are unloaded at the airport in Toluca. The shipment, including ventilators, arrived after Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador asked President Trump for help. (Marco Ugarte/AP) Olivia López, Mexico City’s secretary of health, said she believed the hospital system would survive the coronavirus tsunami. “We are adding beds every day,” she said. But no one knows how long the virus will besiege the capital . Rafael Lozano, of the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, said he didn’t envision the city hitting its peak for a few more weeks. The institute initially projected 3,400 deaths in Mexico City. Lozano said updated figures, due out soon, will be “much higher.” Questions about the true death toll Officials acknowledge the real death toll is greater than the official numbers. As in many countries, Mexico includes only coronavirus fatalities confirmed with a lab test. But there are indications the undercount could be greater than expected. The civic group Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity Critics say the government is hiding the real toll. The truth might be more prosaic. Mexican authorities have ordered testing of all patients with serious coronavirus-like symptoms. But “since there’s too many patients for the number of [health] personnel, sometimes the test isn’t done,” said Benito Alonso, an internist at the 20 de Noviembre hospital. And many patients die before a test is administered. Maria Del Carmen Acero Camacho, 48, center, gets a hug from sisters Graciela, left, and Margarita in Iztapalapa, Mexico City after she was released following 21 days in a hospital battling covid-19. (Rebecca Blackwell/AP) Death certificates that list “possible” coronavirus, based only on symptoms, are being sent to medical committees to evaluate. Separately, Mexico’s bureaucracy will estimate “excess” deaths — including people who couldn’t get treatment for other conditions during the outbreak. But that could take months. López-Gatell said that it was too time-consuming to compile the full numbers at the height of an epidemic. Unless the real count is far higher than the official data, he said, “the number of deaths doesn’t change my decisions” on urgent matters such as ensuring hospital beds for the ill. [Now joining the fight against coronavirus: The world’s armed rebels, drug cartels and gangs] Some say Mexico is missing the opportunity to break chains of transmission. Nahid Bhardelia studies infectious diseases at Boston University. “How can you say you have a handle on an outbreak if


NetEase Is Returning Home to Go Global. Yeah, Really

So get this. A U.S.-listed, Cayman Islands-domiciled, Chinese internet company is seeking to sell shares in China(1), so that it can become more internationalized. That’s among the bizarre rationales for NetEase Inc.’s offering in Hong Kong, 20 years after the company first debuted on the Nasdaq. The elephant in the room, which gets the briefest of mentions in its 458-page prospectus, is that NetEase is among a raft of Chinese companies that may be booted from U.S. bourses entirely. In his letter to shareholders, William Ding, the founder and chief executive officer, outlines the future of NetEase. Among the plans: going global while solidifying its position in China. He’s putting shareholder money where his mouth is. Around HK$9.6 billion ($1.2 billion), or 45% of the expected HK$21.3 billion to be raised in the initial public offering this week, will go toward strategies to make the business more international, the document says. A mere 10% will be put toward general corporate purposes, including mergers and acquisitions. According to Ding, NetEase has been exploring the world over the past few years, though “some people might not have noticed these efforts.” He’s right about that. The world’s second-largest mobile games company, behind Tencent Holdings Ltd., has launched more than 50 mobile titles since 2015, but garners a mere 11% of gaming revenue outside China. With a huge team of developers and a 20-year history, you’d think that if NetEase was truly going global, it would have a bit more to show for it by now. So, the money to be put toward globalization is around 165% of the sales reaped overseas last year. It’s not like NetEase needs even a dime of that Hong Kong IPO cash. It had around HK$82 billion in cash and equivalents at the end of March, almost four times the amount to be raised in the new share sale. It generated free cash flow of HK$18.2 billion last year. But when you’re asking investors for HK$21 billion in cash that you don’t really need, “going global” is a much better sales pitch than, “We might get kicked off one of the world’s major stock exchanges.” You can’t really blame NetEase for that. It’s among dozens of companies left in limbo as the Beijing-Washington spat escalates to the point of Congress passing laws requiring U.S.-listed Chinese companies to be transparent. As the prospectus notes, Beijing doesn’t allow Chinese auditing


The Health 202: Joe Biden says health care comes first when tackling racial inequality.

Trump over how he has handled the pandemic and the racial unrest around the country. “This president — even now, in the midst of a public health crisis with massive unemployment — wants to destroy it,” he said yesterday. “He doesn’t care how many millions of Americans will be hurt — because he is consumed with his blinding ego when it comes to President Obama.” That’s according to a new review of transmission studies the World Health Organization funded, which was published in the medical journal Lancet. The review “was based on evidence gathered in a wide array of studies focused on the transmission of coronaviruses that cause covid-19, SARS and MERS,” Siobhán O’Grady reports for The Washington Post’s live blog. The review also said N95 respirators are more effective than surgical masks. The studies also underscored the impact of social distancing. People who maintained a distance of three feet, or one meter, from others in both health-care and community environments dramatically decreased the risk of infection. Protection increases with more physical distance from an infected individual. Recordings of internal meetings by the U.N. health agency suggested that while WHO officials were praising China in public, they were complaining behind the scenes that “China was not sharing enough data to assess how effectively the virus spread between people or what risk it posed to the rest of the world, costing valuable time,” the Associated Press reports in this investigation. According to the report, China “sat on releasing the genetic map, or genome, of the virus for more than a week after three different government labs had fully decoded the information. Trump has criticized the WHO, accusing it of plotting with China to hide the extent of the outbreak, and announced the United States will no longer participate in it. “The recordings suggest that rather than colluding with China, as Trump declared, WHO was itself kept in the dark as China gave it the minimal information required by law,” the AP writes. “However, the agency did try to portray China in the best light, likely as a means to secure more information. “None of us can be lulled into this false sense of security that the cases may go down this summer,” Deborah Birx said in a live-streamed discussion with the German Marshall Fund’s president, as Politico’s Sarah Owermohle reports. Birx said no country has developed “enough immunity to protect their


Rebel threats, secret burials and shuttered hospitals mask spread of Yemen’s epidemic

CAIRO — As the coronavirus epidemic sweeps through Yemen, rebels who control the north of the country have been threatening medical workers to keep them quiet, part of an effort to cover up the true toll of the outbreak, humanitarian officials say. In southern Yemen, ill-equipped hospitals are turning away patients with coronavirus symptoms, leaving them uncounted and at risk of dying at home, say international aid workers, local health officials and postings on social media. The result is an outbreak health experts say is dramatically larger than the almost 400 cases and 87 deaths reported by official sources as of Wednesday. Doctors and aid workers say they believe that thousands of Yemenis are being infected every week and hundreds are dying. Yemenis have flooded Facebook and other social media with death condolences in recent weeks, filling their pages with “electronic obituaries,” said one United Nations worker. “We are just seeing the tip of the iceberg,” said Caroline Seguin, Yemen operations manager for the medical charity Doctors Without Borders, the only nongovernmental group treating coronavirus patients in the country. In the worst-case scenario, the virus could ultimately infect about 28 million Yemenis — nearly the entire population — and cause at least 65,000 deaths, Altaf Musani, the World Health Organization’s representative, told the Lancet medical journal last week. Weeks ago, epidemiologists warned that the virus could spread farther and faster in the Arab world’s poorest nation than in many other countries. But the reported case numbers remain deceptively low. The northern rebels, known as the Houthis, have sought to hide the extent of the epidemic by threatening to arrest or kill doctors and journalists if they discuss the outbreak, and ordering the secret burial of those suspected of dying of covid-19, according to aid workers, U.N. employees and local doctors. They also report that armed militiamen have been sent to the homes of people who have fallen ill. People are now too scared to report illness. In the south, controlled by various armed groups, hospitals and clinics are turning away patients displaying coronavirus symptoms because of overcrowded wards and lack of trained staff and equipment, said U.N. experts and aid workers. Other facilities have closed because health workers are afraid to work without adequate personal protective gear and testing kits. Deaths are mounting in the main southern city, Aden, with about 8o every day, a sevenfold increase over the normal


at least 65,000 deaths, Altaf Musani, the World Health Organization’s representative, told the Lancet medical journal last week. Weeks ago, epidemiologists warned that the virus could spread farther and faster in the Arab world’s poorest nation than in many other countries. But the reported case numbers remain deceptively low. The northern rebels, known as the Houthis, have sought to hide the extent of the epidemic by threatening to arrest or kill doctors and journalists if they discuss the outbreak, and ordering the secret burial of those suspected of dying of covid-19, according to aid workers, U.N. employees and local doctors. They also report that armed militiamen have been sent to the homes of people who have fallen ill. People are now too scared to report illness. In the south, controlled by various armed groups, hospitals and clinics are turning away patients displaying coronavirus symptoms because of overcrowded wards and lack of trained staff and equipment, said U.N. experts and aid workers. Other facilities have closed because health workers are afraid to work without adequate personal protective gear and testing kits. Deaths are mounting in the main southern city, Aden, with about 8o every day, a sevenfold increase over the normal death toll earlier this spring, according to Doctors Without Borders. In one week last month, at least 385 people in Aden died of coronavirus-like symptoms, said the charity Save the Children. Long before the coronavirus emerged, Yemen was already being called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with at least 10 million people on the edge of famine. On Tuesday, a U.N. appeal for countries to fund emergency programs in Yemen fell far short of its goal, raising the prospect that programs to address the coronavirus epidemic could be slashed within weeks. Starvation, poverty and a litany of diseases have left Yemenis particularly vulnerable to the ravages of covid-19. “There are preliminary reports from the isolation units that point to exceptionally high case-fatality rates,” said Lise Grande, the United Nations’ top humanitarian official in Yemen. “Although we don’t have strong enough testing and a strong enough information base, the rate indicates it could be more than double what it is in other countries.” In the capital, Sanaa, a sign posted on a wall of the city’s largest and best-known burial ground reads: “Dear relatives of the deceased, we assure you that Khozaimah cemetery is full.” Yet the Houthi authorities have reported


