Western states are entering an active wildfire season just as coronavirus cases spike

in the middle of a pandemic. Steve Jensen, an emergency management adviser and lecturer at California State University at Long Beach, who has been working on issues surrounding wildfire and covid-19, the illness the coronavirus causes, said that emergency agencies will need “a more precise, tighter and coordinated messaging strategy, to make sure that residents understand the gravity of a situation and are ready to move at a moment’s notice.” In a worrying sign, covid-19 hospitalizations are steeply rising in seven states, including Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon and California. These states, along with Utah, also recorded their highest incidence of new cases this week since the start of the pandemic, a spike that likely was not due simply to increases in testing, according to a Washington Post analysis. As the summer progresses, these same areas may be grappling with significant wildfires while trying to control the highly contagious virus. The National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) in Boise, Idaho, expects heightened fire activity across much of the western U.S. this summer because of “increasing drought conditions, early loss of mountain snowpack, anticipated lightning activity, and overall hot and dry conditions that should persist through August,” according to its latest report. The Climate Prediction Center, which is part of the National Weather Service, is projecting the likelihood of a hotter and drier than average summer across much of the West. A hot summer will intensify already widespread drought in the region, further drying out vegetation and making wildfires worse. Being prepared for wildfire is imperative in 2020, but the public may have a difficult time navigating this newly fraught territory on their own. Local agencies will need to engage directly with their communities, well before there is a fire, about what evacuating during a pandemic may involve. Erica Kuligowski, a wildfire evacuation expert formerly with the National Institute of Standards and Technology, said it’s important for local law enforcement, emergency managers, fire departments and other first responders to provide advice on how to prepare for wildfires this year. Specifically, people need to know in advance how to receive warnings, what warning platforms or apps to sign up for, the planned locations of shelters in their area, and what evacuation routes and transportation options are available. “This is information that will help households develop their own evacuation plan — such as when will they leave, what and who will they take with them,


Pools? Planes? Camps? What public health experts will — and won’t — do this summer.

What, in general, will you consider when deciding where to go and what to do this summer? The experts say they will continue to limit contact with anyone outside their households and keep any gatherings small. “I won’t expand my sphere too much,” Jackson said. Marybeth Sexton, an assistant professor at the Emory University School of Medicine, said she is aware the risk of exposure is increasing as more people venture out. “I’ll really try to keep anything I do small and outdoors as much as possible — and with people who will be wearing a mask,” Sexton said. Julie Fischer, an associate professor of microbiology and immunology at Georgetown University, said she and her family will remain extra vigilant so they can feel safer visiting grandparents later in the summer. “I’ll be thinking about how much I’m in contact with other people,” Fischer said, “particularly people whose risk background we don’t know about.” Would you travel by plane? All three say they would avoid it, if possible. Plane travel falls short in three key ways: It is indoors, requires close contact with people outside the household and keeps a crowd together for an extended amount of time. “There’s a real risk when you’re crammed into a small space with other people,” Fischer said. “I personally will probably be doing family car trips this summer.” If she did have to fly, Fischer said, she would be careful to not adjust or touch her mask, from the moment she entered the terminal or other public space at her departure airport to the moment she left the terminal or other public space on the other end. Every mask adjustment or touch of the face or eyes, she said, increases the risk of transmission. (Most U.S. airlines — and a few airports, including in Los Angeles and San Francisco — required masks as of late May.) Fischer said she also would bring disinfecting wipes to clean the tray table, the arm rests, the call button and any other high-touch surfaces and would wash or disinfect her hands as soon as possible after getting off. Sexton said she would not feel safe flying because of how close she would be to others while moving through the airport, waiting at a gate and sitting on a potentially crowded plane. “Right now,” Sexton said, “I think the fewer people you can be around, the better.” Jackson


Higher, faster ... tone-deafer? The IOC needs to wake up on its protest policies.

A simple message from Tianna Bartoletta, three-time Olympic gold medalist sprinter and long jumper, to the International Olympic Committee: “Read the room.” Not the room you’re sitting in, IOC members, because the cushioned Victorian chairs from which you have a clear view of both the hearth and the library apparently don’t provide an excellent venue in which to listen to athletes. On June 9, 2020 — 15 days after George Floyd died at the hands of Minneapolis police, not a week after protests of that killing and so many others erupted around the globe — the IOC saw fit to say it would prohibit athletes from kneeling in protest at the postponed Tokyo Olympics scheduled for next summer. The next day, the IOC altered that stance — slightly. It effectively said, “We’ll think about it.” In a conference call with reporters, IOC President Thomas Bach said, “We have fully supported the initiative of the [IOC] Athletes’ Commission to have dialogue with their counterpart athletes from around the world to explore different ways on how Olympic athletes can express their support for the principles enshrined in the Olympic Charter in a dignified way.” Not included there: If you feel like kneeling, please kneel. “It’s almost like when somebody is late to a conversation and they have a position that has completely been deemed tone-deaf and irrelevant, but since they’re so late they don’t really know that — that’s how it comes across,” Bartoletta said by phone Wednesday. “You want the Olympics to be a celebration of unity and harmony and a celebration of sport, a celebration of overcoming covid-19 and say that it can represent so much more than sport. But then you turn around and say: ‘But not that. Not what you want to say. Not what you’re talking about.’ “This is the time.” That it is. And it should be obvious. It is obvious, certainly in the United States but abroad as well, that athletes are among the most thoughtful, meaningful voices leading the discussion in these fraught times. It’s a discussion of what it means to be black, of how it feels to live in fear, of how we can best relate to and understand one another, of how tiring it is having these talks not just in this time but for generations. “It’s not too late,” Bartoletta said. “But I am beaten down. There’s hope, but for


As coronavirus infections surge nationwide, 21 states see increase in average daily new cases

Twenty-one states have seen an increase in their average daily new coronavirus cases this week in comparison to the previous week, according to data compiled by The Washington Post. New infections nationwide also surged. Alabama, Oregon and South Carolina are among the states with the biggest increases. Alabama saw a 92 percent change in its seven-day average, while Oregon’s seven-day average was up 83.8 percent and South Carolina’s was up 60.3 percent. Hospitalizations have risen as well. For example, Arkansas has seen a 120.7 percent increase in hospitalizations, from 92 cases to 203, since Memorial Day. Health officials warn that mass gatherings of any type could worsen the spread of the virus, as the 2020 election heats up and nationwide protests against racism and police brutality stretch into their third week. Here are some significant developments: Sign up for our coronavirus newsletter


Maryland fines two dozen nursing homes for failing to report covid-19 information, reports deficiencies in others

three who were suspected of having covid-19, were reportedly sitting in proximity at the dining area. Employees were unclear of what personal protective equipment they needed to wear and sometimes failed to wash their hands when exiting patient rooms. One employee said she did not know she needed to wear eye protection, the report said, while another noted that the day of the inspection was the first time staff members had gowns. Augsburg, a nonprofit facility, was last cited for infection control deficiencies in 2017. As of Friday evening, 77 of its 114 residents have tested positive for covid-19 and 35 have died. A spokeswoman for Augsburg said on Saturday that most patients have recovered and that the facility no longer has “active” cases of covid-19. It submitted “Plan of Correction” for the noted deficiencies was accepted by CMS on May 28. At Athlea Woodland, a 50-bed nursing home in Silver Spring, inspectors reported that employees did not seem to have adequate protective equipment; one employee in a covid-19 wing was in a disposable yellow gown, which was inside out and had a large hole in it. The nursing home administrator told the inspector that his director of nursing and infection preventionist were “missing in action,” the report said. Althea Woodland owner Philip Meyer said the facility has formally disputed the inspector’s findings, adding that “this surveyor did not like certain things, but we feel they were not deficiencies.” Meyer acknowledged that their director of nursing had “abandoned” the facility in the middle of the outbreak but argued that this was not the fault of the facility. “CMS just kicked us when we were down,” he said. “We filled the position as soon as we could.” At Bedford Court Healthcare Center in Silver Spring, which is part of the Sunrise Senior Living chain, the executive director told inspectors that there was no designated covid-19 section. For three patients who had symptoms of covid-19, there was no signage to indicated they should be isolated, inspectors found. Denise Falco, the vice president of operations at Sunrise, said in a statement that the facility “submitted a plan of correction, which was subsequently accepted, and all corrective actions have been taken in regard to isolation and proper signage within the community.” In March, before CMS suspended non-emergency inspections of nursing homes, inspectors conducted annual surveys of at least 30 facilities, including some that would


Transcript: The Path Forward: Technology & Society

least for a year, that facial recognition technology with police and law enforcement. IBM made a similar statement earlier in the week. You have been thinking and writing about this issue of facial recognition technology for a couple of years. I want to ask you today whether you, on behalf of Microsoft, want to do what some have called for and take a stand on this issue on behalf of Microsoft. MR. SMITH: Well now, first of all, David, thank you. It's nice to be with you and always is good to be with you and to have this conversation. You know, we have been focused on this issue for two years, and we've been taking a principled stand and advocating not only for ourselves, but for the tech sector, and under the law, a principled stand for the country and for the world. As a result of the principles that we put in place, we do not sell facial recognition technology to police departments in the United States today. But I do think this is a moment in time that really calls on us to listen more, to learn more, and most importantly, to do more. You know, given that, you know, we've decided that we will not sell facial recognition technology to police departments in the United States until we have a national law in place, grounded in human rights, that will govern this technology. We'll also put in place some additional review factors so that we're looking at other potential uses of this technology that go even beyond what we already have for other potential scenarios. The number one point that I would really underscore is this: We need to use this moment to pursue a strong national law to govern facial recognition that is grounded in the protection of human rights. I think it's important to see what IBM has done. I think it is important to recognize what Amazon has done. It is obviously similar to what we are doing. But if all of the responsible companies in the country cede this market to those that are not prepared to take a stand, we won't necessarily serve the national interest or the lives of the black and African-American people of this nation well. We need Congress to act, not just tech companies alone. That is the only way that we will guarantee that we will


