Was the new coronavirus accidentally released from a Wuhan lab? It’s doubtful.

“I will tell you, more and more, we’re hearing the story [that the new coronavirus emerged from a Wuhan lab].” — President Trump, President Trump isn’t the only one hearing this tale. The political world, Internet theorists, intelligence analysts and global public health officials are abuzz with a big question: Is it possible that the new coronavirus — which causes covid-19 — leaked from a lab? For months, Chinese authorities have pointed to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan as the virus’s likely origin. A cluster of early cases had contact with the market. It sold a wide variety of wildlife that, officials hypothesized, was critical to the virus’s formation and spread. Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), which cause similar symptoms, were formed after a coronavirus from a bat transformed in another animal and then jumped to humans. The logic seems straightforward. But a more complete analysis of early cases suggests that locating the origin of the virus may not be so simple. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that of the first 425 patients, only 45 percent had connections to the market. A separate Jan. 24 analysis published in the Lancet found that three of the first four cases — including the first known case — did not have market links. Daniel R. Lucey, a pandemics expert at Georgetown University, put it simply: “In my opinion, the virus came into the market before it came out of the market.” That tinge of uncertainty was bolstered after Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin revealed two 2018 cables in which State Department officials warned of safety issues at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a laboratory studying bat coronaviruses. Renewed questions about the virus’s origin brought a rush of alternative theories. Some claimed the virus was a bioweapon. Others suggested it had been altered for a scientific experiment or was simply a viral sample that escaped from a lab. Let’s be clear: No scientist we spoke to thinks the new coronavirus was designed as a bioweapon. When asked, Milton Leitenberg, a biological weapons expert at the University of Maryland, responded with a flat “No.” Most experts say the new coronavirus was the product of a natural process. Still, the safety issues described in the 2018 cables, the Chinese government’s response and the proximity of the labs to the market have raised


explanations. A wildlife trafficker might have brought an infected bat into the city. Another animal might have picked up the virus from bats years ago, allowing it to transform in just the right way to infect humans. There are thousands of bat viruses that scientists have not sampled and even more coronaviruses that circulate in other species, so there’s no guarantee it actually came from thousands of miles away. But even if that virus from Shi’s lab is not the source for the virus, her lab is full of bat coronavirus variants. That left us wondering: Could this virus have been the accidental product of an experiment gone awry? A 2015 paper cautioned against the “gain of function” experiments with which Shi’s team was involved. In this kind of experiment, the researchers mutate a virus strain to enhance a pathogen’s natural traits. Even though the most dangerous part of that experiment was not conducted at the WIV, the 2018 State Department cables referenced similar research by Shi and her team. In 2017, Shi and her team published a study revealing that they had found a coronavirus from a bat that could be transmitted directly to humans. After reviewing the study, Rasmussen said via email that just because these viruses could attach to human cells, it “does not show that they are particularly effective at doing so.” Binding is only one part of the process. “It is not the sole determinant of viral fitness (the ability of the virus to replicate robustly in a given host) or pathogenicity (the ability of the virus to cause disease).” Moreover, genomic analysis reveals that none of the virus samples used to conduct these experiments were or could have been transformed to be the new coronavirus that causes covid-19. That, however, is just one study. Shi’s lab published dozens of academic papers researching bat coronaviruses. The Washington Post reviewed academic studies that described “scores of encounters with animals that are known hosts to deadly viruses, including strains closely related to the pathogen behind the covid-19 outbreak.” “While the scientists wore gloves and masks and took other protective measures, U.S. experts who reviewed the experiments say the precautions would not necessarily protect the researchers from harmful exposures, in caves or in the lab,” The Post reported. This kind of research filled in critical gaps in scientific understanding of SARS-like coronaviruses. It also increased the risk of


Rasmussen said via email that just because these viruses could attach to human cells, it “does not show that they are particularly effective at doing so.” Binding is only one part of the process. “It is not the sole determinant of viral fitness (the ability of the virus to replicate robustly in a given host) or pathogenicity (the ability of the virus to cause disease).” Moreover, genomic analysis reveals that none of the virus samples used to conduct these experiments were or could have been transformed to be the new coronavirus that causes covid-19. That, however, is just one study. Shi’s lab published dozens of academic papers researching bat coronaviruses. The Washington Post reviewed academic studies that described “scores of encounters with animals that are known hosts to deadly viruses, including strains closely related to the pathogen behind the covid-19 outbreak.” “While the scientists wore gloves and masks and took other protective measures, U.S. experts who reviewed the experiments say the precautions would not necessarily protect the researchers from harmful exposures, in caves or in the lab,” The Post reported. This kind of research filled in critical gaps in scientific understanding of SARS-like coronaviruses. It also increased the risk of accidental exposure and lab accidents. But many scientists are still dubious. Kristian G. Andersen, an immunology and microbiology professor at Scripps Research, alongside Holmes and other researchers, stated firmly, “Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.” Trevor Bedford, a researcher in computational biology and infectious diseases at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, was more specific. “You don’t see kind of large chunks of genomic material that are somehow inserted or absent,” he said. Rather, it is the opposite. “The differences are these small mutations, as you’d expect from nature.” (Shi did not return our emails. None of her current collaborators we spoke to could precisely speak to her current research.) Still, no scientist was willing to completely dismiss the idea — they only said that it was highly unlikely. After all, we neither know what either lab was specifically working on, nor do we have an archive of every animal in the lab and virus sequence in its freezer. Without identifying the earliest case and the evolution of the virus, everything is a hypothesis. Richard H. Ebright, a microbiologist and biosafety expert at Rutgers University, said: “The question whether the outbreak


Virus deaths in D.C., Virginia and Maryland surpass 2,000 as District records its largest number of daily infections

The number of known coronavirus cases in the District, Maryland and Virginia was 45,076 on Friday, with 23,488 cases in Maryland, 16,926 in Virginia and 4,662 in the District. The number of virus-related deaths reached 1,199 in Maryland, 583 in Virginia and 232 in the District, for a total of 2,014 fatalities. Here are some of the most significant recent developments as the region responds to the pandemic of the novel coronavirus, which causes the disease covid-19: • Coronavirus deaths in D.C., Virginia and Maryland surpassed 2,000 on Friday as the District recorded its largest number of daily infections. The three jurisdictions reported 85 new covid-19 fatalities, bringing the regional total past another grim milestone. A surge in known D.C. cases announced Friday coincides with the first day the city received more than 1,000 test results in a single day. • A flight path was released Friday for the Navy Blue Angels and Air Force Thunderbirds flyover through the D.C. and Baltimore regions Saturday. The flyover is meant to honor first responders and health care workers on the front-lines of dealing with the coronavirus outbreak. • Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) has estimated that the first phase of reopening could happen in early May, saying he is primarily focused on a downward trend in hospitalizations and intensive care unit bed use, neither of which has happened. A group called Reopen Maryland is planning a 150-mile trek across the state Saturday to demand that Hogan allow nonessential businesses to reopen. When might local restrictions ease?


Dow falls more than 600 points as tech and energy sectors fuel Wall Street retreat

reopen properly.” A sea of earnings reports from America’s biggest and most profitable companies, from McDonald’s to Boeing to 3M and Google-parent Alphabet, flooded Wall Street during the week. The companies generally reported uneven results, but they sent a consistent message: It is almost futile to predict performance in the coming months. “The still-scary levels of jobless claims combined with Apple and Amazon’s withdrawal are weighing on stocks,” said Ivan Feinseth of Tigress Financial Partners. “There’s uncertainty on when and how the recovery takes place.” The bad news has piled up daily, led by more than 60,000 U.S. deaths ascribed to the coronavirus. U.S. gross domestic product contracted 4.8 percent in the first quarter, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday. Thursday’s stock session ended in decline after new unemployment data showed U.S. job losses surged past 30 million since the pandemic hit domestically. A disappointing manufacturing report on Friday added to the growing pile of bad news. Oil prices remain woefully depressed and far below the $50 range that most oil producers need to made a decent profit, despite a rebound in the past week. Crude prices have dropped more than 50 percent since January because of an oversupply brought on by a drop in demand due to global lockdowns. A price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia, two of the world’s largest producers, also flooded the oil market, driving prices down further. Investors shrugged off the bad news for most of April, with Wall Street seizing on good news on the medical front against the coronavirus and a gradual reopening of the country. Small medical advances sprinkled investors with hope the past two weeks as pharmaceutical companies worked on virus vaccines and treatments. It became a shower on Wednesday after Gilead Sciences reported “positive data” in a clinical trial by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for remdesivir, a possible treatment for covid-19, the disease the virus causes. As a result, the broad S&P 500 index surged 12 percent in April, its strongest month since 1987. The S&P remains 26 percent above the March 23, 2020, lows. It is only 16 percent off its all-time high of Feb. 19, 2020. The blue-chip Dow index closed out April with a 10 percent advance, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite surged 14 percent. “Despite the bad news, the market is holding its own,” said Howard Silverblatt of S&P Dow Jones Indices.


This is South Africa’s third major pandemic in 100 years. It has learned its lessons.

