The coronavirus pandemic may mark a decline in U.S. leadership

THE COVID-19 epidemic is inflicting grievous damage on American lives and the economy. It may also mark a decline in U.S. leadership in the world. If so, the loss will be particularly regrettable, because even more than the other injuries, the diplomatic harm will have been senseless and self-inflicted. The cause is straightforward: President Trump has abdicated the role played by U.S. presidents in every previous global crisis of the past century, which is to step forward to offer remedies, support other nations and coordinate multilateral responses. Most recently, presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama led international efforts to stem the 2008 financial crisis; they also initiated robust U.S. responses to the AIDS and Ebola epidemics. Mr. Trump’s principal engagement with the world since the novel coronavirus began spreading internationally has been to shut down travel between the United States and other nations. He brags almost daily about his decision to prohibit travel from China in January; when he closed down visits from Europe a few weeks later, he did so without consulting some of the United States’ closest allies. The United States currently holds the rotating leadership of the Group of Seven nations, but it was French President Emmanuel Macron who took the initiative to organize a G-7 videoconference summit on the virus, after two phone calls to the White House failed to prompt Mr. Trump to act. A virtual summit this week of the larger Group of 20 is being organized by, of all countries, Saudi Arabia; the pariah regime of Mohammed bin Salman is taking advantage of the leadership vacuum created by Mr. Trump. Normally, the secretary of state could be expected to be traveling the world at a time like this — at least virtually — to get U.S. allies working together on ways to head off a global recession, or to ramp up the production of vital supplies. So it was striking that when Mike Pompeo, who has kept a low profile in recent weeks, issued a statement on the epidemic Monday, it was no more than another excoriation of Iran’s supreme leader. The big winner from this unprecedented U.S. retreat looks to be China. Having stemmed the initial outbreak on its own soil, the regime of Xi Jinping is now offering aid, including desperately needed medical masks and ventilators, to hard-hit Italy and Serbia as well as the European Union more generally. The


For more than a decade, butterflies have repeatedly landed on me. I think I’m blessed by the red admiral.

suggested that what attracted the butterflies had to be something chemical. But the problem with the chemical explanation is that the butterflies seem to wait for me, on my car or a bush, while I’m more than 20 feet away looking at them through a window. At that point, I’m clearly not projecting anything chemical very far. As soon as I go outside, they tend to alight on me. Naomi E. Pierce, a biology professor and butterfly expert at Harvard, wondered whether the color of my clothes might be a factor. But since they’ve landed on me whether I was wearing a white shirt or a blue shirt, we couldn’t determine a definitive answer. In early September, I spent much of a day in the library at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology searching for everything I could find on red admirals, looking for something that might describe them landing on the same person year after year. Mary A.B. Sears, head of public services at the library, guided me to numerous sources. One ancient-looking file she pulled out of a drawer included a 1922 article by a professor with the University of Minnesota Department of Animal Biology on the taste organs or “contact chemo-receptors” of red admirals he had studied. It said nothing about butterflies landing on people as a reaction to these chemo-receptors, and I found nothing that came close to relating to my own contacts with the butterflies. It’s possible that part of what’s happening here is that I’m sensitized to red admirals now. I notice them in my environs in a way that others, who haven’t had the same close encounters, do not. Yet that still doesn’t explain their repeated landings on me. Once last year while standing in my garden, for no reason I can offer, I recalled a terrible scene I’d witnessed more than 50 years ago as a reporter during the Vietnam War. I was transported to a moment when I came upon a convoy of South Vietnamese refugees that had been hit by a North Vietnamese artillery strike. There were no survivors as far as I could tell. It was one of those things you can never get out of your head. Then a butterfly appeared. Was it trying to tell me something? Who can say? In the end, I’m left with a feeling of gratitude. I think I’ve been blessed by butterflies.


Arts groups have never been very flush with cash. Now, they’re facing an even bigger battle for survival.

Entire orchestras have been laid off, museums are calculating the losses in millions, and whether you’re David Crosby or a backstage tech, the moment has become a battle for survival. This is the new arts world, where live streams and inspirational singalongs go viral but don’t pay the rent. Where those charged with balancing the budget are filled with dread. The numbers don’t lie: 431 canceled performances, 725 people laid off, 150 musicians in limbo. And that’s just at the Kennedy Center, where administrators late last week calculated the crushing equation of even a best-case scenario. “We have to figure out how to make it to May 10, and if we have to [close] longer than May 10 what does that mean?” says Deborah F. Rutter, the Kennedy Center’s president. “We have to be responsible, make sure everybody is healthy. But there’s been nothing like this. How long will it last? How long will it last?” At the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, officials are planning for a $100 million shortfall if they remain shuttered into July, a time frame looking realistic with each new government update. The Metropolitan Opera canceled its season and told its orchestra, chorus and staff that their paychecks would stop after this month. Same story, different shuttered box office across the country, as arts institutions are cutting staff and programs to mitigate financial losses that will stretch long into the future. Museums nationwide are losing $33 million a day, according to a letter to Congress from leaders of the American Alliance of Museums and its partner umbrella organizations seeking $4 billion in federal aid. Americans for the Arts, a national advocacy group, issued a survey to cultural nonprofit groups, and in less than a week, several thousand responded with real losses topping $5 billion. A quarter said they had already cut staff. The Oregon Symphony has laid off the entire orchestra and half of its administrative staff. The San Francisco Ballet has canceled more than half of its season. The Houston Grand Opera has pulled the plug on its spring season, which could lead to losses nearing $2 million. Some companies, including the Houston opera, have promised to pay half the amount of their canceled contracts, while others, such as the Actors Theatre of Louisville, which shut down the Humana Festival of New American Plays, says it will pay staff for the first


do that,” Weiss says. At the Kennedy Center, Rutter hasn’t had time to calculate the cost of an eight-week shutdown, but it could top $20 million and more if this summer’s 14-week run of “Hamilton” is affected. The arts center depends on its box office, which accounts for more than half of its $279 million annual budget. Rutter said she has taken a 50 percent pay cut (she earned $1.2 million in 2018, according to tax filings), and her senior-team salaries have been cut, too. Robert Lynch, president and chief executive of Americans for the Arts, is hopeful that Congress, which has been supportive of the arts in the Trump era, will include the arts groups in a federal bailout. His organization is collecting data to show the need. “The arts economy has always been rough, with slim margins between income and expenses,” Lynch says, adding that about one-third of nonprofit arts corporations are in a break-even or deficit position every year. “When you have something that shuts down all income, it makes for a tougher situation,” he says. “In terms of survival, it’s worse than ever.” The federally supported National Gallery of Art and Smithsonian Institution — both closed indefinitely — are suffering as much as their nonprofit colleagues. With its 19 museums shuttered at the start of its busy spring season, the Smithsonian will lose several million dollars in earned income from its shops, restaurants and Imax theaters, and other events. But staff layoffs are unlikely, at least in the short term, according to Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III and National Gallery of Art Director Kaywin Feldman. Scott Showalter, president and chief executive of the Oregon Symphony, laid off the entire orchestra and half the administrative staff earlier this week to manage an estimated $5 million shortfall, about one-quarter of his annual budget. The Houston Grand Opera has canceled 11 performances over three productions, but it has vowed to pay the hundreds of artists and staff hired for the productions 50 percent of their contracts. “There’s never been a chance that we would not have paid our artists,” says Perryn Leech, the opera’s managing director. “If we have a financial problem that we deal with in the future, then that’s a financial problem that the whole organization will have to deal with.” At the San Francisco Ballet, the staff and 78 dancers are being paid despite the


D.C. reports second death; police shut down streets to discourage cherry blossom viewing

The tally of known coronavirus cases in the District, Maryland and Virginia rose to 568 Sunday as Maryland reported an additional 54 cases, bringing the state’s total to 245. Virginia reported 22 more cases Friday and another 67 overnight Saturday for a total of 221 as of Sunday. The District reported 21 new patients over the weekend, bringing the total to 102. Here are some of the most significant and recent developments as the region responds to the pandemic of the coronavirus, which causes the disease covid-19: From Saturday: Fairfax, Montgomery counties report first covid-19 deaths • The District reported its second death due to the novel coronavirus on Sunday morning, bringing the regional total to 568. The second fatality is a 65-year-old woman, who died Saturday evening after she was admitted to a hospital with underlying conditions. • D.C. police effectively shut down cherry blossom viewing Sunday morning by closing the streets near the Tidal Basin — effectively barring anyone from checking out the flowers from the safety of their cars. Previously, officials had told pedestrians to stay away, a message echoed by Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) in a CNN appearance Sunday. “Stay at home and view the cherry blossoms this year, virtually,” she said. • Maryland reported a third person has died of the novel coronavirus. The woman, who was in her 40s and lived in Montgomery County, suffered from underlying medical conditions, health officials said. She is the youngest person to die of the virus in the state. Coronavirus in the DMV: What you need to know


Local musicians have nowhere to play now. So they’re coming to you via live-streamed concerts.