This photographer spent decades making photos inspired by the moon

direction. According to the publisher, “Lunario” “takes the name of a traditional farmer’s almanac to bring together several strands of work all relating to the moon.” The book is made up of photos Guidi created from 1968 to 1999. Throughout its pages, references to the moon manifest themselves in surprising ways — from the shape of a woman’s face to the glowing white orb of a young child’s ball and finally through a series of color photos Guidi took of a partial solar eclipse in August 1999. Of the work, the publisher says, “Throughout ‘Lunario,’ Guido Guidi comes back to the moon as a source of stylistic and thematic inspiration: a symbol of melancholy and madness, changeabitlity and a constant reminder of the transience of everyday life.” Because I am not so familiar with art photography but find it fascinating, I often find myself reading the words of people far more invested in the art world than I am. This time around, I read Brad Feuerhelm’s thoughts on “Lunario” at ASX, one of the most prominent blogs devoted to art and photography and one I have visited frequently over the years. It would be worth your time to read Feuerhelm’s entire review, but this paragraph stuck out: “Guidi is looking for the correlation between photographic thought, observation and the processes by which he observes the moon as his muse and finally delineates his response to it with his camera. Lunario, for all the funhouse photographic parlour tricks and Baldessarian motivations of a child’s ball bounced against a garden wall becomes something bigger. There are strange oblique references to the moon in object form such as the scythe, a woman’s Kertesz-like distorted face and one of my favorites — a simple hole in the wall. We are also reminded of gravity, apples and Newton. A series of orbital studies approximate a lunar surface and printed as a contact sheet become something of a conceptual fetish object.” One of the things I like most in photography is a sense of mystery. One cliche that you’ll hear a lot of photo editors use is, “I like photographs that ask questions rather than give answers.” But sometimes cliches hold a nugget of truth. Guidi’s photos certainly do have a sense of mystery to them. That signals a deep commitment to using photography to explore the human condition and not merely describe it. You can


Dear landlords: Without your help, D.C.’s restaurants and bars will close forever

Simone Jacobson, the co-owner of Thamee, and Derek Brown, the president of Drink Company, are the organizers of this open letter. Dear Landlords, Hospitality has never been easy. As owners of independent restaurants and bars, we’ve always been cautious but optimistic. We risked a lot to bring communities together around a hot meal or a well-made drink. To achieve our dream, we relied on our partnerships with you, our landlords, to be both long-term and mutually beneficial. And to a point they were. For more than a decade, business in Washington has been booming, led in part by growth in the bar and restaurant industry. From 2008 to 2016, the city saw a 77 percent increase in bar licenses and a 37 percent increase in restaurant licenses. We collectively added an estimated $13.9 billion in taxable retail and restaurant sales in 2016. Bon Appétit named D.C. the “Restaurant City of the Year” in 2016, and there are now 18 Michelin-starred restaurants here, along with some of the most recognized bars in the country, helping boost tourism. Money isn’t all we contribute to the city. We run the places where Washingtonians meet, work, celebrate and play. We contribute to community-based food halls, business incubators, restaurants focused on fair and sustainable local food systems, job development, and strides in diversity and equity in the workplace. But covid-19 has threatened to end our successful partnerships with our landlords. None of us could have predicted that on Monday, March 16, we would be shut down by the mayor because of a global pandemic. Thankfully, some of our landlords were quick to understand that this emergency would cause not only immediate but also long-term impact, not simply on our business, but on theirs. To those who offered relief in the form of rent abatement or cancellation, we extend our eternal gratitude. Yet even though conditions under which we opened our businesses and made our lease agreements no longer exist, some landlords still expected us to pay the rent as if it were business as usual. Many of us are surviving on a sliver of our previous sales, if we have any sales at all. If, and when, we do reopen, we will be facing a loss of consumer confidence and enforced spacing restrictions because of social distancing measures. We understand why 41 percent of our customers said they would not come back to restaurants and


As control measures lift, the coronavirus pandemic continues to grow. Here are the global hot spots.

Across continents, pandemic-weary communities are emerging from months of shutdowns and restrictions as politicians and businesses urge people to return to work. Lives have been upended, bank accounts have suffered, and many people are craving a return to old routines. But the novel coronavirus persists. Measured in terms of new confirmed cases — figures that experts agree are underestimated — it is surging rather than dwindling. Earlier this month, the World Health Organization reported the highest single-day increase since the start of the pandemic: 136,000 new infections on June 7. (The tally by Johns Hopkins University has slightly different figures.) Days later, the United States surpassed 2 million confirmed cases, cementing its place at the top of the confirmed infections ranking. Overall, more than 7.3 million people worldwide have tested positive for the coronavirus and more than 413,000 people have been confirmed to have died of covid-19. And those are just the infections and deaths we know about. Even if the recent surge in confirmed numbers may be due in part to increases in the availability of testing, the virus is nowhere near going away, experts say. As early hot spots begin to recover, the epicenters of the pandemic shift. Amid a widespread relaxation in restrictions, from Israel to Iran to South Korea to China, new clusters have formed. Three months after much of the world shut down, the United States, Brazil, Russia and India are reporting the highest numbers of new daily cases. What began in Washington and New York states has come for Arizona, Florida and Texas. Stay-at-home orders helped slow the initial spread as testing lagged. But states have largely lifted measures, and on Sunday, both Alabama and South Carolina hit single-day records in new confirmed cases. Hospitals in Houston are reporting record numbers of patients. Public health experts warn that states moving to reopen too fast could lead to fresh round of infections. Numbers so far indicate that has been the case. Coupled with the masses of people who have marched together in protests against racism and police violence, the coming weeks could see further increases. Being outdoors at a distance from others, wearing a mask and washing hands, scientists say, are among the best preventive measures. At the same time, experts are already warning about the winter, when the flu hits hospitals, schools and workplaces, compounding stress on the system. The virus spread through Asia.


Amid a widespread relaxation in restrictions, from Israel to Iran to South Korea to China, new clusters have formed. Three months after much of the world shut down, the United States, Brazil, Russia and India are reporting the highest numbers of new daily cases. What began in Washington and New York states has come for Arizona, Florida and Texas. Stay-at-home orders helped slow the initial spread as testing lagged. But states have largely lifted measures, and on Sunday, both Alabama and South Carolina hit single-day records in new confirmed cases. Hospitals in Houston are reporting record numbers of patients. Public health experts warn that states moving to reopen too fast could lead to fresh round of infections. Numbers so far indicate that has been the case. Coupled with the masses of people who have marched together in protests against racism and police violence, the coming weeks could see further increases. Being outdoors at a distance from others, wearing a mask and washing hands, scientists say, are among the best preventive measures. At the same time, experts are already warning about the winter, when the flu hits hospitals, schools and workplaces, compounding stress on the system. The virus spread through Asia. Then it surged in Europe. Now Latin America is the center of the global pandemic, according to the WHO. Even countries in South America that were quick to shut down, such as Peru and Chile, are seeing infections rise as they ease their restrictions. But Brazil — where the federal government, led by far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, has downplayed the virus — never went into a complete lockdown. Instead, governors and mayors at their own discretion closed schools and shops as the virus kept expanding its reach and the president kept belittling its severity. What began as a cluster among rich Brazilians with the resources to travel has turned into a crisis hitting neglected poor and indigenous Brazilians hardest. Now, as the above graph shows, Brazil’s outbreak is still widening. The country has confirmed more than 42,000 covid-19 deaths and more than 867,000 cases. In mid-March, Russian President Vladimir Putin boasted that the coronavirus, then wreaking havoc across Europe, wasn’t a problem for him back at home. Months later, Russia has the third-highest number of confirmed cases and among the fastest-growing outbreaks worldwide. Given trajectories elsewhere, that’s not much of a surprise: Russia’s shutdowns, which it is easing, helped to