death toll earlier this spring, according to Doctors Without Borders. In one week last month, at least 385 people in Aden died of coronavirus-like symptoms, said the charity Save the Children. Long before the coronavirus emerged, Yemen was already being called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with at least 10 million people on the edge of famine. On Tuesday, a U.N. appeal for countries to fund emergency programs in Yemen fell far short of its goal, raising the prospect that programs to address the coronavirus epidemic could be slashed within weeks. Starvation, poverty and a litany of diseases have left Yemenis particularly vulnerable to the ravages of covid-19. “There are preliminary reports from the isolation units that point to exceptionally high case-fatality rates,” said Lise Grande, the United Nations’ top humanitarian official in Yemen. “Although we don’t have strong enough testing and a strong enough information base, the rate indicates it could be more than double what it is in other countries.” In the capital, Sanaa, a sign posted on a wall of the city’s largest and best-known burial ground reads: “Dear relatives of the deceased, we assure you that Khozaimah cemetery is full.” Yet the Houthi authorities have reported just four coronavirus cases and one death in their area, which accounts for more than two-thirds of the country’s population. Rebel health officials strictly control coronavirus testing, releasing results only if they are negative, said international aid officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid being targeted by the Houthis. On Twitter and Facebook, Yemenis in Houthi-controlled areas have posted accounts of sending relatives with covid-19 symptoms to hospitals and never hearing from them again. Authorities did not permit the family members to retrieve the bodies of the deceased or inform them that the government had buried them. Yemenis have posted videos purportedly showing health workers, in white or green protective suits, secretly burying those thought to have died of the disease. Doctors and nurses in the north have been detained, and others have had their phones taken away to prevent them from discussing the epidemic, according to aid workers and social media postings. In some cases, armed escorts have accompanied health teams to the homes of suspected cases, rounding up the sick and their relatives at gunpoint to take them to isolation areas, according to aid workers and accounts on social media. While the social media postings


The Cybersecurity 202: Chaos in primary elections offers troubling signs for November

Sometimes-chaotic primary elections across eight states and the District of Columbia foreshadowed challenges that could undermine the security and legitimacy of the general election in November. There were signs of dangerous shortcuts and workarounds, especially in the District where officials couldn’t get mail-in ballots out to everyone who requested them and resorted to accepting emailed ballots. Security experts warn such ballots are highly vulnerable to hacking because voters can’t verify they were recorded accurately. That was the biggest security concern on a night that was also marked by hours-long lines for in-person voting, last-minute extensions for absentee voting, and anxiety about going to the polls during the coronavirus pandemic and nationwide protests against police violence, which prompted curfews in some places including Washington and Philadelphia. The good news was that Department of Homeland Security officials said they hadn’t seen any signs of cyberattacks or significant disinformation campaigns from Russia or elsewhere as of a midday briefing. But they warned that disinformation attacks in particular might take more time to identify. Overall, the day produced a middling report card for election officials, with one big note: Needs improvement before November. “We’re looking at administering elections when there’s an ongoing threat from foreign adversaries coupled with a pandemic and now civil unrest,” Voters in the District, Maryland and Rhode Island all reported not receiving mail-in ballots or struggling to request them, Amy Gardner, Elise Viebeck and Natalie Pompilio report. The states were all dealing with huge increases in voting by mail, which experts say is the safest way to vote during a pandemic considering the public health risks of going to the polls. In one Pennsylvania county, a judge ordered the mail-in deadline extended for as many as 500 people who had requested but not received mailed ballots. The state’s top election official Kathy Boockvar said she expected an even greater crush of absentee voting in the general election. “This surge is one thing, but I think we can expect a lot more than this in November, even without covid-19,” she said. In Indiana, meanwhile, the clerk of the state’s most populous county warned last week that thousands of ballots might not be counted because they would not be returned by the Election Day deadline. Elections were also held in Iowa, Montana, New Mexico, South Dakota, Rhode Island and Indiana. In addition to allowing emailed ballots, officials there resorted to driving across


Voting problems in D.C., Maryland lead to calls for top officials to resign

The primary elections held Tuesday in Maryland and the District were a test of a mostly vote-by-mail election, a prospect that much of the country could face in the high-stakes November general election if the coronavirus pandemic continues to disrupt in-person gatherings. On Wednesday, local leaders declared that the two jurisdictions failed that test. They called for top elections officials to resign after botched delivery of absentee ballots and hours-long waits at polling places left some voters disenfranchised. D.C. Council member Charles Allen (D-Ward 6) announced June 19 hearings on what went wrong, and Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) called it “completely unacceptable” that some voters didn’t get ballots and called for hearings in the General Assembly. Maryland Lt. Gov. Boyd K. Rutherford (R) and Comptroller Peter K. Franchot (D) said Linda H. Lamone, director of the State Board of Elections, should relinquish her post. D.C. Council member Elissa Silverman (I-At Large) said D.C. Board of Elections Chair Michael Bennett should resign, as well. “A full investigation is needed given voters were likely disenfranchised due to this screw-up. Unacceptable,” tweeted Silverman, who said she received about 500 emails Monday and Tuesday from voters who had requested absentee ballots but did not receive them. D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) promised to prioritize an inquiry. “It’s important we have a full airing of what happened,” he said. “Voters shouldn’t have to wait an hour, and I understand in some places it was five hours.” Lamone, who was appointed by the State Board of Elections and confirmed by the Maryland Senate, has held the job since 1997. She did not respond to an email seeking comment. “I think it’s time for new leadership there, and to be done early, with enough time to correct all of these issues before the November election,” Rutherford said. “I call on the Senate to work with us to find new leadership, and I encourage the administrator to step down.” Franchot said Armstead B.C. Jones Sr., director of the Baltimore City Board of Elections, should be removed, as well. “Our city, state and country are already facing far too many existential challenges without corroded public confidence in the integrity of our democratic process,” he said. Jones did not return a call to his office. Bennett, who said he does not plan to resign, said, “We’re going to be doing ‘lessons learned’ and figuring out how best to


Trump irresponsibly abandons the WHO while the pandemic surges in less developed nations

has opposed lockdowns and rejected advice from public health experts. Health-care systems in poor regions are collapsing. Cases are also shooting up in Peru and remain high in Chile and Argentina. Meanwhile, India, which imposed a strict nationwide lockdown March 25, is now lifting it, and cases are spiking. The fight against the virus caused massive unemployment — some 100 million people lost their jobs or left the labor force. Covid-19 wards in Mumbai have been full for three weeks, and patients are being turned away. “It is going to be a mess,” Jayaprakash Muliyil, a leading Indian epidemiologist, told The Post. Although the number of cases in Africa has been low, they are starting to surge there, too, and many are not well prepared. Africa has carried out 685 tests per million people, far below the 37,000 per million in Italy or 22,000 per million in the United States, meaning many cases may be undetected. Nigeria, Ethiopia and Egypt have 1,920 intensive care beds among them for more than 400 million people. The knock-on impact of the pandemic is just as severe as the disease. A United Nations study predicts an increase of between 50 million and 70 million people living in extreme poverty compared with the original estimates for this year, with the pain heavily skewed toward sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. The United Nations Development Program says the virus has triggered a “systemic crisis” across all facets of human development, potentially setting back decades of progress in health, education and economic well-being. By mid-April, more than 1.4 billion children ages 5 to 17 in 147 countries (or 86 percent of children worldwide) were out of school. The pandemic has also dealt a huge setback to vaccination campaigns against measles, diptheria and polio. In a statement, the World Health Organization and others estimated that routine immunization services are being substantially hindered in at least 68 countries and about 80 million children under the age of 1 year old are likely to be affected. Public health experts worry that as nations throw limited resources into fighting the pandemic, there will be less for fighting HIV/AIDs, malaria and tuberculosis. All of this will put extra demands on the WHO, which has been at the front lines of fighting disease in the developing world — and it’s more evidence that President Trump’s decision to abandon the WHO is irresponsible and damaging.


Clinging to hope of a life in America, these migrants in Mexico united to practice their own brand of democracy

[Editor’s note: This story was reported before the coronavirus hit Mexico. There were no known cases of covid-19 in the camp at the time the story was published.] The leaders sat in lawn chairs, slippery with dust, beside the Rio Grande. Above them, sagging clotheslines crosshatched the sky. They had arranged themselves in a circle. Here, at least, everyone was equal. As the council made its way through the day’s agenda, the wind carried with it the sounds of the camp — children’s laughter, a baby’s cry, the call of the vendor with the rickety red cart: “Helados, helados, solo cinco pesos.” The council was meeting by request of Elizabeth Cavazos, a retired mental health professional who, as part of her volunteer work with the Angry Tias and Abuelas of the Rio Grande Valley, relayed information from officials here in Matamoros, Mexico, to the residents of the migrant camp that has arisen along the city’s northern shore. All of the migrants had the same goal — to be granted asylum in the United States. They had fled violence, indigence and threats to their lives, and undertaken perilous journeys through the desert. They had turned themselves over to the U.S. Border Patrol and been given dates for preliminary hearings (which, because of the pandemic, have all been pushed back to late June at the earliest). And then — living in tents, surviving with donated clothes and food — they began to wait. In late January, the migrants began to organize. By this point, they had arranged themselves more or less according to country of origin. Mexicans lived closest to the river; Hondurans, next to the Cubans, were farthest to the south; Guatemalans camped by the stadium stairs, and so on. They coordinated a political system, electing a leader from each national community to serve on a governing council that would oversee communication, resource distribution, a cleaning schedule and responses to camp-wide matters as they arose. The leaders set up groups on WhatsApp on their smartphones to provide alerts to everyone in their communities at once. Maura Sammon, a Pennsylvania physician volunteering in the camp, described her impression of its organization. “They’ve created a spontaneous representative democracy,” she told me. “I’ve never heard of anything like it before.” Today marked the first time that all of the elected representatives of each of the eight main countries represented in the camp — Mexico,