hard, and local artists are getting creative. Many are turning to the Internet to stage virtual concerts from their homes or empty venues. Will Urquhart, a freelance audio/visual specialist who often live-streams concerts and festivals for the website DC Music Review, saw the rash of cancellations and postponements earlier this month and put up a post on Facebook offering to help local musicians with streams. “I was thinking about all the fans who don’t have entertainment for a while, but also all the bands and how this impacts them not being able to sell concert tickets,” Urquhart says. “That was the impetus: Let’s give people stuck at home something to watch and do it in a way that we think can help the bands and help the community in general.” DC Music Review launched the Virtual Aid streaming concert series on March 17 with D.C. power-punk band Ménage À Garage from 7DrumCity’s the Pocket in Northwest, where the band was supposed to play last weekend. In keeping with the CDC’s guidelines for social distancing and large gatherings, the band members were stationed as far apart as possible, extra sanitation measures were taken, there was no microphone sharing and the only people in the venue were the ones who needed to be there. DC Music Review’s webcasts are free (through Facebook, YouTube and Periscope) and the site is encouraging bands to choose a local charity for viewers to direct their support toward. The acts can also solicit virtual tips or send people to their Bandcamp, merchandise or social media pages. Ménage À Garage bassist Jenny Thomas, who is also the director of marketing and communications at the Association of Performing Arts Professionals, sees this uncertain time as a challenge for bands, as well as other performing arts institutions that rely on live audiences, to think outside the box. “Longer term, I think we’re all going to be looking at being more inventive, because that’s what artists do,” Thomas says. “This is going to force the question of the online aspect of the performing arts because people are going to be immediately having to fast track figuring out how to present things online.” Live-streaming concerts isn’t a new phenomenon. But for now, it may be a new normal. In the jam band community, fans regularly stream shows (affectionately calling it couch tour) through services like Nugs.tv, which regularly offers pay-per-view concerts from


USA Track & Field calls for Tokyo Olympics postponement, joining USA Swimming

so athletes can be relieved of stress. She said her races have all been canceled and she can’t find gyms or college tracks to train at because they all have been closed. Meanwhile, members of her family have lost their jobs and fallen into financial distress. “Just because we’re Olympians doesn’t mean we’re immune to this disease,” Jones said. “Every time we’re going out in public and trying to find gyms and places to train, I’m like, ‘Really?’ The government is telling us to stay in our house, to self-quarantine, but we can’t because the IOC is being adamant the Olympics are going to go on. Every time I saw a statement from the IOC saying, ‘Hey, the Olympics will go on,’ and my world around me is being so ripped up, it feels like the house is on fire and the IOC is saying: ‘Don’t worry, it’ll be fine. Stay right inside your house.’ ” Former 110-meter hurdle world record holder Renaldo Nehemiah, now an agent who represents several elite runners, agreed with the USATF’s request. Nehemiah, a University of Maryland alum, would understand the competitive fallout of postponing an Olympics more than most. He would have entered the 1980 Summer Olympics as a heavy gold medal favorite, but the United States boycotted amid political tensions with the Soviet Union. “The uncertainty of when normalcy will return places an extreme burden on the athletes,” Nehemiah wrote in an email to The Washington Post. “As of this week, most all training facilities have been shut down, outdoors and indoors. Thus, athletes and coaches have to become creative in order to try and simulate their regular training regimen. It’s impossible to replicate at an elite level. And it’s affecting the athletes’ motivation and ultimately their fitness and preparedness. The only sensible thing to do is postpone the games until there’s enough regression of the virus to not place lives in the balance. Life is more precious than games.” Olympic hopeful Drew Hunter, a distance runner from Purcellville who qualified for last year’s world championships, has had his training only slightly affected. Hunter trains with the running team Tinman Elite, and rather than running in a 12-person pack as usual, they split up into smaller groups of runners who live together. But he runs outside and is able to lift weights in a private gym, and he has continued his normal training


Coronavirus closes Smithsonian museums, cancels National Cherry Blossom Festival events

The District announced its first confirmed case of the coronavirus that causes covid-19 on March 7. On March 11, Mayor Muriel E. Bowser declared a state of emergency in the District. Mass gatherings of 50 or more people are not allowed, restaurants and bars are no longer allowed to serve food or drinks on-site, and theaters and nightclubs have closed. This has had a profound impact on life across the city, including the National Cherry Blossom Festival. Here’s what you should know about visiting the District right now. (Looking for a list of what’s still open in D.C.? You can find that here.) This post will be continually updated. I’m planning on coming to the District to see the cherry blossoms. Is there any impact on the festival, parade or events? The National Cherry Blossom Festival has cancelled or postponed all of its major events. The opening ceremony at the Warner Theatre on March 21, the Blossom Kite Festival on March 28, the parade on April 4, and the outdoor Petalpalooza party on April 11 have all been cancelled. The Anacostia River Festival has been postponed until August 9, and the Sakura Matsuri street festival has been postponed until a future date. At the moment, there are no restrictions on visiting the blossoms around the Tidal Basin, where peak bloom is expected to occur around March 22, though the Tidal Basin Welcome Area, run by the National Park Service, and the ANA Stage, where performances take place at the Tidal Basin, have been canceled. What about the Smithsonian and other museums? All Smithsonian museums and the National Zoo have been closed since March 14. A statement from the institution read: “Due to the rapidly changing nature of the situation, we are not announcing a reopening date at this time and will provide updates on a week-to-week basis on our websites.” All public events have been cancelled through May 3, including tours and lectures. The National Gallery of Art, which closed March 14, tentatively plans to reopen on April 4. It had previously announced the postponement of an upcoming exhibition, “A Superb Baroque: Art in Genoa, 1600-1750,” because many works of art could not be shipped to the United States from Rome and Genoa. Many museums and attractions have announced plans to reopen at the end of March or beginning of April, including the International Spy Museum (closed through “at least”


Prime members first: Amazon is ranking customers and ramping up hiring to address coronavirus demand

to hold price gougers accountable. It added that it has suspended more than 3,900 selling accounts in its U.S. store for violating fair-pricing policies. Meanwhile, Amazon’s plans to hire 100,000 workers as quickly as it can have prompted a media blitz. Commercials advertise four-hour shifts picking groceries at Whole Foods, while Carney has made the rounds to the major news networks to talk about the hiring, plus safety measures and higher wages. The company is targeting its pitch at workers who have been laid off or idled as a result of the outbreak. Bertolino declined to detail how those new hires would be deployed, except to say they’d work at warehouses, transportation operations, stores and make deliveries. For comparison, Amazon hired 200,000 seasonal workers for its holiday season last year — a massive undertaking even while people aren’t under lockdown. And it’s facing nearly as much competition as it would for the holiday season, too, as other major retailers struggle with the same out-of-stock issues and roll out similarly ambitious hiring plans. Walmart plans to hire 150,000 workers. Dollar General and CVS each want to hire 50,000 workers. And Monday, Instacart, the grocery-delivery service, said it’s looking to add 300,000 “full-service shoppers.” There’s no guarantee that Amazon or the other companies will be able to solve the problem with a flurry of job openings. Logistics experts expect supply-chain disruptions to continue to ripple from China, where factory work is resuming as the country begins to emerge from its own lockdowns. Meanwhile, workers at Amazon’s warehouses in both the United States and Europe have sounded alarms about concerns over workplace safety as the coronavirus has spread. The company has acknowledged cases in its warehouses in New York, as well as Italy and Spain. Some workers have said they are working under conditions that don’t always allow for social distancing or proper hand washing. Amazon disputes those claims and says it’s working to keep its warehouses clean and its workers at safe distance apart from one another. The company is betting that laid-off workers at restaurants, retail stores, hotels and elsewhere will want the jobs. “That’s the million-dollar question,” Glick said. For all the challenges Amazon faces in getting customers what they want, it also appears to be marshaling the resources in a way some smaller rivals can’t. In addition to its massive hiring binge, Amazon is also increasing pay for hourly


Fear and anger during a pandemic

the pandemic, however, are more universal, and my family has been feeling the effects. Both my spouse and I find ourselves able to perform our jobs at some base level of competence, and not much else. Unless you are old enough to remember the pre-vaccine polio outbreaks of the late 1940s and early 1950s, you are undergoing pressures unique in our lifetime. More than the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, more than the 2008 financial crisis, the novel coronavirus has forced radical changes in our daily routines. The exponential nature of the pandemic has also made it difficult to adjust to any new normal. About a week ago, a friend and neighbor cheerfully suggested that as the weather warmed up they would be able to host cocktails on their deck. That seemed like a nice idea at the time and completely insane in the present moment. Over the past few days the number of diagnosed cases in my state has more than tripled. Societies have gone from canceling sporting events to canceling school functions to social distancing to encouraging sheltering in place in the span of a few weeks. These parallels to the first five minutes of any zombie apocalypse narrative might be cliched but that does not make them any less unsettling. So far, everyone in my nuclear family remains healthy, which is a blessing. Over the past 10 days, we have adhered to the CDC guidelines for social distancing. But part of the stress is the waiting. I keep backdating to my last social interaction involving the shaking of hands, or the hugging of a friend. Has enough time passed to be in the clear from getting it from them? The long incubation period means it is difficult to know for sure. My brain cannot turn off the constant and conscious personal health inventories. Is my nose stuffy? Am I coughing more than usual? These symptoms are just part of being a middle-aged guy waking up in New England in the cold. Still, I perseverate about them. One day I read about how hard it is to get this from food and relax. The next day I panic and wonder if it is possible to have a fever even if the thermometers insist one’s body temperature is closer to 97 degrees. What if the thermometer is busted? Then there are the precautionary measures to stay healthy. I take


