fight against climate change, Hayhoe said, is roughly equivalent to early March in the fight against the covid-19 pandemic. The threat has already been set in motion. The effects are just beginning to be felt. “Swift decisive action at that point was the difference between planking the curve and a runaway epidemic,” Hayhoe said. (“Planking the curve” is the catchphrase for eliminating infections in Canada, where Hayhoe is from.) One study suggested that the United States could have avoided 36,000 coronavirus deaths had social distancing and other control measures been implemented one week earlier. Like covid-19, climate change is governed by feedback loops and exponential processes; every day of delay makes the consequences more catastrophic. Conversely, each action taken now will help avert even worse effects. United Nations scientists have found that the world can still meet the goals of the Paris Climate Accord — at which nations agreed to keep warming within the tolerable threshold of 2 degrees Celsius — if people reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 7.6 percent each year. It’s an ambitious target, but much of the knowledge and technology needed to achieve it already exists. A recent study from the University of California at Berkeley found that the United States could derive 90 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2035 for almost the same cost as maintaining the current grid. Big buildings, including icons like the Empire State Building, are becoming energy efficient and saving money at the same time. Nations like India, which boasts more electric vehicles than the United States, are seeking to “leapfrog” right over a fossil-fuel based economy to a more sustainable future. People are finding ways to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere through farming, planting trees, recycling it or burying it in the ground. The pandemic has already proved that big change is possible. It took just a few days in March for Americans to isolate in their homes and overhaul their lives. It has taken just a few months for huge majorities people to adopt habits they would never before have considered; an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll in July found that three-quarters of Americans now favor requiring people to wear face masks. “We still have that opportunity to plank the curve on climate change,” Hayhoe said. "The question is: Do we have the will?” Do you have questions about climate change? Ask us


Iowa cuts four sports, becoming the first Big Ten school to ax programs during the pandemic

Four sports that had spanned a combined 328 years at the University of Iowa suffered discontinuation Friday, trimmed from another athletics budget ailing from the effects of the novel coronavirus pandemic. In an open letter, the university president and the athletic director of a program in an especially stormy year announced the end of the men’s gymnastics, men’s and women’s swimming and men’s tennis programs at the end of the 2020-21 academic year. It signaled the end of programs that had begun, respectively, in 1922, 1917, 1974 and 1939, according to Iowa media guides. It happened on the same day some Big Ten football parents, including those of some Iowa players, marched at the Big Ten headquarters in Rosemont, Ill., hoping to restore an autumn football season the conference canceled last week after recommendations from a medical advisory board. “The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a financial exigency which threatens our continued ability to adequately support 24 intercollegiate athletics programs at the desired championship level,” wrote Bruce Harreld, Iowa’s president, and Gary Barta, the athletic director. “With the Big Ten Conference’s postponement of fall competition on August 11, UI Athletics now projects lost revenue of approximately $100M and an overall deficit between $60-75M this fiscal year. A loss of this magnitude will take years to overcome. We have a plan to recover, but the journey will be challenging.” Calling it “extremely difficult news,” the statement read, “Each of these [four] teams will have the opportunity to compete in their upcoming 2020-21 seasons, should the circumstances surrounding COVID-19 permit, before they are discontinued at the varsity level.” While Iowa became the first Big Ten school to announce cuts during the pandemic, its move had precedent among many colleges in less lucrative divisions and among the 65 Power Five schools in the case of Stanford. In July, Stanford ceased 11 of its 36 sports programs. Iowa’s number of sports readied to shrink from 24 to 20 in a program that would figure to be hit even harder than Stanford by whatever realities wind up befalling football, college sports’ king rainmaker. All the possibilities at the moment figure to include drastically reduced stadium crowds and revenue. The Iowa football program, which lists 29 staff members, already knew a turbulent summer as Kirk Ferentz, the longest-standing coach in the 130-team Football Bowl Subdivision at 22 seasons, responded to former players’ claims of racism in the


Pandemic canning is so popular, stores are running out of jars and other supplies

and lots of restaurants are doing cocktails to go in jars, and there are the DIY [disinfecting] wipes.” There’s evidence that canning in the pandemic is more than just a hobby for some. Sales of the all-American Pressure Cooker, the sturdy stove-top gadget used by many more serious canners to preserve meats and poultry as well as low-acid vegetables that aren’t suitable for the hot-bath method, are off the charts. The Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry, where the cooker has been in production since the 1930s, sold 14,000 units last year. They’ve already doubled that figure this year and have 23,000 more on order, the company reports. Joel Andrew, the company’s president of consumer products, says he doesn’t see interest waning. “It’s been very interesting to see how many people are getting into prepping and homesteading — there are a lot of TV shows and homestead blogs,” he says. “That’s translating to our sales.” A spike in pressure-cooker canning seems significant, says Marisa McClellan, the author who runs the Food in Jars blog. “That tells me that people are feeling insecure,” she says. “They’re not just looking to make fun jams and pickles, they’re thinking ‘the apocalypse is nigh, so I need to put up poultry.’” McClellan says interest in her blog and Facebook page, where canners of all experience levels trade tips and photos, is up. And she estimates she gets almost two dozen messages a day from panicky canners looking for a supplier when they find their local store shelves bare. She sees a range of reasons behind canning’s status as the newest pandemic craze: unexpected bumper crops from home gardens, maybe, or people with a bounty of fruits and veggies after visiting pick-your-own farms or farm markets. But she says there’s more than pure practicality at work. Even if you’re not producing quantities that a farmer (or an End of Days-fearing prepper) would approve, canning at least offers people a small sense of security and being in control of their food-supply chain. “Even if it’s a dash of jam in your cabinet, it gives you a bit of that pioneer spirit — like, ‘okay, I’m set for the winter.’” That’s just the kind of psychological boost that Lancaster, the home canner in Indiana, is getting from surveying her modest stash of jars. She said there have been shortages of various foods in her local grocery stores, particularly early on


The U.S. puts ‘maximum pressure’ on the Security Council

sanctions suspended almost five years ago to stay that way, they will ‘snap back’ into place. The United States would veto any move that allows the prohibitions to remain lifted.” Other countries, including the four other permanent members of the Security Council, were unimpressed. Russia’s envoy to the United Nations described the move as “nonexistent,” because the United States was no longer a real participant in the nuclear deal. A joint statement from France, Germany and Britain — usually America’s closest ally at the United Nations — echoed that argument, rejecting the move as incompatible with their efforts to preserve what’s left of the agreement. The current spat brims with irony. Even leading Iran hawks are skeptical. “It’s too cute by half to say we’re in the nuclear deal for purposes we want but not for those we don’t,” John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, wrote in the Wall Street Journal this week. He added that the gambit could undermine the United States’ veto in the Security Council. “For the U.S., there is one point of high principle worth dying in a ditch for at the United Nations: Never impair the Security Council veto,” Bolton wrote. “The snapback mechanism was an unprecedented and powerful innovation in the JCPOA,” tweeted James Acton, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, using the official acronym for the nuclear deal. “If invoked by a state that says it has withdrawn, it will never be accepted in any international agreement ever again.” What happens next is unclear. “In the end … this is more a political fight than a legal one,” wrote Ellie Geranmayeh and Elisa Catalano Ewers in Foreign Policy. “The political case — which seems to be most favored by European countries — is that the United States lacks the legitimacy to resort to snapback since it is primarily motivated by a desire to sabotage the multilateral agreement after spending the last two years undermining its foundations.” They added that the “main actor that will decide the fate of the nuclear deal after snapback sanctions is Iran itself. Iran has already acted in response to the U.S. maximum pressure campaign, from increasing enrichment levels and exceeding other caps placed on its nuclear program, to attacking U.S. forces based in Iraq and threatening to exit the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.” European governments, in particular, face a tricky balancing act between reckoning


Cellphone apps designed to track covid-19 spread struggle worldwide amid privacy concerns

virus, they can be ordered to isolate themselves. South Korean officials managed one of the world’s leading success stories against the pandemic by deploying tactics both traditional — such as masks and contact tracing — and high-tech. This included gathering credit card records, examining video footage and collecting troves of location data kept by cellphone companies on their customers. Following a mass outbreak at a nightlife district in Seoul in May, South Korean officials identified thousands of clubgoers by reviewing guest entries and credit card transaction records at venues. But complicating the search was stigma related to the largely gay clientele among nightlife establishments in the Itaewon neighborhood. As authorities struggled to identify connections among people infected with the coronavirus, they analyzed cellphone location data for people who had been near the virus hot spots. Under South Korea’s infectious diseases law, contact tracing officers can obtain personal information such as phone location data from telecom operators and transaction records from credit card companies without an individual’s consent. "Patients often share inaccurate information with contact tracing officers, either because they don’t want to share sensitive details or simply because of bad memories,” said Na Baeg-ju, former director general of Seoul City’s Civil Health Bureau who led the city’s coronavirus response. “The obtained data serve as essential backup to verify and supplement the firsthand accounts.” While evidence remains sparse that these tactics were crucial to the government’s wide-ranging response, South Korea was able to drive its new infection rate sharply downward without imposing the kind of wide-scale economic shutdowns common in the United States, Europe and many other parts of the world. A team of researchers recently singled out the aggressive efforts as effective. Their paper, “The Cost of Privacy,” used modeling of human movements to conclude that the South Korean approach convinced people to avoid neighborhoods with the highest risks for transmission. The key, though, was the government’s reliance on location data to indicate where infections occurred — something many apps in Western countries, including those based on the disease-surveillance initiative by Google and Apple, don’t include. Economist David O. Argente said widespread shutdowns of national economies were very costly and also, perhaps, could have been avoided if more targeted data allowed ordinary people to know what spots to avoid. Koreans got texts showing that infections had occurred, for example, in a particular coffee shop. “Nobody went to that coffee shop.