Palesa Morudu is a writer and a director at Clarity Global Strategic Communications based in Washington. When the novel coronavirus hit South Africa in early March, there were reasons to fear the worst. The world’s most unequal country had been severely affected by both the Spanish flu and the HIV/AIDS pandemics. But with this history in mind, South Africa launched one of the most vigorous public health responses on the African continent. Over the past five weeks, Pretoria has taken rigorous measures to “to flatten the curve” with aggressive testing and screening and by preparing health centers. The government deployed 28,000 health workers to test and screen communities across the country, drawing on the health infrastructure that had been built in response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic. As of this week, 6.1 million people had been screened and 207,530 tested for covid-19, with 5,647 active coronavirus cases, 2,073 recoveries and 103 deaths. So far, South Africa appears to be on course to flatten the curve far earlier than the United States and many other countries. These measures were accompanied by an extreme lockdown. Except for essential grocery shopping and medical visits, people were prohibited from going to work (apart from essential services personnel), exercising outdoors, walking their dogs and buying cigarettes or alcohol. The police and army have controlled access to public spaces and the streets — and often enforce these restrictions with gratuitous brutality. The lockdown is set to ease marginally on Friday — the first in a five-stage relaxation. What has informed South Africa’s covid-19 response? This is the third major pandemic or epidemic of this kind to hit the southern tip of Africa in just over 100 years. During the 1918-19 influenza pandemic, which claimed an estimated 50 million lives globally, South Africa had the fourth-highest mortality rate in the world. According to University of Cape Town historian Howard Phillips, during the second wave of the pandemic in 1918, between 300,000 and 350,000 South Africans died — an estimated 6 percent of the country’s population. The flu arrived in Cape Town on warships carrying South African troops returning from European battlefields via the port of Freetown, Sierra Leone, where they contracted the virus. After showing no symptoms two days into their quarantine, the men were let go and began returning to their homes. In a matter of days, “Cape Town was a stricken city,” according to media reports.


The U.S. wants Mexico to keep its defense and health-care factories open. Mexican workers are getting sick and dying.

to the state,” Baja California governor Jaime Bonilla Valdez said. During “the health emergency, they are considered [to be performing] nonessential activities.” The closures have shaken major U.S. government contractors, whose work is deemed essential north of the border, but not south of it. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has not clarified whether U.S. defense or health-care manufacturers should remain open. “Companies are left scratching their heads when they learn that their partners in Mexico don’t see what they do as an essential service, even as they’re called to do pandemic response,” said Dak Hardwick, the assistant vice president for international affairs at the Aerospace Industries Association. The National Association of Manufacturers wrote to López Obrador that his government’s lack of clarity “has resulted in the shuttering of essential manufacturing facilities across Mexico, including those that serve as the backbone to critical infrastructure across our continent, potentially weakening our response to the COVID-19 pandemic.” Few events have raised such pressing questions about the mechanics of the international supply chain. In the 26 years since NAFTA was signed, the trends for manufacturing here were mostly positive: hundreds of thousands of new jobs created in Mexico; inexpensive, efficient production for the United States. Even after both countries elected populist presidents wary of a frictionless North American supply chain, the concept of a continental free-trade zone endured: The U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the successor to NAFTA signed by the three countries last year, is due to take effect July 1. Before the coronavirus, that felt like a codification of the region’s commercial ties. The NAFTA bylaws allow its members to act in their own interests “in times of war or other emergency in international relations.” But until now, that contingency has rarely been tested. Luis de la Calle, who helped craft NAFTA as Mexico’s undersecretary for international trade negotiations in the 1990s, said the countries did not coordinate ahead of the pandemic “in a joint fashion.” “They should have agreed that if one country deems a sector to be essential, the two other countries should deem suppliers essential,” de la Calle said. “But that’s not what happened here.” In Ciudad Juárez, where Lear Corp. produces car seat covers, workers began falling ill in March. By April, as many as 13 had died of the coronavirus, according to employees. Lear declined to confirm numbers. “Due to COVID-19, we have seen a tragic situation of fatalities


‘Paper Beast’: A truly great PlayStation VR game

Paper Beast Developed by: Published by: Available on: Perhaps it was when I unspooled tape from an old reel-to-reel player and created a beast out of its ribbons, or maybe it was when I saw a tree sprout hot air balloons. It also could have been when I watched an elephant lead a menagerie in an underwater procession. Each is among the possibilities for the moment I decided that “Paper Beast” should be counted among the handful of truly great games available on PlayStation VR. Developed by Eric Chahi, creator of the renowned early nineties adventure game “Another World,” “Paper Beast” throws players into a hallucinatory cyberscape running on a quantum computer — a place that visually evokes the work of the surrealist painters Dali and Magritte. Before running the quantum computer you must tab through a user agreement that asks, among other things, if it can use part of your neural network while you sleep. Upon registering your responses the computer sets about its quantum calculations and a pop-up text appears on the screen asking if you’d like to play the SwirlyBeat music app while you wait. Trust me, you do. Clicking on the app transports you to your own private party: a small room festooned in confetti and streamers, pulsing with light and Japanese rock music. On the floor are rocks that can be grabbed and tossed using either the DualShock or Move controllers. As the song fades, a glitchy sound rings out and the environment goes dark. Then, in a wonderful transition, you find yourself standing on a narrow patch of terrain, surrounded on all sides by curtains, listening to the song from the music app coming from a reel-to reel player on the ground. Pulling aside the curtain reveals that you are standing underneath a dinosaurlike creature whose skeletal frame appears to be made out of spools of paper. Surrounding you and the creature is a desert whose bright colors and flat surfaces are like something out of a Dali painting. A little later you’ll be in an elevated spot, overlooking a message scrawled in the sand: “this is not a simulation.” I’m reluctant to say much about the ensuing journey because one of the elements I most appreciated about “Paper Beast” was that I had no idea what to expect from one moment to the next — something I seldom experience in video games. That


Woman found fatally shot inside apartment in Northwest Washington

A woman was fatally shot inside an apartment Thursday afternoon in Northwest Washington near Union Station, according to D.C. police. Police said the woman had been shot multiple times and was pronounced dead in a bedroom of a ninth floor residence at the Golden Rule Apartments in the 900 block of New Jersey Avenue NW. The victim was identified as Resha Blount, 25, of Northwest. Police said they were called to the building, located between New York and Massachusetts avenues, about 12:45 p.m. A police report says that after the woman was shot, the assailant pointed a handgun at another woman who was in the apartment and stole her cellphone in an apparent attempt to stop her from calling 911. Police said the assailant left the apartment with the phone. No arrests have been made. The police report lists robbery and drugs as a possible motive but does not elaborate. The shooting was the third killing in the District in two days. There have been 49 homicides in the District so far this year, compared to 51 at this time in 2019, which reached a decade high.


'First thing's first, I gotta beat this game'

With the NBA suspended because of covid-19, Washington Wizards point guard Ish Smith finds himself home, filling his days with video games alone instead of high-stakes games in front of thousands of fans. Smith shared recordings with The Post April 18-23.


Economics, not politics, helps explain why coronavirus and other diseases started in China

The H5N1 avian influenza outbreak in 1996, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003-2004 and now covid-19 were all first detected in China. Some accounts even claim that a precursor to the 1918 influenza pandemic, the worst in modern history, first appeared in China. Why do so many highly infectious diseases appear to start their deadly spread in China? Many recent articles have honed in on the policy errors of China’s authoritarian political system. As the novel coronavirus began to sweep across the United States, President Trump sought to directly implicate Beijing by referring to “the Chinese virus,” instead of its technical designation, SARS-COV-2. But politics and policy aren’t the only factors behind pandemic disease outbreaks. Research shows that geography and economics play key roles, too. It’s important to understand these different dimensions of viral outbreaks to prevent future pandemics emanating in China — and elsewhere. So, how do new diseases start and spread? Here’s what you need to know. 1. Geography isn’t destiny — but it explains a lot In principle, viral outbreaks can happen almost anywhere. A decade ago, H1N1 swine flu likely arose from the mixing of viruses from the pig populations of several countries, including Mexico, Europe and the United States. Even more strikingly, another candidate for the origin of the 1918 influenza is Kansas. In practice, though, novel viruses tend to arise disproportionately from “pandemic hot spots” — places with high human population densities, high levels of biodiversity, large animal populations that can harbor and incubate new diseases, and patterns of regular interaction between animals and humans. This provides viruses with opportunities to jump from one species to another — a process scientists call “host-switching.” The risk of viral disease outbreaks also appears to be higher in regions experiencing rapid changes in land use. Until the recent few decades, most major land-use changes, whether clearing forests for farmland or building new roads and railways, tended to take place in mid- and high-latitude regions with lower biodiversity. But these changes now are increasingly concentrated in the tropical and subtropical regions of the developing world — places where biodiversity is highest. And where there are more animal species, you’re sure to find more viruses. As humans push further and deeper into previously sparsely populated tropical forests and similar habitats, this creates more opportunities for viruses to switch from animal to human hosts. And as it turns out,