Olympic officials begin ‘unprecedented’ task of rescheduling Games

came less than two days after Bach penned a letter to athletes and said a decision on postponement would be premature. Bach explained that there were a lot of developments that transpired in that short window, which prompted the IOC and Japanese Olympic officials to act. He said hours after the IOC’s executive board met Sunday “new alarming information was coming in. We saw more and more travel restrictions. … We also heard the virus start to spread on a number of islands in Oceania. The next morning, Monday morning, we received a declaration from the World Health Organization, which was pretty alarming, where the director general said the spreading is accelerating.” He said a surge in cases across Africa particularly concerned Olympic organizers. “From the very beginning, this was a big worry for me personally … that if the virus would outbreak there in Africa on this huge continent with the challenges many countries in Africa have to face already, that this would be a very dramatic development which would not only affect Africa but, again, affect the entire world. This is why this was such a crucial moment.” Bach did not say that he or the executive committee was particularly swayed by the growing chorus of athletes voicing their concerns or the group of nations which started calling for a postponement, even publicly announcing they would not send their athletes to compete in Tokyo this summer. Bach said he had no regrets about the IOC’s handling of the situation or his hard-line stance throughout the crisis that these Olympics would take place as scheduled. He had been criticized by some athletes for encouraging them to continue their Olympic preparations, even as many governments were enforcing new restrictions and public health officials were issuing warnings as the virus continued to spread. “What we expressed was the confidence in our Japanese partners and friends to organize there in July in safe conditions an Olympic Games,” Bach said. “ … What then made the change was the dynamic changes in the worldwide health situation.” Bach was asked what the IOC might do if the pandemic is not contained one year from now and whether a cancellation or further postponement could be possible. He said: “We have established this principle … that we want and we will organize a Games only in a safe environment for all the participants.” Asked a similar


The pandemic is spreading in local hot spots. We can respond to it locally, too.

expanded testing and isolation of those infected. Quarantine of exposed individuals will have value where testing is not easily accessible, as would the protection of those most vulnerable through the limitation of visitors and decreased social interactions. We should watch assisted-living facilities and nursing homes everywhere carefully — they should use consistent protective measures such as handwashing, routine employee symptom screening and fever monitoring among both residents and employees. Our capacity to provide testing is increasing dramatically. In the past week, the Food and Drug Administration approved with uncharacteristic alacrity multiple different covid-19 tests made by commercial test manufacturers. Some laboratories have been able to repurpose their work from one testing focus, like drug screening, to covid-19 testing with large, high-volume, high-throughput systems that can each test up to 5,000 specimens a day. There has been innovation in the use of different specimen types — like nasal swabs and oral fluids — as well as the validation of different collection methods, such as self-collection and home-collection. Like any response to a crisis or serious emergency, epidemic response is dynamic and must change over time, with increased data, knowledge and capacity. Because of the epidemiologic characteristics — latency period, incubation period, the proportion of infected people who are asymptomatic, the duration of infectiousness, etc. — of the novel coronavirus, its epidemic potential appears to depend on factors such as population density, social behavior and, according to some scientific reports, ambient conditions (temperature and humidity). Outbreaks are like lighting a campfire — it needs the right balance of tinder, kindling and fuel, as well as dryness and a lack of wind. Not every match will ignite. We can verify that hypothesis by observing the outbreaks and epidemics underway in China, South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, Italy and, more recently, Seattle and Santa Clara County, Calif. All those epidemics were localized within a confined geographic area and population base. Transmission appeared to occur in clusters — often in multiple clusters of family members, close contacts, health workers and residents of nursing homes, with an apparent absence of large-scale spread to the general population. In Italy, the epidemic is highly concentrated in the Lombardy region, without much generalized spread to large metropolitan areas like Florence, Rome or Naples, which further supports the unique localization of epidemics within this pandemic. Even in New York, while hospitals are facing substantial challenges, case density is localized to


New York City and a few surrounding counties. Could the severe social distancing interventions in areas with outbreaks be the reason for localization and decline in the spread of the epidemic? Maybe, except that in China, many people fled Wuhan to the countryside and other urban areas as the lockdown was put in place. Similar movement happened out of northern Italy to areas in the south. Yet the epidemic hasn’t spread in those outlying areas, which raises doubts about the value of the national lockdown. Similarly, in New York City, while it may be premature to conclude case rates are leveling, the number of new cases has been relatively steady since March 19, days before a “shelter in place” order was implemented. Other infectious disease epidemics I have helped manage followed similar patterns: In response to concentrated epidemics, we target public health disease control efforts to the population at risk, not to the general population. We test and take action to control spread through contact notification and school-based or employee screening. We protect the vulnerable and health-care workers. We determine the modes of transmission and act on those through community education and the promotion of healthful behaviors. Now that our understanding of the data is improving, it’s time to let the epidemiology of the pandemic drive our response based on case-rates (the number of cases in a given population by age) and the distribution of those cases geographically. Our resources to fight the coronavirus are limited — we need to use them strategically, which also would allow Americans living in low-risk areas with an absence of outbreaks to get back to work and school. We can focus on areas with high epidemic potential and mitigate the consequences of infection in places where outbreaks are occurring. Finally, with approved simple rapid antibody tests, we can determine which health-care workers are immune and can take care of patients safely. We can continue to promote awareness of symptoms and recommendations to avoid work, school or other social settings if a person is symptomatic — but enable people to return to their daily lives in areas where there is an absence of spread. Monitoring for cases at clinics and hospitals should still occur to identify outbreaks to restart stricter interventions as necessary. Places like schools, jails, prisons and nursing homes can report regularly to health departments any suspect cases to assure a timely response.


Pakistan screened us for coronavirus. Nobody checked us when we got back to JFK.

my husband and I didn’t practice “social distancing” while abroad. We were in Pakistan for a friend’s wedding, where, over three days of events — mostly outdoors, thankfully — we mingled with other guests who had come in from Singapore, Dubai, California, Chicago and elsewhere in the country. (We had considered canceling our trip, but left Washington just before anxiety here about covid-19 had really set in.) We also spent four days traveling around Pakistan in the confines of a private car, with a tour guide and driver, in addition to taking taxis and Ubers, eating at restaurants and visiting historic attractions — normal activities for tourists, but all best avoided in light of the current pandemic. Indeed, we ended up changing our tickets to come home earlier than planned, fearing that we’d be stranded abroad, or worse. In the week or so we were in Pakistan, the number of coronavirus cases there spiked from around 20 to over 400, although those figures, according to reports, were considered serious undercounts due to insufficient testing. Most of the country’s early cases came via religious pilgrims returning from the hot spot of neighboring Iran — some of whom were reported to have been poorly quarantined — but there is now community spread, with more than 900 cases identified. En route back to the United States, we had a 14-hour layover in Doha — where we couldn’t leave the airport because Qatar had several days earlier banned entry to all foreign nationals — and then spent another 14 hours on a plane packed with people scrambling to get home. Most passengers, like us, were wearing masks, and no doubt others were bracing for rigorous arrival procedures. That day-long stretch alone made us nervous enough about potential exposure that I actually wished for a temperature check or some kind of assessment when we landed. Upon arrival in New York, I checked my phone for the latest news: Pakistan had suspended international flights; within days, its government had suspended domestic flights as well. While sacrificing freedom of movement might seem extreme, it seemed clear that Pakistani authorities were willing to take aggressive steps in the name of public health. Here, as medical professionals risk their lives and ordinary citizens are sheltering in place, it’s hard to understand why one of the busiest airports in the United States still seems set up for business as usual.


Olympians Allyson Felix, Michael Phelps confront ‘wave of emotions’ after cancellation

For many athletes, the decision to push the 2020 Tokyo Olympics back a year shortens their athletic prime, a move that left two of America’s most decorated Olympians focusing on the long-range consequences of the decision even as they called it the right one. Michael Phelps, the swimmer who won more gold medals than any other Olympian, raised concerns about athletes’ mental health, a point of emphasis for him since his retirement, and Allyson Felix, the most decorated female track and field athlete, offered a message of hope amid the uncertainty of the moment. “It’s a total bamboozle,” Phelps told the Associated Press on Tuesday. “There’s such a wave of emotions. I can’t imagine what these athletes are going through right now.” Phelps, who lives in Arizona with his wife and three children, was “relieved” by the International Olympic Committee’s decision to push back the Games. “Now there’s more of a chance that we can beat this thing and do what we need to do to save as many lives as possible. I was happy to see them logically making a smart decision,” he said. “It’s just frustrating it took this long.” Felix, a six-time Olympic gold medalist, admitted in a Time.com essay that she feels “alone, afraid and unsure” right now. “I don’t know how that makes you feel — maybe the Games are a form of entertainment to you, maybe they give you that warm feeling that reminds you our world can come together around something good,” she wrote. “Or maybe you’re a fellow Olympian and this news feels like a crushing blow. I’ve woken up every morning for the last 6,055 days, since I was 17 years old, relentlessly pursuing Olympic gold.” It’s an unusual time for everyone, and athletes, who are dreamers as well as doers, are no exception. And Felix, who is 34, is aware that her athletic career is closer to the end than the beginning. “At a time like this, it is hard not to focus on the loss, to not think about what could have been. That is something that can be hard about having audacious dreams,” Felix wrote. “Sometimes, you believe so strongly in that dream that you begin to think that you have already earned it, that it is already yours. Until it is taken away from you. This has been a sobering reminder that we are not owed our


The Suez crisis toppled the British Empire. The pandemic will bring down ours.