Athlete-only dorms, banned in the 1990s, could be the NCAA’s answer to the pandemic

The University of Alabama’s Bryant Hall wasn’t the first residence hall constructed solely for the use of college athletes, but to hear Sports Illustrated tell it upon its opening in 1963, it was certainly among the swankiest. Housing 100 football players, 20 basketball players, six baseball players and four track athletes plus golfers, tennis players and swimmers “if they’re winners,” according to a Crimson Tide publicist, the dorm featured a library, two study rooms, a recreation room, a TV room with a 23-inch color television set and two full-time dietitians. “Steak is served every night and twice on Saturday,” the unnamed SI scribe wrote. Other schools, mainly in the South and Midwest, took note and built athlete-only residence halls of their own until the NCAA stepped in and banned the practice in the 1990s, saying the dorms were a perk not given to the rest of the student body and that they built a divide between athletes and other students. But now, amid the novel coronavirus pandemic, the NCAA and its schools could find themselves forced to undermine the long-standing rule if they want to get their seasons off the ground. Three major universities announced major changes to in-person learning policies after outbreaks of the coronavirus occurred within the first week of classes. North Carolina on Monday announced it would halt in-person learning; Michigan State made the same decision a day later. Also on Tuesday, Notre Dame suspended all undergraduate classes for two weeks. Michigan State will not play football until at least the spring after the Big Ten Conference decided this month to cancel fall sports competitions. But the other two schools are proceeding with getting ready for a fall football season in the ACC. For plans to play to move forward, NCAA teams might be forced to decide whether to follow the path of the NBA, WNBA, NHL and MLS in instituting a bubble for athletes in football and basketball, the sports that generate millions in revenue for the schools and thus the ones that they most need played amid the pandemic. And that would force the NCAA into a thorny issue it confronted more than two decades ago. Athlete-only residence halls were constructed with varying degrees of luxury. Florida built Yon Hall right into the side of Ben Hill Griffin Stadium so its football players could live where they played. In 1978, Kentucky’s basketball players moved into


President Trump’s attempt to bypass Congress on stimulus is offering only limited economic relief

said whether they will move forward and offer the payments. South Dakota has turned down the jobless benefits. For the majority of the 28 million unemployed workers who had been getting an extra $600 a week, relief remains elusive. Just last week, jobless benefit claims rose slightly compared with the previous week, to more than 1 million. It’s the 21st week that unemployment claims have topped 1 million during the pandemic. “I don’t know when my next paycheck will come, unemployment has not been helpful, and I’m not sure when the furlough will end. It’s extremely stressful,” said Caleb Dunlop, 28, who lost his job in college athletics in western Washington state on July 1. Dunlop said he had $9 in his bank account after paying rent and utilities last month, and he missed payments for his medication for treating chronic depression. Trump and his economic team have repeatedly suggested that the executive actions largely render talks with Congress unnecessary, with the president saying that they would “take care of pretty much this entire situation.” National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow boasted that the orders had led to a dramatic increase in the stock market, while Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said after the orders were signed that the new unemployment payments would arrive “immediately." The next day, Mnuchin said the payments would be arriving “within the next week or two.” Kudlow also said at the time that the benefits would take “about two weeks” to be paid out. The administration’s assessment of the timing of the benefits has almost certainly proved too optimistic. So far, only Arizona has reported sending the extra $300 week on top of traditional state unemployment benefits, according to Michele Evermore, an unemployment expert at the National Employment Law Project, a nonprofit. Numerous governors have complained that the program is too complicated and could take several more weeks to set up. The White House also stipulated that people receiving less than $100 per week in unemployment benefits from their states are not eligible for the extra $300, effectively preventing as many as 1 million jobless Americans from receiving the benefit. And guidance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency — which manages the disaster relief fund that’s being tapped for the payments — suggested the extra benefit would last only three weeks. About 20 states have said publicly they will apply for the program. Most are expected


Student papers say administrators share blame for virus outbreaks: ‘Don’t make us write obituaries’

Chancellor for Strategic Initiatives and Innovation J. Michael Haynie sent a blistering letter to students Thursday, calling their behavior “selfish and reckless.” “Even more selfish and unsettling is how the actions of those students willfully undercut the efforts of those who have worked tirelessly over the summer to set the conditions for the continuation of residential learning,” he said. Haynie said students could have caused enough damage to shut down the campus before the academic school year starts. But the editorial pages of campus newspapers say school officials should look into a mirror to see how their actions have caused virus scares and uncertainty. The Observer in Indiana said blame toward students isn’t completely misplaced, but it does allow for school leaders to deflect how unprepared they were to safely reopen. In its Friday editorial, students say responses to the virus and inadequate information are glaring indications that the seriousness of returning to campus during a pandemic wasn’t completely examined. The editorial board urged everyone in the tri-campus community, students, faculty and administrators to do their part to mitigate spread, listing all the obituaries they don’t want to write. “Don’t make us write yours,” it ended. The Diamondback, the student-led newspaper for the University of Maryland, was even more direct in its criticism as the school is set to reopen Aug. 31. Students there said the move is motivated by the school’s reliance on room-and-board money as public funding has become scarcer since the start of the pandemic. “But chasing that money means literally risking lives and contributing to the spread of the virus in the state and the county — an area that has already been hit hard. Jeopardizing the health of the community by reopening is unconscionable, especially considering that, with about 86 percent of undergraduate course sections already fully online, there is no need to invite most students back at all,” Diamondback editorial staff wrote. Student staff writers highlighted the disastrous situations across other campuses as examples of the perils sure to follow once on-campus instruction resumes. “So in a few weeks from now, when students and employees are getting sick and College Park is overwhelmed by the virus, remember who’s really to blame,” the editorial board said. Read more: UNC-Chapel Hill’s student newspaper sums up school’s coronavirus policy with an f-bomb Their college year upended, Gen Z journalists keep breaking news on coronavirus (some from home)


National Zoo’s female giant panda has a new ‘miracle’ cub

last cub we’ll have here in a long time,” Brandie Smith, the zoo’s deputy director, said. “It’s sad because it’s . . . the end of an era for the panda program at the National Zoo.” Mei Xiang had, by then, had at least nine “false pregnancies,” which are common in giant pandas and happen when the animal exhibits early signs of being pregnant but no cub appears. She turned 22 in July and her days of motherhood seemed to be over. “She’s aged,” Neiffer said. But in March, she began her reproductive cycle normally and she was artificially inseminated on March 22. Zoo scientists monitored her as usual during her five-month gestation period. Neiffer said some clues started emerging two weeks ago on ultrasounds, which provide images of the uterus. They showed “tissue growing that was not the uterus,” he said. Then, on Aug. 14, he was able to conduct an ultrasound and spotted the fetus. He was able to get “10- to 20-second video clips of [the panda’s] abdomen,” he said. “Immediately, the structures that we saw [earlier] were much bigger, and I was convinced.” He predicted a birth could come within days. Zoo officials were exultant. Volunteers went on 24-hour-a-day watch via panda cam. The public watched, too. Panda-cam views had soared 1,000 percent since Friday, the zoo said. Another ultrasound Monday again showed the fetus. Sometimes giant pandas bear twins. In 2015, when Bei Bei was born, he had a male twin. But the twin inhaled some kind of food product, contracted pneumonia and died four days later. In 2013, when the female cub named Bao Bao was born, a twin was delivered deceased the next day. Neiffer said he did not think the quiet during the zoo’s shutdown had anything to do with the pregnancy. He noted that Mei Xiang has gotten pregnant in the past when the zoo was open and going “full tilt.” Mei Xiang has given birth to three surviving cubs: Bao Bao, Bei Bei and Tai Shan. Tai Shan was born in July 2005 and now lives in China. Bao Bao was moved to China in February 2017. Bei Bei was born on Aug. 22, 2015 and moved to China in November 2019. By agreement, all cubs born at the zoo are sent to China when they are 4 years old. China owns and leases all giant pandas in U.S. zoos.