In the rush to bring students to campus, professors ask: What about us?

space between instructors and students. “Literally everything we do over the next weeks will be driven by our concern for the health of our community,” Doty said. At Ohio State University, no fall plan has been announced, and geography professor Kendra McSweeney applauded the university for taking its time. But she can’t imagine what plan could ease her concerns, given an ongoing public health crisis that has killed 100,000 people in the country and counting. A lot of classrooms are small and poorly ventilated, she said. Some colleagues have compromised immune systems. Even if classes remain online-only, a lot of the burden could fall on underpaid, overworked teaching assistants. Benjamin Johnson, a spokesman for Ohio State, said the university is using “a data-driven approach to recommend when it is safe to begin transitioning back onto campus as well as robust safety protocols.” The panel driving the decision, he said, is led by the deans of the College of Public Health and College of Nursing. At the University of Tulsa, the email that rankled Hindman, sent by interim university president Janet K. Levit, announced a plan to offer a flexible blend of online and in-person instruction in the fall. In a list of anticipated changes, such as ensuring physical distancing in classrooms and adjusting the academic calendar, she wrote every class would have a “back-up faculty of record.” A spokeswoman for the university said the idea came from a task-force subgroup led by faculty. Before the semester begins, a designated faculty member will be included in the learning management system for each course, Mona Chamberlin explained, “should an instructor be unavailable to teach for any reason related to covid-19.” The plan includes accommodations for students and instructors who cannot attend, or do not feel comfortable, attending in-person classes. When asked about faculty concerns, Levit provided several examples of how professors had been included throughout the pandemic. She said the plan to reopen the university was presented to the faculty senate a week before it was presented to the board of trustees for approval, and the president of the faculty senate and two deans are members of the school’s covid-19 management team. Administrators have made increased efforts to include faculty in key decisions in recent months, Hindman acknowledged. “I think they genuinely want to do the right thing,” he said. “But at the end of the day, we’re an afterthought.” At some


Caught between silence and clamor, these musicians find connection in birdsong

of birdsong. Alan Pierson, director and conductor of the New York-based new-music mainstay Alarm Will Sound, recalls clearly the strange silence that fell over his home in Brooklyn and the rest of the city with something that approaches nostalgia. “These are loud, busy, bustling streets, and it was really amazing in those early days of the pandemic how it just stopped,” he says in a phone interview. “There was quiet in a way that I’ve never experienced here. I’m sure they were present before, but suddenly the air was filled with birdsongs in a way it never was before.” In the midst of a terrifying and wrenching event, Pierson says, he felt something “special and magical” about the new proportions of the city’s sound. “But already,” he says, “it’s gone.” Alan Pierson, Alarm Will Sound’s conductor and artistic director. (Joshua Simpson Photography) That overwhelming quiet, the confines of quarantine and the creative restlessness, which afflicted every one of Alarm Will Sound’s 15 members, inspired Pierson to dream up a series of digital performances, the first of which is an at-home adaptation of composer John Luther Adams’s “Ten Thousand Birds,” a piece inspired by “particular birdsongs, captured in minute detail,” that AWS premiered in 2014. Like many of Adams’s works, “Ten Thousand Birds” dissolves the usual strictures of orchestral playing, scattering the players across a given space, usually outdoors. Viewers are able to wander in and around the players, who use their instruments to approximate the songs of various birds and their instincts to guide them through the rhythms of a day. “In this music, time is not measured,” Adams wrote in 2014. “Each page in the score will be its own self-contained world that occupies its own physical space and its own time.” In this way, audience members become passive participants in the piece, conducting the music simply by moving through it and listening from wherever they are. The musicians play off of each other as well as the audience. Pierson has written that one of the great joys of performing the piece, which his group has done several times, is that he has “absolutely nothing to do.” “We’re far apart,” he says. “There’s no pulse that we’re all feeling together. But that space, that distance, opens up a different kind of connection that’s really deep and beautiful. It’s all these players listening to each other and having dialogue with


More privacy news: Your Phone Is a Goldmine of Hidden Data for Cops. Here’s How to Fight Back Federal authorities have more than proven that they aren’t above siphoning off nearly every digital footprint we make in the name of profiling and policing every person in the crowd. Gizmodo To Build Its COVID-19 Task Force, Las Vegas Partnered With A Company Linked To UAE Intelligence Group 42 helped provide “vital testing materials" to Las Vegas. It also owns an app that spied on people. BuzzFeed News Industry report The cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike reported an 85 percent jump in revenue. A photographer edits photos. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images) The spike may have been boosted by companies’ shift to telework during the pandemic, CyberScoop’s Jeff Stone reports. More news from the cybersecurity community: Hackers and hucksters reinvigorate 'Anonymous' brand amid protests The amorphous internet activist movement known as Anonymous staged an online resurgence in the past week on the back of real-world protests against police brutality. Reuters Chat room Russia is using clashes between police and protesters for anti-U.S. propaganda. Foreign Policy’s Robbie Gramer: Obvious hypocrisy here given Russia's dismal human rights record and atrocious record on free press. But it doesn't change the fact that US police have targeted & attacked journalists covering protests in recent daysRU & Chinese propaganda outlets are seizing the moment https://t.co/qVNEgSnTqv — Robbie Gramer (@RobbieGramer) June 2, 2020 Daybook The House Judiciary Committee will host a hearing on protecting the right to vote during the coronavirus pandemic at 10 a.m. today. The RSA Conference will host a webcast on nation-state cyberthreats and the 2020 election on Thursday at 4 p.m. The Brennan Center for Justice and Microsoft’s Defending Democracy Program will host a workshop, “Building Election Resilience,” at noon on Friday. The Senate Judiciary Committee has scheduled a hearing, titled “COVID-19 Fraud: Law Enforcement’s Response to Those Exploiting the Pandemic,” for June 9 at 10 a.m. Secure log off D.C. resident Rahul Dubey gave refuge to about 60 protesters inside his home after law enforcement pushed them down his street, firing chemicals at them. h5{font:bold 24px/125% 'FranklinPro', sans-serif !important;text-transform: initial;margin-bottom:10px !important;}p + h5 {margin-top:32px !important;}blockquote p{font-style:italic !important; border-left:solid 5px #ccc !important;padding: 0 0 0 15px !important;margin-bottom:35px !important;}.signup-box-rr p{font:bold 22px/115% 'PostoniWide', serif !important;}#newsletter-signUp-button{width: auto !important;padding: 11px 14px !important;}.signup-box-rr .nl-wrapper{padding: 20px 0px !important;border-bottom: 1px solid #ccc !important;border-top: 1px solid #ccc !important;}@media only screen and (max-width: 61.9375em){ h5{margin-left:6%;margin-right:5%;}}


U.S. Cases Rise 1.2%; NYC Keeps Monday Reopening: Virus Update

New York City still plans to begin reopening Monday, while Governor Andrew Cuomo warned that mass protests against police violence could accelerate the spread of coronavirus and undo weeks of social-distancing efforts. French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire vowed not to raise taxes, even as the pandemic dealt a bigger blow to the economy than expected. Hong Kong extended virus-prevention measures after a new cluster of cases, and Tokyo’s infections spiked. In the U.K., Prime Minister Boris Johnson plans to reset his government’s agenda with a financial statement and a speech on the post-pandemic landscape. Meanwhile, the country’s statistics body criticized the government’s testing data. Key Developments: • Virus Tracker: Cases pass 6.3 million; deaths exceed 378,000 • No-deal Brexit threat looms over pandemic-ravaged U.K. • Wall Street sends wine, masks to clients with steakhouses closed • Trump’s WHO exit threatens polio, tuberculosis along with Covid • Social distancing is improving your shopping experience • Closing factories the French way: A long, painful demise Subscribe to a daily update on the virus from Bloomberg’s Prognosis team here. Click VRUS on the terminal for news and data on the coronavirus. For a look back at this week’s top stories from QuickTake, click here. Journals Raise Concerns About Data in Covid Studies (5:15 p.m. NY) Two prestigious medical journals said they have significant concerns about a database that was used to look at how older drugs may work in the treatment of Covid-19. The New England Journal of Medicine published an “expression of concern” about a study published by the journal on May 1 that looked at the use of heart drugs called ACE inhibitors in coronavirus patients. Later Tuesday the Lancet, a nearly 200-year-old U.K. medical journal, issued its own similar warning on a study about treating Covid-19 patients with the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine. Both studies relied on data from a firm called Surgisphere Corp., which says it aggregates information from medical records around the globe. Last week, more more than 200 scientists signed a letter to the Lancet asking for greater transparency regarding the hospitals where patients’ medical records came from and the method of analysis, along with other issues. A call Tuesday to Surgisphere wasn’t answered. Zoom Sales Soars on Video Conference Use (5:30 p.m. NY) Zoom Video Communications Inc. reported quarterly sales that more than doubled, leapfrogging analysts’ estimates, showing that a surge in demand for its video-conference


rise in demand, according to a representative for the high-speed rail service. Eurostar has two trains a day in each direction on the Paris-London route Monday to Thursday and three trains on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. It maintains one train in each direction on the London-Brussels route. Iceland Proceeds With Airport Testing (9:45 a.m. NY) Iceland is proceeding with plans to test all incoming airline passengers for Covid-19 from June 15 in a bid to salvage tourism, its biggest export. The government’s announcement follows consultations with the country’s chief epidemiologist and a deal with DeCODE Genetics, which will assist with the testing facilities. Separately, the Portuguese government said it’s in advanced talks with Germany about setting up an “air corridor” for tourists. The government also started talks about this with the U.K. last week, Economy Minister Pedro Siza Vieira said at a parliamentary hearing in Lisbon. Tokyo Issues Virus Alert After Cases Spike (9:44 a.m. NY) Tokyo issued an alert to residents for the first time urging additional caution against the pandemic, after a spike in new cases. There were 34 new infections in the Japanese capital on Tuesday, the most in a single day in more than three weeks. Governor Yuriko Koike triggered what she dubbed a “Tokyo Alert,” aiming to heighten residents’ awareness, which could lead to businesses in the capital again being asked to close their doors should a surge continue. Lufthansa Introduces Mandatory Face Masks (9:35 a.m. NY) Lufthansa is making it compulsory for people to wear face masks on its flights from June 8, according to a statement. Passengers must wear the masks when boarding, during the flight and when leaving the aircraft. Exceptions will be made for children under the age of 6 and for health reasons. Top U.K. Statistics Official Questions Government Data (8:25 a.m. NY) The U.K’s statistics body criticized the government’s coronavirus-testing data, saying it falls well short of expectations. In a letter Tuesday to Health Secretary Matt Hancock, David Norgrove, chair of the U.K. Statistics Authority, said that the “aim seems to be to show the largest possible number of tests,” which gives them “limited value” in terms of analysis. “It is not surprising that given their inadequacy, data on testing are so widely criticized and often mistrusted,” he wrote. Norway’s $10 Billion Oil Aid Package Set for a Boost (8:11 a.m. NY) Norway’s opposition lawmakers are set to beef