Coronavirus is the plague that reveals. The global nature of the pandemic has illuminated national characteristics as it crosses borders: China exerts ferocious control over its population; Italy has a large elderly population with a tradition of warm social interactions, ideal conditions for the spread of disease; Korea is the best-organized nation on Earth; Israel can switch to a war footing more or less instantaneously. And the United States? This moment is to the United States what the 1957 Suez Canal crisis was for the British Empire. The coronavirus pandemic is the event that has stripped away any lingering pretensions of global U.S. leadership. It has uncovered an emptiness. Every empire has its bluff called eventually. In 1957, when Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal, Israel invaded Sinai alongside French and British forces. But President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who needed Arab support against the Soviets, insisted on a retreat and threatened to sell American reserves of the British pound if they didn’t concede the territory back to Egypt. Everybody learned who was really in charge. The loss of the canal mattered infinitely less than the demonstration that the British and French no longer possessed the ability to control foreign territories at will. Invincible no more, the Empire crumbled almost overnight. Fourteen French colonies were their own countries by 1960. Within a decade, 24 British colonies gained independence. Covid-19 demarcates a similar moment of transition, a revelation of a new global structure of power. It has shown that the United States, under the Trump administration, is radically unprepared to face the realities of the interconnected world and that it lacks the basic characteristics that every other country considers essential to the functioning of a state: a government that can respond to existential threats with authority and a civil service that can deal effectively with matters of public health. From the outside, the United States appears uncoordinated, unsystematic, chaotic. Leadership is isolated, state by state. Political squabbling has continued in the middle of a plague, overtaking even the economic response. From the point of view of other nations, a disorderly country cannot be relied upon. The scenes at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago earlier this month of U.S. citizens returning from overseas, packed together with no signs of protection, were open demonstrations of dysfunction. Now, the world’s largest economy with the world’s greatest military has abandoned its citizens overseas. A Norwegian university declared


all its citizens should return from the United States as soon as possible because the American health-care system was unprepared to meet the incipient crisis; many countries have been sending the same message in more guarded language. Trump’s unpredictability has strained foreign relations from the beginning of his term; covid-19 has only revealed how dangerous that unpredictability is. Almost alone in the world, the United States does not consider access to medical care a fundamental human right. In response to the pandemic, the Trump administration made its priorities clear: It suggested a suspension of the payroll tax while covid-19 screening remained widely unavailable. A private system such as the American one simply cannot respond to public health crises. Private companies are being asked to provide the services that states normally provide, often much better, everywhere else: Google was tasked to create a national coronavirus website; the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has busied itself preparing at-home testing kits; Amazon must regulate price-gouging (Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post). Meanwhile the Department of Homeland Security, essential to maintaining order in the current situation, is operating with 65 percent of the top jobs vacant or filled only by acting appointees. This American chaos did not begin in 2020, nor with the Trump administration. Americans have been actively dismantling their government for a generation, and the current crisis is the fruit. Ronald Reagan, in the 1980s, made massive cuts to the budget of the Department of Health and Human Services. Reagan famously said the nine scariest words in the English language are “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.” I have nine that are scarier: “Contact your HMO if you experience symptoms of covid-19.” In most wealthy countries, and the more fortunate developing ones, the people expect governments to protect them; governments expect it of themselves. But even disease will not affect the hyperpartisanship of the country: Republicans are much less worried than Democrats about the effects of the coronavirus, though the difference is narrowing. As recently as last week, 29 percent of Americans believed coronavirus was made in a lab. The consequences of covid-19 on American foreign relations are already apparent if not yet manifest. For the foreseeable future, every American product, every American person, every American idea, will be suspect. This is not about historical memory or anybody’s feelings about the United States or even Donald


The Daily 202: Prince Charles testing positive illustrates how the coronavirus does not discriminate

read this. Yesterday, complications from the contagion killed playwright Terrence McNally, who rose to the forefront of American theater chronicling gay lives with works such as “Love! Valour! Compassion!” and “Master Class.” He was 81. Alan Finder, a legendary retired New York Times reporter, died at 72 from the virus. Former colleagues remember him as a calming presence and “one of the menschiest guys around.” But complications from the coronavirus also killed a school principal from Brooklyn, a woman who was half his age. Dezann Romain, 36, is the first known death of a New York City public school employee from the outbreak, per the New York Post. A teenager who lived in Lancaster, Calif., and had no apparent preexisting conditions may be the first minor to have died from the coronavirus in the United States, but authorities say confirming this will require additional testing. “This is a devastating reminder that covid-19 affects people of all ages,” L.A. County Public Health Department Director Barbara Ferrer told the Los Angeles Times. The virus killed two health-care workers in Georgia, which has a death toll of 25. One of the victims, a 42-year-old mammogram technician, was found dead in her home. She had been dead 12 to 16 hours when police, coming to do a welfare check, discovered her body. Her child, apparently 4 or 5 years old, was in the home at the time, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Former Texas A&M basketball star David Edwards died from complications of the virus. He was 48. Thankfully, the vast majority who get this coronavirus will survive. But the deluge of news about who has been infected underscores how blind the virus is to class differences. To wit: Harvard University President Lawrence Bacow, 68, and his wife, Adele, have both tested positive, according to the Harvard Crimson. So have Amazon workers at six U.S. warehouses and counting. The e-commerce giant, led by Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, has been racing to hire 100,000 new workers to meet surging online orders. A 31-year-old Mexican immigrant, being held in New Jersey, became the first detainee in ICE custody to test positive, according to CNN. One of the 39 news cases reported on Tuesday in Kentucky was a 20-something who tested positive after attending a “coronavirus party.” Talk about tempting fate. “This is the part where I, the person that tells everybody to be calm, have


also being tested in clinical trials, the primary purpose of Oracle’s new website and mobile app is to help gather information on patients prescribed the medications outside of trials and more quickly assess whether the drugs — or any others that may emerge as possible treatments — are effective against covid-19, for which there is no proven treatment. … The administration is also exploring whether it will offer bonus payments to doctors who use the technology. This raises ethical concerns among some health officials, who fear that will further promote the use of unproven drugs.” “That relative stability suggests the virus is less likely to become more or less dangerous as it spreads, and represents encouraging news for researchers hoping to create a long-lasting vaccine,” Joel Achenbach reports. Peter Thielen, a molecular geneticist at John Hopkins who has been studying the virus, said there are only about four to 10 genetic differences between the strains that have infected people in the U.S. and the original virus that spread in Wuhan. This would mean that a vaccine against it could act like immunizations against the measles or chickenpox vaccines – protecting people for a long time. “Some hard-hit parts of the country are receiving fresh supplies of N95 masks, but others are still out of stock. Hospitals [and state officials] are requesting donations of masks and gloves from construction companies, nail salons and tattoo parlors, and considering using ventilators designed for large animals because they cannot find the kind made for people,” Jeanne Whalen, Tony Romm, Aaron Gregg and Tom Hamburger report. “Although governors and hospital leaders welcome the many U.S. companies stepping forward to make masks and ventilators, they fear the voluntary efforts will be too scattershot without federal coordination. … Trump seemed to acknowledge the chaos on Tuesday, however, calling the world market for masks and ventilators ‘crazy’ in a tweet, adding that it was ‘not easy’ to acquire them. But he also tweeted that he hasn’t had to use the Defense Production Act ‘because no one has said NO!’ … Soaring demand and competitive bidding is driving prices up. Premier, a health-care company that purchases equipment and supplies for 4,000 acute-care hospitals, used to pay about 30 cents for an N95 mask but is now seeing prices between $3 and $15 per mask.” “New York health experts predict the state will need about 140,000 hospital beds to handle


A photographer’s surreal flight home during the covid-19 pandemic

For many photojournalists, long-haul flights are a routine part of the job. On March 17, Sharon Pulwer experienced far-from-routine sights when she flew from Newark Liberty International Airport to see her family in Tel Aviv, aboard El Al Israel Airlines. Both Newark and Ben Gurion Airport in Israel, usually busy international hubs, were quiet. Instead of rushed travelers, the few passengers there stood in pairs or alone. “Seeing with my own eyes the same sights in two airports that are almost 12 hours’ flight away from each other was surreal,” Pulwer said. El Al’s flight from Newark to Tel Aviv is regularly packed. But on the March 17 flight, most passengers had three seats to themselves and were able to keep more than six feet from each other while wearing masks and gloves. Some passengers seemed worried and shifted uncomfortably if anyone sneezed or coughed. Many discussed the news. Others tried to keep things light and joked that they should enjoy the human contact and engage in as many conversations as they could before the mandatory 14-day quarantine for entering Israel. The crew was kind and gave their best service while maintaining distance. They were trying to protect themselves while risking their health, with the added stress of knowing many of their colleagues were on unpaid leave. They worked through the 12-hour flight from Tel Aviv to New York, had 12 hours of rest in a hotel near the airport (that they weren’t allowed to leave) and then flew back. The three pilots announced before landing that this was their last flight before going on unpaid leave as well. Everyone on board, crew and passengers, was going through drastic life changes, and the sense of mutual understating was noticeable. That same day, the airline reduced to four the number of international flights operating daily from New York, Paris and London. The company still operates flights to other destinations at a lower frequency. It carries them out in collaboration with the Israeli foreign ministry “rescue flights” designated to allow the return of Israeli travelers stuck in countries that closed their borders. Because of the rising number of cancellations that followed Israel’s travel restrictions, the airline put 80 percent of its employees on unpaid leave, and hundreds of flight attendants were put on quarantine after working on flights that had confirmed coronavirus cases or returned from countries having severe outbreaks. In Sight