For days she couldn’t stop getting sick. At first she doubted the probable cause.

in an increasingly fraught trial-and-error experiment that ultimately left little doubt about the diagnosis. Now 31, she continues to grapple with its ramifications, which altered her life physically, emotionally and professionally in unexpected ways. The first episode occurred on Halloween night 2016, as Moon and a friend were strolling around her neighborhood admiring the trick-or-treaters. Suddenly Moon began to vomit. “It made no sense,” she said. She went home and smoked some marijuana, which she knew could quell nausea and vomiting and is used by some people undergoing chemotherapy. Moon, who promotes cannabis products, had worked in the marijuana industry since 2011, including at a dispensary where she said she “saw all the people it was helping.” (California legalized cannabis for medical use in 1996 and for recreational purposes in 2016.) For several years Moon had used cannabis at night to combat long-standing insomnia and to moderate anxiety and depression. She described herself as a daily user who was not addicted. “I was never one of those people who was stoned all day,” she said. A few days after the Halloween episode, which lasted a few hours, she saw a doctor who diagnosed reflux. He advised her to eliminate spicy or acidic foods, such as tomatoes, and to take a nonprescription acid-blocking drug. For a few months, those measures seemed to work. But by early 2017 the vomiting returned. Moon noticed that the episodes, which occurred weekly, appeared to coincide with her consumption of alcohol, even in small amounts, so she stopped drinking. The vomiting, however, continued. She flew about once a month for business and “lost count of how many Ubers I threw up in,” she said. “I was definitely concerned,” Moon said, “but I didn’t know what to do.” Typically thin, she began to lose weight; at 5-foot-6, she weighed 110 pounds. In late 2017 she read a blog item about an alarming condition affecting some regular users of cannabis: intractable and untreatable vomiting that could last for days. “I remember it had an illustration of a person with crazy eyes,” Moon said. “I did let it sit in my brain for a while but it didn’t make sense. I was throwing up the day after using weed.” As the episodes increased in frequency and severity, Moon discovered that the only thing that seemed to quell hours of vomiting was a hot bath. “I wasn’t sure why it


Man dies after D.C. apartment fire

asking anyone with information about the incident to call 202-727-9099 or text the department’s tip line at 50411. — Paul Schwartzman MARYLAND A 13-year-old boy died after being hit by a puck during hockey practice in Charles County, Md., the county sheriff’s office said. The boy, who was from Carroll County, was at a hockey camp on Monday in the Capital Clubhouse in Waldorf, Md., when the incident occurred, the sheriff’s office said. The boy was struck in the upper body during a practice session, according to the sheriff’s office. When emergency personnel arrived about 10:40 a.m., he was unresponsive and not breathing, the sheriff’s office said. He was placed on life support at Children’s National Hospital in the District but died several hours later, according to the sheriff’s office. The death has been ruled accidental by the D.C. medical examiner’s office, the sheriff’s office said. — Martin Weil Towson University is moving all classes to remote learning for the first week of the fall semester, the university said Saturday. The decision was made after an increase in positive coronavirus tests from a sample conducted by the University Health Care Center in the past week. A sample of 627 tests conducted on campus between Wednesday and Thursday returned 55 positive results on Saturday. Individuals with positive test results are being contacted by phone, and contact tracing is underway in coordination with Baltimore County. None of the 55 who tested positive is on campus. All classes, which were to resume Monday, will now be conducted remotely through Aug. 30. — Associated Press VIRGINIA A new effort is underway to help Virginians who have lost their jobs because of the pandemic to receive training for in-demand work. The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that a coalition of 20 businesses across the state is providing financial backing for a nonprofit entity called Virginia Ready. It aims to get tens of thousands of Virginia residents into training programs by providing cash payments to out-of-work people who complete courses for various jobs through the Virginia Community College System. Virginia Ready is planning to provide $1,000 incentive payments for as many as 15,000 people over the next three years who earn credentials for high-demand fields such as health care, manufacturing and skilled trades. Recipients of the incentives will get $1,000 payments after completing courses and passing credential exams in the college system’s Fast Forward program. — Associated Press


How National Zoo keepers orchestrated an ‘unthinkable’ panda pregnancy amid a pandemic

A few days after the pandemic forced the National Zoo to lock its gates, there was a message in the panda urine. The hormone levels of 22-year-old Mei Xiang showed she might be ready to conceive a cub. Her keepers, who thought her years of mothering were over, were eager to try one more time. But how could they orchestrate a panda pregnancy without unsafely bringing together too many people in the age of social distancing? The answer was sitting in a freezer. No zoo in the United States has ever successfully used frozen semen to impregnate a panda, and no panda as old as Mei Xiang has ever given birth in America. With a limited staff and a baster-type instrument, they tried anyway. On Friday — after five months of coronavirus case counts and death tolls, closures and reopenings, uncertainty and anxiety — news from Northwest Washington ignited the Internet. A pink, fuzz-covered panda cub had just come squealing into the world. “Imagine that. She does the unthinkable,” zookeeper Laurie Thompson said. “At 22, she just says here you go, I’ll give you something good.” The newborn’s arrival was watched by so many people on the zoo’s panda cam that the website crashed. Panda superfans across the globe refreshed their browsers while newcomers desperate for a moment of delight pleaded with the Smithsonian’s tech team on Twitter to fix the feed. By Saturday morning, the site was restored, Mei Xiang was nursing and the bitty bear was putting on a show for its viewers, squawking as it burrowed into its mother’s 238-pound body. The cub weighs about four ounces, as much as a stick of butter. “I feel like a kid,” zoo director Steve Monfort said. “What can I tell you? I sometimes curse them for all the time and effort we have to put into them, but at times like this, it’s just undeniably joyful.” His employees kept caring for the zoo’s 2,700 animals during the four months it remained closed and have carefully navigated reopening plans that include timed-entry passes. The new system kept away the panda-mania that the park would typically see. Instead, more than a dozen masked journalists appeared just after dawn Saturday to feed the insatiable appetite of panda-loving viewers. Keepers who had been awake for more than 24 hours stood for interview after interview about the best news to come to Washington in


months. At the center of it all was Thompson, who helped raise all three of Mei Xiang’s surviving cubs — Tai Shan in 2005, Bao Bao in 2013 and Bei Bei in 2015 — before they returned to China under a conservation agreement between the two countries. “I got the call saying, ‘You better come in,’ ” Thompson recalled about her Friday afternoon. Only on Aug. 14 did an ultrasound reveal that Mei Xiang was likely pregnant. Although pandas can have a gestation period of anywhere between 90 and 180 days, the mother was licking herself in a way that told keepers the birth was likely hours or minutes away. Mei Xiang was alone in her den, lying beside what looked like a pillow of bamboo she had arranged in the corner. The keepers and a veterinarian were in another room nearby, watching on a screen in case anything went wrong. “She has proven to us over the years that she is a great mother. We sit back and watch and let her do her thing,” said Brandie Smith, the zoo’s head of animal care. Around 6:30 p.m., Mei Xiang started making loud, halting noises known as “honking.” “Then she got up and I thought she was repositioning herself, but then we heard the cub cry,” Smith said. “She did exactly what she needed to do. She picked that cub up right away and started taking care of it.” The staff stayed up watching her through the night, unsure whether the birthing was done. Around half of panda cubs are born in pairs. Bei Bei’s twin died a few days after birth and Bao Bao’s twin was stillborn. If Mei Xiang were to have another cub this time, it will happen within 24 hours of the first. Zookeepers will keep watching mother and cub at all hours in the coming week, listening for the squeaks from the newborn that let them know all is well. After about a week, Mei Xiang will feel comfortable leaving her cub for the first time and will get up to eat. The keepers will then use a wall to separate the pair momentarily to inspect the cub for the first time. With an animal so little, zookeepers probably won’t know its sex until they do genetic testing. And it will be months before the cub would be viewable to the public. So as reporters


Thunderstorms might induce respiratory emergencies for those 65 and older, a study says

Is a thunderstorm in the forecast? Your roof may not be the only thing in danger. A new study suggests that if you’re over 65, you are more likely to visit the emergency room for a respiratory problem in the days before a severe storm. In a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine, a group of researchers analyzed Medicare insurance claims and found a correlation between respiratory ER visits and thunderstorms. The analysis combined insurance and Medicare data associated with acute respiratory diagnoses during ER visits with weather data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for all counties within the continental United States between 1999 and 2012. All told, they looked at more than 822,000 days with major thunderstorms and more than 22 million emergency department visits. During days before thunderstorms, Medicare patients’ visits to the emergency department for respiratory illnesses increased, especially among patients with both asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Overall, there were 5.3 additional visits per million Medicare patients during the three days surrounding major thunderstorms — about 52,000 additional visits to the emergency room in total. The researchers couldn’t find the same associations for nonrespiratory conditions such as sepsis. Other researchers have hypothesized that asthma can coincide with thunderstorms because the precipitation could cause pollen particles to burst and become easier to breathe in. But since the bulk of the ER visits happened before storms, the authors of the current study do not think pollen release was at play. Instead, they write, “rises in particulate matter concentration and temperature may be the dominant mechanism of thunderstorm-associated acute respiratory disease in older Americans.” Severe storms are expected to increase over the coming years because of warming oceans caused by human-driven climate change. As global warming continues, it’s expected to drive more stormy days, particularly in the eastern United States. Some models have shown that severe thunderstorms might double in places such as Atlanta and New York if greenhouse gases continue to rise. Since the study looked at Medicare beneficiaries, it only studied people 65 and older. Still, it offers new insight into a potential effect of climate change. Global warming is expected to drive many things, such as heatstroke, diarrheal illnesses, drinking and eating newly flourishing marine bacteria. And now thunderstorm-induced respiratory trouble in older adults can be added to the list.