Transcript: The Path Forward: The New Future of Work

of awaken in us that we're in all-digital, work-anywhere environment. And so, for our customers, their sales forces have to exist anywhere; their customer service organizations have to exist anywhere; their marketing organizations have to exist anywhere. And everyone needs to be able to work from anywhere, and that is a critical part of how we're going to achieve productivity right now. Yes, we're going to get our offices reopened. Yes, we're going to be able to have meetings. Yes, we'll be able to go back, but not all at once. We know we're in a new world with, you know, a virus that we're going to coexist with for probably some time, and probably not our last virus. By the way, this is just the first--I don't know about you, David, this is my first pandemic, I have to be honest with you. But that wouldn't be true if we were, like, in South Korea or we were in Taiwan or we were in Hong Kong or China. You know, this is not their first pandemic, which is one reason why they're doing so well. You read the Journal of the American Medical Association article on Taiwan and what they did and why they've handled this so perfectly, well, they wear masks. They wash their hands. They use information technology to limit the spread. Japan, when people get sick--you know, you look what's going on in the subways in Japan right now, they're all wearing masks. They're all using, you know, very extreme hygiene. So, we're learning, I think, right now, as a country, how to handle a pandemic, because this might be our first major pandemic, but it will not be our last. MR. IGNATIUS: So, Marc, are you--just thinking in the most practical terms, are you likely to shake hands with people in the future? Are you going to give people hugs? Are we going to live in a world where we are just more distanced no matter what, because that's the future? MR. BENIOFF: Well, I don't know if I'm going to be doing the deep bow that I learned in Japan. You know, but when I do go to Japan, there isn't a lot of back-slapping, "Hey, great job." There's not a lot of hugging and kissing. You know, it's not a hugging and kissing culture in Japan, and it's one of the reasons why


make turns, but many of those cars are going around the city without any human intervention at all. Now, that was not possible just 5 or 10 years ago, and it is today. So, you have to project now out into the future 10 years or 20 years and say, "What does that mean?" The technology does not stop. It is a continue--it moves forward. It is constantly getting lower cost and easier to use. And look, that's what makes so many exciting things happen. We just saw this incredible rocket take off and dock at the space station, but a lot of it was done through artificial intelligence and an augmented space program through AI. And that's very different than what the rockets looked like in the first generation. We all know that. So, we're in a new world, and it is a world where software has a very critical part of everything we do, as evidenced by this interview. And AI is probably going to be--well, I already know it's absolutely going to be a huge part of our future. I tell you, by the way, that's one of the reasons at Salesforce, we've been investing so heavily in something called Einstein. And you can learn more about that, but whether it's our customers selling things on line, like Adidas, or whether it's providing customer service or bots, Salesforce Einstein is there to help our customers be more successful with their customers. MR. IGNATIUS: And I should just note for viewers, Einstein is an AI system that Salesforce is offering to customers to help them with these issues. So, just before we leave this subject, Marc, I just want to ask your thoughts about, in this future that's here and will accelerate, some analysts--Andrew Yang, a presidential candidate, for example--has argued we really ought to give people some basic income they can count on when work is more problematic, certainly have a stronger safety net for people. What do you think about that? MR. BENIOFF: Well, I certainly think that that's something that we--actually, I think we're doing it right now. We just gave everybody $1,000 in the country. I wish that, when they sent everyone $1,000, they also sent them 10 N95 masks. I think it would have helped reduce the spread even more dramatically in our country, since we know that masks are critical to do


WNBA to hold a shortened 22-game season without fans

“We are finalizing a season start plan to build on the tremendous momentum generated in the league during the offseason,” WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert said in a statement, “and have used the guiding principles of health and safety of players and essential staff to establish necessary and extensive protocols. We will continue to consult with medical experts and public health officials as well as players, team owners and other stakeholders as we move forward with our execution plan.” The NBA has outlined a similar scenario for its teams finishing the 2019-20 season at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex near Orlando, with limited contact outside a bubblelike environment. The WNBA is still working out details with the players’ union, but a recent proposal included opt-out options for players uncomfortable playing in the current environment. Those with high-risk medical conditions could decide not to play and still receive full pay. Any players without a medical excuse can opt not to play without punishment but would not be paid. The announcement outlined training camps beginning in early July and the season starting in late July. The recent proposal specified a July 24 start date. The original May 15 start date was postponed because of the pandemic, and the normal 36-game schedule will be cut nearly in half. The league had some flexibility in its schedule because it had planned for a break from late July to early August to allow players to participate in the Tokyo Olympics, which were postponed to 2021. IMG Academy is a prep school and popular athletic training destination for amateur and professional athletes. The facilities include four basketball courts. The league’s announcement also stressed a commitment to giving players a platform to drive actionable social justice reform as protests of racial inequality and police brutality continue across the country. “We have always been at the forefront of initiatives with strong support of #BlackLivesMatter, #SayHerName, the LGBTQ+ community, gun control, voting rights, #MeToo, mental health and the list goes on,” Women’s National Basketball Players Association President Nneka Ogwumike said in the statement. “This is not only necessary from a humanitarian perspective, but it may be one of the biggest opportunities that this league has and will ever have.” More WNBA coverage: Mystics waive both of their 2020 draft picks before WNBA’s roster deadline Sabrina Ionescu, Oregon’s star guard, goes No. 1 in WNBA draft to the Liberty


No, Mr. President, the military isn’t an armed MAGA militia

it would be very bad, very bad.” His remarks initially attracted attention for his threat of violence against “the left” — a threat that was carried out during the recent demonstrations. But it was also telling that Trump grouped the military and police along with “Bikers for Trump” as part of his base. He sees the military not as an apolitical organization serving the people of America but as an armed MAGA militia. By his lights, there is nothing wrong with unleashing the military on demonstrators, taking money from its budget to build a border wall, deploying troops to counter a nonexistent threat from caravans of refugees, staging a gaudy military parade through Washington, firing an Army officer from the National Security Council because the officer told the truth about Trump’s attempts to extort Ukraine, pardoning military personnel accused of war crimes, leaving our Kurdish allies in the lurch or pulling 9,500 troops out of Germany because he felt snubbed by Chancellor Angela Merkel. Trump thinks he can do anything he wants; “when somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total,” he said. The military strongly disagrees. It has a long tradition of apolitical service and no desire to be turned into the president’s Praetorian Guard. Soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines are bound together by an ethos of “duty, honor, country” that is utterly alien to a president who has never served any cause greater than his own ego. Those who risk their lives in the nation’s service can only roll their eyes at a president who dodged the draft during the Vietnam War and hid in a bunker when demonstrators neared the White House but boasts about the battle of Lafayette Square as if it were D-Day redux. Nor do troops, who routinely work with foreign militaries, appreciate Trump’s contempt for U.S. allies. Trump’s flagrant racism is particularly neuralgic for a military that is proud of having been desegregated six years before the Supreme Court overturned the color barrier in public schools. By insisting that Army bases remain named in honor of traitors who fought to preserve slavery, Trump is insulting minorities in uniform (43 percent of the active-duty force) and setting back the military’s commitment to civil rights. A president who positions himself as the champion of history knows nothing of the military’s history or traditions. Even while boasting (with typical exaggeration) about all


American Paul Whelan convicted of spying by Russia, given 16 years in prison

he had no English interpretation and had no idea what decision was announced. Speaking on the courthouse steps after the verdict, Sullivan described the case as “a mockery of justice.” “Is this an impediment? Absolutely,” he said of the relationship between Moscow and Washington, referring to current affairs as at a “low ebb.” The U.S. Embassy has repeatedly condemned what it called the prosecution’s lack of evidence and described Whelan’s treatment as “shameful.” He was not permitted to phone his family until 16 months into his detainment, and the embassy said he did not have access to English-speaking doctors for a preexisting inguinal hernia. After experiencing “severe abdominal pain” late last month, Whelan had an “emergency hernia operation” at a Moscow hospital, Whelan’s twin brother, David Whelan, said in an email, citing information from the embassy. The surgery was successful, he said. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Monday in a statement that “the treatment of Paul Whelan at the hands of Russian authorities has been appalling.” “The United States is outraged by the decision of a Russian court today to convict U.S. citizen Paul Whelan after a secret trial, with secret evidence, and without appropriate allowances for defense witnesses,” the statement said. “We have serious concerns that Mr. Whelan was deprived of the fair trial guarantees that Russia is required to provide him in accordance with its international human rights obligations.” The trial, which began in March, was largely behind closed doors, with the court citing the classified materials in the case. Proceedings continued despite the strict coronavirus-related restrictions imposed in Russia’s capital. “Whelan was under surveillance for a number of years; there was a certain script, and there were obvious elements of provocation,” Zherebenkov said. The lawyer added that over the course of many trips to Russia, Whelan got to know about 60 people, “but not a single one has stated that Paul tried to recruit them.” Whelan, who also has Canadian, Irish and British citizenship, was the corporate security director at BorgWarner, a Michigan-based automotive parts supplier, at the time of his arrest. He received a bad-conduct discharge from the Marines in 2008, according to military records. “I need the president of the United States and the prime ministers of Canada, Ireland and England to act decisively to end this political charade,” Whelan said in the courtroom Monday. The Canadian government said Monday that it is “deeply


The personal finance industry must address racial discrimination

much evidence to show that the traditional American antipathy toward generous social welfare benefits is rooted not in our can-do, self-help beliefs, but in our attitudes toward race. Americans think more African Americans receive government benefits than actually do. At the same time, many middle class and upper-middle class Americans — more likely to be white — live in denial about just how much help they actually receive, both from their families and the government. As the Atlantic noted a few years ago, the more homogeneous the state, the more generous the social safety nets tends to be. In other words, the more minorities living in a state, the harder it often is to access government aid. We here in the United States are told there is no financial obstacle we can’t overcome if we work hard enough. But this is not true for everyone — especially not for African Americans, who are, as the New York Times pointed out this week, far, far behind white Americans when it comes to personal finances and economics. They receive lower pay, are less likely to own homes, more likely to both possess student debt and to default on it, and leave smaller — if any — estates to their heirs. Here’s how this plays out practically: as the Boston Globe reported in 2017, blacks from nonimmigrant backgrounds in Boston have a net worth of $8. Whites enjoy one of $247,000. This isn’t a financial literacy problem. It’s the result of long-standing and ongoing racial discrimination. And perhaps it’s not our pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps ideology — what I like to call the First National Church of Self-Help — that causes us to support less comprehensive government benefits. Instead, that messaging thrives because it is a way to justify the obscene privilege of a few. That’s not to say people can’t use financial advice. But those suggestions need to complement more proactive steps, such as demanding greater social safety net supports and talking openly about the long-term financial effects of unequal treatment as well as how to end it. Maybe the next FinCon conference can take that conversation on. Read more from Helaine Olen: Why the world of personal finance needs more politics Americans don’t need a lesson in financial literacy. The Trump administration does. The coronavirus crisis exposes how America really feels about small businesses Renters are under severe financial strain. Congress must help them.