Agency reports. It will be Turkey’s first serious step in lifting restrictions on international travel since shutting down flights more than two months ago. Tourists from EU member states and Russia account for a majority of foreign visitors Turkey relies on for tens of billions of dollars in foreign-exchange revenues every year. In their absence due to the pandemic, Turkey is offering cheap loans to attract local visitors to holiday resorts across the country. Egypt Caps Costs for Treating Coronvirus at Private Hospitals (6:24 a.m. NY) Egypt set a daily cap of 10,000 Egyptian pounds ($626) for treating coronavirus patients at private hospitals, citing complaints about inflated prices. The Health Ministry stipulated a top-tier payment of 7,500-10,000 pounds for patients in intensive care and who require a ventilator. It capped the daily cost for patients in isolation and not in an ICU or on a ventilator at 1,500-3,000 pounds, according to a statement. U.K. House Prices Drop Most Since 2009 Under Lockdown (5:33 p.m. HK) Property values dropped 1.7% in May, the biggest decline since February 2009, Nationwide Building Society said Tuesday. Separately, the Bank of England said U.K. household borrowing plunged in April as the first full month of lockdown pummeled the economy. Households on balance repaid 7.4 billion pounds ($9.3 billion) of consumer credit in April, the most since comparable records began in 1993. The cost of the U.K.’s virus-support measures has risen to 56 billion pounds as the government pays the wages of 8.7 million jobs, according to the latest figures from the Treasury. China Vehicle Sales Likely Rose for a Second Month, Group Says (5:28 p.m. HK) Wholesales of cars as well as commercial vehicles such as light trucks probably increased about 12% to 2.14 million units last month, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said Tuesday, signaling a recovery in the world’s largest car market is gathering pace. In the first five months of the year, deliveries to dealers fell 23% to 7.9 million units, the trade body said in a statement, without giving further details. Iran Reports Rise in Number of New Virus Cases (5:27 p.m. HK) Iran’s daily number of new coronavirus cases edged up to 3,117 from 2,979 on Monday, bringing the total known infections to 157,562. The death tally rose to 7,942 with 64 more deaths in the past 24 hours. South Korea Plans Third Extra Budget, Official Says (5:25 p.m.)


The Keys to Speed in Race for Vaccine, and Its Perils: QuickTake

on average nearly 11 years. And just 6% of experimental vaccines make it all the way. 2. Why does it usually take so long? An inoculation must clear a higher bar than a drug because it’s injected into healthy individuals. After testing a vaccine in animals, developers must show it’s safe and effective in humans. That usually happens in three phases, starting with tests in a small number of people aimed at achieving the strongest immune response without significant side effects. Larger-scale studies follow. The final leg, which often requires thousands of patients and lasts years, evaluates a vaccine in the population it’s intended for. If a vaccine passes these tests, it must then satisfy regulators and be produced in large quantities. 3. How might a Covid-19 vaccine be hastened? Experts are employing or proposing a number of ways: • Using innovative vaccine designs. About a fifth of the Covid-19 vaccine projects rely on so-called gene-based technology. It uses the body’s own cells to produce proteins that trick the immune system to react as if it’s been invaded by a pathogen, training it for the real thing. These experimental vaccines can be made more speedily than conventional ones, which contain an inactivated or weakened version of a pathogen, or a piece of it. Using a gene-based platform, Fauci’s NIAID and Moderna Inc. began the first human test of an experimental Covid-19 vaccine a record-short 66 days after Chinese researchers made public the coronavirus’s genetic sequence. An important caveat: No gene-based vaccine has yet been licensed for humans, although a few are in use in veterinary medicine. • Compressing steps. Another reason Moderna was able to move so quickly was that rather than testing its vaccine in animals before moving on to humans, it did both simultaneously. For Covid-19 vaccines, U.S. and European regulators in March waived the requirement for proving efficacy in animals first. • Building on past work. Researchers at the University of Oxford got a jump by betting on a method they’ve used in their ongoing work on a vaccine against Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, which is caused by a related coronavirus. That vaccine appeared to be safe in animal and early human testing. The technique uses a modified cold virus as a harmless carrier to expose the immune system to the spiked protein that projects from the surface of a coronavirus rather like a crown, hence the


links to arthritis. Some vaccines have been shown to do the opposite of what they’re designed to do by inducing unwanted immune responses. In the 1960s, an experimental vaccine for RSV, a common respiratory virus, not only failed to protect children, but made them more susceptible. Two toddlers died. In recent years, Sanofi’s dengue vaccine was found to exacerbate symptoms in some who received it. Documented reports of unexpected side effects from new vaccines are different from the persistent and incorrect belief that well-established vaccines against childhood diseases carry significant risks. A fumbled Covid-19 shot could further damage perceptions of vaccines. 6. If a vaccine pans out, how does it get mass produced? Given the high failure rate for experimental vaccines, developers usually don’t invest in the capacity to manufacture lots of doses before a new one looks like a winner. In this case, some of the most prominent players in the race, such as Johnson & Johnson, Sanofi and Moderna, are scaling up production facilities already. CEPI, backed by philanthropist Bill Gates, wants to set up manufacturing facilities in every region. Glaxo announced that it is collaborating with Sanofi, an Australian university and two Chinese companies on projects that use its adjuvants, vaccine ingredients that boost the immune response, in the hope of making it easier to produce shots in larger quantities. 7. How would a vaccine get delivered to every corner of the globe? Some populations are bound to get vaccine supplies before others. One risk is that wealthier nations will monopolize Covid-19 vaccines, a scenario that played out in the 2009 swine flu pandemic. A fund-raising drive launched by the European Union brought in pledges of more than $10 billion to develop coronavirus vaccines, treatments and tests and deploy them universally. Immunizing the world would cost multiples of that figure, according to Seth Berkley, head of Gavi, a global non-profit organization focused on vaccine delivery. His group proposes a financing measure called an advance market commitment, aimed initially at getting doses to health workers. In such an arrangement, vaccine companies agree to make their products available at affordable prices in return for funding commitments from governments or other donors. Health advocates say that distributing vaccines evenly all over the globe isn’t just the ethical thing to do. It’s also critical to ending the crisis. For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com ©2020 Bloomberg L.P.


Fewer spectators, mandatory tests: Japan considers a ‘simplified’ Olympics

TOKYO — Japan is exploring options to host a "simplified" version of the Olympic Games in Tokyo next year that could involve fewer spectators and mandatory coronavirus tests, if that is the only way to avoid an outright cancellation, Japanese media reported Thursday. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe says he wants the Games to go ahead in a “complete” form, but John Coates, head of the International Olympic Committee’s coordination body with Tokyo, has said organizers needed to start planning for what could be a “very different” Olympics if the threat from covid-19 has not been eradicated. “Holding the Olympic and Paralympic Games calls for sympathy and understanding of Tokyoites and the Japanese people,” Tokyo’s governor, Yuriko Koike, told reporters without providing details, according to Reuters. “For that, we need to rationalize what needs to be rationalized and simplify what needs to be simplified.” The Yomiuri newspaper, citing unnamed sources in the government and organizing committee, said Japan was considering making the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests for the coronavirus mandatory for all spectators, as well as athletes and staff, and limiting movement in and out of the Athletes’ Village. Kyodo News Tokyo 2020 spokesman Masa Takaya did not confirm the reports but said the IOC and Japanese organizers were studying ways to “optimize and streamline” the Games to reduce costs, while details of how to respond to the coronavirus will take place in the fall when more information is available. “The spread of the novel coronavirus . . . is something very ambiguous, and we have no ability to completely understand what the situation will look like next year,” he said. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga declined to say whether the government was sticking to its promise to hold a “complete” Games. “It is also extremely important to host a secure and safe Games,” he told a news conference Thursday. The Games were delayed by a year due to the coronavirus pandemic and are now scheduled to be held from July 23 to Aug. 8 next year, with the Paralympic Games to take place between Aug. 24 and Sept. 5. Organizers have ruled out a further delay. Faced with massive demand, Tokyo 2020 organizers say they sold nearly 4.5 million tickets to the 2020 Olympics to residents of Japan and an undisclosed number to people in other countries — before the Games were delayed — out of a total


Trump’s response to unrest raises concerns among those trained to detect democratic regression

The administration's response to civil unrest presents major questions about the president’s approach to power. Can Trump use tactics at home that the U.S. condemns abroad? What are the risks of politicizing the military? Reporter Greg Miller explains.