decades. Guangzhou, southern China’s largest city, became home to the world’s 13th-busiest airport, with passenger numbers growing by approximately 6 percent a year. In addition, south China is at the center of some of the world’s most extensive diaspora networks, and it has traditionally accounted for an outsized share of Chinese emigrant populations. U.S. Census data, for example, recorded nearly 50,000 more speakers of the southern Cantonese dialect of Chinese living in the United States than Mandarin speakers, although Mandarin speakers comprise a much greater share of China’s national population. These networks have played a critical role in making southern China one of Asia’s wealthiest and most dynamic regions by channeling overseas investment and helping to create a major hub for global trade and commerce. But extensive economic, infrastructural and social integration with the rest of the world has a downside: potentially faster exposure to new viral outbreaks. Within days of the arrival of the SARS virus in Hong Kong in early 2003, it had spread to places like Toronto and, shortly afterward, even Gainesville, Fla. It’s south China’s dense integration with the rest of China and the world that distinguishes the region from other potential pandemic hot-spot regions. What does all this mean for the next pandemic? In many ways, China is on the leading edge of several trends that are increasing the risk of new viral disease outbreaks around the world. First, rapid development in highly biodiverse regions brings more people into contact with exotic animals and the viruses that lurk within them. Second, ever-more-extensive transport, trade and communications links continue to shorten the distances between a potential pandemic hot spot and virtually any other point on the globe. One lesson from China’s experience is already apparent: Epidemic surveillance is a true global public good, critical to protecting not just lives but entire economies. Going forward, we can expect China and other countries to focus on two big questions as they seek to prevent future pandemics and deal with the consequences of the current one. First, will covid-19 force a rethinking of the balance between information control and exchange for habitually secretive states like China? Second, does the risk of rapid viral disease transmission permanently dent the appeal of globalization and global integration? Even if, as seems likely, the answers are no, the very fact that people pose these questions is testament to just how much dealing with


days of the arrival of the SARS virus in Hong Kong in early 2003, it had spread to places like Toronto and, shortly afterward, even Gainesville, Fla. It’s south China’s dense integration with the rest of China and the world that distinguishes the region from other potential pandemic hot-spot regions. What does all this mean for the next pandemic? In many ways, China is on the leading edge of several trends that are increasing the risk of new viral disease outbreaks around the world. First, rapid development in highly biodiverse regions brings more people into contact with exotic animals and the viruses that lurk within them. Second, ever-more-extensive transport, trade and communications links continue to shorten the distances between a potential pandemic hot spot and virtually any other point on the globe. One lesson from China’s experience is already apparent: Epidemic surveillance is a true global public good, critical to protecting not just lives but entire economies. Going forward, we can expect China and other countries to focus on two big questions as they seek to prevent future pandemics and deal with the consequences of the current one. First, will covid-19 force a rethinking of the balance between information control and exchange for habitually secretive states like China? Second, does the risk of rapid viral disease transmission permanently dent the appeal of globalization and global integration? Even if, as seems likely, the answers are no, the very fact that people pose these questions is testament to just how much dealing with a succession of viral diseases has changed the world. The TMC newsletter is changing shape! Sign up here to keep receiving our smart analysis. Zeke Emanuel is vice provost for global initiatives and Diane v.S. Levy and Robert M. Levy University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Scott Moore is director of the Penn Global China Program at the University of Pennsylvania and is currently writing a book on China’s role in providing global public goods Read more: How coronavirus changes the political outlook in China and the U.S. Can the U.S. sue China for covid-19 damages? Not really. International politics is making it harder to make a coronavirus vaccine Trump announced the U.S. will suspend WHO funding. That could leave another global initiative under China’s influence. China’s coronavirus response could build public support for its government The coronavirus is expanding the surveillance state. How will this play out?


Kayleigh McEnany, the new press secretary, gives first White House briefing in more than a year

start as a booker for “The Mike Huckabee Show” on Fox News, hosted by the former Arkansas governor and father of Sarah Sanders. She came into her own during the 2016 campaign when CNN hired her to speak in behalf of Trump. She has been doing so, in one form or another, ever since. In 2017, she had a brief stint as the host of videos on Trump’s Facebook page, which blossomed into a job as spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee. Her next job, as press secretary for Trump’s reelection campaign, set her up for the White House press secretary’s position just as the 2020 campaign is about to hit its full stride. Until Friday, McEnany was barely visible in her new role, appearing only on Fox News, while seeming to act more as a press critic than press secretary — using her official Twitter account, @presssec, as a platform to amplify, or to add to, Trump’s many grievances against the media. On Sunday, for example, McEnany complained about the position of her quote in a three-week-old Washington Post story that detailed the Trump administration’s delayed response to the pandemic. “The @washingtonpost, unsurprisingly, buried my quote 22 paragraphs down in their story,” she tweeted. “This is to be expected from a paper that repeatedly publishes false headlines about @realDonaldTrump by a 25-to-1 margin.” She has also twice pushed back on unfavorable stories by claiming that reporters had taken something out of context. Last Friday, a day after Trump drew widespread criticism for musing about whether disinfectants and “very powerful light” could be injected into the body to treat covid-19, McEnany released this statement: “Leave it to the media to irresponsibly take President Trump out of context and run with negative headlines,” she said in a statement after Trump was widely mocked. A few hours later, though, Trump said that he was merely being “sarcastic.” She made a similar claim after Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a Post interview that a second wave of coronavirus infections coupled with a new flu season could flare up in the fall, a message out of sync with the administration’s more upbeat framing. “The mainstream media has been taking him out of context, as they so often do with Trump Administration officials,” she told Fox News. Redfield, though, later said his quotes were accurately reported.


The Technology 202: Amazon wasn’t prepared for the coronavirus. Now it’s facing major costs.

work well under that kind of scrutiny, even in the best of times.” Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have stopped short of removing posts about Trump's comments that disinfectant and ultraviolet light are potential coronavirus cures. That’s putting the companies at odds with their own vows to fight harmful misinformation about the virus, Sheera Frenkel and Davey Alba at the New York Times report. The Times found more than 45,000 tweets discussing bleach and UV light cures for the coronavirus related to the president’s comments. Many of the posts said Trump was right about his suggested treatments, and some of the endorsement came from politicians. The Times also found thousands of posts on Facebook and YouTube promoting disinfectants as cures. His claims are not supported by medical professionals and could be harmful. But the social media networks have long declined to remove comments from the president regardless of their veracity, citing their policies' protections of political speech. The new bill renews a push for federal privacy legislation that has stalled during the pandemic. The bill would require companies to: “This bill strikes the right balance between innovation — allowing technology companies to continue their work toward developing platforms that could trace the virus and help flatten the curve and stop the spread — and maintaining privacy protections for U.S. citizens,” said Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. Republican Sens. John Thune (S.D.), Jerry Moran (Kan.) and Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.) co-sponsored the bill. Some Democrats have expressed concerns about sweeping federal privacy legislation that would preempt state laws, but the covid-19 data privacy bill has already attracted some Democratic support. “I look forward to working with colleagues on bipartisan consumer privacy protections — including eventually a national framework that secures these crucial rights,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said in a statement responding to the bill. The bill could get rolled into the next coronavirus relief package, Protocol’s Emily Birnbaum reports: Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) urged the chiefs of Alphabet , YouTube and Twitter to follow Facebook’s lead in displaying messages to users who interacted with misinformation before it was removed and connecting them with information from the World Health Organization. More news from the Hill: Wray helped Facebook argue against a Justice Department order in 2015 that would have weakened the strong encryption used by the company’s WhatsApp messaging service when he was a


The Finance 202: Trump officials spook economists with talk of skipping debt payments to China

rates to spike. “This will also lead to an immediate sell off of the dollar, as investors will lastingly re-evaluate downward what share of their money to put in the U.S.,” he writes. “So the good medicine we would be cutting the U.S. economy off of is the ability to borrow in our own currency at low interest rates when we need to do so. And we really need to do so now when the deficit will exceed 12% of GDP this year.” University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers agrees: The consequences would also spill out into the real economy. His conclusion: “The higher cost of borrowing from strategically defaulting on U.S. government bonds overwhelms any short term gain from it, probably by orders of magnitude.” More than 3.8 million people filed for unemployment in the past week: The approximately 30.3 million figure “represents roughly 1 in 5 American workers. There is no precedent for figures like this in modern American history.” Another round of dismal data deflated gains: “The sharp rise in jobless claims and the precipitous drop in consumer spending come as businesses are forced to shut down and consumers stay home amid the coronavirus pandemic. Stocks were also under pressure … after the European Central Bank refrained from increasing its emergency asset purchase program.” That's the most money so far that any public company received from the SBA: “As lobbyists blitz Washington for a piece of the massive federal response to the global pandemic, a group of former Trump administration officials and campaign alumni are in the center of the action, helping private interests tap into coveted financial and regulatory relief programs. In all, at least 25 former officials who once worked for the Trump administration, campaign or transition team are now registered as lobbyists for clients with coronavirus needs, according to The Washington Post’s analysis of federal lobbying records and employment data compiled by ProPublica.” Two largest banks have processed $45.8 billion in loans: “Bank of America, which submitted 250,000 applications totaling $28 billion, said its average loan size was around $100,000 and that three-quarters of applications came from businesses with fewer than 10 employees. JPMorgan, which submitted about 220,000 applications worth $17.8 billion, said its average loan size was around $81,000. Roughly half of the applications were filed by businesses with fewer than five employees, a bank spokeswoman said.” Fed expands “Main Street” program: “The


Borrowers sue Education Secretary Betsy DeVos for garnishing wages after Congress ordered halt

