone with covid-19 sneezes in an elevator, then leaves, and another person enters minutes later, potentially facing exposure. Bluetooth also has an advantage in that it doesn’t require the sorts of centralized databases that privacy advocates fear would be prone to abuse. “If you’re going to store all this stuff in the cloud somewhere, at some point, there will be some guy somewhere saying, ‘Oh, isn’t that interesting.’ If you have the key to all that data, they’ll find a new purpose,” said Sophie in ’t Veld, a Dutch member


Jupiter, Saturn, Mars and the moon to line up before sunrise this weekend

Looking for a fun way to pass the time while social distancing? The heavens will be putting on a free show this weekend, with an ornamental assortment of planets decorating the morning and evening skies. Weather permitting, you’ll be able to catch the celestial rendezvous all weekend. In the evenings, you can spot Venus, while mornings will offer a lineup of the moon, Mars, Saturn and Jupiter. The days have been growing longer, leading to later sunsets as we steadily inch toward the summer solstice. In Washington, for instance, our sunsets have inched up to near 7:50 p.m. That’s a big difference from the 4:45 p.m. sunsets in December. But after sunset these next few days, look to the west above where the sun went down. Venus will be shining brilliantly above. It won’t set below the horizon until about 11:30 p.m. for the remainder of April. Venus is the second planet from the sun, lying inside Earth’s orbit. That’s why we can only see Venus when the sun is nearby — meaning around sunset or sunrise. Mercury, closest to the sun, is even tougher to spot. Venus is about 86 percent the volume of Earth, meaning it’s of comparable size. However, its atmosphere is 92 times heavier than that of Earth’s. On a trip to Venus, you’d be poisoned to death, crushed to death and burned to death all at once — so we recommend enjoying it from a distance. The evening sky is a great opportunity to do so. The prettiest sky show will come before sunrise, a treat for early risers willing to awaken before the crack of dawn. On Saturday morning, look to the east-southeast between 5 a.m. and about 30 minutes before sunrise. In the coming days, the waning crescent moon will thin into a slender sickle, vanishing entirely as a new moon arrives Tuesday night. Above and to the right of the moon, a faint but visible Mars will shine in red. Equally dim and farther above and to the right will glisten Saturn, followed by a blazing Jupiter leading the pack. Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system. Its mass is 2½ times greater than the sum of all the solar system’s other planets combined. Around Washington, clouds are likely to obscure viewing the moon and the planets on Saturday, but Sunday should offer a nice opportunity with clear skies. The


Trump tells a damnable and murderous lie

for his own failures? Almost immediately after China disclosed the outbreak, I’m told, 15 CDC officials at the WHO headquarters began working on covid-19 and other U.S. officials there were reassigned to the outbreak from their work on Ebola. U.S. officials participated in person in the twice-daily meetings of the WHO’s emergencies division. In addition to top-level conversations involving Redfield and Fauci, which would be expected, other Trump administration scientists were in all “incident-management” meetings and participated in the WHO’s pandemic “expert network.” They participated in a teleconference between top WHO officials in Geneva and the WHO’s regional and national offices. When the WHO formed its “emergency committee” in January to fight the virus, Martin Cetron, the CDC’s head of quarantine and global migration, was on it. Schuchat, the CDC’s No. 2 official, and Lane, a Fauci deputy, were on the WHO’s “Strategic and Technical Advisory Group for Infectious Hazards.” Others worked with the WHO group coordinating research on therapeutics, diagnostics and vaccines. This is as it should be: The CDC and NIH experts did their job. It’s Trump who didn’t. Now Trump would blame the WHO for failing to sound alarms about the virus, even though the CDC had an office of 14 people in China “to contain infectious disease outbreaks before they spread globally.” And he would blame the WHO for failing “to call out China’s lack of transparency” — even though, on Jan. 24, he tweeted: "China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!” Trump has decided that reelection requires him to attack the World Health Organization at the height of a pandemic. Multitudes could die for his lie. The Washington Post is now the only place you can read my columns online. You can also sign up to Watch the latest Opinions video: Read more: Paul Waldman: Trump’s retreat from responsibility will fail Henry Olsen: Trump’s new covid-19 guidelines are right on the mark Colbert I. King: Directions on safely reopening the country must come from credible officials — not Trump The Post’s View: How China’s authoritarian system made the pandemic worse Alexandra Petri: Give me liberty and give me death! Leana S. Wen: Three key issues missing from Trump’s guidance on reopening the country


Americans don’t need a lesson in financial literacy. The Trump administration does.

Earlier this week, a video of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin speaking on “Face the Nation” late last month began making the rounds. Mnuchin seemed to imply that the government’s current financial support system — the temporary boost to unemployment benefits, the small business lending program and the $1,200 stimulus check — would be enough to tide American families over until the coronavirus pandemic crisis passed. This is all ludicrously, offensively inaccurate. But lucky for us, April is Financial Literacy Month. It’s the perfect opportunity to teach Mnuchin — and the rest of the Trump administration — a few realities about the finances of everyday Americans. There are at least 22 million people who lost their jobs within the past month — and that’s what we know of. Antiquated state unemployment systems cannot keep up with the demand. And despite the fact that gig workers are supposed to be covered — for the first time ever — the Trump administration’s Labor Department is attempting to issue regulations to get around that directive. “We want workers to have work, not to become dependent on the unemployment system,” Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia and Small Business Administration head Jovita Carranza wrote in an op-ed published by Fox Business (where else?) this week. No surprise, thousands upon thousands of people are lining up at food banks, desperately seeking help — and the cost of staples such as eggs is soaring. Food banks, in turn, are increasingly concerned about running out of food, money or both. Meanwhile, the Trump administration needed to be publicly shamed into backing off an attempt to impose work requirements on food stamp recipients, even as jobs have disappeared. As for the small business loan program designed to keep people employed — the Paycheck Protection Program — it was so underfunded that it ran out of money within days of opening up for applications. Financial literacy? Small business owners attempting to apply for loans couldn’t get banks to agree to process their applications, and confronted a maze of conflicting information about what they needed to do to apply for the money. More finance facts: According to the real estate site RENTCafé, the average rent in the United States is more than $1,400, over $200 more than our one-time $1,200 stimulus check. In many cities — including hard-hit New York — it’s more than $2,000. Almost a third of renters didn’t pay their


Covid-19 is forcing us to dwell in uncertainty. History can help.