Trump’s suggestion of deploying law enforcement officials to monitor polls raises specter of voting intimidation

decree,” he said. “Our volunteers will be beaten over the head that they need to be compliant with all applicable laws, and they need to be respectful and courteous when they are engaging in their operations.” He added: “They are not there to stop people from voting. We want people to vote. If they don’t believe us, they don’t believe us. That’s the God’s honest truth.” Such assertions are viewed with skepticism by voting rights activists, particularly since the RNC has amplified Trump’s unfounded claims that voting by mail could lead to rampant fraud. Many activists think long lines are driven in part by GOP-backed efforts to limit early voting or reduce the number of polling sites. They also note that Republicans have said that they are open to recruiting former military service members and law enforcement officers as poll watchers — a proposal not far removed from the president’s suggestion to send sheriffs to the polls. “We would be foolish not to be vigilant,” said Vanita Gupta, the former head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, noting the country’s history of voter intimidation and the president’s misleading rhetoric. Gupta, who is president of the nonprofit Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said she expected that Trump would threaten to deploy law enforcement officials to the polls. “The danger is whether the threat alone or the posturing dissuades voters,” she said. “That’s where voters really need to be empowered and educated — the best way to fight back is to do the opposite and register and vote.” Still, she noted that the country has “long-standing laws” prohibiting law enforcement intimidation of voters. Several states have their own statutes severely restricting police activity near polls. But in the current fraught political atmosphere, the president’s call for a robust poll-watching effort could lead to unpredictable results. Earlier this year, a conservative organization called True the Vote was recruiting former members of the military to go to polling places, according to Ed Hiner, a retired Navy SEAL who said he started the group’s “Continue to Serve” program. Hiner said in an interview that he used the email lists from veterans associations to invite 2 million former military personnel to participate. He said he thought the program would be a bipartisan effort that would pair Democratic and Republican veterans to encourage voting, and stopped working with the group this summer after realizing


With no end to the pandemic in sight, coronavirus fatigue grips America

plays. They rescheduled for March 2021. But now they worry that even that might be optimistic. “I’m crossing my fingers. But I’m also not going to be packing my bags,” said Kelli, 33. A flight attendant, she also agreed to an 18-month voluntary separation from her work. She’ll keep her health insurance and part of her salary. But she won’t be bored. All four of the Crawfords’ children, ages 4, 5, 10 and 13, are home. The three oldest have begun remote classes. Their 4-year-old daughter has been aching to start preschool since she saw her older brother do so last year. But there is no virtual preschool, so that plan is on hold. “It’s one thing for the adults to be lonely,” Kelli said. “But these poor kids, I get so heartbroken about the loneliness they’re experiencing.” There are glimmers of hope for those staggered by this dire moment: The vaccine development for the novel coronavirus appears to be moving at unprecedented speed. There are promising therapeutics that may lower the mortality rate of those who become severely ill. The pandemic will someday come to an end, experts promise, because all pandemics have. And though SARS-CoV-2 is a slippery and unpredictable virus, it has not proved as deadly as the 1918 influenza virus that swept across much of the planet. “In 1918, practically every city in the country ran out of coffins,” Barry said. Victims commonly died at home. “All these things led to much greater fear, which meant that people were also more willing to put up with anything that might help.” Howard Markel, a medical historian at the University of Michigan, said that though similarities exist between today’s outbreak and the influenza pandemic a century ago, American society was different at that time. Americans had experienced epidemics of cholera, diphtheria and other diseases in the not-so-distant past. They were accustomed to children dying of smallpox, whooping cough and other diseases. Unlike today, most Americans also had little confidence that a magic bullet would end the suffering and exasperation. “Another expectation of our era is the expectation that science will come up with a fix quickly,” Markel said. “None of us have the patience for lengthy processes. We live in an instant society.” Still, Markel said, despite the seemingly endless nature of the current situation, history offers reasons for optimism. When the pandemic of 1918-1919 was over, for


Scientists fight disease-carrying mosquitoes by letting them feed off their blood

feeding a few thousand per month with his own limbs. With the Wolbachia research, he uses his own blood because he needs to keep the mosquitoes under as natural conditions as possible. The colonies tend not to reproduce as well if they’re given alternative feeding sources, and getting the Wolbachia to proliferate is already challenging. At first, when Ross began feeding mosquitoes while working toward a master’s degree in 2012, the itching was brutal; he couldn’t stop scratching for weeks. But like Rund, his body grew accustomed to it. Since then, Ross estimated, he has fed mosquitoes on the order of eight liters of his own blood. “I’d be dead if they all fed on me at once,” he said jokingly. Not everyone who works with mosquitoes uses the human feeding method. Chelsea Smartt, associate professor of molecular biology and biochemistry at the University of Florida, has not fed lab mosquitoes off her own arms since graduate school in the early 1990s — and that was in only special populations that didn’t adapt to other methods. She said she never got used to it. “It was amazing to watch but uncomfortable and itchy,” she said in an email. Smartt became interested in mosquito disease transmission because when she was 7 her family moved to Tanzania and her brother contracted malaria. Smartt’s lab looks at why certain mosquitoes can propagate viruses and transmit them to people, and some cannot. While females need blood to reproduce, mosquitoes generally also feed on nectar. Bait stations that people can put in their yards contain sugar laced with fungi or insecticide that kill mosquitoes. Smartt’s ultimate goal is to find a molecule that attaches to sugar that would instead block a virus from replicating. That way, a mosquito bite might cause an itchy welt, but not dengue or some other disease. “I’m trying to do a reverse vaccine,” she said. “I’d like to try to vaccinate the mosquito instead.” Instead of human blood, Smartt’s lab uses anesthetized chickens or commercially available blood so that the mosquitoes can reproduce for research. Other labs may use mice, guinea pigs or other animals. Other researchers tinker with various components in artificial blood to see which chemicals most attract female mosquitoes. The key to making synthetic bloodlike solution look delicious to mosquitoes is to warm it up first, says Veronica Jové, a doctoral student at Rockefeller University in New


Civil rights protest, political demonstrations and fireworks: D.C. to host thousands amid coronavirus pandemic

into marked sections that run the length of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. The signs will also include reminders about coronavirus safety guidelines. The National Park Service has not yet granted a permit for the demonstration, but officials said that is likely to happen early in the week. The week is expected to be a revolving door of events with thousands of people in and out of D.C. On Tuesday, gatherings coordinated by Maryland Republicans and the Maryland Black Republican Council will take place at Lafayette Square and around the Ellipse, where attendees will remain through the afternoon and into “the late night,” according to a permit application recently filed with the Park Service. The same group, which estimated the event would draw 10,000 attendees, will return Thursday afternoon ahead of Trump’s official GOP nomination. After Trump’s acceptance speech, fireworks are planned near the Washington Monument. In a permit application, organizers said the event, which will start after 11 p.m. Thursday, will probably draw protesters. People will begin to arrive for the civil rights rally early Friday. Nearly a dozen other demonstrations calling for an overhaul of the criminal justice system and for racial equity are also scheduled Friday. Several will melt into the larger demonstration, led by the Rev. Al Sharpton and featuring Martin Luther King III, the elder son of the civil rights leader. It will include several families of men and women who have been killed by law enforcement, including George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Eric Garner. It was not clear how many people are expected to attend the rally. On its permit application with the Park Service, NAN originally estimated 100,000 participants, although D.C. officials have said they expect the final number to fall short of that. “The District of Columbia continues to work closely with event organizers to ensure that individuals can exercise their right to protest peacefully,” Chris Rodriguez, director of the city’s Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency, said in a statement Friday. “While this communication continues, it is important to note that mass gatherings, including for First Amendment activities, pose a risk of spreading the virus within our community.” The other groups that requested permits to hold rallies around the larger march estimated participant numbers would range from about 50 to 500. Black women on motorcycles will gather under the banner of Black Girls Ride, roaring into D.C. from around the country.


CDC drops 14-day self-quarantine recommendation for international and out-of-state travelers

Since March, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has advised travelers to self-quarantine for 14 days after all international travel, and after domestic travel to states seeing a high rate of coronavirus cases. But the CDC has changed that stance, removing the directions for two-week quarantines from the “After You Travel” section of its coronavirus travel guidance. Instead, they share “after-travel” recommendations based on individual countries. A map of country-specific health information can be found on the CDC website, and includes a map of reported cases in the United States. In an email, CDC spokesman Scott Pauley told The Washington Post: “This updated guidance is based on risk of exposure during travel, asking travelers to think about what they did, where they were, and who they came into contact with to evaluate their risk of exposure to covid-19.” The CDC’s updated travel guidance states that all returning travelers should social distance, wear a cloth face covering, wash their hands often and watch for symptoms. Notably, those are all basic measures the CDC has highlighted to Americans to follow since the beginning of the pandemic, regardless of whether traveling is involved. Doctors say that quarantines can still be a good idea after traveling to a coronavirus-impacted area, and that quarantines are especially useful in the absence of testing. Plus, if you’re from a state that requires a two-week quarantine, you’ll likely still need to complete one. “Broadly speaking, if someone travels to an area with an active outbreak, it’s reasonable upon return for them to be required to either get tested or to quarantine, a measure that many states now have in place,” Boston University epidemiologist Sandro Galea told The Washington Post. “We’re all trying to adapt to shifting realities and shifting facts all the time,” he says, but the advice to distance, frequently sanitize and wear a mask in public “are guidelines we should all be following all the time, regardless of whether we’ve traveled or not.” The CDC’s travel guidance does still note that travel and being in crowds increases the chance of contracting the virus, and that infected people can be asymptomatic and spread the disease. But CDC quarantine guidelines also now narrowly define those who should isolate for two weeks as “people who have been in close contact with someone who has COVID-19 — excluding people who have had COVID-19 within the past three months.” Galea