Since January, when the Education Department began withholding 12 percent of her paycheck for a past-due student loan, Elizabeth Barber, 59, has teetered on the edge of poverty. The $12.89 an hour that Barber earns as a home health aide in Penfield, N.Y., was barely enough to cover her utilities and mortgage before her wages were garnished. With every dollar lost, Barber has fallen further behind, especially as her hours have been reduced amid the novel coronavirus pandemic. When Barber learned about a federal relief plan for defaulted borrowers, she believed the financial strain would ease. But every paycheck she has received, even as recently as last week, has been shorted. “I need every dollar I earn at work to survive each day,” Barber said. “I don’t understand why the government keeps taking my money away after it passed a law that says they will stop.” Barber is the lead plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit filed late Thursday against Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and the Education Department, accusing them of mismanaging a federal order halting involuntary collection for past-due student debt during the pandemic. The Trump administration last month imposed a 60-day moratorium on the collection of defaulted student loans by the federal government, which Congress codified in the stimulus package and extended through Sept. 30. But the Student Borrower Protection Center, an advocacy group involved in the case, has received dozens of complaints from people who are still being shorted on their paychecks at a time when they can least afford it. “Congress passed emergency legislation to ensure that these borrowers would keep their paychecks,” said Persis Yu, a staff attorney at National Consumer Law Center, which represents Barber and other borrowers alongside the National Student Legal Defense Network. “Sure, it’s administratively challenging, but the system has to work, and the bottom line is these borrowers need their money.” The Education Department estimates about 285,000 people were subject to involuntary collection between March 13 and March 26. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, demands the department immediately suspend garnishment for Barber and all other affected borrowers. The Education Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The allegations mirror accusations made previously by advocates and reported by The Washington Post. People familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said


Local Digest: Woman fatally shot in apartment in Northwest

THE DISTRICT A woman was fatally shot inside an apartment Thursday afternoon in Northwest Washington near Union Station, according to D.C. police. Police said the woman had been shot multiple times and was pronounced dead in a bedroom of a ninth-floor residence at the Golden Rule Apartments in the 900 block of New Jersey Avenue NW. The victim was identified as Resha Blount, 25, of Northwest. Police said they were called to the building, located between New York and Massachusetts avenues, at about 12:45 p.m. A police report says that after the woman was shot, the assailant pointed a handgun at another woman who was in the apartment and stole her cellphone in an apparent attempt to stop her from calling 911. Police said the assailant left the apartment with the phone. No arrests have been made. The police report lists robbery and drugs as a possible motive but does not elaborate. As of Friday afternoon, there were 49 homicides in the District so far this year, compared with 51 at this time in 2019, which reached a decade high. — Peter Hermann MARYLAND A man was found dead after a fire in Prince George’s County, officials said Friday. On Thursday around 11:25 a.m., officers responded to the 3700 block of Branch Avenue in Temple Hills after a report of smoke coming from the bottom level of a parking structure adjacent to Iverson Mall, Prince George’s County Fire spokesman Michael J. Yourishin said in a statement. Firefighters extinguished a fire in a storage space beneath the first floor ramp, the statement said, and discovered the body of a man. The name of the victim was not released. An autopsy is pending to determine the cause of death, officials said. Both the police and fire departments are investigating the circumstances leading to the fire. Authorities ask anyone with information about the incident to contact them at 301-77-ARSON. — Justin Wm. Moyer Two people were killed in two separate crashes in Prince George’s County in recent days. In one, a 22-year-old man died. Maryland State Police said the incident happened just after 5 p.m. Thursday near eastbound Route 50 and Route 410 in College Park. An initial investigation found the man was driving a 2007 Ford Crown Victoria when he and a female passenger got into a physical fight in the car, according to police. He lost control of the car. It


FDA authorizes use of Gilead Sciences’ remdesivir for patients severely ill with covid-19

drug had a “clear-cut, significant, positive effect in diminishing the time to recovery.” “That is really quite important,” said Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is overseeing a study of more than 1,000 patients in the United States and around the world. O’Day, in a news release, said the authorization “opens the way for us to provide emergency use of remdesivir to more patients with severe symptoms of covid-19.” The company has already provided the drug to thousands of patients through clinical trials and its own compassionate use program. Gilead said it would coordinate with the government to prioritize cities and hospitals most heavily impacted by coronavirus infections for distribution. Hospitals with intensive care units, which treat the most severely ill patients, will get the drug first, the company said. Doctors will not use the drug on people with covid-19 who are at recuperating at home, said Paul Goepfert, an infectious disease doctor at the University of Alabama-Birmingham and a trial site investigator for the NIAID remdesivir study. The drug was found in the trial to reduce hospital stays from 15 days to 11 days. The trial began in late February. Reaching the stage where it can be routinely provided to patients in a little over two months “has to be one of the fastest findings for this kind of drug development ever,'' Goepfert said. A key consideration for its use will be drug availability. Gilead has said it plans to have enough doses for 140,000 people by the end of the month, a supply that could be extended if a finding in a separate Gilead trial holds up that said a five-day course of treatment might be as effective as a 10-day course. Gilead has said it believes it can produce 1 million courses of treatment by the end of the year. Possible side effects of remdesivir include increased levels of liver enzymes, which may be a sign of inflammation or damage to cells in the liver, and infusion-related reactions, which may include low blood pressure, nausea, vomiting, sweating and shivering. The FDA is requiring that information about using remdesivir to treat covid-19 be made available to health-care providers and patients, including dosing instructions, potential side effects and drug interactions. Mark Berman and Colby Itkowitz contributed to this report. Has your child tested positive for the coronavirus? Share your experience with The Post.


Stopping covid-19 behind bars was an achievable moral imperative. We failed.

not be committing suicide. And that they are should tell us that there’s something wrong with our jails. But that point never really seems to resonate with the public. Americans don’t want jailers actively killing people. But we don’t want our jails too cozy, either. We want them punitive. If that occasionally means conditions that might drive otherwise healthy people to suicide, or neglect that leads to preventable death from other causes, that’s tragic but not tragic enough to hold anyone accountable. The covid-19 outbreaks are a symptom of the same problem, but distilled, sped up and presented in starker relief. The main difference is that unlike abuse of inmates or jailhouse suicides, this time, our neglect of the incarcerated comes with a price: As jail and prison staff get infected, they’ll bring the virus home and infect the surrounding community. But we seem to be okay with that, too. In the early days of the outbreak, I spoke with a number of public defenders and criminal-justice-reform advocates who were hoping the mass emptying of the jails would help make the case for bail reform. Once thousands of low-level offenders were released to prevent virus spread and needless deaths, the thinking went, we’d see that keeping people behind bars because they can’t afford bail is purely punitive, and doing so does nothing to improve public safety. But that argument rested on a faulty premise. It assumed that when confronted with the urgency of the covid-19, that upon the realization that prisons and jails by their very nature make inmates sitting ducks for a highly communicable and potentially lethal disease, judges, governors, prosecutors and other public officials would have enough regard for the health, welfare and humanity of incarcerated people to at least get low-level offenders out of harm’s way. It assumed they would give a damn. It was a good-faith assumption, grounded in the notion that even the most retributive among us would want to prevent needless mass deaths behind bars. It was wildly optimistic. Read more: The Post’s View: Lisa Freeland, David Patton and Jon Sands: Covid-19′s threat to prisons argues for releasing at-risk offenders The Post’s View: No one should profit off of prisoners trying to stay in touch with their families Jonathan Capehart: Trump and governors can slow the spread of covid-19 in prisons and jails Sean Kennedy: Maryland should not release prisoners. It’s safer for everyone.


The pandemic is too important to be left to the scientists

little definitive research. In an excellent piece about the pandemic, posted last week, Bill Gates has a section on “a number of key things we still don’t understand.” These are central to fashioning the right response. One example: Why do young people tend to do so much better with the disease? The answer would help us decide how soon and under what conditions to reopen schools. Other questions: Which activities make infections more likely? Does weather affect the virus’s spread? Keep in mind that we do not even have accurate numbers for the virus’s rates of infection, spread or lethality. As we go through the process of locking down and opening up, scientists around the world are gathering data at a furious pace. We should welcome this and use it to refine or even reverse our views about the pandemic. And we should welcome those who have heterodox approaches. T.J. Rodgers, the founding chief executive of Cypress Semiconductors, ran an analysis of the available data that led him to conclude that the speed with which cities locked down had little appreciable effect on lowering the death rate from covid-19. It’s a fairly crude model but is still worth examining. It suggests, for instance, that high population density is eight times more likely to correlate with a high death rate than a late lockdown is. This might explain why densely populated cities such as New York — with crowded public transportation networks — have been hit so hard, and why a state such as Florida, despite waiting longer to lock down, has had relatively few deaths. And while it always makes sense to be cautious and plan for the worst, there are real costs to the “precautionary principle.” By canceling non-emergency medical procedures in anticipation of covid-19 patients, hospitals denied care to many sick people who got worse as a result, even though it turned out most facilities had the capacity to care for both. Balancing such costs and benefits is ultimately not only about health. If we lowered the speed limit everywhere to 35 miles an hour, we would surely save lives, yet we try to strike a balance between costs and benefits. Trump’s willful ignorance makes us want to hand the country over to Fauci. But that’s the wrong response. We need leaders who take responsibility and make choices, informed deeply by science but also by economics, politics, ethics