The Health 202: Manufacturers promise plenty of coronavirus tests for a possible second wave in the fall

Post. “I’m cautiously optimistic that both countries will be successful in developing a vaccine for their own country.” That’s according to interviews with nearly 60 public health experts, lawmakers and community leaders who said the sites were placed there despite requests from black leaders. Local governments also focused few of their coronavirus education campaigns, including guidance about social distancing, on African Americans. “Poor reporting of data, which initially masked the fact that the disease was disproportionately affecting black communities, remains a problem even as states move to reopen their economies,” Robert Samuels, Aaron Williams, Tracy Jan and Jose A. Del Real report. “Today, Americans living in counties with above-average black populations are three times as likely to die of the coronavirus as those in above-average white counties, according to an analysis of census and other data by The Washington Post.” Some tried to sound the alarm early. Shreveport Mayor Adrian Perkins in March created a map that showed cases were clustering downtown and in black neighborhoods. “He had shared his computerized map, with its telling clusters of red pins, with black clergy on April 1, enlisting their help in sounding an alarm on what he deemed hot spots,” Robert, Aaron, Tracy and Jose write. “…Yet in the midst of a global pandemic, other local leaders appeared nervous about Perkins publicizing his findings. It resurrected a familiar conversation in this country, in times of crisis or not, about whether drawing attention to race would do more harm than good.” They add: “Those concerns initially helped delay the release of data about the virus’s racial impact.” The first randomized clinical trial testing the antimalarial drug hyped by the president found it was no more effective than a placebo at preventing the disease caused by the coronavirus, Laurie McGinley and Ariana Eunjung Cha report. “The results were the latest development in a highly charged medical and political issue — the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in combating covid-19,” they write. “Trump has repeatedly touted the drug as a ‘game changer’ for covid-19 and recently said he took a course of it. But federal regulators have said it should be used only for hospitalized patients or in clinical trials, because of possible side effects including serious heart-rhythm issues.” The trial’s researchers enrolled more than 800 adults in the United States and Canada who were exposed to someone with covid-19 in their jobs as health workers or


Hundreds of nursing homes ran short on staff, protective gear as more than 30,000 residents died during pandemic

New federal data released Thursday reflect the rising death toll from covid-19 at the nation’s nursing homes and the desperate need at thousands of facilities for critical personnel and basic supplies. More than three months after the coronavirus began sweeping through U.S. nursing homes, thousands of homes are still underequipped for the continuing onslaught, the data show. So far, the number of nursing home deaths attributed to covid-19 has reached nearly 32,000 residents and more than 600 employees, and both counts are sure to rise: About 12 percent of the nation’s 15,000 homes have not yet reported figures. The new numbers, building on data released Tuesday that showed about 26,000 resident deaths, include the death toll from more homes. The data offer a statistical portrait of an industry at the center of the pandemic’s fury unable to properly care for its 1.4 million residents: Nearly 2,000 facilities reported a shortage of nursing staff and more than 2,200 said they lack enough aides, according to the data. The figures on basic supplies are similarly dire: More than 250 nursing homes lack any surgical masks and another 800 are within a week of running out. More than 2,000 are a week away from running out of gowns and more than 800 are a week away from depleting hand sanitizer supplies. More than 500 lack any N95 masks used to prevent infection, according to the data. "We have failed the residents and we have failed the staff as a society,” said Michael Wasserman, president of the California Association of Long Term Care Medicine. Nursing homes with stringent infection control and adequate staffing were better equipped to prevent the spread of the coronavirus once it struck, Wasserman said, but even the best nursing homes lacked personal protective equipment and access to testing. “This is something the CDC should have been studying from the beginning,” he said. The federal government’s decision to provide information about outbreaks at nursing homes comes after more than a dozen states refused to make public the same information, spurring lawsuits across the United States. As of the end of May, 14 states were not disclosing information about the pandemic’s impact on nursing homes, according to a survey by USA Today. In some states — including Arizona and Idaho — media organizations have filed lawsuits demanding the information, arguing that the public ought to know which nursing homes have outbreaks. In


other states, legal pressure has led to public release of the information. In Florida, for example, state officials released more information following a lawsuit drafted by the Miami Herald and supported by other media organizations including The Washington Post. The federal government eventually stepped into the dispute, requiring more public disclosure about the nursing home outbreaks. In April, the U.S. agency that oversees nursing homes — the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services — issued a rule calling for nursing homes to report information on coronavirus cases and deaths among residents and staff to the agency. “We wanted to be as transparent as possible with the American people,” CMS Administrator Seema Verma said Thursday. The data released Thursday covers nearly 9 in 10 of the country’s 15,000 federally certified nursing homes. It does not include assisted-living centers and other types of eldercare facilities not certified and inspected by the CMS. The data includes information on cases and deaths per home as well as shortages of staff and PPE, which some homes have blamed for their high rates of infection. The data also will be used by researchers to study one of the central mysteries about the ravages of the virus at the nation’s nursing homes: Why did the virus run rampant at some nursing homes, infecting most residents, while at other facilities the effects of the virus have been minimal? Industry associations have argued that nursing homes are blameless and that no amount of preparation could have prevented an outbreak at any home. Instead, they say, the outbreaks tended to happen at larger homes in communities where the virus is widespread. Some academics agree. People may “believe the narrative that it’s the nursing home’s fault,” said Vincent Mor, a professor of health services, policy and practices at Brown University. “It’s a narrative that people really want to hear because it’s too frightening to assume that it’s all random.” But, he said, the likelihood of an outbreak at a home is not about the home’s quality. Instead, he said, the outbreaks reflect “the prevalence of the virus in the county, the size of the home and the population density.” Verma, of the CMS, on Thursday disputed that assessment. She said many nursing homes that made “stringent efforts” to screen staff and enforce hand-washing and other infection-control measures saw no outbreaks or deaths. The agency looked at homes with high rates of


A D.C. street musician was troubled by rioting. He decided to save the city he loved — with a song.

As dusk fell on the fifth day of protests in the nation’s capital — with thousands of people gathered as close as they could get to the White House — a woman with long violet braids strode to the heart of the crowd, gripped a microphone and quieted the demonstrators. On previous nights around this time, some protesters had begun rattling barricades, shouting abuse at police officers or lobbing water bottles at stony-faced men and women in military uniforms. On still worse nights, law enforcement had opened fire with chemical irritants, or buzzed people with helicopters. Now thousands fell silent en masse, almost immediately. Swinging her hair over her shoulder, Arianna Evans, a college student from Maryland, warned anyone hoping to loot and cause destruction to go away. The evening was and would remain peaceful, she vowed: “We will flush you out,” she told would-be troublemakers. Then she handed the mic to Kenny Sway, a D.C. musician. He asked the still-silent and docile crowd to sit cross-legged, raise their cellphones and turn on the flashlights. With the sun setting over his right shoulder, Sway took a deep breath and issued a hopeful plea: “Please,” he said to thousands, “sing this song with me.” Then he bent to a boombox, and — as the familiar strains of Bill Withers’s “Lean On Me” began to fill the air — he opened his mouth wide. Some - times in my life, we all have pain … We all have sorrow … It was Sway’s first time performing in front of a large group of people — or performing for anyone in person — since the coronavirus shut down society, canceling many big events he had planned. Sway has been performing in the District for about a half-decade and has snagged gigs opening for national names in massive venues. But even as his star rose, he always kept performing in the streets, too, because he knows many people cannot afford tickets to snazzy concerts. “I bring the music,” Sway said, “to them.” He is well-known in the District for performing Adele outside the Chinatown Metro. Once, his serenading of a Stage IV cancer patient outside her home caused her to rise from her sickbed and begin dancing. Another time, he went viral online for crooning Whitney Houston’s “I Will Love You” to his daughter on the streets of Chinatown. The virus had ended all


The Daily 202: Protests spark intense debates over the proper role of the military, media and police in American life

in free fall. “The Department of Labor, which released the data, also noted that gig and self-employed workers filed fewer initial claims last week — 620,000 compared to 1.2 million the previous week — under the expanded federal program that grants them benefits,” Eli Rosenberg and Heather Long report. “The slowing in jobless claims doesn’t mean the United States has any less deep of a hole to dig itself out of. The weekly numbers on Thursday are still more than double the pre-coronavirus record of 695,000 set in October 1982, as they have been every week since mid-March this year. Unemployment rates by state are highest in Nevada (25 percent), Maine (23 percent), Michigan (23 percent), Hawaii (20.6 percent) and New York (19 percent).” “The same day in mid-March that the United States launched human testing of its first experimental coronavirus vaccine, scientists in China announced their own trial would begin. Days after a company unveiled the partial data from the first U.S. human tests last month, a complete report of the Chinese trial was published in a prestigious medical journal,” Carolyn Johnson and Eva Dou report. “The nation that produces the first safe and effective vaccine will gain not only bragging rights but also a fast track to put its people back to work, a powerful public health tool to protect its citizens and a precious resource to reward allies.” “For a time, early in the pandemic, when Latin America was mostly a spectator watching outbreaks in China, then Europe, then the United States, there was hope that when the coronavirus arrived here, things would be different. The climate was warmer. The people were younger. The governments had more time to study the mistakes made elsewhere, and to prepare,” Terrence McCoy reports. “Weeks later, more than a million people have been infected, tens of thousands are dead, and those hopes are gone. … More than 31,000 [have died in Brazil]. … Peru has now confirmed twice as many infections as China. Mexico has suffered more than 10,000 deaths. Officials in Chile, now in the throes of one of the world’s most explosive outbreaks, warn that the hospital system in Santiago is teetering at capacity. The World Health Organization has declared Latin America the new epicenter of the global pandemic.” Rebel threats, secret burials and shuttered hospitals mask the spread of the pandemic in Yemen. The former deputy attorney general


Should military officers like Jim Mattis enter the political arena?