Prisoners and guards agree about federal coronavirus response: ‘We do not feel safe’

Kareen “Troy” Troitino spent all of July working in a prison medical facility just as the coronavirus was surging through Miami’s Federal Correctional Institution, where the number of confirmed cases ballooned from a handful of prisoners to nearly 100 in a matter of days. When he returned to work at FCI Miami in August, he was caught off guard when the prisoners welcomed him back with a laudatory uproar he said “sounded like the Super Bowl.” Word had circulated among prisoners in the 1,000-person low-security facility that Troitino, a corrections officer and union president, was telling reporters, lawmakers and managers that despite assurances, the Bureau of Prisons’ response to the coronavirus pandemic was endangering the lives of federal employees and prisoners alike. Troitino, who spoke to The Washington Post as a representative of his union, acknowledged that prisoners and guards don’t always find themselves on the same team; but in a pandemic, everyone’s fates are intertwined. “All of us are trying to survive,” Troitino said. “Your health affects me, and vice versa. Inmates and staff, we do not feel safe.” Troitino is among the federal workers suing the government for hazard pay over what they say are risky conditions they’re forced to work under during the pandemic — but he’s hardly a disgruntled worker. When the BOP announced Aug. 5 it had moved into Phase 9 of its covid-19 action plan, prisoners and their advocates panned the news as the bureau’s attempt to create the impression that the virus is under control in facilities while papering over a deepening health and safety crisis. BOP Director Michael Carvajal has dismissed scrutiny of the bureau as “misinformation.” During a June Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on covid-19 best practices for prisons and jails, Carvajal testified that the bureau was well-prepared and that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had praised the bureau after evaluating unspecified facilities in the early months of the pandemic. As of June 1, Carvajal said 1,650 federal inmates and 171 bureau staff had tested positive. Less than 12 weeks later, those numbers grew to 11,953 prisoners and 1,436 staff, with more than 120 combined deaths, according to UCLA’s Covid-19 Behind Bars Data Project. Covid-19 cases are proportionally higher and have spread faster in prisons than in the outside population, said Brendan Saloner, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who is studying the issue.


forced to work under during the pandemic — but he’s hardly a disgruntled worker. When the BOP announced Aug. 5 it had moved into Phase 9 of its covid-19 action plan, prisoners and their advocates panned the news as the bureau’s attempt to create the impression that the virus is under control in facilities while papering over a deepening health and safety crisis. BOP Director Michael Carvajal has dismissed scrutiny of the bureau as “misinformation.” During a June Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on covid-19 best practices for prisons and jails, Carvajal testified that the bureau was well-prepared and that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had praised the bureau after evaluating unspecified facilities in the early months of the pandemic. As of June 1, Carvajal said 1,650 federal inmates and 171 bureau staff had tested positive. Less than 12 weeks later, those numbers grew to 11,953 prisoners and 1,436 staff, with more than 120 combined deaths, according to UCLA’s Covid-19 Behind Bars Data Project. Covid-19 cases are proportionally higher and have spread faster in prisons than in the outside population, said Brendan Saloner, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who is studying the issue. Saloner told The Post federal public defenders contacted his team with troubling details from clients. “Their contention is that it’s worse in the BOP than in the state prisons,” he said. People inside the facilities aren’t the only ones at risk from an outbreak, Saloner added; as seen with other congregant facilities such as nursing homes, outbreaks in prisons inevitably spread back outside through staff, vendors and furloughed prisoners. “Prison isn’t Vegas — what happens there doesn’t stay in there,” he said. Interviews with a dozen federal prison employees, prisoners, lawyers and health and legal experts who monitor correctional facilities, as well as reviews of lawsuits and petitions filed by prisoners and collected from the UCLA data project, show the ways by which the pandemic has exacerbated existing problems in federal prisons; they range from overcrowding and staff shortages to a lack of transparency around policies for personal protective equipment (PPE) and testing. “It’s a complete disaster,” said Rob Norcross, an inmate at the minimum-security satellite camp at FCI Jesup in Georgia. The bureau’s stated guidelines about sanitization and social distancing don’t comport with reality, Norcross said: Prison camp inmates are barred from using hand sanitizer, lack cleaning supplies and


rather than preventive. Troitino said prisoners were only getting tested if they had a fever — a testing threshold that hobbled the early months of the U.S. coronavirus response on the outside, before it spread to prisons. “The strain of the virus we got in the facility shows no fever,” Troitino said. “Most inmates complain of extreme low energy, a headache, can’t get out of bed, vomiting, diarrhea.” Emery Nelson, a BOP spokesman, told The Post via email that prisoners are typically tested when they’re considered symptomatic, in quarantine, as part of random testing or because they are being monitored because they are in a certain subgroup that may be exposed; results can take as few as 10 minutes for a rapid test (which can be less accurate), or as long as two weeks when processed by a commercial lab. Those protocols don’t go far enough for lawmakers such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who sent Carvajal letters demanding answers on testing and transparency. Warren and several congressional Democrats introduced a bill Aug. 6 that would require federal and local corrections facilities to collect and report comprehensive data on covid-19 infections and deaths. “Covid-19 is out of control in prisons and jails across the country — and the Trump Administration has failed to effectively manage this pandemic and protect the health and safety of incarcerated people, correctional staff, and the general public,” Warren said in the past week in a statement to The Post. UCLA Law’s Sharon Dolovich, who leads the Covid-19 Behind Bars Data Project, echoed Warren’s criticism of the bureau, noting the data it does publish on coronavirus cases and deaths is non-comprehensive and opaque. “The culture of secrecy that’s been allowed to develop in the nation’s prisons and jails over the past 40 years is antithetical to these institutions’ status in a democratic society,” she said. “We have government officials who act as if this is their private information.” Troitino, the Miami prison guard, said he’s not sure how much more uncertainty his fellow prison workers can take; guards are eligible for retirement at age 50 and plenty are eyeing the door. He blamed the BOP for a lack of leadership and warned the poor working conditions that have been exacerbated by the pandemic will continue to thin the ranks in already-understaffed facilities. “All I hear is, ‘As soon as I’m eligible, I’m out,’ ” he said.


Coronavirus has left the Rio Grande Valley riven by death and anxiety

to persuade Norma Vasquez to visit a doctor when she contracted the virus, but Vasquez refused. They chatted by video during the 15 days she was ill, fighting off symptoms with home remedies. Vasquez made tea from eucalyptus and guava leaves, and tonics of chamomile mixed with Topo Chico. She sent her son over the border into Mexico to buy cheap fever-reducing medicine — Paracetamol — and shared the recipes with neighbors. “I won’t go to the hospital,” said Vasquez, 50. “You leave worse off than when you enter.” While Vasquez beat the virus, her neighbor did not. Olivia Castro had been nursing her husband through the virus when she became gravely ill. She filmed herself live on Facebook from her hospital bed and peered into the camera for 10 minutes, because she could not breathe enough to speak. She waved, nodded her head and pressed her hands firmly together, silently asking for prayers while friends posted encouraging messages. When Castro tried to respond to the questions from family, she mouthed words with a murmur. Vasquez told Castro, 40, to hang on. She died Aug. 2. The colonia is helping the family raise money for funeral expenses. As death has pervaded almost everything here, the death business is struggling to keep up. On a recent afternoon, two funeral home workers needed a break and sought shade under a tree in a Hidalgo graveyard. They started talking while staring at the fresh heap of dark brown dirt at their feet. “It’s super confusing,” said Daniel Contreras, 29, as he wiped his forehead. “It’s everywhere. I look at the families and can see that people are being taken away too early.” The men operate a lowering device that places caskets into graves. Their job often forces them to stay on site for most of the services. “I know, man. I do think about getting sick a lot. But we have to keep working,” replied Ysmael Ybarra, also 29. “I’ve done so many of these that I already know all the mariachi songs well enough I can judge how well the bands played it.” “And you don't even know Spanish,” Contreras said. The specter of sickness also torments. Once it arrives, emptiness and bitterness follow. Debts and bills arrive. Danielle López’s amá warned her about “La Gran Ansiedad” — the Great Anxiety. Her elderly mother had a way of flourishing advice with mystery.


The Energy 202: How Pebble Mine opponents used Fox News push Trump to delay the Alaska project

weather. The western United States has experienced record-breaking heat, which has sparked freak thunderstorms and wildfires in California. Scientists say that climate change is driving the extreme weather. Last week the National Weather Service warned that “summer is hot, but this is different.” The extreme weather patterns are coming at a time when emergency response services are already strained by the coronavirus pandemic. “Tens of thousands of people are trying to escape wildfires and extreme heat at a time when they are also asked to wear masks and keep a distance from strangers. And as a hurricane season turbocharged by heat gets underway, the virus promises to complicate responses,” they write. Margaret Everson, the new acting director for the National Park Service, told regional directors Wednesday that staff shortages should not get in the way of the public’s access to picnic areas, parking lots, overlooks or campgrounds, National Parks Traveler reports. Everson said that parks should raise staffing limitations with regional directors and NPS headquarters, which could work on alternative hiring strategies or other options to keep the parks open. Phil Francis, the chairman of the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks, a membership organization of current and former NPS employees and volunteers, condemned Everson’s message. “This directive from Acting Director Everson demonstrates her complete lack of understanding regarding how parks operate and what National Park Service employees actually do," Francis said. "Her suggestion that all outdoor facilities, including campgrounds and picnic areas, should be open despite staff shortages suggests she thinks these facilities run themselves. They do not," National parks across the country have experienced closures this summer, but it’s unclear how many of those were due to staff shortages as opposed to general fear over the potential spread of the coronavirus, National Parks Traveler reports. “ The plume of gas released north of Gainsville between May 2 and May 3 was estimated to total 300 metric tons. The EPA’s southeast regional office told Bloomberg in a statement that the preliminary findings indicated that it “may have occurred from maintenance operations at a natural gas compressor station located in Brooker (Bradford County), Florida.” Methane generally sticks around for a shorter amount of time than carbon dioxide, but makes a more potent contribution to climate change than carbon dioxide. The Trump administration this month rolled back Obama-era regulations that required oil and gas companies to detect and prevent methane leaks.