Local Digest: Two men, teenager charged in Northeast D.C. killing

an apartment building and another on the street. — Peter Hermann D.C. police on Wednesday arrested a suspect in a fatal shooting that occurred in August in the Fairlawn neighborhood of Southeast Washington. Melvin Simmons, 26, of Oxon Hill, was charged with first-degree murder while armed. Police said he was arrested on a warrant. Simmons is charged with shooting William Roland, 28, of Southeast Washington shortly after 3 a.m. in the 1500 block of 18th Street SE. Roland was pronounced dead at a hospital. Police said officers responding to calls about gunshots found the victim lying in the street. A police report said that Roland was struck in the chest and neck and that 11 shell casings were recovered from the scene. — Peter Hermann MARYLAND A 15-year-old accused of fatally punching a man at a Maryland fair pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter Wednesday. A Frederick County Circuit Court judge kept the teen’s case in the juvenile court system, and prosecutors indicated during the hearing that they would agree to his release upon completion of a Department of Juvenile Services assessment program, the Frederick News-Post reported. The teenager was accused of attacking John Weed, 59, at the Great Frederick Fair in September. Prosecutors have said the defendant and his 16-year-old brother asked the man for a dollar and then threw multiple punches at Weed when he refused. Prosecutors alleged the 15-year-old ran at the victim and delivered the fatal blow, news outlets reported. Charges of first-degree and second-degree assault were dropped against the 15-year-old under a plea agreement, the News-Post said. The defendant’s brother was charged with assault. The status of his case was unclear. — Associated Press VIRGINIA The Arlington County Board on Thursday unanimously passed a $1.3 billion budget for fiscal 2021 that officials say includes no tax increase and accounts for an anticipated $56 million loss of revenue amid the coronavirus pandemic. The board also approved a $10.2 million contingent fund that contains $2.7 million in housing grants and emergency food assistance funds in addition to $7.5 million for small businesses, nonprofit organizations and the service delivery industry, officials said in a statement. The county projected revenue losses, including from sales taxes, permitting, parking and parks fees. That resulted in less money for government expenditures and public schools than in the budget first proposed in February. “In just three short months, our budget priorities have been upended,”


Va. judge rules governor has power to shut down gyms; more than 118,000 sought jobless benefits last week in region

The number of known coronavirus cases in the District, Maryland and Virginia was 41,956 on Thursday, with 21,758 cases in Maryland, 15,871 in Virginia and 4,327 in the District. The number of virus-related deaths reached 1,147 in Maryland, 557 in Virginia and 225 in the District, for a total of 1,929 fatalities. Here are some of the most significant recent developments as the region responds to the pandemic of the novel coronavirus, which causes the disease covid-19: • A Circuit Court judge has refused to let a gym reopen in Culpeper, Va., ruling that Gov. Ralph Northam (D) did not exceed his authority in ordering a shutdown to combat the coronavirus pandemic. Elsewhere, Reopen Maryland is planning a 150-mile trek Saturday to demand an end to restrictions imposed by Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R). • More than 118,000 people filed for unemployment benefits in the District, Maryland and Virginia during the week ending April 25, according to figures released Thursday from the Labor Department. That pushes the jobless ranks to more than 647,000 people in the three jurisdictions in the six weeks since social distancing measures shut down all but essential businesses. • The District reported 19 deaths and 217 new infections Thursday — with the number of deaths being a daily record for the city. Fourteen of the covid-19 victims were black, three were white and two were Latino. Nearly 80 percent of the District’s covid-related victims are black. When might local restrictions ease?


China has turned to bullying to avoid accountability. It may be working on Europe.

are not met. Disturbingly, this tactic appears to be working with the European Union. Last week, a unit inside the European External Action Service dedicated to tracking disinformation completed a report about covid-19 that described Chinese and Russian propaganda. Among other things, it said, accurately, that “China has continued to run a global disinformation campaign to deflect blame for the outbreak of the pandemic and improve its international image.” [Full coverage of the coronavirus pandemic] When a leak about the report appeared in Politico’s European edition, China’s enforcers got busy. According to the Financial Times, two foreign ministry officials called the E.U. Embassy in Beijing, while a third contacted the E.U. diplomatic headquarters in Brussels. They objected to the conclusion that the Chinese government was spreading disinformation; the Financial Times reported that a senior official told the E.U.’s ambassador in Beijing that “if the E.U. were to follow the U.S. in publicly attacking China, it would be pushed back as the U.S. had been.” Brussels’s reaction was extraordinary. According to the New York Times, an aide to the E.U.’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, told the disinformation unit to revise its report so that it focused less on Russia and China. Sure enough, when it was finally posted Friday, the account dropped the reference to China’s “global disinformation campaign” as well as a reference to an attempt by the Chinese ambassador in Paris to discredit France’s response to the pandemic. A spokesman for the External Action Service claimed Monday that there had been a “misperception” of its actions, and that there had been two reports, with the tougher one intended all along for “internal consumption.” That was hard to credit, given an internal email obtained by the Times in which one E.U. analyst accused her superiors of “self-censoring to appease the Chinese Communist Party.” And why prepare two versions, if not to avoid Beijing’s wrath? The Xi regime’s campaign to suppress Western reporting and commentary about its coronavirus record is escalating. It recently expelled journalists from The Post, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Its diplomats demanded a public statement by the German government praising its coronavirus management. Its ambassador in Australia threatened the country with an economic boycott if the government did not stop asking for an investigation of the origin and handling of covid-19 in China. The response to such belligerence cannot be appeasement and censorship.


Deadliest coronavirus day in D.C., as pressure mounts on Hogan to open Maryland

The greater Washington region reported nearly 2,000 new coronavirus cases Thursday, with the District recording its worst day for fatalities, as Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) came under increasing pressure from fellow Republicans to reopen his state’s economy. With the virus having killed 1,929 residents of the District, Maryland and Virginia, area leaders said it’s unlikely they would soon lift shutdown orders that have stunted the local economy — even as nearly 119,000 more local residents lost their jobs last week. D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) said the District’s 19 new reported covid-19 fatalities and 217 new known infections “highlights for everybody that we are not done with this virus in this city.” The District’s previous high for covid-19 fatalities in a day was 15, which officials reported on several other days in April, according to The Washington Post’s tracker of known cases in the region. District officials said Thursday that more than 85 percent of the city’s 225 fatalities so far were residents with underlying health conditions. Seventy percent had hypertension, while half had diabetes. The majority of those residents — 70 percent — had more than one preexisting health problem. Bowser said residents “have to continue to heed the guidelines by staying at home, wearing a mask when going out, especially to do our essential work, and listening to symptoms that your body is telling you to get tested.” The region’s overall tally of known coronavirus infections climbed to nearly 42,000 as of Thursday evening, the result of increased testing in the area and the virus’s continuing spread. In Virginia, officials reported 885 additional infections and 30 more deaths. Maryland recorded 893 more infections and 62 additional covid-19 fatalities, most of which were in the Washington suburbs. With more than 647,000 area residents losing their jobs during the past six weeks, Hogan is facing calls from Republican lawmakers and others to lift his state’s shutdown orders. The governor released a plan last week that outlines how to reopen the state in three stages. Both Bowser and Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) have released similar plans, with all three leaders planning to coordinate a gradual, regional relaunch. Hogan has estimated that the first phase could happen in early May, saying he is primarily focused on a downward trend in hospitalizations and intensive care unit bed use, neither of which has happened. A group called Reopen Maryland said it


Chinese lab conducted extensive research on deadly bat viruses, but there is no evidence of accidental release

including strains closely related to the pathogen behind the coronavirus pandemic. While the scientists wore gloves and masks and took other protective measures, U.S. experts who reviewed the experiments say the precautions would not necessarily protect the researchers from harmful exposures, in caves or in the lab. The risks were not limited to interactions with animals. Dozens of routine studies required extracting viruses from bat feces and growing them in batches for use in a wide array of experiments. For some projects the researchers spliced genetic material from different coronaviruses to create chimeras that could more easily infect human cells for laboratory experiments. The research filled in critical gaps in scientists’ knowledge about deadly viruses and prompted Chinese scientists to issue repeated warnings about the possibility of a new SARS-like disease making the leap from bats to humans. But with each experiment came opportunities for an accidental exposure to dangerous pathogens, experts say. Indeed, such accidents occur dozens of times each year in high-security laboratories around the world, including in the United States. The National Institutes of Health, the Defense Department and other U.S. government agencies have spent millions of dollars in recent years to fund research by American scientists into coronaviruses in bats, federal records show. Some of those scientists have worked with colleagues at the lab in Wuhan. “Even if a lab is mechanically safe, you can’t rule out human error,” said Lynn Klotz, a senior science fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, a Washington nonprofit group, and author of a comprehensive study of lab mishaps. “Accidents happen, and more than 70 percent of the time it’s due to the humans involved.” Records of accidents in U.S. labs reveal multiple inadvertent infections and exposures to lethal microbes, including the pathogens linked to anthrax, Ebola and the plague. While no comparable records are available for Chinese labs, a Chinese scientific paper last year described widespread systemic deficiencies with training and monitoring of high-security laboratories where disease-causing pathogens are studied. “Maintenance cost is generally neglected; several high-level BSLs [biological safety level labs] have insufficient operating funds for routine, yet vital processes,” said the paper by Yuan Zhiming, a chief scientist at Wuhan, published in the Journal of Biosafety and Biosecurity. Most laboratories “lack specialized biosafety managers and engineers,” he wrote. While the source of the outbreak ultimately may be unknowable, the claim that the laboratory could not


D.C. officials warn restrictions may extend into summer; number of cases in D.C., Maryland and Virginia passes 39,000

The number of known coronavirus cases in the District, Maryland and Virginia was 39,961 on Wednesday, with 20,865 cases in Maryland, 14,986 in Virginia and 4,110 in the District. The number of virus-related deaths reached 1,085 in Maryland, 527 in Virginia and 206 in the District, for a total of 1,818 fatalities. Here are some of the most significant recent developments as the region responds to the pandemic of the novel coronavirus, which causes the disease covid-19: • D.C. officials said Wednesday that the city found an additional $8 million in relief funds for local businesses and should be able to give money to every eligible applicant. The city plans to notify applicants between Wednesday and May 8. • The District, Virginia and Maryland on Wednesday reported 106 new deaths and 1,471 new infections, bringing the total number of coronavirus cases in the three jurisdictions past 39,000 and total deaths to 1,818. • Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) on Wednesday urged Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to take necessary safeguards when the chamber resumes its work in Washington next week, or risk furthering the spread of coronavirus in the Washington region. His letter comes the day after the House abruptly delayed its session, after discussions with the Office of the Attending Physician. • Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) announced that he will let a ban on elective surgeries expire Friday, a move that represents the first major easing of restrictions since the coronavirus arrived in the state. Northam had imposed the ban amid a shortage of personal protective equipment and fears that a surge of covid-19 patients might overwhelm the state’s hospitals. When might local restrictions ease?