emotion. Following the first cholera pandemic in the U.S., the nation’s piety wilted as did trust in the medical profession. Indeed, Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Ohio, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New York, South Carolina and Vermont all loosened or repealed their medical licensing laws. A medium-term effect was the so-called democratization of medicine in which herbalists, alternative practitioners and quacks flourished. A long-term effect was a wholesale refiguring of medical knowledge: Whereas in the 1820s, many of America’s most prominent medical thinkers were still theorists, by the 1860s, the profession was being organized around observable, empirical facts. The religious changes were similarly drastic. As historian Charles Rosenberg details in “The Cholera Years,” in 1832 Americans looked to God, but by the 1866 outbreak, they turned to data. The pandemic seemed to reveal that neither God nor doctors could do anything to stop the massive casualties. Nevertheless, there were benefits, too, as Rosenberg argues, by 1866, cholera so pressed the need for sanitation reform that it led to the precursors of Boards of Health. We all hope that we are not at the precipice of the kinds of horrors the cholera pandemics unleashed on the nation and the world, but we know we are in for some truly horrific months. Covid-19 is certainly not as deadly as cholera, but it is poised possibly to kill millions and to seriously harm many more. Projected figures and scenarios have varied wildly. A Harvard epidemiologist suggested in early March that up to 70 percent of the world might be infected if no public health measures were taken. More recently, conflicting predictive models estimated 100,000 to 2.2 million fatalities (if no interventions) in the U.S. alone. Currently, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington predicts 60,308 American deaths by Aug. 4. Data about fatality rates has likewise continued to shift dramatically, hampered by a lack of available information about how many Americans have contracted covid-19. The promise of a vaccine offers great hope, although it is no balm for our current emergency. If current vaccine trials prove successful, a vaccine might be available by fall 2020, but 12-18 months has long seemed a more reasonable estimate. Here, too, we must remember the cautions of history: in 1984, the U.S. government suggested a vaccine for HIV/AIDS might be available in the next two years, and although treatments have improved dramatically, we


The pandemic will haunt today’s children forever. But we can help them now.

vulnerable period can be especially damaging to children who already have accumulated trauma in their lives and further increases the chance a child will develop anxiety, depression or even schizophrenia. Exposed adolescents are at higher risk for risk-seeking behaviors, setting the stage for violence and drug abuse. There’s also ample research to show that a parent’s well-being can affect that of their children. Psychological stress during pregnancy increases the likelihood that a baby will be born prematurely and the chance that a child will need breathing and feeding support in the neonatal intensive care unit. Stress can be an endocrine disrupter, in the same way that synthetic chemicals disrupt hormonal functions that shape the development of the brain and other body systems. We don’t routinely check cortisol levels in infants, but if we did, we would see higher levels of this stress hormone, because mothers can transmit stress or depression to their infants. Children who suffered the ill effects of toxic stress during pregnancy also have reduced lung function at school age. Stress can increase unhealthy diet and physical activity behaviors in school-age kids, showing up as weight gain that increases the risk of later heart disease. The effects of stress from the coronavirus pandemic may propagate for generations to come. The Dutch Hunger Winter in 1944-45 showed us how environmental stressors in pregnancy can have effects that reverberate all the way to the grandchildren. Stresses like these change how our genes are imprinted, turning genes on or off without changing the underlying genetic code. These imprints can modify how genes are expressed, not just in those who are exposed, but after they are passed on to the next generation, programming a ticking time bomb of disease that appears as much as 70 years later. The parallels to the Dutch Hunger Winter are surprisingly relevant for the children living in the poorest households, even in a country where food is plentiful. In our experience working at Bellevue Hospital in New York, these families rely on the public school system for meals for their children. Now, they are reluctant to open their doors, let alone go to community centers for meals delivered there by the city government. When they go out for food, they may resort to the closest and cheapest options rather than the healthiest. Coronavirus-related job and income losses may magnify extant household stressors. Research on the aftermath of


stress from the coronavirus pandemic may propagate for generations to come. The Dutch Hunger Winter in 1944-45 showed us how environmental stressors in pregnancy can have effects that reverberate all the way to the grandchildren. Stresses like these change how our genes are imprinted, turning genes on or off without changing the underlying genetic code. These imprints can modify how genes are expressed, not just in those who are exposed, but after they are passed on to the next generation, programming a ticking time bomb of disease that appears as much as 70 years later. The parallels to the Dutch Hunger Winter are surprisingly relevant for the children living in the poorest households, even in a country where food is plentiful. In our experience working at Bellevue Hospital in New York, these families rely on the public school system for meals for their children. Now, they are reluctant to open their doors, let alone go to community centers for meals delivered there by the city government. When they go out for food, they may resort to the closest and cheapest options rather than the healthiest. Coronavirus-related job and income losses may magnify extant household stressors. Research on the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and other disasters can give us some insight on how to treat and, more importantly, prevent harm. Children of first responders were particularly affected, suggesting that we should focus on families of those who are grappling directly with the crisis, including health-care personnel, who are likely to be at higher risk. Direct experience, such as witnessing the fall of the twin towers in 2001 or thinking a loved one might be hurt, predicted post-traumatic stress symptoms six to seven years after 9/11. People who previously reported reexperiencing the trauma of the disaster were nine times as likely to report reexperiencing the disaster after Hurricane Sandy, indicating that those affected by previous disasters are uniquely vulnerable to the effects of the pandemic. The stress induced by the coronavirus outbreak will require additional medical care. In primary care, pediatricians have designed interventions to build parenting skills and confidence in low-income families most likely to be affected by the pandemic. These interventions use video recordings and developmentally appropriate toys, books and resources to improve parent-child interactions and strengthen early development in infants, toddlers and preschoolers. Programs have been built for school-age children to help them adapt and