What does it mean that most Republicans see the coronavirus death toll as acceptable?

When the ball in Times Square began dropping on Dec. 31, 2019 — the day on which the novel coronavirus first came to international attention — there were a bit over 330 million people living in the United States. Over the eight-plus months since, one out of every 1,900 of those people has died of covid-19, the disease the virus causes. By early November, researchers from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington estimate that an additional 50,000 to 120,000 people will have died of covid-19, bringing the death toll to somewhere between 225,000 and nearly 300,000 people — or as many as 1 in 1,111 Americans. The number of deaths depends on what Americans do between now and then. If people wear masks every time they leave the house, the number of deaths will slow. If we instead broadly ease mandates aimed at containing the virus, they’ll accelerate. What America does between now and then, meanwhile, seems to depend on how they view President Trump. Over the weekend, CBS News released a poll conducted by YouGov looking broadly at the presidential contest. It included a number of questions about the coronavirus pandemic — understandably, since the pandemic is the primary driver of the presidential contest. Among the more remarkable results? About 3 in 10 Americans think the number of deaths from the coronavirus so far is acceptable. That includes 1 in 10 Democrats and a majority of Republicans. To some extent, this is a function of skepticism that the tally is accurate. Nearly two-thirds of Republicans think that the number of deaths is lower than what’s been reported, an idea fostered by allies of Trump and personalities on Fox News. That’s inextricable from the other reason Republicans are so sanguine about the death toll: They understand that the question was inherently a question about Trump’s handling of the pandemic. Some Republican supporters of the president see all of this as blown out of proportion and also think Trump has, as he asserts, done everything possible to address the pandemic. It raises the question, though: How many deaths is too many? When the White House first called for a shutdown of most economic activity in March to slow the spread of the virus, it produced a graph showing how containment measures could lower the eventual death toll. If nothing was done, coronavirus response coordinator Deborah


Extreme weather threatens coronavirus pandemic response in hard-hit states

cautioned that the outbreak could reverse course if people abandon health measures as they bunker down for the storms. “We don’t want to lose what we’ve gained,” Jefferson Parish President Cynthia Lee Sheng said at a news conference Saturday, as reported by the New Orleans Advocate. Cases also surged in Mississippi last month and are trending upward again after dipping in the first half of August, according to The Post’s tracking. Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves (R) declared a state of emergency over the weekend and warned residents that shelter capacity would be limited because of the state’s outbreak. He urged people to seek out nonpublic spaces if they needed to evacuate. “What we can’t have happen is, if this thing is to strengthen on Sunday or Monday, to have a mad rush of people to our sheltering space,” Reeves said. In other parts of the country, officials stepped up warnings about possible “superspreader” events that create ideal conditions for virus transmission. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti (D) told CBS News’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday that he recently shut off power at a Hollywood home after the residents hosted large parties. “Where people don’t listen, we’re going to shut them down,” Garcetti said. “We’re just not playing here. We are not going to let people take our lives into their hands, so we shut it down.” In Maine, the Aug. 7 wedding reception in Millinocket is a growing concern for health officials, who said this weekend that they have identified secondary and tertiary infections connected with it, showing the virus had rippled into the surrounding community. Those infected ranged in age from 4 to 98, officials said. The Millinocket Regional Hospital confirmed in a statement Friday that a woman linked to the reception had died of the virus. About 65 people attended the event, the Bangor Daily News reported. Large gatherings are a problem for colleges and universities, too, with school officials struggling to rein in their students as they return to campus for the new academic year. Some institutions, including the University of Notre Dame in Indiana and Towson University in Maryland, have suspended in-person classes following campus outbreaks. Images of students packed into bars and common areas have resulted in harsh warnings and discipline from administrators. At the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts, administrators told students that an off-campus party had been linked to a confirmed


after the residents hosted large parties. “Where people don’t listen, we’re going to shut them down,” Garcetti said. “We’re just not playing here. We are not going to let people take our lives into their hands, so we shut it down.” In Maine, the Aug. 7 wedding reception in Millinocket is a growing concern for health officials, who said this weekend that they have identified secondary and tertiary infections connected with it, showing the virus had rippled into the surrounding community. Those infected ranged in age from 4 to 98, officials said. The Millinocket Regional Hospital confirmed in a statement Friday that a woman linked to the reception had died of the virus. About 65 people attended the event, the Bangor Daily News reported. Large gatherings are a problem for colleges and universities, too, with school officials struggling to rein in their students as they return to campus for the new academic year. Some institutions, including the University of Notre Dame in Indiana and Towson University in Maryland, have suspended in-person classes following campus outbreaks. Images of students packed into bars and common areas have resulted in harsh warnings and discipline from administrators. At the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts, administrators told students that an off-campus party had been linked to a confirmed coronavirus case and several potential infections before the semester had even started. In a message titled “Last Night’s Selfish and Reckless Behavior,” Syracuse University leaders admonished first-year students who gathered on a quad in violation of guidelines. University of Alabama President Stuart Bell told the campus community that the university was experiencing an “unacceptable rise” in cases. Robert Robbins, president of the University of Arizona, said more than 5,000 students living in the university’s dorms have been tested for the virus. But he cautioned that the more than 20,000 other students living off campus will be harder to control once the university begins in-person and online classes Monday. “I think the big issue is off-campus activity,” Robbins told “Face the Nation” on Sunday. He said students could be expelled for violating the university’s pandemic policies, including mandatory mask-wearing, and said the campus could shut down again if cases spike and area hospitals become overwhelmed. “If we can’t handle it and people are getting really ill,” Robbins said, “then we’ll pull the plug.” Matthew Cappucci, Jason Samenow, Abigail Hauslohner and Felicia Sonmez contributed to this report.


U.S. coronavirus cases and state maps: Tracking cases, deaths

3,700 deaths of people who were presumed to have died from covid-19 but were never tested, and New Jersey added more than 1,800 to its tally on June 25. Health officials, including the country’s top infectious disease expert, Anthony S. Fauci, have said the virus has killed more people than official death tolls indicate. The virus continues to kill in New York, where at least   cases have been reported and at least   have died. But the pace there has slowed considerably from the peak weeks in spring. Meanwhile, the disease seems to flourish wherever people let down their guard. In addition to large urban centers, beaches and tourist areas, outbreaks have arisen in prisons, factories and other workplaces. As summer progressed, clusters appeared in newly reopened college campuses and high schools. It has hit Black communities and Hispanic and Native American communities particularly hard. In the absence of a federal plan, strategies vary by state and even by locality. Alarmed by the astounding increases and stresses on their healthcare systems, governors in several states have paused or reversed their reopening plans. By late July, more than 30 states required masks in public places and some of the largest national retail chains required them in their stores. Most deaths continue to be among people older than 65 and those with underlying health problems. By late June, however, the virus was coursing through a younger, more mobile population. People under 40 tend to become less sick but also unknowingly may pass the disease to others around them. Researchers have linked the virus to a mysterious and deadly inflammatory syndrome in hundreds of U.S. children, an indication that much is still unknown about the virus and the way it affects different people. Sparsely populated areas don’t have the huge raw numbers of cases or deaths that cities have reported, but some rank among the highest in deaths and cases per capita. People in very rural areas are more likely to die of flu than urbanites and may be more vulnerable to covid-19 as well, according to a Post analysis of CDC data. Testing was slow to begin Surging cases in July and high caseloads in August overwhelmed testing infrastructure again, and waits for results in some areas were a week or more — too long to be of much use in controlling the spread. In late June, CDC Director


a mysterious and deadly inflammatory syndrome in hundreds of U.S. children, an indication that much is still unknown about the virus and the way it affects different people. Sparsely populated areas don’t have the huge raw numbers of cases or deaths that cities have reported, but some rank among the highest in deaths and cases per capita. People in very rural areas are more likely to die of flu than urbanites and may be more vulnerable to covid-19 as well, according to a Post analysis of CDC data. Testing was slow to begin Surging cases in July and high caseloads in August overwhelmed testing infrastructure again, and waits for results in some areas were a week or more — too long to be of much use in controlling the spread. In late June, CDC Director Robert Redfield estimated that, based on antibody tests, the actual number of U.S. residents who have been infected with the coronavirus is likely to be 10 times as high as the number of confirmed cases. One indicator that the virus is spreading — and not just that tests are identifying more asymptomatic cases — is that more people are being hospitalized in many places. Healthcare workers are again reporting shortages of personal protective equipment. Some hospitals in hard-hit areas report few or no beds available in their intensive care units. Many states and territories did not publicly report hospitalizations until recently, and four still do not: Hawaii, Guam, American Samoa and the Virgin Islands. More than 20 states do not report the number of patients in ICUs. Design and development by Data on deaths and cases comes from Post reporting and Johns Hopkins University. Post-reported data, including hospitalizations, is gathered from state sites and from county and city sites for certain jurisdictions. Deaths are recorded on the dates they are announced, not necessarily the dates they occur. All numbers are provisional and may be revised by the jurisdictions. The seven-day rolling average uses the past seven days of new daily reported cases or deaths to calculate a daily average, starting from the most recent full day of data. Population data are five-year estimates from the 2018 American Community Survey by the U.S. Census Bureau. State stay-at-home order data from Post reporting. State-of-emergency declarations were tallied by Boston University's covid-19 U.S. state policy database. Testing data is from the Covid-19 Tracking Project. Contact us at uscoronavirustracker@washpost.com.