‘Second-week crash’ is time of peril for some covid-19 patients

During the first week she had covid-19, Morgan Blue felt weak, with a severe backache and a fever. The symptoms did not alarm doctors at her local emergency room, however. They sent her home after she showed up at the hospital. But on Day 8, she abruptly felt like she was choking. “That day, I suddenly couldn’t breathe,” said the 26-year-old customer service representative from Flint, Mich. An ambulance took her to the hospital, where she spent eight days, four of them in intensive care, before she recovered and was able to go home. For people who suffer the most severe reactions to the novel coronavirus — and their caregivers — the second week can become a time of sudden peril and heightened concern, when some of those who seem stable or on the mend can suddenly become critically ill. There is little consensus among doctors and experts about why the fifth through 10th days, or thereabouts, seem to be so dangerous for some people with covid-19, the disease caused by the virus. But critical care specialists and EMTs alike are aware of this frightening aspect of the disease. “This second-week crash has certainly been well described, but 2½ months in, why it happens we’re still not entirely sure,” said Ebbing Lautenbach, chief of the division of infectious diseases at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine. Learning on the fly as they confront the virus, There is little, if any, current research to guide them. “I’ve been thinking about this a lot,” said Naftali Kaminski, chief of pulmonary critical care and sleep medicine at the Yale School of Medicine, who studies the genomics of lung disease. “There’s an early stage of infection and the virus sits somewhere. You can almost look at the virus as a fifth column coming in, securing its stronghold and then slowly inducing more cells to let it in. “Because of this lurking nature, your genetic makeup and preexisting conditions will affect presentation of the disease,” he said. Doctors say the overwhelming majority of covid-19 cases do not require hospitalization. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. covid-19 patients are currently hospitalized at a rate of 29.2 per 100,000 people. That represents about 10 percent of the 1 million known cases so far. Of those, only a small percentage require intensive care or ventilators, and only some will experience a rapid


deterioration of their health. But people with the coronavirus can crash before or after they are hospitalized. Doctors report seeing patients who wait too long to seek care, including those who do not feel the symptoms of plummeting oxygen levels, such as shortness of breath, until they are in crisis. No one is sure why. Many people’s lungs remain flexible for a while, allowing carbon dioxide out and forestalling the sensation that they aren’t getting enough oxygen. “The people who actually crash, they’ve actually been sick a while,” said Merceditas Villanueva, an associate professor of medicine at the Yale School of Medicine. “They’ve underestimated how sick they are, or they’ve just waited.” The virus may be killing the cells that line the air sacs of the lungs, which keep them open and allow for the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide, said Russell G. Buhr, a pulmonary and critical care physician at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles. At some point, the body simply can’t regenerate those cells as quickly as they die, he said, and a stable situation turns life-threatening. That may also help explain why covid-19 patients can linger on ventilators for up to four weeks, much longer than with other respiratory diseases, he said. “Some of that may be direct lung toxicity effect,” Buhr said. “You need more time to regenerate those cells.” Another line of thought focuses on the virus’s possible effect on the cardiovascular system. Researchers have suggested that some crashes are caused by events such as heart attacks, strokes and clots related to blood complications. Eytan Raz, a neurointerventional radiologist at NYU Langone Health, said one theory is that some of the clotting complications may be caused by an overreactive immune response that comes after the virus has settled in, multiplied and triggered a defensive army of antibodies. An April 17 paper in the medical journal Lancet said that covid-19 appears to have the ability to attack the lining of blood vessels anywhere in the body. Frank Ruschitzka, a researcher from University Hospital Zurich, and his co-authors wrote that this may be why so many organs, including the lungs, kidneys and intestines, are affected in patients with severe illness. It also could explain why people with cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity, as well as smokers, are more likely to have severe illness. Michael Bell, chief of critical care medicine at Children’s National


Anti-vaxxers will fight the eventual coronavirus vaccine. Here’s how to stop them.

risk. Social distancing for polio in years past resembles our response to covid-19. Uncertainty and fear were equally common, and there was also a race for a vaccine. Yet as groups like the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis — later the March of Dimes and an early example of crowdsourced science — raised funds for a vaccine, they communicated clearly and effectively to the public. So clearly and effectively, in fact, that a 1954 Gallup poll shows that more people knew about the polio vaccine field trials than knew the name of the president. Today, trust in the medical establishment is notably lower than it was decades ago. Public perception of pharmaceutical companies has been clouded, understandably, by exposes of widespread corruption, profiteering and manipulation of the kind that led to the opioid crisis. That makes it imperative for SARS-CoV-2 vaccine researchers in the United States and abroad, as well as government agencies and health care providers, to emphasize transparency, clarity and reassurance about vaccine science — including the way vaccines work in the body and what steps were abbreviated in what will surely be an expedited review process. Long lists of side effects in fine print and newspaper articles laden with technical jargon are not enough. An essential part of transparency is ensuring that explanations are easily accessible and widely distributed through active outreach. Supply chains and manufacturing standards, often opaque, must also be made painstakingly clear. This is especially important given the global nature of vaccine development and production, which includes countries with different standards of transparency and regulation. Overcoming the natural/unnatural binary is a good place to start. Pediatricians are already increasingly working to describe vaccines as a technology that allows the “body’s natural immune response to create protections” and stimulate a “natural reaction.” “Immunize for Good,” a Colorado vaccine advocacy campaign, has adopted similar rhetoric to reassure the public, explaining that “Vaccines cause a natural immune response in the body without causing illness. … Our bodies recognize these weakened invaders and create antibodies to protect us against future infection. In this way, we trick our bodies into thinking we’ve already had the disease.” In other words, they emphasize how the end result is not only safe, but also natural. Those who frame the vaccine in this way do so because they have listened to people’s concerns, and that’s what we should be doing right now. Vaccine


Local leaders urge Trump administration to continue federal telework; 139,654 sought jobless benefits last week in region

The number of known coronavirus cases in the District, Maryland and Virginia was 30,138 on Thursday, with 15,750 cases in Maryland, 11,023 in Virginia and 3,365 in the District. The number of virus-related deaths was 756 in Maryland, 377 in Virginia and 139 in the District, for a total of 1,272 fatalities. Here are some of the most significant recent developments as the region responds to the pandemic of the novel coronavirus, which causes the covid-19 disease: • In a letter to the acting director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, the governors of Maryland and Virginia and the D.C. mayor asked the federal government to maintain its covid-19 telework policies. • Labor Department numbers show 139,654 people filed for unemployment assistance in Virginia, Maryland and the District last week, pushing the jobless ranks to more than 529,000 in the five weeks since social distancing measures shut down all but essential businesses. • D.C., Virginia and Maryland reported some of their biggest jumps in new coronavirus cases Thursday, bringing the region’s total to 30,138. The region’s health departments also reported 87 new virus-related fatalities. • Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) aggressively criticized Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Thursday over McConnell’s reticence to offer a big federal aid package to states, which are facing billions in revenue shortfalls because of the coronavirus pandemic. When might local restrictions ease?