The 6 factors that determine coronavirus containment or devastation

co-founder and managing partner of WestExec Advisors. Michael Morell was deputy director of the CIA from 2010 to 2013 and was twice acting director during that period. He is the head of geopolitical risk at Beacon Global Strategies and a contributing columnist to The Post. We both spent hundreds of hours in the Situation Room trying to prevent crises or dealing with them when prevention failed. Often, the issues we dealt with involved whole-of-government approaches here in the United States or working with our allies abroad. This experience got us interested in the key differences between countries that have managed the coronavirus outbreak well and those that have not. Fundamentally, we define success in managing the outbreak as limiting the number of cases and deaths per capita; failure is the opposite. Examples of success include South Korea, Taiwan and New Zealand; all have rates of fewer than 300 cases per million people and no more than five deaths per million. Examples of failure include Spain, Italy and France, which have more than 2,200 cases per million people and death rates above 280 per million. At least six factors are responsible for this difference. Understanding them is essential as our government and others struggle to deal with covid-19 and consider how to better prepare for future pandemics. It is important to note what is not responsible for the differential in country performance. This is critical because the Chinese are aggressively arguing that authoritarian governments have dealt with the crisis better than democracies. Outcomes in South Korea, Taiwan and New Zealand show that Beijing’s self-serving argument is specious. So, what are the factors? We think three were determined before the coronavirus outbreak and three after. Quality of health Quality of the public health system Culture and social cohesion Critical decision-making Considering the entire country Leadership The virus that causes covid-19 is a formidable foe. But many countries have shown that it can be beaten. We should learn from experience and follow their lead. Read more: Jackson Diehl: The winners and losers of the coronavirus’s global test of governance The Post’s View: How China’s authoritarian system made the pandemic worse Marc A. Thiessen: As Taiwan shows, the antidote to the virus is freedom Mark Lowcock and Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus: The coronavirus threatens all of humanity. All of humanity must fight back. Bill Gates: Here’s how to make up for lost time on covid-19


In glimpse of life after lockdown, some countries begin to reopen schools

the University of Sydney, said closing schools may be unnecessary to limit the spread. “Of course, anyone who is a bit scared will keep their children at home,” he said. “I don’t think that’s good for children and the whole of our normal living.” Children appear to be at very low risk of severe outcomes from covid-19 if they do become infected with the coronavirus. Statistics updated Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that in the United States from Feb. 1 to April 11, only three of the first 13,130 deaths officially attributed to covid-19 involved children under 15. From age 15 to 24, there were another 13 deaths. Norway’s schools reopen April 27 for grades one through four. Within the next three weeks, a host of other countries plan to follow for some students: New Zealand, Mexico, Germany and France are among them. French President Emmanuel Macron said Monday that “there is an inequality in that there are those who don’t have Internet access and who can’t be helped by their parents.” Israeli officials are considering the limited opening of some school programs for special education students before the end of April. Later, preschool, elementary, middle and high school programs would be phased in. But the plan sparked a backlash from some parents. An Education Ministry spokeswoman said the ministry was moving with caution, looking at how to expand remote learning. In China, some provinces reopened schools last month. Beijing and Shanghai have already reopened many businesses, but schools will come later: from April 27 to May 11. Hong Kong, like mainland China and Macao, was among the first to close schools when the coronavirus hit, with widespread consensus that schools should close their doors, given the scars in Hong Kong society over the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak in 2003 that took almost 300 lives in the territory. Mickey Leung, an 18-year-old student in Hong Kong who will sit for a university entrance exam later this month, has to contend with the distraction of her brother playing computer games. Hong Kong schools remain closed. “I find it really hard to concentrate at home. And on the other hand, anxiety over the virus has affected me psychologically, along with the constant changes in the date of the exam,” she said. Singapore kept schools open until April 8, citing early data that showed children were


As men wage bloody battle for Syrian province, women sew face masks to fight the next threat

BEIRUT — With the coronavirus pandemic accelerating, Ithar al-Allam toured the sprawling refugee camps of Syria's embattled Idlib province last month to warn of the disease. But she realized awareness was not enough. “People tell you, ‘I can’t buy face masks or hand sanitizer or do isolation, because whole families live in a tent.’ A tent is not a place equipped to provide full isolation from the illness,” said Allam, 34. So her organization, which runs women’s centers in the area, launched a project sewing homemade face masks to distribute in the midst of Idlib’s humanitarian crisis, one of the worst in the world. This pocket of rebel-held territory in northwestern Syria is home to over 3 million people, half of whom have been displaced from elsewhere in the country, according to United Nations estimates. Many have been displaced repeatedly — as many as five times. Children account for half the population, according to Save the Children. There have been no reported cases of coronavirus in the Idlib enclave, but the vulnerability of the people means the virus, if it breaks out, is likely to rage through the local population. “A health system in ruins, weak disease surveillance, population density, low levels of sanitation services, poor response capacity and suboptimal levels of public health preparedness; are all factors that are likely to trigger a rapid transmission of the virus in the region,” the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said of Idlib in a report released Thursday. The World Health Organization has shipped over 5,000 tests to a lab in Idlib city and is seeking to accelerate further shipments, anticipating possible restrictions or disruptions in the cross-border flow of aid in coming weeks, it said. “We could be in a situation in a few months where we have an outbreak on our hands and we’re all desperately scrambling to get in more protective equipment,” said Misty Buswell, policy and advocacy director for the International Rescue Committee in the Middle East. “We’re trying to prepare and preposition now as best we can to avoid that, but there are concerns about being able to access global supplies and the challenges of getting them into northwest Syria given covid-related restrictions.” In addition to the closed international borders and other public health restrictions, the grinding war in Idlib is also a significant obstacle to addressing a possible outbreak of disease. Since


Protest planned to reopen Maryland draws caravan of vehicles to downtown Annapolis

A caravan of cars, trucks and motorcycles swarmed the streets of Annapolis on Saturday, demanding an end to coronavirus-related restrictions in Maryland, while a group of the state’s Republican politicians encouraged Gov. Larry Hogan (R) to reopen the rural areas they represent first, even if the harder-hit urban centers need to remain shut down to prevent the spread of the virus. The protest and the push from politicians come as groups around the nation have become more vocal in recent days about prodding state governors to reopen for business. At the same time, the number of people testing positive for the coronavirus continues to increase. The region recorded 73 additional deaths as of Saturday morning, and the number of fatalities is now nearing 900. The number of infections has surpassed 23,000. State and city officials have said they expect the peak and then a decline in the coming weeks, a key to reopening some businesses and services. For more than two hours on Saturday, however, drivers honked their horns and crowded the streets of the state capital to let it be known that they want the stay-at-home orders to end sooner rather than later. They waved American flags while holding up signs out of their car windows: “Let me work so I can feed my kids.” “Quarantines are for sick people.” “We are all essential.” “I need a haircut.” Traffic along Main Street in downtown Annapolis was at a standstill as dozens of cars waited to drive around Church Circle for the protest, organized by a group called Reopen Maryland. More than 1,275 people signed an online petition demanding that Hogan immediately reopen the state’s business, educational and religious institutions. Caryn Abbott, a 58-year-old registered nurse from Pocomoke City, Md., and a spokeswoman for the group, said she helped organize the protest to urge the governor to reopen businesses, schools and churches by May 1 — while still following Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines and protecting the vulnerable from contracting the virus. Others who protested didn’t want to wait that long; they urged the governor to lift the restrictions immediately. “I don’t think it’s right to limit the rights of the many to protect the few,” said Rob Dahl, a 37-year-old from Baltimore who was holding a sign that said “Legalize hugs.” “This has been a planned-demic all along,” another man shouted from a megaphone through his car