for an inexperienced candidate like Clinton. That Clinton was successful, and that this success could in part be credited to Crowe’s vouching for his toughness, made military endorsements an important element of presidential campaign strategy. Not surprisingly, once this habit was established, such endorsements skyrocketed, peaking with the 500-plus retired military officers who backed Mitt Romney’s unsuccessful 2012 campaign. Such endorsements became pivotal because of broader currents in American history: While every president from World War II until Clinton had served in the military, no recent president has had significant military experience (George W. Bush served in the Air National Guard and saw no combat). And that matters because American civil society has grown increasingly distant from its soldiers, requiring candidates to reach across this divide, especially since the military is the public institution that garners the most respect. Candidates seek out military endorsements as a way to attach the well-respected military brand to themselves, as well as to use such endorsements as a bridge to the military. President Trump — obsessed with toughness and lacking a military record — gravitated toward this practice, going even further than Bill Clinton, as evidenced by his decision to put two retired generals in his Cabinet and appoint a third as national security adviser. He’s seeing that potentially backfire as Mattis now blasts his handling of the uprisings in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd. Biden, in turn, will undoubtedly chase such endorsements, seeing them as a symbol of Trump’s failing on foreign policy and national security, and a sign of the Democratic Party’s ability to keep Americans safe. But national security experts worry that these endorsements may make the military less independent and trusted, potentially even preventing the military from acting efficiently because politicians worry about generals’ political motivation. The very divide between those who see endorsements as appropriate, maybe even necessary in trying political times like ours, and the military leadership fighting to retain an image of nonpartisanship creates unnecessary tension within the armed services. A politicized military, or even a military perceived as having partisan political interests, could be sidelined if its advice is no longer seen as neutral — something that seems an even greater risk after Trump’s use of the military this week. Even the hint that the military is politicized in a partisan way could also create more cynicism about decisions of war and


New jobless claims slightly down in region as coronavirus reopening continues

the week ending May 30, according to figures released Thursday by the Labor Department, down from 5,135 filed the previous week. In Maryland, 31,343 claims were filed, compared with 33,991 the previous week. And in Virginia, there were 32,202 claims filed, down from 39,242 a week earlier. The region had been under stay-at-home orders for most of the past two months, with most nonessential businesses closed or strictly limited in how many people they may serve. Over the past three weeks, those restrictions have gradually eased, with the District and its immediate suburbs keeping more of the shutdown in place than farther-out areas of Maryland and Virginia that were not hit as hard by the virus. Parts of Maryland and Virginia will enter the second stage of their reopenings starting Friday. But the counties and cities that surround the District say they will maintain the current restrictions on crowd sizes and business capacity awhile longer. Government officials in both states and in the District are basing their reopening decisions on a variety of factors, including the number of people sickened and hospitalized by covid-19, the percent of people testing positive for the virus and the capacity of each jurisdiction to trace the contacts of those who are infected and to accommodate any surge in cases. Virginia, Maryland and the District reported 1,931 new coronavirus cases as of Thursday, bringing the area’s total number of cases to 112,834. There were 46 newly reported deaths. Since March, a total of 4,588 fatalities have been attributed to covid-19 in the greater Washington region. In Maryland, there were 876 new cases and 27 new deaths. Three of the deaths and 302 of the new cases were in Montgomery County. In Prince George’s County, there were 202 new cases and 15 new deaths. The District reported 104 new cases and two new deaths. Virginia reported 951 new cases and 17 new deaths. Fairfax County reported 219 new cases and seven new deaths, Arlington reported eight new cases and no new deaths, and Alexandria reported 15 new cases and no new deaths. Greensville County, Va., at the border with North Carolina, has reported a spike of 140 new cases since Monday, which state officials attributed mostly to an outbreak at a state prison, where 202 inmates and 54 staffers have tested positive. Across Virginia, Maryland and the District, 1,372 covid-19 patients were hospitalized as of Thursday.


Your home could be helping or harming your mental state during quarantine

The 2020 coronavirus pandemic and stay-home quarantine reveal that the nature of your residential real estate environment — physical characteristics of the dwelling and neighborhood you inhabit — affects your state of mind in how you view your confinement and isolation experience. Neighborhood density, dwelling size and design, interior and exterior amenities and number of household occupants can greatly influence your feelings and ability to cope. Numerous coronavirus reports have documented the psychological malaise experienced by people confined at home. Suffering most are millions of furloughed or unemployed Americans facing increasingly severe economic hardship as they worry about making mortgage payments or paying rent. The possibility of living on the street looms. Researchers, media reporters and pundits regularly point to disparities in pandemic impact. Using Zip code data, they identify those most adversely affected, typically people of color in urban areas where household incomes are at or only marginally above poverty level. Such households have minimal access to health care and little financial security. Adverse effects can become even more intense and chronic for someone confined in a tiny, cramped room or efficiency unit, or cooped up with too many other people in a small apartment or rowhouse. Imagine the cheerlessness of inhabiting an overcrowded apartment building and looking out your windows at nothing more than other overcrowded apartment buildings. Contemplate the misery of living in a substandard, unsafe dwelling in an impoverished neighborhood short on public services and lacking ample sources of healthy foods. Now imagine why other people successfully cope with covid-19 confinement. Some are intellectually and emotionally able to tolerate uncertainty. Such people also are likely to have sufficient income and financial resources to continue paying their bills, despite declining net worth. And they probably inhabit psychologically favorable real estate. Our house and its Northwest Washington Palisades neighborhood are an example of real estate that makes coping with covid-19 tolerable. In an area zoned for detached, one-family homes on 5,000-square-foot lots, our house is in a cluster of seven detached houses sharing a single, 39,000-square-foot hillside parcel. Seven detached, one-family homes on less than an acre is relatively high density compared with suburban densities Yet despite the density, each home enjoys considerable interior and exterior privacy. The shared property’s mature deciduous and evergreen trees surround the houses and shade each home’s decks elevated above on-grade masonry terraces. Sizable windows and sliding glass doors are placed to provide


The coronavirus pandemic claims another victim: Medical research for deadly rare diseases

Anissa Merriam was a vibrant teenager, a talented artist who loved anime and excelled in difficult classes. But at 14, she started dropping her pencil and her hairbrush, and struggled with her studies. Something wasn’t right, she told her parents. Eventually, Anissa was diagnosed with a rare, neurodegenerative form of epilepsy that strikes in early adolescence, causing intractable seizures and dementia. Most patients die before 30. Today, Anissa, at 22, likes to dress up like 1930s child star Shirley Temple, watch Disney movies and tap dance. Not long ago, her mother, Jenifer Merriam, had reason to hope, as scientists pursued three or four different approaches they were confident would lead to a treatment, perhaps even a cure, for the disorder called Lafora disease. Some researchers were planning clinical trials for early next year. But those efforts have been imperiled by the coronavirus pandemic, as many labs remain shuttered or are operating at low capacity. For the Merriam family, it’s an especially cruel turn. Since March, medical research on diseases other than covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, has taken a huge hit, with countless experiments abandoned and clinical trials suspended or postponed. This singular focus will inevitably delay much-needed advances for other life-threatening ailments, including cancer, stroke and heart disease, experts say. “Anytime you slow down a rapidly progressing field of medicine, there is some long-term decrease in how fast new therapies get approved and used,” said Benjamin Neel, director of the Perlmutter Cancer Center at NYU Langone Health. The Cleveland Clinic’s Steven Nissen, who is overseeing several major cardiovascular trials, said every study has been hurt in some way. One trial, now shut down, involves a therapy for a fatty particle linked to a higher risk of having a heart attack, a condition Nissen said he has wanted to treat for three decades. Now, as medical institutions explore resuming non-coronavirus research, they say it will be hard to make up for lost time. Some researchers have to rebuild their colonies of specially bred animals. Many labs are implementing staggered work shifts to limit the number of employees at any one time. “I don’t see how we can maintain the levels of activity we had in the past,” said Craig Jordan, a leukemia researcher at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. The pause is especially difficult for families with relatives who have rare diseases. Often, these are


loss. “You wake up every day, and all your friends’ daughters have gone off to school and are doing adult things,” Merriam said. In 2018, Merriam was surprised to learn at a Lafora conference that researchers were making significant progress. At their request, she enrolled Anissa last December in a “natural history study” of the disease being conducted at a handful of hospitals. They went to the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. Such studies follow a group of people to understand how a disease develops and how best to treat it or design trials. In Dallas, Anissa underwent tests including an electroencephalogram and was told to return in six months. Researchers say the study may serve as a comparison group for trials, instead of a group given a placebo, though that ultimately will be up to federal regulators. When a nurse at the hospital explained to Merriam about efforts that were being pursued to develop treatments, “I just sat and cried,” she said. “I was given a death sentence for my daughter 10 years ago and sent home. They gave me hope that I will not have to bury my daughter.” But because of the coronavirus outbreak, participating hospitals put the natural history study on hold or scaled it back, as medical centers kept non-emergency patients out of their facilities to protect them from infection. It’s another delay that concerns researchers. Merriam Jenifer was worried that her daughter’s appointment for mid-June would be canceled, but she recently learned that they will have their next appointment in a little more than a week. With nurses and therapists no longer coming to Merriam’s home because of the pandemic, Anissa’s 13-year-old brother and 20-year-old sister are helping their mother care for Anissa. Merriam sleeps with a baby monitor to make sure her daughter isn’t having a seizure or respiratory distress, which is typical of the disease. For her 22nd birthday last month, Anissa wanted to have a dance party. Her mother agreed but insisted on physical distancing. As Anissa danced to Michael Jackson and Ariana Grande in the big entryway of their home, relatives and a few family friends took turns dancing with her, six feet apart. “She might not be able to dance for her next birthday, so I’m going to let her dance and laugh and celebrate 22,” Jenifer Merriam said. “We will live today and enjoy today.”