After covid-19, aging in America may never be the same

detect falls, provide companionship through robotics, monitor the frequency of sleeping and toilet visits, or even check how often the fridge door is opened. The pandemic should prompt us to explore these alternatives, or options for generational living where grandparents reside with younger generations, contributing to the mortgage and pitching in with child care. But not everyone can afford or manage such arrangements. The pandemic should prompt us to reexamine the model of for-profit long-term care facilities that account for 70 percent of nursing homes and tend to have lower ratings and higher tallies of infraction. Nursing homes deserve our prayers more than our condemnation. An industry group says that only one-third of the 15,000 nursing homes in the United States have easy access to covid-19 tests. As with health-care workers at hospitals, the assistants, orderlies, food service workers and medical staff in nursing homes deserve our deepest thanks. They show up for work every day knowing that they are walking straight toward danger. But examination and real reform are necessary for the people who live there, and the millions heading in that direction, to receive the care they deserve. There will most certainly be a national commission to examine the U.S. response to this pandemic. It should include a robust investigation of nursing home deaths — and the underlying structure that left so many vulnerable. As I write this, I can’t help but think of all of the senior citizens living in the petri dishes of potential infection that are nursing homes right now, waving to family members through windows and learning that friends down the hall are gone. They are trapped in the epicenter of the pandemic, weathering a fate that no one deserves. We owe it to them to ensure this is never repeated. The Opinions section is looking for stories of how the coronavirus has affected people of all walks of life. Write to us. Read more: Read a letter in response to this piece Michael L. Barnett and David C. Grabowski: Covid-19 is ravaging nursing homes. We’re getting what we paid for. The Post’s View: Nursing homes are in the pandemic’s crosshairs. They can’t be neglected. Robert Gebelhoff: The hidden victims of Trump’s deregulatory agenda: Nursing home residents The Post’s View: Why ‘choosing’ between the elderly and the economy is a phony, barbaric choice Kathleen Parker: Beware insidious messaging about who lives and who dies


12 historic sites you can virtually tour from the couch during the coronavirus outbreak

who normally come from all over the world to see the 2,000-year-old marvel. The Smithsonian is offering virtual tours that let visitors take a self-guided, room-by-room trip through the museum’s slate of exhibits. The current exhibits include the Butterfly Pavilion and the David H. Koch Hall of Fossils, and visitors can even journey through past exhibits, on topics including the last American dinosaurs, the universe, and DNA and genomics. National parks are known for their dazzling views and historical landmarks, and Yellowstone holds some of the nation’s most iconic ones. The virtual tour takes visitors through the first national park, showing Wyoming’s most treasured sites including its canyons, hot springs and geysers, the most famous being Old Faithful. The MoMa is one of over 500 museums and galleries Google Arts & Culture has partnered with to offer an interactive experience of the gallery space. The nearly 100-year-old museum is home to some of the contemporary art world’s most famous pieces, including Claude Monet’s “Water Lilies,” Vincent van Gogh’s “The Starry Night” and Pablo Picasso’s “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.” The most visited zoo in the country is known for its open-air, cageless natural habitats and is famous for being one of the few zoos in the country that spearheaded conservation efforts of giant pandas. Even though pandas are no longer in the United States, the San Diego Zoo has set up live streams of its habitats for anyone to view the koalas, baboons and penguins that call the zoo home. The world’s oldest national public museum is another space that has partnered with Google Arts & Culture to showcase a virtual, interactive gallery. Visitors can roam the halls of the museum, peruse the exhibits and see famous objects like the Rosetta Stone, the Parthenon sculptures and Egyptian mummies. Just don’t expect to see any Banksys lying around anytime soon. The Met in New York will host nightly encore performances of some of its most iconic shows throughout its season. The free streams will go live at 7:30 p.m. each day and be available for 20 hours after the performance. The slate includes the likes of Puccini’s “La Bohème” and Verdi’s “Il Trovatore” for viewers on-demand. “We’d like to provide some grand opera solace to opera lovers in these extraordinarily difficult times,” Met General Manager Peter Gelb said in a statement. Read more: How to find a real animal sanctuary How to use


Stranded in the United States, with no way home or health insurance: ‘We’re just trapped’

She was supposed to stay in New York for a month, exploring the city and swapping business cards. Then the pandemic struck, and her country shuttered its airports. Now, Nuong Faalong, a broadcast journalist from Ghana, is trapped in the city, sleeping on a friend’s pullout couch. “This is a terrible nightmare,” said Faalong, 33, who doesn’t have American health insurance — or any idea when she can leave. Thousands of Africans are thought to be stranded in the United States after borders tightened around the world, thrusting them into coronavirus limbo in the nation with the world’s highest death toll. There is no database of marooned travelers, but more than 62,000 visitors from the continent entered the United States in March — just as cases began to skyrocket in a country where a stay in intensive care can cost tens of thousands of dollars. The coronavirus has grounded people across the globe, including thousands of Americans, who have posted pleas for help from Peru, Morocco, Nepal and elsewhere. (The State Department has organized dozens of repatriation flights.) Getting back to an African country is particularly hard when 34 of the continent’s 57 international airports have closed or dramatically cut flights. Panicked people are calling embassies, diplomats say, but national budgets are strained from fighting outbreaks — and repatriation flights are astronomically costly. The South African Embassy has fielded more than 1,000 requests for assistance, Ambassador Nomaindiya Mfeketo said in a late-April video message. “A sizable number of people find themselves stranded in the United States,” she told viewers. “We have been working tirelessly to find ways of getting you home.” The nation of roughly 58 million — Africa’s second-largest economy — was unable for weeks to charter repatriation flights from the United States, Mfeketo said. The first are tentatively scheduled for early May. (Otherwise, only a Florida company has organized a trip home for its South African employees.) Consulates across the United States have been making lists of the stranded and setting up WhatsApp support groups. Senegal started handing out $500 checks last week to help people cover lodging and medical expenses. Guinea and Mali have raised money for burial costs after several in their stateside community died of covid-19. “We are very concerned about the situation,” said Malian Ambassador to the United States Mahamadou Nimaga. Neo Lehoko, an architecture student from South Africa, had to suspend her studies


Two fewer minutes of thrills and a missing week of dreams

in 2002 and 2003 wound up going like this: Prince Ahmed Bin Salman of Saudi Arabia (War Emblem, 2002), followed by the so-called “Sackets Six” from tiny Sackets Harbor, N.Y., near Canada on Lake Ontario (Funny Cide). The Sackets Six, having departed the ephemeral neighborhood and then watched their horse win the Preakness, made for an all-time rollicking interview near the end of that May. They were men you thought you knew all your life, men without oil fields. One, J.P. Constance, would go out on the porch afternoons at 4:30 and blow a “cocktail bugle” for all to come around. Another was late for the interview because he had to umpire a prep baseball game. (He called bases.) Another, Mark Phillips, taught Math 129 at a community college. They came from mid-1960s classes at Sackets Harbor High, where they won elections such as Most Comical, Most Likely to Succeed, Most Athletic, class president (in the case of Jack Knowlton). They had gotten into the sport for $5,000 each at a backyard party even as one, Harold Cring, said he had begun by saying he would sooner bury the $5,000 in a coffee can in a yard. Where horse intellectuals often comment on the varying looks of the various competitors, one Funny Cide owner, Larry Reinhardt, said, “He looks like the rest of them.” Another, Constance, said he had learned that “geldings are tough to breed.” Gales of laughter tore through the room, including when Cring said they had convinced him partly by prodding him to try to beef up his eventual obituary. Then, as a fresh Kentucky Derby (and Preakness) winner, he said, “I can’t wait to die!” Derby wins never do die, so even if you missed Mine That Bird’s smelling-salts upset in 2009, you might venture to visit him 10 years later in his home in Roswell, N.M., because, yes: The rich tapestry of the neighborhood had found a place for a horse from New Mexico — fourth in the Sunland Derby! — who would go home later to live happily down the road from the International UFO Museum and Research Center. He’s a Derby winner with a pretty but non-regal address because the tapestry of Earth does need those. Four years before Mine That Bird arrived charmingly on a 21-hour ride in a pickup with trainer Chip Woolley, and two years after the Sackets Six had


D.C., Maryland and Virginia pass 2,000 covid-19 deaths; disclose most infections in one day

Perdue Farms, one of Maryland’s most concerning hot spots. As of Friday, the county had the fourth-highest per capita caseload in the state, up from the fifth-highest the day before. Wicomico’s coronavirus caseload doubled from roughly 220 cases April 24 to 425 a week later. “This remains a rapidly evolving situation,” Hogan said He announced a second public testing site will open in Caroline County, home to poultry workers who commute to two affected plants in Delaware. It joins a test site that just opened at Perdue Stadium in Salisbury. Salisbury is also the terminus of a statewide “Reopen Maryland” protest planned for Saturday, when people frustrated by prolonged social distancing measures plan to drive from Frederick to the Eastern Shore to increase pressure on Hogan to lift the restrictions. The group wants to reverse the economic standstill created to slow the spread of the virus, as well as reopen schools and churches. Organizers say the measures are overly broad and socially destructive. Public polling across the nation shows broad support for stay-at-home measures despite the protests. In Virginia, the governor’s nonessential business closure is set to expire May 8. Northam said his administration would announce Monday whether some businesses can reopen with restrictions. He said he anticipates schools reopening next academic year. In the District, officials announced a new testing site designed to respond to the disproportionate impact of the coronavirus among African Americans and residents of the poorest parts of the city. Howard University Hospital on Tuesday plans to open a testing site intended to serve residents of Wards 7 and 8, even if they have no risk factors or symptoms, said Hugh Mighty, dean of the Howard University College of Medicine and vice president of clinical affairs. Wards 7 and 8 are home to 30 percent of D.C. residents with the virus and 35 percent of those who succumbed to covid-19. “We need to screen everybody,” Mighty said. “You want to know the negative as well as you want to know the positive. Unless we blanket the whole region with screening, we’re not going to know what we’re dealing with in terms of who is positive.” Howard wants to test 100 in its first week at a Benning Road clinic and eventually double that capacity. D.C. officials also said Friday that hundreds applied for new contact tracing jobs in the first day they were posted, part of


This World Press Freedom Day, remember the journalists jailed or killed for doing their jobs