As big corporations say ‘black lives matter,’ their track records raise skepticism

shows that 8.3 percent of U.S. managers are black. (Amazon founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.) The numbers are lower in the world of venture capital. One percent of venture funding went to black start-up founders in 2018, according to a study conducted by Silicon Valley Bank and others. And 1 percent of decision-makers at the top 100 venture capital firms were black in 2018, according to an annual survey by the Information, a tech news site. In addition to hiring and pay disparities, banks have come under fire for allegedly discriminating against minority customers. Some have settled claims in recent years for targeting black and Hispanic home buyers with risky, expensive loans. Homeownership, one of the most important ways to build wealth, has remained virtually unchanged for African Americans since 1968. “These are some of the same banks that ripped so much wealth from black and Latino communities during the foreclosure crisis,” said Maurice BP-Weeks, co-executive director of the Action Center on Race and the Economy, a nonprofit focused on racial and economic justice. Corporate statements supporting Black Lives Matter stand empty, he said, without meaningful actions such as directing profits back into black communities, eliminating racial pay disparities, increasing hiring from black neighborhoods and promoting black employees. “All of these things would show that this is more than just platitudes.” The American Bankers Association said in a statement that the industry “condemns discrimination of any kind in the lending market, the workplace and beyond” and that banks of all sizes are committed to “enhancing diversity, equity and inclusion within the industry” and addressing “racial injustice and inequity in the country.” JPMorgan Chase has battled allegations of discrimination against black financial advisers and customers, most recently in recordings obtained by the New York Times in 2019. The bank has said it was reviewing how it does business “so that we could gain a deeper understanding of what more we can do to root out racism and discrimination anywhere it exists.” At Wells Fargo, which paid $10 million last year to settle a lawsuit filed by the city of Philadelphia accusing the bank of steering black and Hispanic borrowers into riskier, more expensive mortgages, a committee of senior executives is meeting daily to develop recommendations for addressing societal inequalities facing black employees and customers. The bank denied allegations of discriminating against minority borrowers. “As a white


Ask Amy: Boyfriend sees jealousy as a dare to cheat

Dear Amy: I even share my location with her through iPhone, but she says that when I go to the store (to get my alone time, as I can't get it at home) that she doesn't know if that's where I'm really going. Shouldn't she have learned her lesson about going through my phone, snooping and trying to catch me doing things? Because of this, my phone is now unlockable only using Face ID because she knows my passcode. If I'm getting accused of cheating without even doing it (as I spend every waking moment with her unless I'm at work or she's at her office), why not just cheat and get it over with? I don't have a shortage of offers, either. She's very insecure because I have been with a LOT of girls. I'm talking high three digits. I'm a good-looking guy, as I constantly hear from women, but there's a lot more to me than being aesthetically pleasing. I have a good heart, I'm genuine, I'm cuddly and affectionate, and I have a slew of other good qualities. My girlfriend is also very highly dependent on me being in bed with her every night to be able to sleep. Her soon-to-be ex-husband made her spend a lot of time alone because he's a scum bag, and she's taking what he did out on me. We live together. How can we communicate better? — Upset Guy Upset Guy: Your girlfriend’s insecurities are amplified by your own sexual history. You believe that she is daring you to cheat — and you are obviously capable of fulfilling that dare — but maybe she is daring you NOT to cheat. Jealousy is insidious. As a partner you deserve to be trusted without a tracking device. Communication involves talking during calm moments, eye contact, positive reinforcement and consistent actions backing up your statements. If your girlfriend asked me, I’d say it’s probably too soon for her to bounce into a live-in relationship before she has ended and recovered from her marriage to Mr. Scumbag. Making your current partner pay for your previous partner’s behavior is a rookie mistake — and people do this when they don’t really know who they are and what they want. A couples counselor could help. Try reading, “The Jealousy Cure: Learn to Trust, Overcome Possessiveness, and Save Your Relationship,” by Robert Leahy and Paul Gilbert (2018, New


How false hope spread about hydroxychloroquine to treat covid-19 — and the consequences that followed

“But I think it could be, based on what I see, it could be a game changer.” — President Trump, at a White House news briefing, March 19, 2020 “Hydroxychloroquine — I don’t know, it’s looking like it’s having some good results. That would be a phenomenal thing.” — Trump, at a White House news briefing, April 3 “What do you have to lose? I’ll say it again: What do you have to lose? Take it. I really think they should take it.” — Trump, at a White House news briefing, April 4 “It’s this powerful drug on malaria. And there are signs that it works on this. Some very strong signs.” — Trump, at a White House news briefing, April 5 The world is looking for answers in the search for a treatment for covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, which has claimed more than 100,000 lives across the globe. President Trump has repeatedly touted the anti-malarial medications hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine as that much-needed solution. Even before Trump started talking about the drugs, studies abroad sparked interest in them as a potential cure. News about the drugs spread quickly online, percolated to the media and the White House. Scientists have since pointed to major flaws in those original studies and say there is a lack of reliable data on the drugs. Experts warn about the dangerous consequences of over-promoting a drug with unknown efficacy: Shortages of hydroxychloroquine have already occurred, depriving lupus and rheumatoid arthritis patients of access to it. Doctors say some patients could die of side effects. Other potential treatments for covid-19 could get overlooked with so much concentration on one option. The Fact Checker video team has reconstructed how the claim spread online and illustrates the troubling consequences of such misleading hope in the drugs. Conversation around hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine as potential treatments for covid-19 started in China in late January. According to Kate Starbird of the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, tweets from media organizations — including Chinese state outlets — and investors highlighted past studies in which the medications were tested as cures for severe acute respiratory syndrome. (The 2005 tests never made it to human trials.) They also pointed to statements from the coronavirus research center in Wuhan, China, suggesting the drugs could be used to fight covid-19. Renée DiResta, technical research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory,


Despite U.S. sanctions, the International Criminal Court will keep investigating alleged war crimes in Afghanistan

President Trump declared a national emergency last Thursday — but it wasn’t about the covid-19 pandemic or police brutality or nationwide protests. Rather, the subject of the emergency declaration was the International Criminal Court, the body investigating the United States for suspected war crimes in Afghanistan. Trump announced that the ICC represents an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.” The executive order pushes back by authorizing economic and diplomatic sanctions on ICC personnel working on the Afghanistan probe and anyone who helps them. The Trump administration has consistently and directly opposed the ICC, in contrast to the more passive opposition or even ad hoc support from previous administrations. The goal, as amplified by other U.S. officials, is to undermine the court, not only by interfering with the Afghanistan investigation but also investigations that don’t directly affect the United States. Yet the timing of this action seems odd, given the ongoing domestic health crisis, economic downturn and political crisis. Why now? And what will be the effect? In March, the ICC’s appeals chamber authorized Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda to investigate possible crimes committed in Afghanistan by U.S. and non-U.S. forces and intelligence, including the Afghan National Security Forces and the Taliban. The authorization came nearly a year after the pretrial chamber initially rejected Bensouda’s request to open an investigation. Now, she and her team will investigate alleged “torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity, and rape,” among other issues. The U.S. isn’t currently a member of the ICC. But Afghanistan, the country where the alleged abuses occurred, is a member. That puts the United States within the ICC’s jurisdiction. The sanctions order applies to any foreign person who materially supports or is directly involved in ICC efforts to “investigate, arrest, detain or prosecute any United States personnel.” It includes freezing these individuals’ U.S.-based financial assets and restricting their travel. The sanctions also apply to immediate family members. On first reading, the scope of the order is very wide, giving administration officials broad leeway in its application. The inclusion of family members is notable because a 2019 Trump executive order to sanction terrorists didn’t include their family members. Another unusual aspect of this executive order is the implication that U.S. officials could target human rights advocates and nongovernmental organizations, since they regularly work with the ICC and affected communities on investigations. Trump administration


including the Afghan National Security Forces and the Taliban. The authorization came nearly a year after the pretrial chamber initially rejected Bensouda’s request to open an investigation. Now, she and her team will investigate alleged “torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity, and rape,” among other issues. The U.S. isn’t currently a member of the ICC. But Afghanistan, the country where the alleged abuses occurred, is a member. That puts the United States within the ICC’s jurisdiction. The sanctions order applies to any foreign person who materially supports or is directly involved in ICC efforts to “investigate, arrest, detain or prosecute any United States personnel.” It includes freezing these individuals’ U.S.-based financial assets and restricting their travel. The sanctions also apply to immediate family members. On first reading, the scope of the order is very wide, giving administration officials broad leeway in its application. The inclusion of family members is notable because a 2019 Trump executive order to sanction terrorists didn’t include their family members. Another unusual aspect of this executive order is the implication that U.S. officials could target human rights advocates and nongovernmental organizations, since they regularly work with the ICC and affected communities on investigations. Trump administration officials have threatened ICC-related sanctions before. For instance, in 2018, national security adviser John Bolton advocated for sanctions against any entity that assisted the court. But there was no follow-through. In March 2019, ahead of the court’s pretrial chamber decision to authorize or to not authorize the Afghanistan probe, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo threatened visa restrictions and economic sanctions on any non-U.S. citizens who furthered the probe. The State Department revoked Bensouda’s visa to visit the United States less than a month later. But the timing of this latest round of sanctions differs from the previous one. In past skirmishes with the ICC, the Trump administration acted quickly, even preemptively. For instance, Bensouda’s visa was revoked before the decision of the pretrial chamber, which denied her permission to open the investigation. When the appeals chamber overturned the lower chamber’s decision on March 5, clearing the path for the probe, Pompeo quickly fired back. He promised to take “all necessary measures” to prevent the investigation from targeting U.S. personnel. But that was three months ago. Why order sanctions now? A notable component of the latest sanctions is that they go beyond ICC officials investigating the United States to include officials