The games will come back. Will the corporate sponsorships and marketing campaigns?

claims for jobless benefits in the past 10 weeks, according to Labor Department data. As the country falls into a recession, corporate balance sheets will reflect tighter marketing budgets. In January, one marketing firm projected sports sponsorship to total $48.4 billion in 2020, including nearly $6 billion alone from this summer’s Tokyo Olympics. Now, the Olympics — and all bets — are off. “ Marketing and advertising partnerships are a valuable source of supplemental income for athletes across the board. Those with enormous deals like LeBron James, Roger Federer and Tom Brady make up only a small percentage of those signed, however. Things aren’t as simple for others. “A lot of the marketing opportunities we did have for our rookie receiver fell by the wayside,” said Luke Inveiss, partner at The Institute For Athletes sports agency. “Those guys don’t have any money. They’re just coming from college. They have absolutely no money right now. So that’s significantly affecting them and their cash flow and what they’d be earning right away because also they’re not even guaranteed to make the roster." NFL rookies are in limbo, but the collective bargaining agreement dictates that signed contracts are paid. Major League Baseball is at odds over pay after it originally reached an agreement in March to pay players a prorated figure based on games played. NBA players took a 25 percent pay cut. Other leagues are still wrangling with the issue. One thing is certain: As leagues remain dark and first-quarter earning reports come out, the robust marketing deals athletes could have expected before the pandemic are no more. Baltimore-based Under Armour, for example, released its first quarter results in May and noted a 23 percent loss of revenue and an expected reduction in operating expenses of $325 million. The sports apparel giant plans “actions to limit broader marketing activations until we have greater visibility into the magnitude of virus impact on consumer demand and behavior.” Often, athletes sign smaller deals with local companies. Those also have disappeared, according to Ira Turner of Agency 1 Sports Group. Local car companies and restaurants are just trying to stay afloat. Athletes receive appearance fees at summer camps, but most of those are already canceled. “Pretty much everything’s put on hold,” said Turner. “Companies basically want to assess where they come out on the other side of this to determine how they want to move forward.


The urgency of peaceful protest

handful of white colleagues, Rustin went to prison for his principles in 1944. There, segregation was routine. Rustin petitioned the warden to allow all inmates use of common recreation rooms. A white prisoner, Elam Huddleston, took offense when Rustin became the first to attempt the experiment. Huddleston warned Rustin not to come back. When Rustin did, Huddleston savagely struck him with a wooden mop handle. Rustin knelt and crossed his arms over his head. His white friends stepped forward to deflect the attack, but he urged them not to intervene. Violence would beget violence, Rustin believed. Only nonviolence had a hope of breaking the cycle. Passive resistance subverted the aggressor’s claim to superiority by showcasing the resistor’s more civilized behavior. Huddleston shattered Rustin’s wrist and ultimately the mop handle. Then, ashamed of himself, Huddleston dropped the stick and never made trouble again. Desegregation of the rec room proceeded. A decade later, Rustin traveled to Montgomery, Ala., to advise the 27-year-old King, who had just become spokesman for the bus boycott that kick-started transportation reform. Homophobia prevented Rustin from exercising leadership openly at the time, so he operated mostly behind the scenes. A Baptist minister, King had bought a pistol after racists threw a bomb into his home where his wife tended their 7-month-old daughter. Rustin told King to give up the gun if he wanted to capture the moral high ground. King not only did so, but told followers, “I want you to love our enemies.” King heeded Rustin’s example again in 1962 when attacked by an American Nazi Party member who jumped onstage at a public convention to stop him from speaking. King dropped to his knees and calmly pleaded with the 200-pound Roy James, a hale 24-year-old who rained blows so heavy that King toppled backward. “Don’t touch him! Don’t touch him!” King called to his aides, and afterward refused to press charges. The new medium of television beamed the startling dissimilarity between the nonviolent King and his crazed opponents, in peaceful protest after peaceful protest, into homes across America. It awakened the nation’s conscience. King won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 for leadership that led to the implementation, at last, of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, guaranteeing equal protection to all. The Nazi Party awarded Roy James the “Order of Adolf Hitler Medal.” The contrast could not have been brighter for the post-World War


With live concerts on hold, Nashville students perform for music lovers over video conference

erased by the coronavirus outbreak. So Ebin decided to open the Zoom concert series to the public, starting with an email blast to all the patrons on the school’s mailing list and eventually through the Nashville media and word-of-mouth. “It’s heartbreaking we have to do this,” Ebin said, “but it’s also uplifting that we can.” The response was overwhelming. The list of performers grew to include not only string players but pianists and flutists, from 5-year-old Suzuki students to 21-year-old college seniors and even an occasional faculty member. Audience slots began filling up, first days and then weeks in advance. Mother’s Day was an especially hot ticket — four separate concerts that day, four more each on the Saturday before and the Monday after. Eventually, Ebin could barely keep it all straight — which is where Nora Wang came in. Wang, a 17-year-old violin student at Blair with deep skills in the art of organization, began as a performer in the Zoom concerts, but perhaps recognizing an operation in need of some organization skills, offered to be Ebin’s assistant. The offer was quickly accepted. Wang eventually took over running the Tuesday night Zoom concerts at Abe’s Garden, lining up the musicians and audience members, maintaining an Excel spreadsheet with the schedule, sending out the Zoom links, introducing each performer during the videoconference and facilitating some friendly dialogue at the end. “I’d performed at retirement homes in the past, and it was always amazing to see how grateful everyone was,” Wang said. “But performing for the same people online in some ways is even more meaningful, because with everyone isolated, you can see how much people need that connection, that interaction.” Meanwhile, the individual performances, available to anyone with Zoom capabilities, have grown to a rate of roughly one per night. Most of the audience members are in Nashville, but there was a Mother’s Day concert for a mom in Mexico City, another for a grandmother in India. There have been shows for people watching from Israel, the United Kingdom and Canada. Someone in New York asked for some Vivaldi for his wife’s birthday and got a personal, all-Vivaldi concert. The concerts are free and the performers unpaid, but many audience members ask if they can make donations to the music school, which are graciously accepted. Inevitably, the Zoom concerts began to feature the same set of issues: the technical glitches,


An airline resumed flying with new coronavirus rules. Days later, it’s shutting down again.

As airlines around the world attempt to restart travel in the wake of coronavirus slowdowns, not all things are going according to plan. In Jakarta, Indonesia, Lion Air announced that all domestic and international flight operations would be suspended temporarily beginning June 5. The move was made, in part, because travelers were not following the requirements of the country’s covid-19 health protocols, according to the airline’s website. In a statement, the airline said the “decision was based on considerations from an evaluation of previous flight operations, that many prospective passengers were unable to carry out air travel because they did not complete the required documents and conditions" necessary during the country’s pandemic alert period. Passengers who have already purchased tickets will be able to receive a full refund or change their ticket without fees when travel resumes, but for now the airline’s goal is to prioritize the “physical and mental health conditions of all employees.” Last month, Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo issued a ban on mudik, the annual exodus of millions of travelers from the country’s cities at the end of the Ramadan fasting month, according to reporting from the Jakarta Globe. The Transportation Ministry allowed for business-related travel and family emergencies, as long as travelers could show proof they were free of the novel coronavirus, but few met the requirements. “Many passengers had to cancel their trip because they could not show the required documents,” a spokesman for the airline told the paper after the airline reopened this week. Indonesia — with a population of more than 267 million — was hit hard by the coronavirus outbreak, and millions of residents have been under sweeping travel restrictions and stay-at-home orders for months. According to data from the country’s Central Statistics Agency, domestic flight volume was down 82 percent in April, with 838,100 passengers on flights, compared with 4.6 million in March. International travel numbers were worse, with a 95 percent drop in passengers, leading to 26,000 fliers last month, as opposed to 558,700 in March. Lion Air has promised to monitor the coronavirus outbreak to keep the company’s “flight operations under applicable provisions of safety and security aspects,” and to “continue to implement health protocols according to the provisions” that prevent the spread of covid-19. For now, there’s no date set for when air travel will resume.


Mexico adds 1,000 deaths to official coronavirus toll, most in a single day

MEXICO CITY — Mexican authorities added more than 1,000 people to the country's official coronavirus death toll on Wednesday in an outbreak that's proving far more vicious than the government had anticipated. The 1,092 deaths did not occur in one day. Rather, many of the death reports had been delayed — a common event as records make their way to the central government. A graph displayed at a Health Ministry news conference on Wednesday evening showed that the total deaths on any single day had not exceeded 350, so far. But the figure was a startling indication of how the outbreak here has intensified. It was only Monday that the official count of people who died after testing positive for covid-19 surpassed 10,000. Now it stands at 11,279 — a two-day leap of more than 10 percent. Officials acknowledge the real total is higher, since many victims die before they can be tested. Hugo López-Gatell, the senior Health Ministry official who has coordinated Mexico’s coronavirus campaign, told reporters the new figures had arrived from various hospitals, reflecting deaths from different dates. “Here we have a very old one, from some state, from March 25,” he said, pointing to the graph. It was not immediately clear why the tally might have jumped so dramatically in one day. Mexican authorities have acknowledged that the virus is turning out to be more deadly than they had expected. Mexico reported its first confirmed coronavirus cases on Feb. 28, a day before New York City. But while New York’s cases quickly skyrocketed, Mexico’s climbed more slowly. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said last month that Mexico had “dominated” the pandemic. Now the Mexican capital is at the epicenter of the country’s health crisis. Authorities have said new cases have reached a peak, with some signs of decline. Deaths, however, have stayed stubbornly high for days. Mexico has followed a controversial policy of not seeking mass testing for the virus. Instead, authorities have predicted the pandemic’s course by watching cases at a sample set of medical centers around the country and constructing mathematical models. A lockdown was imposed on March 23, when officials said cases were starting to multiply. Critics have said the quarantine should have been imposed earlier, and more strictly. Many factors have contributed to the rising death toll. Mexico suffers some of the hemisphere’s highest levels of obesity, hypertension and diabetes, complicating factors