Blood from people who recover from coronavirus could provide a treatment

An old idea for fighting infections — an approach most physicians know about only from medical lore — is being revived as people wait for drugs and vaccines to thwart the novel coronavirus. If it works, the blood plasma of people who have recovered from covid-19 would be used to protect health-care workers and help sick people get well. The possible therapy is based on a medical concept called “passive immunity.” People who recover from an infection develop antibodies that circulate in the blood and can neutralize the pathogen. Infusions of plasma — the clear liquid that remains when blood cells are removed — may increase people’s disease-fighting response to the virus, giving their immune systems an important boost. The approach has been used against polio, measles, mumps and flu. “The recovered people could have in their blood something that could be very useful,” said Arturo Casadevall, chair of molecular microbiology and immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “The history is this has been used in 120 years in medicine, and it’s well-known.” Casadevall is hopeful the treatment, called “convalescent plasma,” could provide short-term relief to a medical system that faces a surge of patients, with no approved drugs or vaccines. But he and colleagues face regulatory, logistical and scientific challenges to set up a process that will ultimately be limited in how many people it can treat. Researchers must collect blood plasma from people after they’ve recovered, then test it to determine if it is likely to be potent against the disease and deliver it to patients. Infectious disease specialists are sharing information through grass-roots networks, helping each other with clinical trial designs and ideas on how to screen plasma for virus-fighting antibodies. New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) announced his state would begin trying the treatment in patients stricken with covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. The Food and Drug Administration announced Tuesday it was helping facilitate access to the experimental treatment, while underscoring the need to establish safety and effectiveness. Mount Sinai Health System in New York announced this week that it plans to begin transfers of antibody-rich plasma from recovered patients to people who are severely ill. “We get really hung up on always trying the newest, latest, greatest thing. And sometimes the classics are good, too, and they tend to be ignored,” said Jeffrey P. Henderson, an infectious disease


The Daily 202: PR_8-25_DraftTest01_ML - THIS IS A REPUB2

with Mariana Alfaro President Trump has shown a mastery of distraction and deflection. One anecdote in the new tell-all by former national security adviser John Bolton confirms that his modus operandi is quite deliberate. On the evening of Nov. 19, 2018, The Washington Post reported that senior presidential adviser Ivanka Trump had sent hundreds of emails to White House aides, Cabinet officials and her assistants using a personal account, many of them in violation of federal records rules. The next morning, the White House issued a startling defense of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman over the killing and dismemberment, by bone saw, of Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi. The statement, which included eight exclamation marks, began: “America First! The world is a very dangerous place!” It attacked Khashoggi by repeating the baseless allegations from the regime in Riyadh that the journalist was an “enemy of the state” and a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Post reported earlier that week that the CIA had concluded, with a high confidence, that the prince personally ordered the assassination of Khashoggi. In his statement, Trump said, "[W]e may never know" if Mohammed was involved. But, "in any case, our relationship is with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. They have been a great ally … The United States intends to remain a steadfast partner of Saudi Arabia.” Bolton reveals in his new book, whose publication Trump is trying to block, that the main goal of the president’s missive was to take away attention from the story about his daughter’s emails. After all, Trump had not just spent years attacking Hillary Clinton for using a private email server while she was secretary of state but had also said his 2016 rival should go to prison for doing so. As president, he had egged on chants of “lock her up” at his rallies. “This will divert from Ivanka,” Trump said, according to Bolton’s book, as he drafted his defense of the Saudis. “If I read the statement in person, that will take over the Ivanka thing.” The president was correct. His gambit worked. The over-the-top defense of the Saudis diverted attention from Ivanka’s email use. It generated front-page stories and outraged editorials. Then the news cycle quickly moved on. The crown prince has continued to plunge his country deeper into autocracy. He has never been held accountable for Khashoggi’s killing. And Ivanka Trump, who remains


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. A former top lawyer for the National Security Agency says the White House’s move to block Bolton’s book is a Catch-22: The Russian Foreign Ministry seized on Bolton's claim that Trump asked


Genetic data show how a single superspreading event sent coronavirus across Massachusetts — and the nation

developed flu-like symptoms, according to the Boston Globe. By March 4, the company was instructing everyone who’d gone to the meeting to self-quarantine. The next day, Biogen confirmed that three out-of-state attendees had been diagnosed with covid-19; genetic data show that at least 12 others were sick by that point. But Woolfson knew nothing about her potential exposure until a friend texted her a news article about the outbreak. Suddenly the dry cough and mild ache she’d been feeling seemed serious enough to call her doctor, who immediately sent her to the ER for testing. She was positive. The Massachusetts Department of Public Health ultimately identified 97 coronavirus cases among meeting attendees and people who lived with them. Every individual linked to the conference whose genome was sequenced — 28 people in total — carried the conference’s characteristic mutation. It was dubbed “C2416T” for its location at the 2,416th spot on the genome and the two nucleic acids, cytosine (C) and uracil (T), that got switched. Sequencing also revealed how the coronavirus evolved even as the Biogen conference was going on. About a quarter of attendees were sickened by a virus whose genome contained both the C2416T mutation and a second mutation, G26233T. In one case, the scientists found both versions of the virus replicating in a single set of lungs. This shows that the G26233T variant is a descendant of the germ that originally arrived at the meeting, Lemieux said, an imperfect clone that wound up giving rise to its own distinct lineage. The conference, the new study finds, amplified both variants, turning what might have been just one more introduction of the virus into a “superspreading event." About a month later, more than 600 residents and staff members at two of Boston’s biggest homeless shelters were tested as part of a universal screening effort. Officials were shocked to discover that 230 people were already infected with the coronavirus, the large majority of them asymptomatic. Genetic analysis showed that nearly two-thirds of sequenced infections among shelter residents could be traced back to the conference. “Our jaws dropped,” said Pardis Sabeti, a computational biologist at the Broad Institute and one of the lead researchers on the study. “It was the realization that these events really affect the most vulnerable among us.” Scientists can only speculate as to exactly how the infection among biotech executives made its way into Boston’s homeless


The Republican convention is fan fiction

spending months denying the coronavirus would affect the United States and claiming it was about to disappear, Trump was in fact the only one who realized how serious it was. “One leader took decisive action to save lives: President Donald Trump,” said the narrator of a video laying out a fantasy in which Trump personally wrestled the pandemic into submission. Speakers were brought in to testify to how fantastically Trump performed and how much America benefited. “I can tell you without hesitation Donald Trump’s quick action and leadership saved thousands of lives during covid-19,” said Amy Johnson Ford, a nurse from West Virginia. “President Trump truly moved mountains to save lives,” said G.E. Ghali, a doctor and the chancellor of Louisiana State University Health Shreveport. You’d never know that over 174,000 Americans have died of covid-19, or that while many of our peer countries, such as Germany, Canada, and South Korea, have the pandemic largely under control to the point where their daily death tolls are in the single digits, America is still ravaged by the virus. But not in the GOP fanfic. “Just imagine what 2020 would have looked like,” said cancer survivor Natalie Harp, had Trump not done such a magnificent job. “Millions would have died. Millions more would have been infected.” Just like in all those countries unfortunate enough to lack the benefit of Trump’s leadership, like … um … well, anyway, the pandemic is pretty much over, right? Then there was the rewriting of Trump’s character. That Trump we all know, the petty, vindictive, crude, selfish narcissist who only seems comfortable around other humans when they’re telling him how great he is? Forget that guy. The convention gave us a fan-fiction version of Trump, one brimming with kindness and compassion. “I’ve seen up close a man who has a deep love for family,” said RNC chair Ronna McDaniel, who literally was forced to change her name because Trump found the “Romney” in it displeasing. (She’s Mitt’s niece.) “I’ve seen private moments where he comforts Americans in times of pain and sadness.” Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan told us “how much he truly cares about people,” by relating a story in which Jordan asked Trump to speak on the phone to a family member whose young son had been killed in a car accident. Rather than saying no, Trump spoke to the man for five minutes. Could any