Military leaders promise to address systemic racial disparities in the military justice system

Disparities in how white U.S. troops and service members of color are treated in the military justice system have persisted for years and new efforts are needed to understand racial bias and its consequences, senior officers told a congressional panel Tuesday. The officers, all military lawyers, acknowledged years of data showing that black service members have faced investigations, courts-martial and other forms of discipline more frequently than white service members in a system in which commanders have the power to decide how to prosecute. “We must understand that how preconceptions and prejudice can affect both the investigation and disposition of misconduct,” said Lt. Gen. Charles N. Pede, the Army judge advocate general. “While my experience tells me that we have an extraordinarily healthy system of justice, I also recognize that we simply do not know what we do not know. It is our job to discover what needs fixing and to fix it.” The officers spoke about the issue at a hearing of the House Armed Services Committee’s military personnel subcommittee after the release of reports detailing racial disparities in military justice. Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), the panel’s chairwoman, said senior defense officials must acknowledge biases in the system and look for solutions. “The way things have always been done are wrong,” she said. “The results are repugnant.” The hearing, titled “Racial Disparity in the Military Justice System — How to Fix the Culture,” was held after the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office and the nonprofit Protect Our Defenders released reports showing that black service members are punished more frequently than white service members, and as protests against police brutality and racism following the police killing of George Floyd continue across the country. Lawmakers recently included a provision in the 2020 defense spending bill, the National Defense Authorization Act, that would require the Pentagon to track the race, ethnicity and gender of those facing court-martial and to identify causes for any disparity. Doing so, the lawmakers and military officials agreed, will help understand the issue. The GAO found that black and Hispanic service members were more likely to be tried at court-martial than their white counterparts and that the services do not record information about race and ethnicity uniformly, making it difficult to identify problems. Military officials said they are already working to collect more information. Protect Our Defenders said in a report released last month that while the Air Force


The Health 202: The hydroxychloroquine hype is over

virus doesn’t care that we’re tired. The virus is still out there.” “They’re either just over it, or they’ve come to believe it’s a phony pandemic because their own personal grandmother hasn’t been affected yet,” Andrew Noymer, an epidemiologist at the University of California at Irvine, told The Post. “People just think this is a nothingburger. So they think the risk is exaggerated.” Vin Gupta, an assistant professor at the same University of Washington institute, pointed to political leaders that haven’t given a consistent message about mask-wearing and social distancing. “It’s as though they’re actively trying to oppose their public health professionals,” he said. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released data on more than 1.7 million cases and 103,700 deaths from the first four months of the pandemic. The data is consistent with initial reports that people with underlying conditions, such as heart disease and diabetes, were hit harder, Lena H. Sun reports. The report also highlights the disparities in the impact of covid-19 between white and nonwhite people. “Among nearly 600,000 people who were sickened and for whom the CDC has race and ethnicity information, 33 percent of patients were Hispanic, although they make up 18 percent of the U.S. population; 22 percent were black, while they constitute 13 percent of the population; and 1.3 percent were Native American or Alaskan Natives, nearly double their representation in the overall population,” Lena reports. The CDC’s report offers a better understanding about what groups may be vulnerable, especially as states continue to reopen and some areas see surges of new cases. The CDC found the most common underlying conditions “were heart disease (32 percent), diabetes (30 percent) and chronic lung disease (18 percent). Other preexisting conditions included liver disease, kidney disease, neurodevelopmental or intellectual disability, and immunocompromised conditions,” Lena adds. On Sunday, 27 states reported a seven-day case average higher than the average the week prior, Meryl Kornfield writes for The Post’s live blog. Neither Arizona nor Texas’s governor has announced plans to bring back any restrictions that have already been lifted. Trump’s take, per Rebecca Ballhaus, White House reporter for the Wall Street Journal: “There’s a certain point where you have to recognize you can’t be in a permanent state where people are locked away for months and months and months on end,” Newsom said. He cited stabilizing infection numbers and the state health system’s capacity for new


Expect a baby bust, not a boom, from the coronavirus pandemic

Rahul Gupta is the chief medical and health officer for the March of Dimes. In the United States alone, at least 1 million children who would have been born over the next three years will never giggle, take their first steps or grow up to contribute to the great American experiment. The covid-19 pandemic will be remembered for its death toll and the shock it inflicted on the world. Its other indelible imprint will be the lives that never began because of it. Though one might expect that stay-at-home orders would create a baby boom, scientific evidence and our own history point in the opposite direction. In the global influenza pandemic of 1918, for instance, U.S. birthrates dropped by 10 percent over the nine to 10 months following the peak in deaths. If even this single trend holds true with today’s pandemic, the United States will have 379,000 fewer births each year until 2022. Even before the novel coronavirus reached our shores, Americans were having fewer babies. Just recently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that the U.S. birthrate dropped to its lowest level in 35 years. In 2019, the total fertility rate — the expected number of births that a woman would have over her lifetime — had fallen to a meek 1.71. A rate of 2.1 is needed to sustain a nation’s population. The overall trend is troubling enough. Yet a confluence of three factors — fear of the unknown, economic instability and shuttered fertility services — will likely drive the country’s already-declining fertility rate even beyond today’s historic lows. These changes stand to dramatically impact our population, workforce, economy and even our culture over the next generation unless actions are taken to mitigate the impact of the pandemic. We know from decades of research that stress and fear are the enemies of healthy pregnancies. We also know, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, that pregnant and postpartum women today are undergoing a significant degree of stress, fear, uncertainty and anxiety because of covid-19, from changing prenatal visits to wondering about the impact of the virus on their baby. While researchers are still learning how covid-19 affects pregnant women, I’ve seen in my own work that women are wondering whether they should even get pregnant, especially with warnings that a brutal second wave of the virus awaits in the fall. At a charity


Fires are raging in the desert Southwest and California, with a long, hot summer ahead

to take hold. And until then, it’s a waiting game. “Is it fire season until then? Unfortunately, kind of,” explained Deemer. “We need moisture to really help with those fuels … they’re so sensitive to the extreme heat we have. They just need a spark. And a lot of times, the best way to fight those is to get the moisture in. Usually, June all the way through mid July is peak Arizona fire season.” A number of smaller wildfires were also threatening communities in California, including the Avila Fire near San Luis Obispo. The 400-acre fire was 10 percent contained Tuesday morning, but evacuation orders were canceled. Highway 101 was reopened late Monday. East-southeast of Sacramento, the Grant Fire continued to burn but was 92 percent contained. A little over 5,000 acres had been consumed by the flames. Much of California’s Central Valley, the Great Basin of Nevada, northern Arizona and the Four Corners region are under red flag warnings on Tuesday — denoting conditions that would immediately favor the spread of wildfires. The National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center also outlined an area of critical fire weather conditions from northern Arizona through Utah and into extreme northwest Colorado. Relative humidities of 5 to 20 percent were expected — further drying out any remaining moisture from vegetation. Meanwhile, a low-level corridor of high winds, known as a low-level jet stream, passing overhead late Tuesday will foster an uptick in surface winds in many of these areas. Some improvement is forecast Wednesday, but it will take a larger-scale pattern shift to make a noticeable difference in ongoing fires across the Southwest. And in California, fire season is just beginning — with a long summer ahead. Drought is already firmly established across the northern half of the Golden State, with the Climate Prediction Center calling for anomalously hot conditions and near to below-average rainfall over the next three months. The 2020 fire season is taking place amid the coronavirus pandemic, complicating evacuation orders and preparation decisions. Cases of covid-19 are on the rise in several states in the West, including Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon and California. These states, along with Utah, also recorded their highest incidence of new cases last week since the start of the pandemic, a spike that likely was not due simply to increases in testing, according to a Washington Post analysis. Diana Leonard contributed to this report.