News literacy lessons: The wrong ways people believe covid-19 began

This is the latest installment of a weekly feature on this blog — lessons from the nonprofit News Literacy Project. Each installment offers new material for teachers, students and everyone else who wants a dose of reality. You can learn about the News Literacy Project and all of the educational resources it provides in this piece, but here’s a rundown: Founded more than a decade ago by Alan Miller, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter at the Los Angeles Times, the News Literacy Project aims to teach students how to distinguish between what’s real and fake in the age of digital communication and a president who routinely denounces real news as “fake.” Now the leading provider of news literacy education, it creates digital curriculums and other resources and works with educators and journalists to teach middle school and high school students how to recognize news and information to trust — and provides them with the tools they need to be informed and engaged participants in a democracy. It uses the standards of high-quality journalism as an aspirational yardstick against which to measure all news and information. Just as important, it provides the next generation with an appreciation of the First Amendment and the role of a free press. The following material comes from the project’s newsletter, the Sift, which takes the most recent viral rumors, conspiracy theories, hoaxes and journalistic ethics issues and turns them into timely lessons with discussion prompts and links. The Sift, which publishes weekly during the school year, has more than 10,000 subscribers, most of them educators. Both of the lessons below concern the global coronavirus pandemic, which has nearly stopped public life in many countries. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the coronavirus, which causes the disease known as covid-19, probably started first in animals and transferred to humans. As a preface to the lessons, here is what the agency says about the origin and spread of novel coronavirus, which it refers to by its official name, SARS-CoV-2: Here are lessons from the Monday, March 23, 2020, edition of the Sift, as provided by the News Literacy Project: About 3 in 10 (29 percent) of U.S. adults The survey also found that 62 percent of respondents said they think that the news media has exaggerated the risks of the current outbreak — “greatly,” according to 37 percent, and “slightly,” according to 25 percent. In


the role of a free press. The following material comes from the project’s newsletter, the Sift, which takes the most recent viral rumors, conspiracy theories, hoaxes and journalistic ethics issues and turns them into timely lessons with discussion prompts and links. The Sift, which publishes weekly during the school year, has more than 10,000 subscribers, most of them educators. Both of the lessons below concern the global coronavirus pandemic, which has nearly stopped public life in many countries. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the coronavirus, which causes the disease known as covid-19, probably started first in animals and transferred to humans. As a preface to the lessons, here is what the agency says about the origin and spread of novel coronavirus, which it refers to by its official name, SARS-CoV-2: Here are lessons from the Monday, March 23, 2020, edition of the Sift, as provided by the News Literacy Project: About 3 in 10 (29 percent) of U.S. adults The survey also found that 62 percent of respondents said they think that the news media has exaggerated the risks of the current outbreak — “greatly,” according to 37 percent, and “slightly,” according to 25 percent. In addition, attitudes about various aspects of the pandemic — and news coverage of it — differed along partisan lines, the survey found: Republicans gave news coverage of covid-19 lower ratings than Democrats did and were more likely than Democrats to say that news organizations exaggerated the risks. During the time the survey of 8,914 American adults was conducted (March 10-16), Pew’s Amy Mitchell and J. Baxter Oliphant wrote: “The number of confirmed cases in the United States increased from about 650 to over 3,000, the World Health Organization declared the covid-19 outbreak a pandemic, President Donald Trump announced a ban on travel to the U.S. from European countries and many universities announced closures or remote classes.” Related: · “Once and for All, the New Coronavirus Was Not Made in a Lab” (Shayla Love, Vice). · “How to debunk covid-19 conspiracy theories” (Justine Calma, The Verge). · “The conspiracy theories about the origins of the coronavirus, debunked” (Eliza Barclay, Vox). · “People are getting a lot of coronavirus news from traditional media, but they trust information from their employers more” (Hanaa’ Tameez, Nieman Lab). · “CVS sent false coronavirus information to staff” (Donie O’Sullivan, CNN Business). Discuss: Idea: Denunciations over associating


current outbreak — “greatly,” according to 37 percent, and “slightly,” according to 25 percent. In addition, attitudes about various aspects of the pandemic — and news coverage of it — differed along partisan lines, the survey found: Republicans gave news coverage of covid-19 lower ratings than Democrats did and were more likely than Democrats to say that news organizations exaggerated the risks. During the time the survey of 8,914 American adults was conducted (March 10-16), Pew’s Amy Mitchell and J. Baxter Oliphant wrote: “The number of confirmed cases in the United States increased from about 650 to over 3,000, the World Health Organization declared the covid-19 outbreak a pandemic, President Donald Trump announced a ban on travel to the U.S. from European countries and many universities announced closures or remote classes.” Related: · “Once and for All, the New Coronavirus Was Not Made in a Lab” (Shayla Love, Vice). · “How to debunk covid-19 conspiracy theories” (Justine Calma, The Verge). · “The conspiracy theories about the origins of the coronavirus, debunked” (Eliza Barclay, Vox). · “People are getting a lot of coronavirus news from traditional media, but they trust information from their employers more” (Hanaa’ Tameez, Nieman Lab). · “CVS sent false coronavirus information to staff” (Donie O’Sullivan, CNN Business). Discuss: Idea: Denunciations over associating covid-19 with a geographic location or ethnicity, such as calling it the In a March 19 statement, the Asian American Journalists Association (supported by other journalist groups) cited that guidance in its condemnation of “harmful language” that “persists.” According to an analysis published March 17 by the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research Lab, media organizations’ use of ethnic or geographic labels for the current strain of coronavirus dropped dramatically after WHO published its recommended naming convention — but the terms spiked on social media because of the use of such language by President Trump and other politicians. Related: · “Trump says U.S. must ‘totally protect’ Asian Americans from coronavirus blame” (Ursula Perano, Axios) · “Spit On, Yelled At, Attacked: Chinese-Americans Fear for Their Safety” (Sabrina Tavernise and Richard A. Oppel Jr., The New York Times). · “The ‘Chinese Virus’ Is a Test. Don’t Fail It.” (Graeme Wood, The Atlantic). · “Chuck Grassley’s ‘Spanish Flu’ Tweet Adds to Wave of Xenophobic covid-19 Rhetoric From GOP” (Arturo Garcia, TruthOrFiction.com). · “UNHCR condemns fake notice which claimed refugees in Malaysia are resisting covid-19 tests” (AFP Fact Check). Discuss:


Coronavirus could threaten endangered great apes, scientists warn

wildlife tourism and reducing field research, though Gillespie said sites may need additional funding to ensure essential staff remain on the ground to prevent other threats to apes: poaching and deforestation. Some countries, including Gabon and Rwanda, have already suspended tourism, and widespread border closures and flight cancellations have dramatically reduced international travel. But a primary concern, Gillespie said, is that cheaper flights and lower access fees to spots that are still open may entice younger travelers — who are more apt to hike into the wilderness to see great apes and are also more likely to have mild symptoms if infected with covid-19. A March 15 statement from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature “strongly” advises that no humans come within 10 meters, or about 33 feet, of great apes in the wild. It also recommends that no person who has been sick or who has been in close contact with sick people in the previous 14 days be allowed to visit great-ape sites. Previously, that guidance was capped at seven days, Gillespie said. “This pandemic is distinct. We need a longer quarantine,” Gillespie said. “We’re concerned that we’re going to have people with mild symptoms who are going to be infectious prior to showing symptoms.” The letter is also directed at zoos and sanctuaries that keep great apes, said Dominic Travis, an associate professor at the University of Minnesota’s College of Veterinary Medicine and co-author of the letter. Staff at those facilities have typically been prepared to cope with disease outbreaks and threats, both at refuges in Africa and at well-funded Western zoos, where he said exhibits are often designed to keep human pathogens out. That doesn’t mean all have the resources to deal with this pandemic, he said. “There is a direct threat from this virus. We don’t know how big that threat is, but we know it exists. And that’s what this letter is about. This letter says, ‘Hey, all ape people: Pay attention,’ ” said Travis, who studies wildlife epidemiology and veterinary public health. “Can apes get this coronavirus? There’s a lot of evidence in the virus itself that says probably. … Do we need more evidence to be careful? Probably not.” Read more: How to pet dogs during the coronavirus pandemic A dog has a ‘low-level’ coronavirus infection Dog with ‘low-level’ coronavirus infection remains quarantined after blood test, Hong Kong officials say


Floyd Cardoz, the influential Indian American chef behind the groundbreaking Tabla, dies of complications from covid-19

This post has been updated. Floyd Cardoz, an influential India-born chef and restaurateur widely credited for introducing the flavors of his homeland to New York’s fine-dining scene in the 1990s, died Wednesday from an infection related to covid-19, according to the company that oversees his restaurants. He was 59. The company, Hunger Inc. Hospitality, issued a statement confirming his death. The statement said he died in New Jersey. A multiple James Beard Award nominee, Cardoz went to culinary school in Mumbai before studying at the respected Global Hospitality Management School at Les Roches in Switzerland. He moved to New York in 1988 and, several years later, started working at Lespinasse, where the late Gray Kunz blended Asian ingredients with French techniques. Cardoz left Lespinasse to join forces with restaurateur Danny Meyer to open Tabla, a pioneering Indian-American fine-dining destination in Manhattan. It received three stars from Ruth Reichl when she was restaurant critic for the New York Times. “Mr. Cardoz is working with a palette similar to that employed by Mr. Kunz, but here it is not tempered by the cream and butter of the French kitchen,” Reichl wrote in her review. “This is American food, viewed through a kaleidoscope of Indian spices. The flavors are so powerful, original and unexpected that they evoke intense emotions. Those who do not like Tabla tend to dislike it with a passion.” Cardoz would earn four Beard nominations for his work at Tabla, which closed in 2010 after a 12-year run. It was the first restaurant that Meyer closed. Cardoz also won Season 3 of Bravo’s “Top Chef Masters.” Meyer and Cardoz would first cross paths in the mid-1990s, not long after Union Square Hospitality Group signed a lease to open two restaurants in the Eleven Madison Building. One would become Eleven Madison Park, a three-Michelin-star restaurant originally opened by Meyer in 1998 as a more approachable brasserie. (Meyer sold Eleven Madison Park in 2011.) The second restaurant was going to showcase the Indian-spiced dishes that chef Michael Romano was trying to shoehorn into the Union Square Cafe menu, which leaned more Italian, French and California. But neither Romano nor Meyer knew anyone who could lead such an Indian-American kitchen. That’s when Nick Oltarsh, a chef at Gramercy Tavern, overheard the men discussing their problem. “And Nick said, ‘If you guys are really interested, I know just the guy for you,’” Meyer recalled