“WHAT BREAKS my heart is to see how much he aged since being imprisoned. He used to be a man full of energy and vigor. Now, he is old, sickly, skinny, and there’s no way out of this situation for him.” So reported Khadicha Askarova, the wife of Kyrgyzstan journalist Azimjon Askarov, last year after visiting her 68-year-old husband in a jail where, we are sad to say, he still remains. It has been well established that Mr. Askarov is innocent of any crime. But he has spent nine years in prison after receiving a life sentence on trumped-up charges because of his truth-telling reporting on human rights violations. Mr. Askarov’s case has been ranked as the most urgent by the One Free Press Coalition in advance of World Press Freedom Day on Sunday. But what is most striking and shameful is that Mr. Askarov is far from alone in a world where journalists’ freedoms have come under increasing assault. In 2019, at least 250 journalists were imprisoned, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, and so far this year, six journalists have been killed and 64 are missing globally. The worst offenders are the authoritarian regimes in Turkey, Egypt and China. Solafa Magdy, a freelance multimedia journalist in Egypt, has been jailed (along with her husband) on charges that include “spreading false news.” Four Yemeni journalists — Abdulkhaleq Amran, Akram al-Waleedi, Hareth Hameed and Tawfiq al-Mansouri — have been sentenced to death on charges of spreading false news. Truong Duy Nhat, a blogger in Vietnam, has been sentenced to 10 years after a half-day trial on charges of “abusing his position and power while on duty.” Some journalists — Elena Milashina in Russia; Mir Shakil-ur-Rehman in Pakistan; Yayesew Shimelis in Ethiopia — have been targeted for their reporting on covid-19. The pandemic not only underscores the vital role that journalists play in providing critical information to the public, but it gives real urgency to the need to free journalists who have been jailed for simply doing their jobs. Prisons and detention facilities have become hot spots for the deadly virus, and journalists such as Mr. Askarov, who was tortured and is in declining health, are at high risk. “Freedom,” said Ms. Askarov, “is his main wish and goal. He lives for it.”


Federal judge orders inspection of Pr. George’s jail after inmates worried about coronavirus sue

A federal judge ordered the inspection of a Maryland jail as part of fast-moving litigation that alleges inmates in Prince George’s County have been woefully unprotected from the novel coronavirus. The action, announced Friday afternoon during a conference call by U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, is designed to sort through decidedly different versions of how the jail is dealing with an outbreak of the virus. Carlos Franco-Paredes, an infectious-disease expert at the University of Colorado School of Medicine who was on the call, told Xinis he was ready to review more than 1,000 pages of documents over the weekend and arrive at the jail as soon as Tuesday. “The doctor will be showing up in short order at the facility,” Xinis responded. Franco-Paredes will be given wide authority to examine and photograph the jail and speak to inmates and staff members, according to Friday’s hearing. He has been sounding the alarm in recent weeks about the virus’s danger inside the nation’s jails. “This epidemic has the potential to become the Coming Prison Plague,” Franco-Paredes wrote last month in a letter warning officials of the risks to inmates. “Detention and incarceration of any kind requires large groups of people to be held together in a confined space and creates the worst type of setting for curbing the spread of a highly contagious infection such as covid-19.” Xinis indicated that based on legal filings so far, she is concerned enough to move swiftly on an inspection to see whether emergency measures are needed. “I saw areas of great concern to me,” she said. On April 21, attorneys representing a group of inmates sued Prince George’s County Corrections Department Director Mary Lou McDonough, accusing her jail officials of ignoring recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to stop the spread of the deadly virus. The attorneys requested expedited, court-ordered steps, including the immediate release of medically vulnerable inmates. The litigation also seeks immediate action inside the jail, including more social distancing, more protective equipment for jail staff and enhanced cleaning. As recently as Wednesday, the attorneys have filed more court papers alleging that the walls of some isolation cells are contaminated with “mucus, feces, blood, old food, urine, spit, everything you can name.” The attorneys assert the jail didn’t administer its first coronavirus test until March 27. By April 24, it had given 20 tests, and 18 of them came back


The coronavirus has brought back border barriers in Europe, dividing couples, families and communities

BERLIN — When Thomas Schütz, of Saarbrücken, Germany, wanted to visit France, all he had to do was step outside his house. In March, that changed. As the coronavirus pandemic swept across Europe, borders that had been open for decades reverted to their role as barriers overnight. With France under a temporary coronavirus lockdown and officers patrolling the border, Schütz, 57, would now risk a hefty fine for crossing from his German hometown of Saarbrücken to the French commune of Schœneck. His neighbor’s house, on the opposite side of a narrow road, became legally impossible for him to reach. “The border officers told me to essentially imagine a wall that cannot be crossed,” Schütz said. The nearby restaurant he owns, which depends on French guests for half of its revenue, faces an existential threat. Travel restrictions have increased around the world amid the coronavirus pandemic. In Europe, the return to border controls carries harsh economic implications — and symbolic weight. “It really hurts, not just economically but also because it touches upon the identity of us as Europeans,” said Tanja A. Börzel, director of the Center for European Integration at the Free University of Berlin. More than 30 years after the Berlin Wall came down and 25 years after internal border controls began to be abolished across what is now known as the Schengen area, a generation has grown up moving between nations with the ease of crossing a street. But barriers have begun to creep back. Some European countries reinstated border measures in 2015 to keep migrants out. Now, with little warning, the coronavirus crisis has prompted governments across the continent to close borders that hardly still existed in the minds of those living near them. After decades of free movement, Schütz said, a return to the divided Europe of his childhood “would be so deeply sad.” The restrictions have temporarily separated families, friends and romantic partners. In the southern German border town of Konstanz, Swiss-German couples hugged and kissed across a border barrier they could no longer cross after it was closed in mid-March. “It’s absurd,” a German resident told a local paper at the time. She had not been able to see her partner living in Switzerland for 12 days. To prevent physical contact across the border, officials in Konstanz have since erected two parallel fences. Married couples and international commuters are still allowed to pass. Officials


The good news in New York City is how the virus is fading. The bad news is where it isn’t.

Day after day for a few weeks now, officials in New York City and the state have offered cautiously tempered good news. The rate of hospitalizations for covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, has declined. The number of daily deaths in the city, the epicenter of the outbreak in the United States, has fallen. The efforts to contain the virus have worked. Yet in New York and elsewhere, the number of cases nonetheless increased, even after stay-at-home orders went into effect. There are myriad reasons that happened, including that not everyone adhered to the orders. But one key reason is probably that not everyone could adhere to them — and that’s probably reflected in the city’s coronavirus numbers. The peak number of deaths per day in the city came on April 7, according to data from the New York City health department. Since, the daily death toll has declined fairly steadily. The complete drop-off is misleading, we’ll note, since recent data is incomplete. Over the course of April, the city released information breaking down the race and ethnicity of those infected with the virus, where such information could be determined. It quickly revealed disparities in how the virus was affecting New Yorkers, with an about-equal number of black, Hispanic and white deaths from covid-19 in a city where there are three white residents for every two black residents. (For the graphs below, we took the most recent data on the past four Fridays and compared them. Those dates — April 6, 16, 22 and 30 — are marked on the graph above. The data from April 6 included only deaths. Racial groups besides Hispanic exclude Hispanic residents.) If we look at the density of each racial group over the month compared with the density of that group in the population at issue (that is, as a percentage of only those New Yorkers who are white, black, Asian or Hispanic), the overrepresentation of black and Hispanic New Yorkers becomes obvious. But remember, the city’s stay-at-home order went into effect on March 20. The virus has an incubation of up to two weeks, meaning that until April 3 or so the city would be seeing new cases from people who were infected before the stay-at-home order went into effect. In other words, new cases after that point would be expected to be people who didn’t or couldn’t abide by the


The last time the government sought a ‘warp speed’ vaccine, it was a fiasco

The federal government has launched “Operation Warp Speed” to deliver a covid-19 vaccine by January, months ahead of standard vaccine timelines. The last time the government tried that, it was a total fiasco. Gerald Ford was president. It was 1976. Early that year, a mysterious new strain of swine flu turned up at Fort Dix in New Jersey. One Army private died. Many others became severely ill. The nation’s top infectious disease doctors were shaken. “They were well aware of the ravages of the 1918 flu, and this virus appeared to be closely related,” political scientist Max J. Skidmore wrote in his book “Presidents, Pandemics, and Politics.” “The officials were concerned about a repetition of the tragedy, or the threat of perhaps an even more virulent pandemic.” Ford raced to come up with a response, consulting with Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin, the scientists behind the polio vaccine, and in late March he announced an audacious plan for the federal government to produce the vaccine and organize its distribution. “No one knows exactly how serious this threat could be,” Ford said, with Salk and Sabin by his side, a shocking sight given the two scientists had become enemies over who should get credit for the polio vaccine. “Nevertheless we cannot afford to take a chance with the health of our nation.” Every American, Ford said, would be vaccinated. The government had never attempted such an endeavor — both in its breadth and speed. Almost immediately, there was chaos. According to Skidmore, a professor at the University of Missouri at Kansas City, insurers were concerned about liability and balked at covering the costs. Manufacturers the government wanted to partner with had similar concerns, prompting Congress to pass a law waiving liability. One manufacturer produced 2 million doses with the wrong strain. As tests progressed, more scientific problems emerged — even as there were few, if any, signs that a pandemic was materializing. In June, tests showed the vaccine was not effective in children, prompting a public squabble between Salk and Sabin over who should be vaccinated. But Ford was undeterred. He directed the vaccination program to proceed, announcing plans to inoculate 1 million people per day by the fall — an unprecedented timeline the government struggled to meet. By mid-October, vaccinations were underway. Ford was injected by the White House doctor. And then more problems emerged. There were reports of sporadic