The Daily 202: North Korea blowing up liaison office spotlights Trump’s dashed hopes after Singapore summit

Jeff Stein, Jonathan O’Connell and Aaron Gregg report. “Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin appeared to bow to [bipartisan] pressure, saying he would work with Congress on new oversight measures. But some Democrats have said the White House is not taking disclosure requests seriously enough.” “It is fair to say that Britain, with the third-highest coronavirus death toll in the world and its prime minister forced into an intensive care unit to fight for his life, has been distracted from long-running Brexit debates over cod fisheries, customs duties in the Irish Sea and shared aviation standards,” William Booth, Quentin Aries and Karla Adam report. “But Brexit is still a big deal for Johnson, whose political career is built upon delivering it, even if pollsters say most Britons now care much more about the economic crisis and the virus. On Monday, Johnson and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, alongside leaders of the European Council and European Parliament, held their first high-level talks in months … After the closed session, Johnson cheerily said a deal could be reached by July with ‘a bit of oomph.’” “The three jurisdictions added 743 known coronavirus cases and 14 deaths. … The District reported no new deaths Monday for only the second time since the early days of the pandemic. Virginia’s death toll increased by six, while Maryland recorded eight additional fatalities,” Emily Davies, Dana Hedgpeth and Julie Zauzmer report. “Washington’s harder-hit Maryland and Virginia suburbs have trailed other parts of the two states in lifting restrictions. Northern Virginia entered Phase 2 of its recovery on Friday, while Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich (D) said his county will move to that phase at 5 p.m. this Friday. … The District continues to look at Friday as a possible first day of its Phase 2 reopening.” (The National Gallery of Art will reopen the Sculpture Garden on Saturday.) Trump was mocked for saying that there would be fewer coronavirus cases if there was less testing: Trump and his allies are fighting to protect one of his former national security advisers (Michael Flynn) while promising to target another one (John Bolton): Tucker Carlson’s father ran VOA in a different era: Seth Meyers was pleasantly surprised by the Supreme Court ruling on LGBTQ rights: Stephen Colbert joked that Trump’s bone spurs acted up during his visit to West Point: And John Oliver looked into the dangers of facial recognition:


The successful closing of youth prisons shows a path to police reform

by 52 percent. Since the onset of the pandemic, six youth prisons in five different jurisdictions have closed. California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) announced his intention to close the state’s Division of Juvenile Justice entirely, shuttering a brutal network of youth prisons that once locked up 10,000 kids. Maryland’s highest court instructed judges to release young detainees to keep them safe during the pandemic, resulting in a 53 percent drop in kids behind bars in a matter of months. Crucially, the pandemic-related drop in youth incarceration is benefiting black youths at a higher rate than white youths. This is unprecedented. When Schiraldi was running the youth justice department in Washington, D.C., there was not a single white child in custody. Pre-coronavirus, even as youth incarceration dropped nationwide, the racial gap among youthful detainees widened. This latest shift offers a glimmer of hope around an injustice that has so far appeared as intractable as racialized policing. While it’s easy to dismiss police chiefs who “take a knee” in solidarity, it’s worth noting that the movement to shutter youth prisons has benefited tremendously from the support of those running such systems. Last year, a group of 55 current and former youth prison administrators (which Schiraldi co-chairs) condemned youth lockup as an “archaic” institution where “abuse is common” and “falls disproportionately on youth of color” concluding that “the time has come to close down youth prisons, once and for all.” On those rare occasions when a young person must be removed from home for the safety of the community, the group recommended substituting “a warm, nurturing environment, close to home” for the brutal, distant prisons its members had run. These changes are happening at an astonishing rate. Although there’s still work to be done to completely abolish youth prisons, the success of that movement holds important lessons for those now working to downsize the police — most crucially, that watershed change and community safety go hand in hand. Read more: Marc Schindler and Vincent Schiraldi: It’s time to close all youth prisons Marc Schindler and Tyrone Walker: Maryland should follow D.C.’s lead on youth rehabilitation The Post’s View: ‘Defund the police’ is a call to imagine a safer America. We should answer it. David Von Drehle: ‘Defund the police’ isn’t a winning campaign slogan. But it has a point. Christine M. Cole and Charles H. Ramsey: What defunding the police really looks like


Record jump in retail sales sends stocks higher, but Fed chief warns economic recovery remains uncertain

Saunders, managing director of GlobalData Retail, wrote in a note to clients. “Usually, a 7.7% year-over-year decline in retail sales would be an unmitigated disaster — but in the context of everything that is going on, the outcome is palatable." Some 20 million Americans are still without jobs. Even though U.S. employers added 2.5 million jobs in May, economists say ongoing uncertainties about the public health crisis and the economy have made it difficult to know when consumers and businesses might return to spending levels more common in the past few years. Pool company American Sale shuttered all eight of its Chicago-area locations in late March. By the time it reopened in early May, demand for pools, hot tubs, trampolines and swing sets was booming. Sales are up about 30 percent from a year ago. "Business has jumped considerably," said Bob Jones, the company's president. "During the lockdown, you had all of these people at home, saying 'I'm not traveling or taking vacations. What can I do instead?'" He said stimulus checks helped prop up many households, at least temporarily. But the looming uncertainty also has many business owners worried about how the coming months could play out. “The numbers are improving because of staged reopenings around the country, but the economy will remain soft for some period of time," said Brian Marks, an economist and senior lecturer at the University of New Haven. “People need to have trust, confidence and faith — both in the economy and in monitoring and testing [of the coronavirus], social distancing and, ultimately, a vaccine. But we’re not there yet." In all, consumers spent $485.5 billion in May on retail goods, groceries and gas. And 17 percent of sales —$86.4 billion — were purchased online. E-commerce, which is up 31 percent from a year ago, has emerged as a bright spot during the pandemic, as homebound Americans turn to the Internet for groceries, books, furniture and other discretionary goods. Although online shopping has been on the rise for years, analysts say the recent lockdown orders have sped up the process, resulting in long-term shifts in how and where people shop. Online sales at Target have more than doubled during the pandemic, with e-commerce growing 282 percent in April alone. “We’ve just seen Cyber Monday occur almost every day except the volume is twice the size,” Target chief executive Brian Cornell told investors last month.


Patients with underlying conditions were 12 times as likely to die of covid-19 as otherwise healthy people, CDC finds

People with underlying medical conditions such as heart disease and diabetes were hospitalized six times as often as otherwise healthy individuals infected with the novel coronavirus during the first four months of the pandemic, and they died 12 times as often, according to a federal health report Monday. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released data on more than 1.7 million coronavirus cases and 103,700 deaths from covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, reported to the agency from state and territorial health departments from Jan. 22 through May 30. The data is consistent with earlier reports showing the disproportionate impact the pandemic has had on people with underlying medical conditions. The report also highlighted the disease’s stark disparities between whites and minority groups. Among nearly 600,000 people who were sickened and for whom the CDC has race and ethnicity information, 33 percent of patients were Hispanic, although they make up 18 percent of the U.S. population; 22 percent were black, while they constitute 13 percent of the population; and 1.3 percent were Native American or Alaskan Natives, nearly double their representation in the overall population. As states reopen, and with reports of surges in infections, the report offers more details about the groups most vulnerable to illness and death based on four months of data. Race and ethnicity data were missing from more than half of the cases reported to CDC. Because of that missing data, the agency did not provide estimates by race and ethnicity for the incidence of underlying health conditions. In many metropolitan areas, majority-black areas have high rates of chronic health conditions including diabetes, obesity and heart disease. Those conditions compound a lack of access to medical care and the legacy of racism and its effect on health. In the District, neighborhoods that flank the eastern edge of the city are predominantly African American and have rates of these diseases above national levels. Those same neighborhoods have some of the highest incidence of coronavirus cases in the District, according to city health data. Figures from a separate CDC hospital surveillance system that began collecting information March 1 on laboratory-confirmed hospitalizations show much higher hospitalization rates for minority groups. Native Americans or Alaska Natives are hospitalized at five times the rate of whites; rates for blacks are 4.5 times higher; and rates for Hispanics are four times higher. In Monday’s report, the CDC said the


most common underlying conditions reported in people with covid-19 were heart disease (32 percent), diabetes (30 percent) and chronic lung disease (18 percent). Other preexisting conditions included liver disease, kidney disease, neurodevelopmental or intellectual disability, and immunocompromised conditions. Although the disease is typically more severe among older people, people of any age with underlying medical conditions are at increased risk if they contract the virus, for which there is no vaccine and only limited drug treatment. About 45 percent of patients with underlying conditions were hospitalized, compared with 7.6 percent of those who did not have significant preexisting conditions. Deaths were 12 times as high among patients with these underlying conditions (19.5 percent) compared with those without reported conditions (1.6 percent). The information released Monday also breaks down the data by age. Even for patients in their 20s and 30s, those already dealing with health challenges were about six times as likely to be hospitalized than healthy individuals. “The COVID-19 pandemic continues to be severe, particularly in certain population groups,” the report said. “These preliminary findings underscore the need to build on current efforts to collect and analyze case data, especially among those with underlying health conditions.” The report doesn’t provide a complete picture of the demographic characteristics and underlying health conditions of those who were sickened or died. There are probably more people who fell ill from the coronavirus but who are not included in data about the disease because they were never tested. And the findings on underlying medical conditions probably understate the role they played in contributing to deaths because of missing data. Perhaps most important, people who are infected with the virus but don’t have symptoms are not likely to be “captured well” in the surveillance data, the report said. Asymptomatic people are unlikely to seek testing because of limitations in testing capacity and because initial guidance prioritized people with symptoms. Asymptomatic transmission does occur, but researchers don’t know how frequently. Some modeling studies have suggested as much as 41 percent of disease spread may be attributable to asymptomatic people, but it remains an open question whether they are a large force driving transmission. Meanwhile, the CDC sent a report Sunday to four congressional committees, as required by the Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement Act, one of the coronavirus relief packages lawmakers adopted this spring. The new report, obtained from an individual on Capitol


“The COVID-19 pandemic continues to be severe, particularly in certain population groups,” the report said. “These preliminary findings underscore the need to build on current efforts to collect and analyze case data, especially among those with underlying health conditions.” The report doesn’t provide a complete picture of the demographic characteristics and underlying health conditions of those who were sickened or died. There are probably more people who fell ill from the coronavirus but who are not included in data about the disease because they were never tested. And the findings on underlying medical conditions probably understate the role they played in contributing to deaths because of missing data. Perhaps most important, people who are infected with the virus but don’t have symptoms are not likely to be “captured well” in the surveillance data, the report said. Asymptomatic people are unlikely to seek testing because of limitations in testing capacity and because initial guidance prioritized people with symptoms. Asymptomatic transmission does occur, but researchers don’t know how frequently. Some modeling studies have suggested as much as 41 percent of disease spread may be attributable to asymptomatic people, but it remains an open question whether they are a large force driving transmission. Meanwhile, the CDC sent a report Sunday to four congressional committees, as required by the Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement Act, one of the coronavirus relief packages lawmakers adopted this spring. The new report, obtained from an individual on Capitol Hill on the condition of anonymity, follows an earlier one consisting of four pages that congressional Democrats criticized as inadequate. Like its predecessor, the new 22-page report was required to provide Congress “disaggregated” data on who is getting tested for the virus. The expanded version said CDC had received reports of nearly 20 million diagnostic tests administered as of June 4, with 11 percent of them positive. It does not provide a demographic breakdown of who was tested. The report includes a variety of other demographic information about the cases, hospitalizations and deaths. As with a congressionally required report in late May on a national testing strategy, federal health officials did not release this new report publicly. Katherine McKeogh, a Health and Human Services spokesman, said Monday evening, “This report aims to provide more fulsome information with the data available. . . . However, we do not typically share beyond Congressional committees.” Amy Goldstein contributed to this report.