Trump is giving people false hope of coronavirus cures. It’s all snake oil.

between their two views. He characterized their respective positions as, “It’s the hope that it will work, versus proving that it will work.” The next day, he added: “The president is talking about hope for people. And it’s not an unreasonable thing to hope for people.” Fauci is correct: Hope for a cure — whether for AIDS, cancer or covid-19 — is not unreasonable. It’s even beneficial. Hope can help patients to continue with medical treatment in the face of a grim prognosis; it also has been found to have therapeutic value, making it more likely that people take steps to bring about their hoped-for result, by, for example, regularly taking their medications. And when political leaders express hope, it can create the vision of an ideal outcome for the public to strive toward. But this is not the kind of hope that Trump is offering. The hope he has expressed for the effects of warm weather, travel bans (“The virus will not have a chance against us,” he vowed), and now, hydroxychloroquine, is best-described as unsubstantiated “false hope.” Quackishly touting an unproven covid-19 treatment continues Trump’s long-standing record of salesmanship without substance. Even more perniciously, this particular hydro oil builds — and then exploits — the public’s hope for a quick end to the pandemic. Of course, outsize confidence has always been one of Trump’s trademark personality traits. It’s typical for his remarks to be blustery and error-prone. But the pandemic has caused it to take a new shape: that of affected medical authority. After failing to respond to the outbreak in its earlier stages, Trump is now attempting to appear in control of the crisis by affecting medical authority. Earlier this month, he wondered aloud if “a solid flu vaccine” might “have an impact” on the coronavirus’s spread. Undeterred by pharmaceutical executives’ briefings, he repeatedly promised that a vaccine would be available “soon” — including at a North Carolina campaign rally. As the crisis has deepened, he is now fixating on the idea that the disease may have some readily available cure, and has fashioned himself into an early proponent of a promising treatment despite the naysayers. Since his first describing hydroxychloroquine as a “game changer” on March 19, Trump has hyped its potential on a daily basis. The next day he called its results “impressive” and stated that he was a “probably more of a fan of


President Trump’s desire to reopen businesses quickly is dangerous

more than all those killed in WWI and World War II combined) and approximately 675,000 Americans (when the population numbered 103 million). When it swept across the United States, the country was in the midst of a draft, with widespread anti-German sentiment, and with a wartime state suppressing free speech. In response, politicians and officials, hyper-nationalist patriots, journalists and public health chiefs alike spouted lines about minimal risk. They suggested the disease resembled the common cold and objected to public health measures that would infringe on their freedoms or the U.S. war effort. But when the disease’s true damage became more apparent, cities like St. Louis took action — canceling and postponing large events, gatherings, schools and limiting public transportation. These efforts, what we’d now call social distancing, worked to slow spread. Officials in Philadelphia did the opposite. They blithely followed the lead of the Wilson administration. Not only did they “stay open,” they towed the patriotic wartime line, despite hundreds of emerging flu cases, and held an enormous Liberty Loan Parade on Sept. 28, 1918. Within three days, virtually every bed in Philadelphia’s 31 hospitals was brimming with patients. By Oct. 5, some 2,600 people had died. Within a week, the death toll was up to 4,500. On the worst days, nearly 800 died; the clergy could not keep up with the pickup of the dead. By Oct. 3, city officials rapidly shut virtually everything down. But it was too late. The damage was done. National officials were slow to act, with even U.S. surgeon general Rupert Blue arguing that “there is no cause for alarm if precautions are observed.” At the end of September, as the spread took immense tolls, the Army canceled the nationwide draft call, but no blanket federal policies were announced. It was not until Oct. 8 that Blue issued a recommendation (not an order) for the use of closure policies. Military officials advised President Woodrow Wilson to continue troop transports despite considerable numbers of ill soldiers and sailors. Even by mid-October the surgeon general continued to assert that mild cases barely needed attention. It was his belief that “the present generation has been spoiled by having had expert medical and nursing care readily available.” But cities like St. Louis took a different approach from Philadelphia or the federal government. The city tracked influenza closely, the mayor granted the health commissioner special powers and by


usual. Why was there such a discrepancy between federal and state responses to the pandemic? Because it unfolded during World War I, and the military conflict abroad exacerbated the problem by allowing misinformation and racism to flourish in place of federal government action, leaving states and localities no choice but to act. Because most Western nations were involved in the war, they attempted to control information, hide data about infection as well as mortality and pushed hyper-patriotic activities. The media was prevented by sedition laws from printing truthful stories about the disease that might undermine the war effort (such as by noting troops not being combat ready due to illness and spreading the flu nationally as well as internationally). Thus, citizens were ill-informed and even tended to deny the flu, waving it off as “three-day fever.” That the illness became known as the “Spanish flu” was as much a part of wartime politics and racist propaganda as anything related to public health. Because it was neutral in the war, the Spanish press openly covered the serious influenza suffered by King Alfonso XIII and others, while combatant nations failed to openly discuss the illness. The British and later American press derisively called it the “Spanish flu” or “Spanish lady” (though the Spanish sometimes called it the “French flu,” Germans termed it the “Russian pest,” while Russians deployed the phrase “Chinese Flu”), and attributing it in part to the climate and hygiene in Spain. Framing the illness as “foreign” combined with hyper-patriotic wartime pressures to make Americans slower to respond and implement lifesaving preventive measures, especially at the national level. But this was self-defeating. In 1918-19, the influenza death rate in the United States was about 0.65 percent, and at times wartime factories that remained open had 50 percent of their workforce out sick. Then as now, all the action really happens at the state level. Proactive local and state leaders in California, Washington state, New York, Minnesota, Oregon and Ohio, among others, rather than the federal government are leading the way, if only because they are facing the most immediate impact of the virus’s spread. If their efforts prove successful, the worst of the spread, deaths and economic damage can be mitigated. If not, or if the Trump administration undermines these policies before they have had time to be effective, history hints at a much worse fate looming around the corner.


What counts as an essential business in 10 U.S. cities

During the coronavirus pandemic, which businesses and services should be considered essential? Most state and local officials nationwide agree that certain ones — grocery stores, banks, gas stations, laundromats, and trade services such as plumbing and electrical work — should make the list. But a Washington Post survey of 10 cities shows distinct differences, not only in the enterprises allowed to remain open but in the efforts to enforce new restrictions. Several cities are even deploying police officers to break up gatherings that shouldn’t be happening and check on businesses that shouldn’t be operating. In many instances, the exemptions reflect communities’ different outlooks. Chicago, Denver and San Francisco are allowing dispensaries to sell recreational and medical marijuana. Three cities where bicycle commuting is popular, Philadelphia, New Orleans and San Francisco, have exempted bike shops from closure. Chicago and Hartford, Conn., specify that liquor stores can stay open, while Chicago includes gun shops as essential enterprises. And then there are the places where coronavirus cases are just beginning to climb, such as Phoenix. With limited exceptions, it’s still up and running. For the full story, please visit,


This orchestra in Little Rock is performing bedtime lullabies for your self-quarantine

When the mayor of Little Rock declared a state of emergency this month, it meant the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra’s planned tribute to Aretha Franklin would have to be postponed. The novel coronavirus outbreak has placed Arkansas in a gradual lockdown, and that’s brought a steady stream of cancellations along with it. But despite the news, Drew Irvin — the orchestra’s co-concertmaster — came up with a way to play some music. Every night around 9 o’clock in Little Rock, Irvin and other members of the orchestra have been uploading performances on Facebook. The series is called “Bedtime With Bach,” and it’s a way to provide some live music when so many are stuck at home. These videos have thousands of views, and though that’s nowhere near the peaks other videos have reached on the Internet, what they’re providing may be just as important: a bit of classical music as many find themselves in isolation. “When there’s a lot of uncertainty and anxiety, I think art and beauty are things that bring a lot of comfort,” said Alisa Coffey, principal harpist for the orchestra. “As musicians, we’re kind of bastions of that." The social distancing recommended — or required — in the past week means large gatherings, including musical performances, are out of the question. Performing artists are live-streaming their talents on Facebook and Instagram, like virtual buskers. John Legend and Coldplay’s Chris Martin are playing sets from home with the hashtag #TogetherAtHome. You can find Yo-Yo Ma recording his on Twitter. The orchestra’s “Bedtime With Bach” series is just one of many such efforts by musicians to offer some solace because, for all of them, it’s impossible to perform any other way. “Nobody, right now, can put together a new show with sixty, a hundred, two hundred people. You just can’t,” Irvin said. For those in the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra, the difference between their videos and the ones with millions of views from big-name stars is that their neighbors, students and friends are often the people watching from home. The orchestra is a part of the community, Irvin said, and it’s not uncommon to be stopped at the grocery store because someone saw a performance. Irvin said he wants to keep “Bedtime With Bach” running for as long as people are stuck at home, practicing social distancing. One goal is for every member of the 65-person orchestra to submit their


The Technology 202: Social networks want you to stay home -- and to tell your friends to do the same