‘My source, my strength’: Friends, family remember Montgomery County employee who died from covid-19

Michael Miller, 60, was rarely spotted alone. In the nine years he worked at the Silver Spring bus depot, he was most often seen in “a crowd of fellas,” recounting the previous night’s basketball game or discussing a brand of cigars, said his co-workers. On summer weekends, he hosted barbecues at his Temple Hill home, playing ’70s music while grilling ribs that became renowned among his friends and family. There was nothing that pleased Miller more, said his wife Donna Miller, than seeing the people around him having a good time. Last week, however, Michael Miller was alone when he was taken to Southern Maryland Hospital Center in Prince George’s County. He was alone as he struggled against the aggressive coronavirus that has infected thousands in the Washington region and killed more than 800 people. And on April 15, Miller was alone when he died, becoming the first Montgomery County government employee to lose to his life to the disease. “The hardest part of the whole thing was not being able to see him,” said his mother, Jessye Miller, 93. Hours before he died, a nurse put a phone to his ear so that relatives could speak to him. “We said that we loved him, that we were praying for him, and it was okay to move on,” Jessye Miller said. “That’s the one thing that has helped us all through this. That we were able to say goodbye.” Born in Stroudsburg, Pa., Miller was a kind but “rambunctious” boy, his mother said, chuckling. He split his childhood between Maryland and Pennsylvania. He later joined the Army and was stationed in Germany. In the 1990s, he met Donna and settled down with her in Prince George’s County, where they raised two sons, Joshua and Jonathan, and welcomed three grandchildren. In 2011, he joined the Montgomery County Department of Transportation as a motor pool attendant, which involved checking and maintaining the buses as they came into the depot. Miller always “had a joke and a giggle” while he was working, said Silver Spring depot chief Andre Lucas, and he didn’t gripe when the hours were long. Every year, to prepare for the department’s “Give and Ride Week,” where passengers donate nonperishable food items in exchange for riding for free, Miller would come to the depot the weekend before to personally outfit 140 buses with bags for donations. Miller made it his


I was supposed to run the Boston Marathon today. Instead I created my own.

dedicated my last book to. He now has Alzheimer’s, and we had been trying to get together for the first time in years when the virus hit. When I stopped and thanked him his eyes turned red, and I wiped a tear of my own before starting off again. I didn’t expect to see 10 people that day, but about a hundred showed up along the long route. The response was unexpected — and overwhelming. With all the bad news leaving us feeling so powerless, perhaps they needed to cheer something, anything — and as one friend told me, “Hey, you’re the only game in town.” They brought handmade signs, cowbells and even bagpipes in honor of Barney Klein, whose eulogy I gave last year. He was 56. After four hours, my already-slow pace turned slower, with every step pounding my left knee and right hip. At Mile 24, just past Michigan Stadium, Warhurst yelled, “If you ran any slower you’d be walking — backward!” But we both knew, with friends yelling from the curbs and spread out in the empty streets, there was no way I was stopping. When we made our final turn it wasn’t quite the same as Boston’s famed Hereford-to-Boylston bend. There were no stands of screaming fans, hundreds of reporters or medals at the end. But my wife and a friend spanned the street with a strip of drywall tape, and I had just enough energy left to snap it. I thanked everyone from afar, replacing high-fives and hugs with air fist-bumps and waves, and I received big hugs and kisses from Christie and Teddy. “You did it, Daddy!” But we had done something else, perhaps best captured by my friend San Slomovits, who wrote me that night: “It was uplifting and inspiring to see you today. Moved all three of us to tears. Probably the same thing would have happened last year, but it was even more moving now. To see you do something very hard, when times are very hard; to see you keep your word, when that’s a character trait in rather short supply; to see your friends and family cheering you and supporting you — that kind of community is always moving but, again, especially now.” Together, we had created something from nothing — something worth remembering. John U. Bacon has written seven national bestsellers on sports, business, health, and history.


What community associations should do during the coronavirus pandemic

How do you practice social distancing when you live communally and share services, amenities and even hallways and elevators with neighbors? That’s one of many questions on the minds of community association board members and managers as covid-19 impacts all our lives. Since news of the virus broke, homeowners associations and condo boards have wondered how they should respond to the outbreak. Among the questions being asked: Given the spread of the illness, all associations should be asking similar questions. The general response is that association boards should be vigilant and, while medical professionals are on the front line of responding to the crisis, community associations have an important role to play as well. The association can act as a conduit for information to owners on tips for staying well and protecting themselves. Information should come from a reliable source, such as the governor, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or state and local health officials. From a legal perspective, responsibilities in a community association usually follow ownership. The association controls the common areas, and lot or unit owners are responsible for their private property, except as provided in the governing documents. Without question, the association must abide by any state or local health emergency declarations, which could include shutting down common areas or banning gatherings of people. Even without such mandates, an association should consider: Some owners have questioned whether improvements are needed to plumbing or HVAC systems to combat covid-19, whether in common areas or the entire building for a high-rise condo. Such upgrades could be expensive and might accomplish little, as it does not appear the virus spreads through those systems. However, discussing such issues with a professional may help answer questions and allay fears. If covid-19 becomes prevalent in a community, the association should discuss with its professionals how best to handle the specific situation. As noted above, that talk will certainly focus on what the association is responsible for and what the owner is responsible for. At the end of the day, owners are most responsible for their own health and safety. CDC’s tips for preventing illness concentrate on an individual’s responsibility: The association should require association employees to follow these guidelines, including any additional advice from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration or health department recommendations. If an owner in the community contracts covid-19, it may be appropriate to inform residents, especially in


Emboldened by the absence of humans, jackals have appeared in a park in the heart of Tel Aviv