The U.S. Open gets go-ahead to play as scheduled, but will tennis’s top players show up?

its 2020 edition because of the virus. The French Open, which was scheduled to begin in late May, announced it would postpone its start until Sept. 20, just a week after the U.S. Open is scheduled to end. It is far from clear how many top-ranked players will travel to New York to compete in the U.S. Open. Like Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, Ashleigh Barty and Simona Halep are among those who have acknowledged concerns in recent weeks about the health risks of participating. “Well, [it] is not the ideal situation, honestly. If you ask me today if I want to travel today to New York to play [a] tennis tournament, I will say, ‘No, I will not,’ ” Nadal told reporters during a June 4 conference call. “In a couple of months, I don’t know how the situation [is] going to improve. Hopefully [it is] going to improve the right way.” Barty voiced concerns in an email to the Associated Press, writing, “I understand the tournaments are eager to run but keeping everyone safe has to be the priority.” Djokovic told Serbia’s state broadcaster, RTS, that his season probably would resume on clay, with an eye toward the French Open in September. Under the protocols, players will be subjected to numerous restrictions to guard against contracting and spreading the coronavirus. Among them: Players could be accompanied by only one person (whether coach, physical therapist or spouse); must stay en masse in a designated hotel near the tournament site in Queens (rather than in Manhattan, where players routinely spend the fortnight); show evidence that they do not have the virus; be tested frequently during the tournament and be ousted if they test positive at any point. Djokovic called the restriction on traveling parties “really impossible,” saying, “You need your coach, then a fitness trainer, then a physiotherapist.” Nonetheless, U.S. Open officials are pushing forward largely because of the revenue the tournament generates and the fact that the USTA failed to secure insurance against cancellation as Wimbledon officials did, which made the decision to cancel less financially impactful. The fact that no spectators would be allowed at the U.S. Open will drastically curtail the USTA’s annual revenue, depriving it of ticket receipts, concession and merchandise sales and on-site sponsorship deals over the two-week event, which holds separately ticketed day and night sessions that in 2019 brought nearly 800,000 fans to the grounds.


Fashion was broken even before the pandemic. A reboot could be just what it needs.

largest luxury conglomerates, LVMH and Kering, as well as Chanel and Hermès, essentially determine their own destiny. They are their own ecosystems complete with production facilities and boutiques. It’s the rest of the fashion industry — those with big footprints and tiny ones — that’s linked, and when one element is squeezed, everyone feels the pain. Indeed, it was designer brands’ foolhardy attempt to mimic the steady volume of merchandise produced by fast fashion companies such as H&M, the Gap and Zara that helped put them on such a nonsensical, destructive course. A $900 shirt is not throwaway fashion; no one needs to replace it every 12 weeks. Those best positioned for the future, if they can survive the present, may be the independent shops and the most nimble brands. Customers may be less inclined to go into large department stores and malls if they can avoid them, Gilhart says. “They may find the shop around the corner is fine for retail therapy. Or they’ll go online.” Retailer Will Sharp has combined those divergent destinations by transforming his store in Washington’s Navy Yard neighborhood into a giant vending machine. Shoppers can walk up to the cobalt blue facade of Somewhere, peer into the window at the T-shirts and baseball caps, scan the QR code on the wall and have the item delivered to their home. He got the idea from trips to Japan, where billboards in the subway showcase grocery store items with QR codes, so you can shop online. “That’s perfect for what’s going on right now,” says Sharp, who founded streetwear brand Durkl. Designer Savannah Yarborough, who’s based in Nashville, has taken the intimacy of personal tailoring online. Her brand Savas specializes in made-to-measure leather jackets, and when clients could no longer come into her shop for fittings, she created a virtual-fitting package: video consultations, a packet of fabric swatches and a self-measuring kit. The need to adapt her five-year-old business for the shutdown has given her a model for the future — and a renewed certainty in her fashion philosophy. “I don’t want to add to the pile of stuff out there,” Yarborough says. “I will be so sad to see your jacket in your closet. It should be hanging by your front door.” For brands like Yarborough’s, where jacket prices begin at $2,500, the experience of the purchase is almost as important at the product itself.


Widespread mask-wearing could prevent covid-19 second waves, study says

Population-wide face mask use could push covid-19 transmission down to controllable levels for national epidemics, and could prevent further waves of the pandemic disease when combined with lockdowns, according to a British study last week. The research, led by scientists at Britain’s Cambridge and Greenwich universities, suggests lockdowns alone will not stop the resurgence of the new coronavirus which causes covid-19, but that even homemade masks can dramatically reduce transmission rates if enough people wear them in public. “Our analyses support the immediate and universal adoption of face masks by the public,” said Richard Stutt, who co-led the study at Cambridge. He said combining widespread mask use with social distancing and some lockdown measures could be “an acceptable way of managing the pandemic and reopening economic activity” before the development of an effective vaccine against covid-19. The study’s findings were published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A, a scientific journal. At the onset of the pandemic last winter, scientific evidence on the effectiveness of face masks in slowing transmission of respiratory diseases was limited, and there was no data on covid-19 since it was a previously unknown disease. But, prompted by some new research in recent weeks, the World Health Organization said June 5 that it now recommends that everyone wear fabric face masks in public to try to reduce disease spread. In this study, researchers linked the dynamics of spread between people with population-level models to assess the effect on the disease’s reproduction rate, or R value, of different scenarios of mask adoption combined with periods of lockdown. The R value measures the average number of people that one infected person will pass the disease on to. An R value above 1 can lead to exponential growth. The study found that if people wear masks whenever they are in public it is twice as effective at reducing the R value than if masks are only worn after symptoms appear. In all scenarios the study looked at, routine face mask use by 50 percent or more of the population reduced covid-19 spread to an R of less than 1.0, flattening future disease waves and allowing for less stringent lockdowns. Experts not directly involved in the latest British study were divided over its conclusions. Brooks Pollock, a Bristol University infectious-disease modeling expert, said the likely impact of masks could be much smaller than predicted. Trish Greenhalgh, an Oxford University


CDC urges organizers of large gatherings to ‘strongly encourage’ use of face masks

those trends closely, he said. On large gatherings, the guidance says event planners should consider several strategies, from broadcasting regular announcements about steps attendees could take to reduce the virus’ spread, to limiting attendance or seating capacity to allow for social distancing, to reconfiguring parking lots to limit congregation points. It also suggests limiting attendance to people who live in the area and working with local officials to identify how to separate people with covid-like symptoms, or those who have tested positive for the virus but do not have symptoms. Separately, officials laid out recommendations to help individuals reduce their own risk for infection as they resume daily activities. Besides urging people to continue taking precautions such as hand-washing, wearing face covering, and keeping six feet from others, it made specific suggestions for certain activities, including: *Going to the bank — Use drive-through services or ATMs; *Hosting a cookout — Encourage people to bring their own food and drinks and identify one person to serve shareable items; * Traveling overnight — Consider taking the stairs at hotels, or wait to ride alone in the elevator or only with people from your household. Officials also released a report showing Americans strongly supported stay-at-home orders in early to mid-May, with most adults reporting they would not feel safe if those orders were lifted. Most also said they often or always wore face coverings. The report was based on a survey of more than 2,000 adults nationwide, including separate surveys for residents of New York City and Los Angeles. Researchers found widespread agreement across the country for keeping six feet apart from others, wearing cloth face coverings, and for nonessential workers to stay home, with the strongest support for those measures in Los Angeles and New York, which were hardest hit by the pandemic. At that time, the first group of states to be pummeled by covid-19 -- New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Louisiana, Washington, and Michigan -- were past their first peaks and still navigating the ups and downs of a slow and prolonged decline. Hot spots were still exploding around nursing homes, at meatpacking plants throughout the Midwest, and at prisons in the Southeast. New York was requiring everyone to wear masks in public and still largely shut down. Elsewhere, particularly in the South and Far West, governors were in the process of lifting stay-at-home orders and rescinding restrictions on businesses.