Hunter Walk, a co-founder of Homebrew Ventures who previously worked at YouTube, said he hopes tech companies’ efforts now can be applied beyond public health. “Generally I’d say it’s fantastic to see these companies understand how they can influence people’s actions in a manner which promotes safety and wellness,” Walk said. “I hope this opens doors to them all thinking creatively about other civic collective action issues, such as getting out the vote and volunteerism. ” You are reading The Technology 202 , our guide to the intersection of technology and politics. BITS: Oracle and the White House are working together to develop a platform to promote unproven coronavirus treatments, Conversations with Oracle founder Larry Ellison, a prominent Trump fundraiser and supporter, helped convince Trump the drug may be a cure to the coronavirus, my colleagues report. Top health officials also attended Trump’s meeting with Ellison. The president’s fixation on chloroquine has ramped up demand nationally, making it difficult for some patients who need the drug for diagnostic uses to find it. An Arizona man died on Monday self-medicating with chloroquine phosphate, a fish tank cleaner, after watching a Trump briefing, NBC News reported. Oracle declined requests to comment. The White House did not respond to request for comment. NIBBLES: Workers from at least six Amazon warehouses in the United States tested positive for covid-19 in the past few days, Amazon shut down facilities for cleaning in some cases where employees reported diagnoses, and some co-workers who were in close contact with their infected colleagues have been quarantined. It’s unclear how effective those measures will be to slow the spread of the disease. Amazon workers say the company has taken insufficient steps to protect them from the virus, such as failing to provide them with appropriate sanitation materials and forcing them to work in close proximity, Jay previously reported. Amazon has struggled to procure enough face masks for its hundreds of thousands of warehouse workers, CEO Jeff Bezos admitted in a letter to employees. (Bezos also owns The Washington Post.) Amazon recently announced it would hire 100,000 new workers to meet the increased demands posed by the coronavirus. But a rapid spread of the illness within its existing workforce could further stress the company’s operations, which are currently prioritizing essential items. BYTES: Firms that gather cellphone location data for marketers are now compiling that data to track how people move


Louisiana paper juggles the coronavirus, furloughs

The Tigers of Louisiana State University won college football’s national championship on Jan. 13, prompting demand for keepsakes. “Today alone, we’ve sold over 45 new digital only subscriptions, 8K papers and 4K posters!” noted Judi Terzotis, president and publisher of the Advocate, Louisiana’s largest newspaper, in an email to staffers. “Today alone.” (Bolding in original.) The football windfall prompted optimistic chatter in the office. “We’re at least not going to get laid off from all these sales that they’re making,” recalls a staffer at the newspaper. “We’re possibly even getting bonuses. Those were the conversations we were having.” Those conversations have shifted. Louisiana ranks third in the United States in “per capita cases of people infected with the deadly novel coronavirus,” according to the Advocate. On Sunday, Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) issued a stay-at-home order until April 12, and the state has promulgated various commerce-killing measures — shutting down bars, casinos, gyms and movie theaters, as well as limiting restaurants to takeout, delivery and drive-thru service — to enable its citizens to survive the virus. Authorities pin the blame for the outbreak in New Orleans, at least in part, on a thronged Mardi Gras celebration, which ran through Feb. 25. The result? Advertising at the Advocate has “dropped off,” according to a memo from Terzotis and Advocate Editor Peter Kovacs. “This week, we will be temporarily furloughing about a tenth of our 400-member workforce,” notes the memo, “and the rest of us will begin four-day workweeks. Our newsroom, with about 120 employees, is the largest in Louisiana, and the furloughs will chiefly impact people who cover sports and social events, which have been curtailed.” The reduced schedule is part of a 20 percent pay cut for all employees. More instability in Louisiana newspapering, in other words. Last year, in a surprising move, the Advocate gobbled up the New Orleans Times-Picayune. The transaction didn’t include the venerable Times-Picayune’s 65 editorial staffers (though some of them subsequently joined the Advocate). That acquisition came seven years after the Times-Picayune’s retreat from daily to thrice-weekly delivery, a widely panned move that invited competition from the Advocate, based in Baton Rouge. As of the fourth quarter of 2019, the Advocate and the Times-Picayune/New Orleans Advocate had a combined circulation of 163,172, according to the Alliance for Audited Media. The Advocate’s grim news comes paired with classic newspaper business rhetoric. “We needed to make some


Turkish prosecutors charge 20 Saudis, including senior officials, in Khashoggi killing

ISTANBUL — Prosecutors in Istanbul said Wednesday they had indicted 20 Saudi nationals, including two senior officials, on murder charges after an investigation into the 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, according to a statement from the prosecutor's office. The suspects are all believed to be in Saudi Arabia, where prosecutors conducted a separate, closed-door trial for Khashoggi’s killing. Saudi officials had previously refused Turkey’s request to extradite Saudi suspects in the case. Khashoggi, 59, a veteran journalist and columnist for The Washington Post, was killed in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in October 2018 by a team of agents dispatched to Turkey by senior Saudi officials, according to Turkish and Saudi prosecutors. After Khashoggi was strangled, his body was dismembered and his remains have yet to be recovered, Turkish officials said. Before his death, Khashoggi, writing in The Post, had been critical of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s day-to-day ruler. The killing shone a light on the extraordinary crackdown on dissent carried out by Saudi authorities under Mohammed’s leadership and soured relations between Saudi Arabia and Turkey. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government first publicized details of the Saudi plot and has continued to accuse the Saudi leadership of shielding senior officials from blame. The CIA concluded that Mohammed had probably ordered the killing, which the crown prince has denied. The Turkish indictment was the latest sign that Erdogan’s government would continue to highlight Khashoggi’s case. It charged two top Saudi officials, Saud al-Qahtani, a close adviser to Mohammed, and Ahmed al-Assiri, a former deputy head of Saudi intelligence, with having “instigated premeditated murder with monstrous intent.” The two men “gave the other suspects the necessary instructions to fulfill the action of killing” Khashoggi, the statement said. Both men were cleared of any wrongdoing by Saudi prosecutors late last year. Five other unidentified men were sentenced to death in the trial, which was criticized for lacking transparency by human rights advocates. In addition to Assiri and Qahtani, Istanbul prosecutors charged 18 other men in the killing, after investigators collected evidence from surveillance footage, phone logs, and Khashoggi’s laptop and cellphones, the statement said. kareem.fahim@washpost.com


NFL plans to keep draft in April, despite GMs’ recommendation to postpone it

that the NFL continues to conduct itself in a responsible way at this time, it is appropriate to outline certain principles that will apply during the current period,” the NFL’s memo to teams said. “These principles have been reviewed with and endorsed by the Competition Committee and will remain in effect until further notice.” The league’s decision to close all team facilities did not come solely in response to the recommendation of a seven-member committee of general managers that the draft be postponed. The NFL already had planned to study the issue this week, with some teams having closed their facilities and others keeping them open. But those competitive imbalances were a concern of the GM committee, which advises the league on a variety of football operational issues. The GMs also were concerned about other issues affecting draft preparations, according to a person familiar with the deliberations. Draft-eligible players have been prohibited from visiting teams, and teams were barred from allowing coaches and scouts to attend players’ pro-day workouts on college campuses. The issues raised by the GMs’ committee were first reported by ESPN. The draft has been reduced to a TV-only event, but the league intends to keep it where it is on the calendar, the person familiar with the NFL’s planning said. The live event in Las Vegas associated with the draft has been canceled. It could be staged at the Los Angeles studios of the league-owned NFL Network. Some but not all teams previously had closed their facilities, sending staffers to work from home. The league’s order issued in Tuesday’s memo exempts employees providing medical care to players, security employees and IT experts. “The challenges we face are not unique — many businesses and individuals throughout the country are experiencing and addressing similar issues,” the memo said. “Please be assured that the NFL is well-positioned to meet these operational challenges as we prepare to offer our fans and the country an outstanding 2020 NFL season.” Read more Tom Brady’s move is bad for the NFC and good for the Bills Cam Newton, the NFL’s 2015 MVP, is released by Carolina Tom Brady expresses ‘love’ for Patriots, says transition to Buccaneers will be complicated The Texans have to plug a DeAndre Hopkins sized hole. Here’s how they’ll have to do it. The Rams’ new logo is similar in design — and unpopularity — to one that leaked earlier


Larry Hogan can lead by addressing covid-19 in prisons and jails

come and go, and new incarcerated people arrive. The virus will not only come in, but it will leave once staff go home. Quarantine in prisons and jails is close to impossible. The virus can replicate in individuals for days before symptoms are visible, and it is highly contagious even at an asymptomatic stage. Additionally, social distancing, an essential covid-19 prevention strategy, can’t work for people living in crowded dormitories and cell blocks or having meals together. The same prevention-focused logic the governor employed when ordering people to socially distance, work from home and not gather in groups of more than 10 must apply to prisons and jails. A failure to do so risks recognizing our shared vulnerability, putting all of our lives in jeopardy. The concerns start at the time a person is arrested. In normal times, even if an individual is arrested for a minor offense — drug possession, prostitution, minor traffic offenses — he or she can wait up to 24 hours in a crowded cell before being seen by a judge who will likely release the person pending a court date. In the face of the covid-19 pandemic, those 24 hours in a jail cell can be deadly. Someone spending a few hours in a cramped cell can contract the virus and bring it back to his or her family, quickly spreading covid-19 into the greater community. Many correctional facilities have already taken swift action to prepare and downsize. New York City, Los Angeles and Cleveland have taken action to reduce the population in jails. San Francisco’s sheriff’s department developed a smart and publicly available covid-19 action plan, including health-care protocols in jail. Maryland must step up, too. And while we’ve seen prosecutors around the country attempt to implement policies that will minimize the presence and potential exposure to this exceptional virus to those charged with minor offenses shuffled in and out of crowded jails pretrial, this is not the time for a piecemeal approach where they go into court and argue case by case for individual release. A more comprehensive strategy is needed, and that strategy must be led by the governor. The governor should develop a plan to protect staff and incarcerated individuals from contracting and spreading covid-19. The governor must mandate that facilities make their covid-19 prevention policies public to facilitate transparency and sharing of practices. The governor should order the immediate review