As humans grapple with the coronavirus pandemic, some surprising things have been happening in the natural world. For one, there is less pollution. The air has cleared up from Los Angeles to Wuhan, China. Wild animals are also finding they are more free to walk wherever they want. Goats have been meandering wherever they please in the Welsh town of Llandudno; buffalo are roaming the streets of India, deer are wandering the roads of Nara, Japan; and packs of jackals have overtaken a park in Tel Aviv. The Washington Post’s Terrence McCoy, in his report on this resurgence of wildlife, said: “For centuries, humans have pushed wildlife into smaller and smaller corners of the planet. But now, with billions in isolation and city streets emptied, nature is pushing back.” Let’s go back to the jackals in Tel Aviv. Associated Press photographer Oded Balilty has been documenting them as they gather in the city’s Hayarkon Park. Around this time of year, the park is usually populated by people jogging, children playing on jungle gyms, and families and friends picnicking. These days, however, the park belongs to packs of jackals. Zvi Galin, director of Tel Aviv’s veterinary department, told Balilty that the jackals are in the park because they are desperately looking for food. According to Galin, jackals are scavengers that normally hang out on the edges of the park. But because people are staying at home because of the pandemic, the park is empty and that is encouraging the jackals to venture farther than they normally would in search of food. Galin also told Balilty that jackals are usually afraid of people, but Balilty has observed people bringing plates of dog food to feed the animals. Galin notes that this is a big no-no because if people continue to feed the jackals, the animals could become comfortable in the presence of humans and then aggressive if they are not fed I’ve seen other photos, as I’m sure most of us have, of animals exploring their newfound freedom during this global pandemic. But I was more struck by Balilty’s photos. Maybe it’s because jackals conjure up something more wild and sinister for me than goats or deer. But also, somewhere in the back of my head, scenes from Terry Gilliam’s post-apocalyptic movie “12 Monkeys” are reeling. No doubt, all of this social isolation is creating a landscape in which animals are free


The Energy 202: Biden says he’s open to ‘expanding’ his climate plan to win over young voters

And ethanol producers provide much of the carbon dioxide to the food industry — CO2 that’s used for beer, sodas and seltzer water, Reuter reports. “The lack of ethanol output is disrupting this highly specialized corner of the food industry, as 34 of the 45 U.S. ethanol plants that sell CO2 have idled or cut production, said Renewable Fuels Association Chief Executive Geoff Cooper,” per the report. “CO2 suppliers to beer brewers have increased prices by about 25% due to reduced supply, said Bob Pease, chief executive officer of the Brewers Association. The trade group represents small and independent U.S. craft brewers, who get about 45% of their CO2 from ethanol producers.” The region from California, Arizona and New Mexico north to Oregon and Idaho is in the middle of the first-ever human-caused megadrought, according to research published in the journal Science. It’s the first such megadrought — a severe drought across a broad duration for a long time — in the past 1,200 years. “Unlike historical megadroughts triggered by natural climate cycles, emissions of heat-trapping gases from human activities have contributed to the current one, the study finds,” The Post’s Andrew Freedman and Darryl Fears report. “Warming temperatures and increasing evaporation, along with earlier spring snowmelt, have pushed the Southwest into its second-worst drought in more than a millennium of observations.” Residents in largely black and Latino communities in the Texas Gulf Coast say they’ve been hit hard by the Trump administration’s moves to ease decades of public health and environmental protections, the Associated Press reports. Under the Trump administration, “federal regulatory changes are slashing requirements on industry to monitor, report and reduce toxic pollutants, heavy metals and climate-damaging fossil fuel emissions, and to work transparently with communities to prevent plant disasters — such as the half-dozen major chemical fires and explosions that have killed workers and disrupted life along the Texas Gulf Coast over the past year alone,” per the report. There were concerns even before Trump’s federal regulatory changes. “Even before the Trump administration began the rollbacks, Houston’s urban freeways and industries were pumping enough poisonous refinery chemicals, heavy metals, and diesel and car exhaust to ‘almost certainly’ be to blame for some respiratory problems and early deaths, as well as an ‘unacceptable increased risk’ for cancers and chronic disease, concluded a landmark city task force, started in 2005 to study the health impacts,” per the report.


More than a dozen staff members in Afghanistan’s presidential palace test positive for coronavirus

in the palace, but he said more Afghans need to abide by social distancing guidelines to prevent the spread of the virus. Current government models estimate that more than 25 million of the country’s 36.6 million people could be infected by the coronavirus if social distancing guidelines are not respected, Mayar said. Under that model, he said, more than 100,000 people in the country would be killed. Afghanistan’s highly fortified presidential palace in central Kabul is a sprawling complex that takes up several city blocks where hundreds of people, considered essential workers, still show up each day. In March, the compound was also the site of Ghani’s inauguration, which was attended by thousands of guests from around the country. Afghanistan had confirmed more than 1,000 coronavirus cases as of Monday, up from about 600 a week ago, according to the Health Ministry. More than 30 people in Afghanistan have died of covid-19, the disease the coronavirus causes. Lockdowns continue in a number of Afghan cities, and public and commercial transport between provinces has been halted. But because of low testing, Afghan officials say, the true number of cases in the country is certainly higher. With United Nations assistance, there are now eight laboratories nationwide that can analyze coronavirus tests, but limited lab capacity and equipment have forced some labs to temporarily halt testing. Afghanistan has the capacity to test 500 to 700 people a day, with the goal of increasing capacity to test 2,000 people a day in the coming weeks. The infections in the palace can be traced to “an official document delivered to the Presidential Palace in Kabul,” according to a Reuters report that cited an anonymous health official. The news agency reported that at least 20 people in the palace tested positive for the coronavirus. Afghanistan, racked by decades of conflict, is particularly vulnerable to outbreaks of disease. More than half of the population lives below the poverty line, and it is one of three countries in the world where polio remains endemic. Following the coronavirus outbreak, the United Nations called for a humanitarian cease-fire in Afghanistan to facilitate the delivery of medical aid. The Taliban said it is willing to end attacks if there are large outbreaks in territory it controls, but violence in Afghanistan has spiked in recent weeks as the start of talks between the Taliban and the government are repeatedly delayed. sharif.hassan@washpost.com susannah.george@washpost.com