Government may suggest men limit alcoholic drinks to one per day

less likely to associate feeling tired or subpar the next day with drinking the night before. Another positive aspect of the low- or no-alcohol trend is that it has made the concept of what it means to consume alcohol more fluid. Abbott said drinking used to be more black and white — people either drank or were a teetotaler — but today, more people are describing themselves as “sober curious” or “sober sometimes,” observing Dry January and creating demand for low- and no-alcohol beverages that still feel a little special. As Exhibit A, Abbott points to the boom of attractively packaged mocktails-in-a-can (or bottle) — often featuring ingredients such as bitters and herbal extracts — that re-create the ritual of the evening cocktail. “There’s much more selection now that doesn’t bring you back to that club soda sad feeling.” The beverage industry has stepped up its game. Craft breweries, wineries and distilleries are offering tastier low- and no-alcohol beer, wine and spirits, and there’s no shortage of drinking vinegars and shrubs, artisan bitters, CBD beverages, bottled and draft kombucha — both low- and no-alcohol — as well as “hard” seltzers. “There’s no reason to drink plain water or sugary-sweet drinks as a replacement for a cocktail when you’re celebrating,” Hultin said. “This is a really important trend, because they support and normalize not drinking alcohol, for whatever reason, but still give a nod to the fact that celebratory drinks are part of our culture. Now everyone can feel included but still choose whether or not they want to drink alcohol. There are options for all.” What do you do if you really enjoy, perhaps even rely on, your evening libations — especially with everything going on right now — yet worry that you really should cut back a bit? Hultin maintains that a “happy hour at home” can be a nice ritual for most people when exercising moderation. “However, if that’s the only way to relax or if people find they’re using alcohol to escape or cope, then it’s worth exploring other forms of relief, too.” She suggests experimenting with taking an occasional day off from alcohol and trying some of the new, different kinds of nonalcoholic beverages available. “For some, not drinking can actually have a bigger effect on happiness and can also improve sleep quality and energy levels.” Three things we could all use a little more of.


How the media has us thinking all wrong about the coronavirus

Emily Oster, a professor of economics at Brown University, is the author of “ Last month, a swimmer in Maine was killed by a shark. This tragic event was widely reported by local and national media. It was news. But the fact that there are hardly ever shark attacks in the United States is not news, because we expect most days to pass without shark-related fatalities. Researchers have documented our preference for the unexpected, exploring how information that is “surprising” provides greater entertainment and attracts more attention. Often this is benign: A basketball game that ends in a stunning upset, for instance, gets more coverage than a routine blowout. When it comes to covid-19, however, this preference — and the media’s tendency to indulge it — presents a real danger. It warps our thinking about the pandemic and may be leading us toward irrational decisions that can cause lasting harm. The problem is that reporting on covid-19 tends to follow the shark-attack example. We’re unaccustomed to what the virus has wrought — hospitals overwhelmed, celebrities and world leaders suffering near-death experiences in the public eye. These “surprises” are what the media focuses on. The challenge with the novel coronavirus, however, is exactly that: It’s completely novel. Nothing about it should be expected. All of the ways it behaves — and doesn’t behave — are new. In that sense, a nursing home with zero infections should be just as newsworthy as a nursing home with several. Because of the overwhelming bias in what gets reported about covid-19, the public lacks essential context for making reasoned, well-informed decisions. Researchers found, for example, that droplets containing the virus can, in theory, travel far in the air. That discovery was widely reported. Overlooked was the fact that, even if droplets can travel far in the air, we don’t have evidence that they usually do. So hiking trails and other open-air facilities were closed, despite the fact there are no documented cases of covid-19 caused by hiking. Then there is the debate surrounding schools. Districts in many areas are still grappling with whether to reopen, or when and how, with plenty of accompanying media coverage. Nearly all of it focuses on examples of covid-19 infections. But the uncertainty surrounding the coronavirus means the same attention should be given to schools where there are no cases. Twitter is full of people saying, “My kid’s school opened


without any cases this week!” Data I’ve collected shows that there are many camps and child-care facilities — even large ones — operating without any confirmed cases. These examples are out there; they just don’t show up in headlines. Parents and policymakers influenced by this skewed reporting may naturally conclude that any in-person instruction is dangerous. But they are missing a key piece of the puzzle. There are 291 school districts in Indiana serving 1 million children. Several have been open since July. Even if, by one count, there have been 100 cases in Indiana schools so far, this is likely to be a low in-school infection rate. Beyond that, this fact doesn’t tell us anything about whether infections spread in schools. In the absence of complete information on risks, our overreactions can have serious consequences. One example is the Three Mile Island nuclear event, which has not been conclusively linked to any long-term negative health outcomes but did terrify Americans about nuclear power. People simply didn’t have enough baseline information about the number of nuclear plants operating safely on a given day to realize that the probability of a nuclear disaster was vanishingly small. The result was that nuclear power — a plentiful, carbon-free energy source — never reached its potential in the United States, leading to needless overreliance on dangerous fossil fuels. We risk making similar mistakes with the coronavirus. Keeping children out of school harms their development. Shuttering businesses destroys livelihoods. These downsides may be offset by the benefits of limiting covid-19. But we cannot rationally assess the trade-offs when we have only partial information. What we really need to know is not the anecdotes that news reports provide, but the full picture. What share of schools have cases? Moreover, what differentiates places with cases from those without? Is it differences in prevention measures? Demographic and economic characteristics? The prevalence of community-spread events? To answer these questions, we need systematic data collection and reporting — the sort that lets us evaluate risks in all kinds of situations, from driving cars to flying on planes to, yes, ocean swimming. It should be possible to do this. As schools open, districts will have counts of at least detected covid-19 cases, as well as information on the overall enrolled population. This data could be combined in public databases with user-friendly dashboards and maps. Since this type of data collection has


It’s time to start testing potential covid-19 vaccines on children

Steven Joffe is a bioethics and pediatrics professor and interim chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. In the 1950s, a fearful America eagerly awaited a vaccine that would help end the scourge of polio. In April 1954, a trial of a vaccine developed by Jonas Salk, which enrolled 1.8 million children, began in McLean, Va. Just one year later, researchers announced that the vaccine was safe and effective, and a national program of mass vaccination began. By 1964, polio had almost been eradicated from the country. Almost 70 years later, a fearful America eagerly awaits a vaccine to fight against the novel coronavirus. The first large-scale trials of vaccine candidates have just begun, and hopes are high that one or more will prove safe and effective. But unlike for polio, most of these trials are enrolling only adults, so they will provide no evidence on the safety, effectiveness or dosing of the vaccines in children. Without data from children, the Food and Drug Administration is unlikely to approve the vaccines for pediatric use. This possibility is unacceptable. Because children appear to be at lower risk of developing severe covid-19 or of dying from the disease than adults, they will not be first in line to receive a vaccine when one is ultimately approved. However, it will be important to move as quickly as possible to vaccinate children for at least three reasons: First, although rare, children can die from the novel coronavirus infection or develop serious complications such as multisystem inflammatory syndrome. Second, children are likely to be important vectors of community spread; recent studies in JAMA Pediatrics and the Journal of Pediatrics suggest higher levels of viral shedding among children compared with adults. Finally, a vaccine that establishes immunity in children might make it possible to successfully hold in-person classes without complex, burdensome and expensive physical distancing and other measures. Precedent and FDA testimony suggest that the agency will not be willing to approve a vaccine in children, or even authorize its emergency use, without supportive data from pediatric trials. The agency has noted in its guidance document on the development and licensure of coronavirus vaccines that safety and effectiveness might differ between children and adults. Furthermore, children are not just little adults; given the variation in size and development across childhood, the agency will want


What to know about getting tested for the coronavirus to travel

After months of staying at home in New York City during the pandemic, travel writer Sarah Khan called her general practitioner for advice on getting tested for the coronavirus before a potential train trip to see her aging parents. For more than a week before taking off, Khan followed a strict self-quarantine at home, only leaving to take the coronavirus test at an urgent care clinic. The day after getting her negative test result, she left for Massachusetts, confident she wouldn’t be spreading the coronavirus onboard — but conscious the risk for contracting it was still present. “It’s obviously not foolproof,” Khan says. “You shouldn’t feel infallible from [a negative test]. But I do think that it’s an important step in our preplanning process now. Just like we have our packing list like, ‘Do I have my passport and everything?’ I feel like now would be like, ‘Did I take my covid test?’ ” In an email, a spokesperson for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told The Washington Post: “Travel-associated testing is a worthwhile concept under active discussion in the U.S. and internationally to reduce the risk of transportation-associated COVID-19 infection and the translocation of the virus from one location to another." Khan is not alone in getting tested before traveling during the pandemic. Lin Chen, a doctor and director of the Travel Medicine Center at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Mass., says she’s had an influx of inquiries about testing and travel. Here’s the advice she shares with would-be travelers. There’s a variety of places offering coronavirus testing, including urgent care centers, travel clinics, fire stations, pop-up sites, most hospitals, and pharmacies. Chen says potential travelers should check in with their primary care provider, who may know the best options for testing in their area. Other options include looking at city and state health department websites for testing resources. While some people may have success walking into testing sites without an appointment, Chen advises against waiting until the last minute to arrange your test. Appointments in some areas may be limited, and because of testing supply and manpower shortages, Chen says testing sites may only test high-priority, at-risk people and turn away travelers. Depending on the site, and whether a traveler has insurance, the price of a coronavirus test will vary. As the world scrambles to figure out how to understand, treat and stop covid-19, multiple methods