Trump wants U.S. economy ‘opened up and raring to go’ by Easter

President Trump on Tuesday said he hopes the nation’s dramatic response to the coronavirus pandemic will be scaled back within weeks to revive the economy and pack churches by Easter Sunday — an aspiration that was largely panned by public health experts and many elected leaders, including Republicans. “I would love to have the country opened up and raring to go,” Trump said during a Fox News town hall broadcast from the White House Rose Garden. The holiday falls on April 12. “Our people are full of vim and vigor and energy. They don’t want to be locked into a house or an apartment or some space,” Trump said. “It’s not for our country, and we are not built that way.” The president’s push to restart the faltering U.S. economy goes against the advice of experts who continued to warn the current restrictions might need to stay in place for months to avert a tidal wave of American deaths. His views also clashed with medical workers alarmed at the prospect of overwhelmed emergency rooms, governors who have ordered more than 100 million Americans to stay home, some members of his own party and world leaders who have pursued ever-more-aggressive measures to slow the trajectory of the pandemic. Trump’s optimism about how quickly American life could return to normal also collided with a darkening reality. On Tuesday, the number of confirmed cases of covid-19 in the nation surpassed 50,000, continuing a rapid rise. More than 680 American deaths have been blamed on the disease, and the epicenter of the outbreak has shifted to the New York metropolitan area, which accounts now for more than 60 percent of the U.S. cases and where the disease is spreading at eight to 10 times the rate of anywhere else in the country. Globally, the tally of confirmed cases eclipsed 400,000, suggesting that the pace of infection continues to increase. Italy neared 7,000 deaths from the pandemic, and France became the fifth country to mark more than 1,000 coronavirus fatalities. Japan on Tuesday acknowledged what had become increasingly inevitable — that the 2020 Tokyo Olympics should be put on hold as a growing number of countries vowed not to send athletes if the Games began as scheduled in July. “In light of the current conditions and for all the athletes, we made a proposal of a postponement of about a year, to hold them securely


Conor McGregor makes impassioned plea for ‘true lockdown’ in Ireland and elsewhere

Making impassioned remarks in a video he posted Tuesday, UFC star Conor McGregor implored the government in his native Ireland to impose a “full lockdown” to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus. Addressing the people of Ireland as well as top politicians and government officials there, McGregor said: “I know a good, tough fight when I see one, and we have one on our hands now. I want to call upon my people — the great people of Ireland. This fight needs us all. We’re all in the red corner together, awaiting the bell. So let’s gather together and ring the bell ourselves, including the people of the rest of the world. “A true lockdown must begin, and it must begin now — a lockdown together, a lockdown united.” Ireland has thus far not been among the hardest-hit European countries, but the number of confirmed cases of covid-19 rose by over 200 Tuesday for the second day in a row (per the Irish Times), bringing the total in the country to 1,329 with seven deaths. Having called for an array of preventive measures earlier in the month, including the temporary closure of schools, day care facilities and pubs, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar announced more expansive restrictions Tuesday, such as a closure of all nonessential retail. Varadkar also encouraged people in Ireland to engage in greater social distancing and said no unnecessary travel should take place, both within the country and overseas. McGregor declared that much more was needed, including closing airports and deploying military units as necessary to enforce a lockdown before Ireland suffers the same fate as neighbors such as Italy. “We have the advantage here in that we can see this coming. We can see this coming!” exclaimed the 31-year-old McGregor. “But if we do not act on our advantage, we cannot expect different results. We are not adhering to social distancing, at least not to the extent required to halt exponential growth. A lockdown would facilitate this." The video marked a dramatic shift in tone from some of McGregor’s previous public comments regarding the pandemic, including an Instagram post March 13 in which he wrote, “I believe we have this virus contained,” and, “To the people of the world. We will do this! We are doing this! It’s done. We did it. Congratulations!” On Saturday, the former UFC featherweight and lightweight champion used another Instagram


The coronavirus isn’t alive. That’s why it’s so hard to kill.

Viruses have spent billions of years perfecting the art of surviving without living — a frighteningly effective strategy that makes them a potent threat in today’s world. That’s especially true of the deadly new coronavirus that has brought global society to a screeching halt. It’s little more than a packet of genetic material surrounded by a spiky protein shell one-thousandth the width of an eyelash, and it leads such a zombielike existence that it’s barely considered a living organism. But as soon as it gets into a human airway, the virus hijacks our cells to create millions more versions of itself. There is a certain evil genius to how this coronavirus pathogen works: It finds easy purchase in humans without them knowing. Before its first host even develops symptoms, it is already spreading its replicas everywhere, moving onto its next victim. It is powerfully deadly in some but mild enough in others to escape containment. And for now, we have no way of stopping it. As researchers race to develop drugs and vaccines for the disease that has already sickened 350,000 and killed more than 15,000 people, and counting, this is a scientific portrait of what they are up against. Respiratory viruses tend to infect and replicate in two places: In the nose and throat, where they are highly contagious, or lower in the lungs, where they spread less easily but are much more deadly. This new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, adeptly cuts the difference. It dwells in the upper respiratory tract, where it is easily sneezed or coughed onto its next victim. But in some patients, it can lodge itself deep within the lungs, where the disease can kill. That combination gives it the contagiousness of some colds, along with some of the lethality of its close molecular cousin SARS, which caused a 2002-2003 outbreak in Asia. Another insidious characteristic of this virus: By giving up that bit of lethality, its symptoms emerge less readily than those of SARS, which means people often pass it to others before they even know they have it. It is, in other words, just sneaky enough to wreak worldwide havoc. Viruses much like this one have been responsible for many of the most destructive outbreaks of the past 100 years: the flus of 1918, 1957 and 1968; and SARS, MERS and Ebola. Like the coronavirus, all these diseases are zoonotic — they jumped from an


Respiratory viruses tend to infect and replicate in two places: In the nose and throat, where they are highly contagious, or lower in the lungs, where they spread less easily but are much more deadly. This new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, adeptly cuts the difference. It dwells in the upper respiratory tract, where it is easily sneezed or coughed onto its next victim. But in some patients, it can lodge itself deep within the lungs, where the disease can kill. That combination gives it the contagiousness of some colds, along with some of the lethality of its close molecular cousin SARS, which caused a 2002-2003 outbreak in Asia. Another insidious characteristic of this virus: By giving up that bit of lethality, its symptoms emerge less readily than those of SARS, which means people often pass it to others before they even know they have it. It is, in other words, just sneaky enough to wreak worldwide havoc. Viruses much like this one have been responsible for many of the most destructive outbreaks of the past 100 years: the flus of 1918, 1957 and 1968; and SARS, MERS and Ebola. Like the coronavirus, all these diseases are zoonotic — they jumped from an animal population into humans. And all are caused by viruses that encode their genetic material in RNA. That’s no coincidence, scientists say. The zombielike existence of RNA viruses makes them easy to catch and hard to kill. Outside a host, viruses are dormant. They have none of the traditional trappings of life: metabolism, motion, the ability to reproduce. And they can last this way for quite a long time. Recent laboratory research showed that, although SARS-CoV-2 typically degrades in minutes or a few hours outside a host, some particles can remain viable — potentially infectious — on cardboard for up to 24 hours and on plastic and stainless steel for up to three days. In 2014, a virus frozen in permafrost for 30,000 years that scientists retrieved was able to infect an amoeba after being revived in the lab. When viruses encounter a host, they use proteins on their surfaces to unlock and invade its unsuspecting cells. Then they take control of those cells’ molecular machinery to produce and assemble the materials needed for more viruses. “It’s switching between alive and not alive,” said Gary Whittaker, a Cornell University professor of virology. He described a virus as being somewhere “between


chemistry and biology.” Among RNA viruses, coronaviruses — named for the protein spikes that adorn them like points of a crown — are unique for their size and relative sophistication. They are three times bigger than the pathogens that cause dengue, West Nile and Zika, and are capable of producing extra proteins that bolster their success. “Let’s say dengue has a tool belt with only one hammer,” said Vineet Menachery, a virologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch. This coronavirus has three different hammers, each for a different situation. Among those tools is a proofreading protein, which allows coronaviruses to fix some errors that happen during the replication process. They can still mutate faster than bacteria but are less likely to produce offspring so riddled with detrimental mutations that they can’t survive. Meanwhile, the ability to change helps the germ adapt to new environments, whether it’s a camel’s gut or the airway of a human unknowingly granting it entry with an inadvertent scratch of her nose. Scientists believe that the SARS virus originated as a bat virus that reached humans via civet cats sold in animal markets. This current virus, which can also be traced to bats, is thought to have had an intermediate host, possibly an endangered scaly anteater called a pangolin. “I think nature has been telling us over the course of 20 years that, ‘Hey, coronaviruses that start out in bats can cause pandemics in humans, and we have to think of them as being like influenza, as long-term threats,’” said Jeffery Taubenberger, virologist with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Funding for research on coronaviruses increased after the SARS outbreak, but in recent years that funding has dried up, Taubenberger said. Such viruses usually simply cause colds and were not considered as important as other viral pathogens, he said. Once inside a cell, a virus can make 10,000 copies of itself in a matter of hours. Within a few days, the infected person will carry hundreds of millions of viral particles in every teaspoon of his blood. The onslaught triggers an intense response from the host’s immune system: Defensive chemicals are released. The body’s temperature rises, causing fever. Armies of germ-eating white blood cells swarm the infected region. Often, this response is what makes a person feel sick. Andrew Pekosz, a virologist at Johns Hopkins University, compared viruses to particularly destructive burglars: They