Amid bipartisan criticism, Treasury Dept. attorneys review bank seizures of $1,200 stimulus checks

the stimulus funds and change its policy after the American Prospect reported the bank took $3,400 in payments from the family of a disabled veteran to offset an existing debt. The seizure of stimulus checks by private lenders threatens to further undermine the rocky rollout of the $2 trillion coronavirus relief package. A number of obstacles have surfaced blocking Americans from swift access to the direct payments, a massive increase in unemployment benefits and emergency loans through the Small Business Administration. The Trump administration has defended its implementation of the law, saying it sent out 80 million checks within three weeks with an error rate of under 1 percent and has successfully disbursed hundreds of billions in small-business aid. Millions of people stand to have their stimulus payments garnished under the current Treasury Department policy. Nearly a third of Americans have a debt in collection, although the exact number affected is unclear, according to Lauren Saunders, associate director of the National Consumer Law Center, a nonpartisan advocacy group. Several of the largest banks, such as Bank of America and Wells Fargo, have said they will not collect these payments regardless of the Treasury Department policy. Thousands of smaller banks and credit unions may still be doing so, and some debt collectors are trying to grab the payments. “Congress authorized these payments because people have lost their jobs and are desperate for money for food. The money needs to go to food, not the debt collectors or back bank fees,” Saunders said. “I hope Treasury reverses itself immediately, because every day that goes by that people can’t access their money they are wondering how they are going to eat.” Some Treasury Department officials have privately told outside advisers that Congress would have to pass new legislation to give them the authority to ensure the payments are not garnished, according to two people familiar with the conversations. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. A joint letter signed by the American Bankers Association, the Consumer Bankers Association and the Financial Services Forum urged Congress to revise the Cares Act to ensure the stimulus checks are not redirected to “court ordered garnishment to pay creditors.” The issue has surfaced across the country, complicating the process of disbursing badly needed aid. Alex Kornya, litigation director of Iowa Legal Aid, said dozens of people have called a hotline for help,


The three key ideas at stake for a post-coronavirus future

is focused on therapeutic usage. We currently have enough tests for that therapeutic purpose. But can tests also help control the disease outside of the clinical setting? Yes, just as masks can. Some 20 to 40 percent of people infected with the novel coronavirus are asymptomatic. They are significant disease “vectors.” To control the disease without mass stay-at-home orders, you need to be able to test broadly enough to find those asymptomatic people and to find their contacts and test those people, too. Finding all the asymptomatic covid-19 people and having them isolate, with strong social supports, is the best available tool for controlling covid-19 that we are not currently using. This issue is exactly like the masks issue, in fact. Yes, when we had a small supply, we needed to limit their use to the clinical setting. But at the same time, we needed to massively scale up supply so that everyone could use masks, because they help keep those who don’t know they’re positive from spreading the disease and they help all of us touch our faces less. It’s the same with tests. While we needed to ration at first, by now we should be aggressively scaling up. Here’s the second core idea being debated. Which kind of toolkit for control and suppression of disease do we want? A toolkit in which collective stay-at-home orders are a standard and regularly used tool, or one in which they are the absolutely last-stage emergency tool only, and the goal is to never need to use them? If we want the former toolkit, we currently have enough tests. If we want the latter, where we use testing, tracing and supported isolation (TTSI) to find and control the disease, we need many more tests than we have. The former toolkit points us toward current levels of 1 million tests a week. The TTSI toolkit approach points us toward much higher levels, more like 5 million a day, according to research for the report “Roadmap to Pandemic Resilience.” Here’s the third core idea being debated. Should we hope for the best and plan for the best, or hope for the best and plan for the worst? The best-case scenario is one in which by the middle of June we have new therapeutics that so significantly reduce the severity of disease and improve its treatability that we no longer really need to worry about


This is the problem with calling it a ‘war’ against coronavirus

are critical of his response. He further claimed his powers as president provide him “total authority” over America’s response to the crisis. But legal experts have said this is simply untrue. These expansive claims could risk eroding democratic norms even if Trump does not ultimately attempt to exercise this “authority.” Reasoning by analogy is risky, and war is often a poor analogy for other policy problems. Militarized language risks suggesting the appropriate response is a primarily military one. Research on American civil-military relations shows us that the public holds a strong sense of deference to the armed forces and responds positively to rhetorical invocations of the military. The military is particularly good at logistics — deploying people and assets quickly. It can often be an effective tool outside of traditional warfare. But scholars also argue there are limits on what the military can do and a risk of mission creep. The military can’t solve all our problems. Some challenges call for nonmilitary tools and expertise. Civilian government agencies already specialize in public health, disaster relief and economic policy. While they don’t always get things right, neither does the military. In responding to any public health crisis, transparency and clear public messaging are crucial. The military, like other national security organizations, is used to operating in an environment where secrecy and operational security are paramount. But we don’t need to hide our plans from a virus. Responding to the pandemic also requires policymakers to make value trade-offs, particularly regarding how to assess and balance competing public health and economic interests. This is something that ultimately can only legitimately be done by elected leaders — the military is not directly accountable to the public. There is also evidence the military failed to appropriately respond to the pandemic within its own ranks. The firing of Capt. Brett Crozier and the subsequent resignation of acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly has called into question the military’s readiness to handle covid-19. Research shows While the pandemic may finally see those who provide these types of service getting the appreciation they deserve, celebrating these individuals because they are like soldiers — putting themselves in harm’s way to fight an invisible enemy — risks reinforcing the notion that this is the only type of service that is valuable. Americans trust medical scientists, nurses and doctors, and have even begun joining in with other nations to cheer and clap


Outbreak at JBS pork plant triggers another meat industry closure

following spikes in coronavirus infections. It shut down its Greeley, Colo., beef facility last week and another in Souderton, Pa., which has since reopened. Local CBS affiliate WCCO, citing the Minnesota Department of Health, reported Saturday that there were 56 confirmed cases of coronavirus in Nobles County — and 20 of them worked at the Worthington plant, and another five who were related to the workers. The pork plant will wind down operations in the next two days, JBS said, and continue to pay employees during the closure. “We don’t make this decision lightly,” said Bob Krebs, president of JBS USA Pork. “We recognize JBS Worthington is critical to local hog producers, the U.S. food supply and the many businesses that support the facility each and every day.” A growing number of processing facilities that prop up the American meat supply have themselves become outbreak hot spots. The outlook is even more precarious given that U.S. meat processing is largely handled at a few enormous plants. At the same time, restaurants are drastically cutting orders of more expensive cuts, such as tenderloins and sirloin, that don’t draw supermarket customers. With the supply chain so off-kilter, experts are worried that meat could become the next item wiped clean from grocery store shelves as customers start to hoard. On Friday, the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 663 called on JBS to slow production speeds at the Worthington plant and allow for more social distancing. The union, which represents more than 1,850 workers at the facility, said that a delayed response could come “too late for too many people.” “Failure to make this critical safety improvement will put our community and our nation’s food supply at devastating risk,” said UFCW Local 663 President Matt Utecht. Earlier this month, Smithfield Foods announced that its plant in Sioux Falls, S.D., would shutter indefinitely. The Argus Leader reported Friday that there were nearly 800 confirmed coronavirus cases linked to the plant, which is one of the country’s largest pork processing facilities and represents 4 to 5 percent of U.S. pork production, according to Smithfield. National Beef Packing has also closed its plant in Tama, Iowa. Cargill halted production at its Hazleton, Pa., ground beef and pork processing plant. The company also scaled back operations at one of Canada’s biggest beef-packing plants after dozens of workers contracted the virus. Laura Reiley contributed to this report.