In Brazil, a dying man and a desperate search for an open bed

public health system, one of the largest in the world. Known as the SUS, for its initials in Portuguese, it is considered perhaps the strongest system in Latin America. But over the past decade, as the economy stalled and health-care funding dried up, the number of hospital beds has steadily dropped, falling below 2 per 1,000 people — lower than regional neighbors such as Chile and Argentina. For weeks, there have been signs that Brazil would struggle to expand its capacity. Even before the virus arrived, many of the country’s intensive care beds were occupied. Soon state governors, health officials and hospitals were complaining that Chinese suppliers had canceled their orders after the United States launched a market blitz on medical equipment. U.S. officials say they had nothing to do with canceled purchases. “The United States government neither bought nor blocked any material or equipment from China destined for Brazil,” tweeted Todd Chapman, the U.S. ambassador to Brazil. “Reports to the contrary are completely false.” With shortages of equipment and doctors, health systems across Brazil have started to buckle. “We are experiencing two wars,” said Cássio Espírito Santo, an undersecretary of health in Amazonas state. “One is against the covid-19, and another to obtain equipment and supplies.” As her ambulance shot across Manaus, Said was witnessing that war anew. She grabbed the radio and called Hospital João Lúcio to ask whether it could take another patient. She feared she already knew the answer. No beds, she was told. Completely full. She hung up the radio, glanced down at the patient through her goggles and prayed he would hold on a little longer. The look in their eyes was one of the hardest parts. To see the desperation on their faces when informed that the hospitals were full — that help wasn’t within reach — was almost more than Said could bear. She tried to console them, taking their hands, assuring them that for as long as they held on, she’d keep looking, and together, they would find something. The job had become so “unbearable” at times that it was difficult to remember that being a doctor was all she’d ever wanted. She knew it wouldn’t be easy, working in a health-care system as fragile as Manaus’s. Isolated, underfunded, plagued by corruption, it is the only system in a state twice the size of Texas that can perform complicated procedures. People


Contact tracing is the key weapon against covid-19

to be infected, their contacts are also informed. It’s a public health technique that has been used for decades to contain tuberculosis and measles epidemics, as well as HIV/AIDS. Today, contact tracing and diagnostic testing are the anchors of any successful response to covid-19, regardless of whether the strategy being pursued is mitigation or suppression of the disease. Mitigation uses just enough of both techniques to slow the disease down some but not enough to eradicate it. Suppression, in contrast, involves a surge of testing and tracing strong enough to interrupt chains of transmission and get case incidence down to pretty near zero. Suppression, if you can do it, is obviously the better strategy choice. The White House has chosen mitigation as the nation’s baseline policy — at best settling for a gentleman’s C for effort. Which means that places that skimp on testing and tracing are likely to get a second wave: Even before the mass demonstrations against racism, 24 states were estimated to have rising rates of infection. We’re seeing the results of the mitigation strategy in the numbers of cases now in Arizona, Texas and Florida. But in some localities, such as New Orleans, there are strivers at the helm who are going for an A: full suppression. The results were visible in April in a quick return to a very low level of case incidence from a high peak. Unfortunately, thanks to less ambitious efforts elsewhere in the country, New Orleans can count on repeat reintroductions of the disease. The city will have to keep up its hard work for longer than would be the case if everyone had pursued suppression upfront. Across all contexts, strategies and case-incidence levels, we will need contact tracing for the foreseeable future. What does all this mean for you? Know your status. Know the case-incidence level and trend in your community. If your public health leaders are not providing that information, ask for it. Know whether your community public health leaders have chosen mitigation or suppression. If they haven’t told you, find out. Know your personal status. If you think you’ve been exposed in the past, seek an antibody test. If you think you’ve been recently exposed, seek a diagnostic test. For me, the scariest thing is that as many as 50 percent of transmissions come from people without symptoms or prior to symptom onset. That’s why I embrace contact


Egypt thought it dodged the worst of the pandemic. But now hospitals are being overwhelmed.

CAIRO — Abdo Fathi was desperate. His 57-year-old mother, already suffering from diabetes and high blood pressure, had tested positive for the coronavirus and spent two weeks in isolation at her home when her body broke down. She began having trouble breathing. But finding a hospital bed in an intensive care unit proved difficult. So last week, Fathi posted a plea on Facebook, like countless others have done recently. “We need an ICU spot,” he wrote. “Someone help us.” For three months, Egypt seemed to escape the huge case numbers seen in many other nations, including those with far lower populations. But the number of reported cases in the country has steadily risen in recent weeks, with more than 1,500 infections per day since Friday, escalating pressure on a health-care system that was strained long before the pandemic. On Monday, Egypt reported 97 deaths, the most in a single day since the outbreak began. Some Egyptian officials and health experts say the number of cases is probably much higher than officially reported. Egyptians are now posting dire messages on social media seeking scarce hospital beds and money to pay for treatment. Doctors are accusing the government of negligence, blaming it for shortages of personal protective equipment and a lack of adequate safety measures. Several hundred doctors and nurses have tested positive for covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, and scores have died. The medical union has warned that Egypt’s health system could “collapse.” “The patients are increasing in very rapid numbers,” said a 32-year-old doctor at a quarantine hospital in the southern city of Esna, where every bed was filled with coronavirus patients. “But you don’t have the capacity of beds, hospitals and staff numbers. It’s really exhausting for the staff.” Like other doctors interviewed, he spoke on the condition of anonymity because President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi’s government has sought to muzzle criticism of its response to the pandemic. Doctors and journalists have been arrested The United Nations’ human rights office said that 15 people were arrested in April on charges of spreading “false news” about the virus and that a doctor and a pharmaceutical worker were arrested for Facebook video posts complaining about a dearth of face masks. At least two journalists have been arrested for what the government described as publishing false news about the pandemic, said Gamal Eid, a human rights lawyer. Sissi has weighed in


FAQ: What are the new U.S. sanctions on Syria, and how might they hurt?

particular that Russians and Iranians allied with Assad could be the focus. The Caesar Act also calls on the U.S. Treasury to determine whether the Central Bank of Syria is “a financial institution of primary money laundering concern” and requires that new sanctions be imposed on a long list of individuals allegedly complicit in human rights abuses. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Wednesday that Assad and his wife Asma will be placed under sanctions. This is the first time Asma al-Assad is being sanctioned by the United States. Also named are Maher al-Assad, the president’s brother and head of the infamous Fourth Division of the Syrian Arab Army; Bushra al-Assad, the president’s sister who resides abroad; other members of the Assad family; and the prominent Hamsho family, which has close ties to the government. “Anyone doing business with the Assad regime, no matter where in the world they are, is potentially exposed to travel restrictions and financial sanctions,” Pompeo said. The Caesar Act says it aims to place political and economic pressure on the Syrian government to “compel the government of Bashar al-Assad to halt its murderous attacks on the Syrian people and to support a transition to a government in Syria that respects the rule of law, human rights, and peaceful coexistence with its neighbors.” Sanctions would be suspended if the government halted its attacks on civilians; stopped cutting off besieged areas from international aid and medical and humanitarian assistance; released all political prisoners; facilitated the safe return of the displaced; and held accountable all war criminals. The act is named after a Syrian military police defector with the pseudonym “Caesar” who smuggled out 55,000 photos of detainees tortured to death in Syrian prisons and hospitals. Nearly 30,000 people were killed in prisons between 2011 and 2017, Amnesty International estimated. Hundreds of thousands have been killed as a result of the war. Syria is already under sanctions by both the United States and the European Union. These measures banned transactions with Syrian state entities as well as with hundreds of companies and individuals. The United States has also banned Americans from exporting to Syria or investing there, and barred oil and gas transactions with Syria. These sanctions reverberated across Syria even before they took effect. As individuals and entities made adjustments to avoid the sanctions, the Syrian pound took a drastic hit, reaching a record low on


Put a lid on it, folks: Flushing may release coronavirus-containing ‘toilet plumes’

Gerba, a microbiologist at the University of Arizona. “The risk is not zero, but how great a risk it is, we don’t know,” Gerba, who has studied the intersection of toilets and infectious disease for 45 years, said of the potential for flushing to spread the coronavirus. “The big unknown is how much virus is infectious in the toilet when you flush it … and how much virus does it take to cause an infection.” A study published in March in the journal Gastroenterology found significant amounts of coronavirus in the stool of patients and determined that viral RNA lasted in feces even after the virus cleared from the patients’ respiratory tracts. Another study in the journal Lancet found coronavirus in feces up to a month after the illness had passed. Scientists around the world are now studying sewage to track the spread of the virus. Researchers say the virus’s presence in excrement and the gastrointestinal tract raises the prospect of transmission via toilets, because many covid-19 patients experience diarrhea or vomiting. A study of air samples in two hospitals in Wuhan, China, found that although coronavirus aerosols in isolation wards and ventilated patient rooms was very low, “it was higher in the toilet areas used by the patients.” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says it remains “unclear whether the virus found in feces may be capable of causing covid-19,” and “there has not been any confirmed report of the virus spreading from feces to a person.” For now, the CDC characterizes the risk as low based on observations from previous outbreaks of other coronaviruses, such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS). Wang decided to use computer models to simulate toilet plumes while isolating at home, per Chinese government orders, and thinking about how a fluids researcher “could contribute to the global fight against the virus.” The resulting study was published Tuesday in the journal Physics of Fluids. It found that flushing of both single-inlet toilets, which push water into the bowl from one port, and annular-inlet toilets, which pour water into the bowl from the rim’s surrounding edge with even greater energy, results in “massive upward transport of virus.” Particles can reach heights of more than three feet and float in the air for more than a minute, it found. The paper recommends not just lid-closing and hand-washing but urges manufacturers