Maryland to begin Stage 2 reopening Friday; Prince George’s and Montgomery stay put

end of the school year. In a briefing for state lawmakers on Wednesday, Thomas V. Ingelsby, director of the Center for Health Security at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said he felt “confident” about the state’s reopening plan but was still bracing for a new wave of infections. “We should be prepared for a rise in cases in the next two to four weeks,” said Inglesby, who serves on the governor’s recovery task force. He said mass rallies in recent days to protest the death of George Floyd, a Minneapolis man who was killed after being pinned down on the ground by police, have added to the risk. “Some of the hardest decisions are coming and I don’t think there are answers to them yet, including issues around indoor restaurants and entertainment, larger gatherings, school reopening, university reopening,” Inglesby said. “All those activities will have more risks than the things we have so far.” Inglesby said he had just a “few concerns” about Hogan’s reopening decision, including his move to allow churches to hold indoor services, at up to 50 percent capacity, starting late last month. “I’m concerned about the risk there, but I understand that was dictated by legal requirements at the state level,” Inglesby said. A spokesman for Hogan did not immediately respond to a request for comment about what legal requirement the state may have faced. Inglesby said Maryland has been “moving in the right direction” on many of its coronavirus metrics. He noted that occupancy of beds in intensive care units has dropped from a high of 611 a few weeks ago to 481, and hospitalization of patients with covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, has decreased from a high of 1,700 to about 1,100. He said the state will need to “keep close watch” on those numbers and be prepared to put a pause on reopening if needed. On Wednesday, Virginia, Maryland and the District reported 1,603 new coronavirus cases, bringing the region’s total known infections to 110,903. There were 68 new deaths. The death toll in the region is now at 4,542. More than 2,700 people are hospitalized with the virus, including 285 in the District and 1,311 in Virginia, according to health department numbers in each jurisdiction. Montgomery and Prince George’s counties each reported 193 and 185 new cases, respectively. Montgomery County had nine new deaths, bringing its


Latin America had time to prepare for the coronavirus. It couldn’t stop the inevitable.

the media has plummeted lower. “The worldwide media and the local media is dominated by the left,” said Aluizio Montelo da Silva, 63, who lives in the northern Brazilian city of Belém. “It’s a biased media. It’s an activist media. There’s no way you can believe in a media like this.” For weeks, his clothing shop has been closed to comply with containment measures — and for what? It didn’t stop his city from suffering a devastating outbreak. The hospitals still became overwhelmed. People are still dying. So much sacrifice, and so little to show for it. His frustration has given way to distrust. He believes officials are using the pandemic to bilk the system. Leaders are being accused of fraud and corruption from Panama to Rio de Janeiro, where the state governor is now embroiled in scandal. The people, Montelo said, are being played for fools. So he now leaves the house whenever he can — to protest the quarantines and show support for President Jair Bolsonaro, who has repeatedly played down the disease and called on the country to reopen immediately. “I never believed the stories,” Montelo said. “I’m not someone who blindly follows the media.” As cases in Brazil surge and the hospital system buckles, the country is losing the political will for more quarantines. The streets are filling once more. Officials in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo barely even talk anymore about harsher containment measures. “I know my country,” said Margareth Dalcolmo, a researcher at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation. “There are 2 million people who live in the favelas in Rio, and to talk about social distancing is ridiculous. It’s pathetic. It’s empty rhetoric. It doesn’t mean anything.” The Pan American Health Organization last week urged a recommitment to social distancing in Brazil to avert a calamity. Its projections showed that 88,000 people could die by August. Researchers at the University of Washington put their death toll still higher — around 125,000 by August. “It is still not the time to relax restrictions or to reduce preventive strategies,” said Carissa Etienne, the organization’s director. “It’s necessary to remain strong and vigilant, and implement aggressive and proven measures of public health.” But the following day, João Doria, the governor of São Paulo, the heart of the outbreak in Brazil, announced what he described as a “conscious reopening.” Cases continued to climb, and there’s no vaccine, but


Empire State of Green

words of Dana Robbins Schneider, Empire State’s senior vice president and director of energy and sustainability. “That’s why we have to make it work,” she said. “We want to use this super-famous building that everybody recognizes as a beacon … to change the world.” Retrofits like this one are neglected — but powerful — tools for protecting the planet, experts say. Climate policies often focus on emissions from power plants and cars. But in the fight against rising global temperatures, buildings are silent saboteurs. The processes used to construct them, the energy required to heat and cool them, and the electricity that powers them account for about 39 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, according to the United Nations Environment Program. The problem is even greater in densely occupied cities. More than two-thirds of New York City’s emissions come from its buildings. And most of those buildings will still be standing 30 years from now, when U.N. scientists say the world’s net emissions must be zero to avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change. But if buildings are among the biggest contributors to the climate crisis, they can also be a city’s greatest tool for fighting it, said John Mandyck, chief executive for the nonprofit Urban Green Council. “The pathway to a low-carbon future is literally standing in front of our eyes.” In 2007, New York adopted energy conservation requirements for all construction and renovations. But the city had no mechanism to make existing buildings significantly more sustainable; no one even knew whether such a thing was possible. This quandary was on the mind of Ira Magaziner, the head of the Clinton Climate Initiative, during a chance encounter at a party with Anthony Malkin, CEO of the realty trust that owns the Empire State and 14 other buildings. He asked: Would Malkin be willing to serve as a test case for an experimental “deep energy retrofit”? Malkin offered to try it at one of the trust’s other properties, but Magaziner demurred. No one was going to pay attention to a retrofit at some anonymous building, he said. It had to be the Empire State. Quietly — in case the project turned out to be a bust — Malkin assembled experts from the engineering firm Johnson Controls, real estate manager Jones Lang LaSalle and the sustainability nonprofit Rocky Mountain Institute. Their mandate was to devise a plan to incorporate energy


With Olympics postponed, Katie Ledecky focuses on educating herself — and others

questions and stressing the importance of pursuing STEM fields. “I think having this extra year gives me more of an opportunity to connect with different people,” she said in a recent interview. The STEM event took place Sunday morning in Tokyo — Saturday evening in California. Like the rest of the country, Ledecky spent much of the preceding days following the headlines about the death of a black man at the hands of Minneapolis police and the ensuing protests that erupted across the country. Earlier in the day, she shared a message on social media, saying her “heart aches for George Floyd, his family, and all those who experience systemic injustice. “I am angry, and I understand the dismay and anger in America right now,” she wrote. “To my teammates, friends, and community: I am here for you. I am here to listen and to comfort. I am here to engage in uncomfortable conversations. And I am here to vote.” The postponed Olympics left Ledecky with time and a more flexible schedule. She will wrap up her training this summer without any more competitive racing and plans to begin working on the new season a bit earlier than usual, probably in August. For now, she does her dry-land workouts in her apartment, and she gets in eight or nine swim sessions each week in a 25-yard pool, usually with just her coach, Greg Meehan, and former Stanford teammate and fellow Olympic champion Simone Manuel present. “They’re basically the only two people I see on a regular basis,” she said. While she waits for Stanford’s facilities to reopen, Ledecky called this period of training “kind of strange.” “Right now, I feel like we’re being productive and maintaining some level of where we were at,” she said, “not making huge gains but focusing in on a few details.” The Tokyo postponement was announced early enough for Ledecky to enroll in classes. The psychology major had been taking time off from full-time coursework in preparation for the Olympics. Among her classes: Global Change and Emerging Infectious Disease. The online lectures cover the coronavirus but also past pandemics and all of the contributing factors to an outbreak. “As someone who hasn’t had a lot of background in this topic, it’s been really, really interesting,” she said. The sciences always intrigued Ledecky, which is why the Panasonic partnership and the STEM initiative appealed to her.


In France, coronavirus confinement a la Nice

while we were abroad. And for the first two months in Lisbon and Porto, it worked. But then, on the train from Barcelona to Marseille, we learned that Italy had closed. I made a snap decision to reroute to the Côte d’Azur and rented an apartment on Vrbo for the rest of the month. In Nice, the museums closed shortly after we checked in. The next week, bars and restaurants shut down. Then the mayor tested positive for covid-19. And within a few days, the city went from a vibrant Mediterranean tourist destination to a police state. France is one of Europe’s coronavirus hot spots, with more than 159,000 cases. You can’t leave your apartment without an attestation — a signed form that states you are buying groceries, exercising or going to work. You can print the form, write the information on a piece of paper or create an electronic document on your phone. If authorities catch you more than a kilometer away from your residence when you’re out walking, you’re looking at a fine of between 38 and 135 euros, or about $41-$146 in U.S. dollars. “There are worse places to be stuck,” a friend texted me after we arrived. Well, that depends on your circumstances. I’m in an apartment with three teenagers. The boys (ages 15 and 17) are taking online classes at the University of Arizona. They’re also learning several languages, including Portuguese, Spanish, French and Japanese. My daughter, 13, is in ninth grade and works with an online tutor four days a week. When we talk, it’s about what we’ll do after this ends. Should we return to the States? Or stay in Europe as planned, finishing our journey? The best part about being trapped in an apartment with adolescents is that you never run out of food. They’re constantly at the nearby Monoprix supermarket replenishing our supply of cereal, fruit and fresh baguettes. Teenagers are like hummingbirds, eating twice their weight in a day. That’s only a slight exaggeration. The worst part? No, it’s not the eye rolls and the “Dad, you just don’t get it,” responses to every other question. The worst part is not knowing whether their in-ear headsets are on. To find out, just ask them a question. Silence means the headsets are blasting music or language lessons. The kids aren’t afraid of getting caught outside. Their paperwork is always in order