The Tokyo Olympics could hinge on a covid-19 vaccine. One Japanese scientist has his doubts.

Earlier this month, the chief executive of the Tokyo Olympics said he could not guarantee the Games would go on next summer even after they were postponed by a year because of the novel coronavirus pandemic. On Monday, a Japanese professor of infectious disease went even further, saying he thought the Olympics would have to be put off in 2021 as well. “To be honest with you, I don’t think the Olympics is likely to be held next year,” Kentaro Iwata, a professor of infectious disease at Kobe University, said Monday, per the Associated Press. “Holding the Olympics needs two conditions; one, controlling covid-19 in Japan, and controlling covid-19 everywhere.” “I am very pessimistic about holding the Olympic Games next summer unless you hold the Olympic Games in a totally different structure such as no audience, or a very limited participation,” Iwata added. Devi Sridhar, professor of Global Health at the University of Edinburgh, told the AP last week that next year’s Olympics — and the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing, which are scheduled to begin about six months later — depend on the development of a covid-19 vaccine. “I think it all depends on whether we have a vaccine,” Sridhar said. “And so I think if you talk to some of the scientists, they’re saying we’ll have a vaccine by the fall and we can manufacture it quickly and we can get it out to people. If we do, then I’d say, actually, we have a great chance of going ahead with the Olympics.” But as said repeatedly by Anthony S. Fauci, the United States’ leading infectious disease expert, the process of developing a vaccine could take a year to 18 months. “If it looks in the next few months that a vaccine is proving difficult, that actually it has massive side effects or it’s not effective or we’re not actually building immunity in individuals, then I think [the Olympics will] have to be delayed,” Sridhar said. Even though it was the second country after China to record a case of the coronavirus, Japan has been criticized for its response to the pandemic, with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe not instituting a nationwide state of emergency until last week amid a sharp spike in positive tests. The country, which has seen about 11,000 confirmed infections and about 240 deaths as of Monday, has seen its medical facilities overburdened, with emergency


Japan’s leader is following a Trumpian playbook on the coronavirus

crisis has been slow,” Eurasia Group wrote in an April 16 report. As such, “many local political leaders have moved independently to tackle the outbreak.” None with more fanfare than Hokkaido Gov. Naomichi Suzuki. The leader of Japan’s northernmost main island has declared two states of emergency. The first, on Feb. 28, came as Tokyo was still insisting the 2020 Olympics was still on for a July start. Suzuki became a national folk hero for decisive steps to close schools, cancel large-scale gatherings and ask residents to shelter in place. Within two weeks, new cases were down to one or two per day. Suzuki lifted the order on March 19. Then came the second wave of cases, leading to a new emergency decree on April 12. A similar chain of events played out in the South Korean city of Daegu. All this could be a cautionary tale as China accelerates efforts to reopen the economy after months of lockdown. The same applies to a Trump administration hellbent on restoring an air of normalcy in some areas as early as May 1. None of this is to say Tokyo, Osaka or Sapporo, Hokkaido’s biggest city, are going the New York route. The Japanese have long been enthusiastic face-mask wearers and consumers of hand sanitizer. Hugging and handshakes run afoul of cultural norms. Japan also has a top-notch health-care system that champions preventative medicine. Yet it seems fanciful to think Japan will sit out this pandemic. It is absolutely crucial that Abe’s government take testing more seriously. Even Tokyo’s goal to test 20,000 people per day at some point lacks audacity and urgency. Instead, Team Abe is prioritizing the economy and spin over public health. Look no further than the government earmarking $22 million for artificial intelligence tools and other strategies to locate and rebut criticism of Tokyo’s coronavirus response. If only Japan would harness technology to raise its epidemiological game. In one fell swoop, Abe could save hundreds of thousands of lives, boost the economy and halt these Fukushima parallels once and for all. Read more: William Pesek: Japan’s coronavirus response is too little, too late Jeff Kingston: Goodbye, Tokyo 2020. It’s time to start hoping for 2021. The Post’s View: The Olympics must be canceled or postponed William Pesek: How the coronavirus is shaking up Asia’s political order Jeff Kingston: Japan’s response to the coronavirus is a slow-motion train wreck


Photo essay: She got to Hong Kong before the protests. She left as the coronavirus spread.

to Causeway Bay, I took a break to edit photos on a sidewalk. Nearby a group of older men and women stood chattering and grumbling about the police. When they spotted me, they insisted that I share some of the fruit that they had brought to feed protesters. As I picked up a cantaloupe cube, the offering seemed both strange and ordinary. At protests this dichotomy was everywhere. And my eyes adjusted quickly — to the sight of food stall owners wearing gas masks, to hearing the whir of leaf blowers as they dispersed clouds of tear gas, to college campuses with Molotov cocktail assembly lines. As clashes steadily accelerated, daily life churned forward, too. I treasured having the chance to build relationships with my extended family. I got to cook for my aunt and uncle, celebrate birthdays with my cousins and go to yum cha, or get dim sum, with my grandma. Between eating steaming baskets of siu mai and shrimp dumplings, my aunt would act as interpreter for me and my grandma, who spoke only Teochew. Although I was able to carry on conversations with my relatives using a combination of Cantonese and English, I knew very little of her dialect. I learned “hiu sik,” or “get some rest,” when she had a stroke in September, which I would repeat at her hospital bedside while she gripped my hand. While I was in the States for a winter holiday, she developed pneumonia and passed away at 104. Not long after her funeral, the exponentially growing threat of the novel coronavirus, which was first discovered in Wuhan, China, further changed the cityscape. Those who were able to stayed home for fear of catching the virus. Everywhere on the streets of Hong Kong paranoia hung thick in the air. Subway cars during rush hour felt spacious, and shopkeepers talked quietly at empty street markets previously filled with a cacophony of noise. For me this has been a time of witnessing irreversible change, in my personal life and in society. There were so many moments of wanting to help and feeling helpless at the same time. But amid it all, I believe I did what was most important — as a photographer, as a granddaughter — to bear witness to it all. May-Ying Lam is a former Washington Post photo editor. Design by Christian Font. Photo editing by Dudley M. Brooks.


The Health 202: Twelve takeaways from the 1918 flu epidemic that help us think about the novel coronavirus

reported 3,342.” But the jump in numbers is not necessarily a surprise. "It is virtually impossible to get an accurate count when health systems are overwhelmed at the height of a crisis — and they confirm suspicions that many more people died than the official figures had showed," Ken writes. There have been long-running questions about the accuracy of China’s official case count, leading to “accusations that Chinese officials were seeking to minimize the impact of the outbreak and could have brought it under control sooner.” According to Wuhan’s coronavirus response headquarters gave a few reasons for the undercount, saying it was part a result of mistaken reporting by medical staff, deaths at institutions that weren’t linked to the epidemic information network, and deaths that occurred outside hospitals. More than a dozen researchers, physicians and public health experts, many from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, were at the U.N. agency’s Geneva headquarters as the coronavirus emerged late last year. They sent information about its emergence and spread to administration officials, The Post’s Karen DeYoung, Lena H. Sun and Emily Rauhala report. A spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services, Caitlin B. Oakley, confirmed to The Post that HHS had 17 staff members, including 16 from the CDC, at the WHO “working on a variety of programs, including covid-19 and Ebola.” President Trump, which is withholding WHO funds, says the agency failed to communicate the extent of the virus’s threat and that such a failure is to blame for the rapid spread in the United States. He has also criticized Chinese leadership for withholding information. Oakley said the presence of CDC staffers didn’t mean the agency’s leaders were being forthright. “[J]ust because you have Americans embedded in WHO providing technical assistance does not change the information you are getting from WHO leadership.” Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) said Trump’s comments defending protesters were unhelpful and nonsensical. Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) suggested Trump is focused on protests because he has not been able to provide more critical tests, our colleagues Luz Lazo, Erin Cox and Hannah Natanson report. In an interview on CNN, Hogan said he understood the desire to restart the economy, but said doing so soon would be reckless. “I understand the frustration among the people that want to get things open right away. I’m frustrated, too. I wish I had someone to protest to,”


What Trump did about coronavirus in February

that’s when it starts getting hot and this virus reacts very poorly to heat and dies. So we’ll see what happens.” Trump visited his campaign headquarters in Virginia. Later that afternoon, he spoke by phone with New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D). The conversation centered on the administration’s efforts to pressure New York to change its immigration laws by blocking New Yorkers from a federal travel program. Feb. 14. “Sixty-one percent of the voters approve of Trump’s handling of the coronavirus,” Trump said, pointing to a poll from the Morning Consult. (That figure is now at 45 percent.) “And, you know, we did a very early move on that. We did a — I was criticized by a lot of people at the beginning because we were the first. We’d never done it before. We closed our borders through certain areas. It’s never happened before where we did that. We never closed our borders. But we did it, and we actually did it early, and we took some criticism. Now everyone is saying we did a good job.” He again said that only 12 people in the country had been infected, praised Xi and suggested that the virus would fade in April. The only other events on Trump’s calendar were his intelligence briefing — and his late-afternoon departure for Mar-a-Lago. From the campaign timeline: “The CDC expanded enhanced entry screening to eight major airports across the nation.” Feb. 15. Feb. 16. Trump headed back to Washington, attending adviser Stephen Miller's wedding at Trump's D.C. hotel. Feb. 17. Feb. 18. During a briefing on the 2020 Olympics, the subject of the virus didn’t come up. A month later, the Games were postponed until 2021. Trump then attended several fundraising events in Southern California before heading to the Trump hotel in Las Vegas for the night. From the campaign timeline: “HHS announced it would engage with Sanofi Pasteur in an effort to quickly develop a coronavirus vaccine and to develop treatment for coronavirus infections.” Feb. 19. At the rally — held the same day as the Democratic debate discussed by Baier — Trump did not mention the virus. Trump participated in an interview with a local television station while in Phoenix. “How confident are you that China is being 100 percent honest with us when it comes to this scary virus?” the reporter asked. “I’m confident that they’re trying very hard,”


Mark Zuckerberg: How data can aid the fight against covid-19

Mark Zuckerberg is founder and chief executive of Facebook. As the world fights covid-19 and countries develop plans to reopen their societies, it’s critical to have a clear understanding of how the disease is spreading. Better data can help governments determine where to send resources such as ventilators and personal protective equipment — and eventually which areas are safe to start opening up again. Getting accurate county-by-county data from across the United States is challenging, and obtaining such focused data from across the whole world is even harder. But with a community of billions of people globally, Facebook can uniquely help researchers and health authorities get the information they need to respond to the outbreak and start planning for the recovery. We recently started showing the Facebook community in the United States an opt-in symptom survey run by health researchers at Carnegie Mellon University. The survey asked people if they have symptoms such as fevers, coughing, shortness of breath or loss of smell that are associated with covid-19. Since experiencing symptoms is a precursor to becoming more seriously ill, this survey can help forecast how many cases hospitals will see in the days ahead and provide an early indicator of where the outbreak is growing and where the curve is being successfully flattened. The survey responses are sent to the researchers and aren’t accessible to Facebook. On Monday, the team at Carnegie Mellon is publishing its initial findings. They’re getting approximately 1 million responses a week in the United States, and the results are promising. They correlate with publicly available data on confirmed cases, which suggests this data can help predict where the disease will spread. They can also be used to build detailed county-by-county insights. The results indicate, for example, that in some New York City suburbs, an estimated 2 to 3 percent of people are experiencing covid-19-like symptoms. Using aggregate data from Carnegie Mellon’s results, Facebook produced its first report and new interactive maps, which we plan to update daily through this outbreak. This is work that social networks are well-situated to do. By distributing surveys to large numbers of people whose identities we know, we can quickly generate enough signal to correct for biases and ensure sampling is done properly. We’re partnering with faculty from the University of Maryland to expand this survey globally, and the team at Carnegie Mellon is building an application programming interface, or