As coronavirus rebounds, more patients are being hospitalized and capacity is stretched

Patients suffering from covid-19 are rapidly filling hospitals across the South and West, with Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas, Nevada and Arizona setting records for hospitalizations Thursday, a sign that the coronavirus pandemic is entering a dangerous new phase. In Arizona, where the virus appears to be spreading out of control, hospitals rushed to expand capacity and adopted practices similar to those employed at the height of the outbreak in New York City and Italy, including doubling up hospital beds in rooms, pausing elective surgeries and bringing in health-care workers from other states. Perhaps most chillingly, at the urging of doctors and advisers, state officials this week activated “crisis standards of care” protocols, which determine for hospitals which patients get ventilators and care as the system becomes overwhelmed under the crush of patients. “I think it’s pretty obvious that we are not going in the right direction,” Anthony S. Fauci, the country’s top infectious-disease expert, said during a YouTube live stream. The coronavirus continued its recent surge across swaths of the United States, with more than 55,000 new cases reported Thursday, eclipsing the record for the largest single-day total that was set Wednesday. Deaths, which had declined steadily for several months, also are rising. States reported that 700 people died Thursday of covid-19 — an increase of more than 25 percent compared to the previous seven-day average. “We are not flattening the curve right now,” Brett Giroir, the U.S. government’s coronavirus testing coordinator, said during a House hearing. “The curve is still going up.” Not all states report on the number of current hospitalizations for covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, but even with incomplete data the increases are alarming, since they may presage a rise in deaths following the documented explosion in cases in the South and West and increases in scattered states elsewhere. “There’s a lag between confirmed case and hospitalization, and between hospitalization and death. So you look at the numbers and you can see how hospital capacity could quickly become strained in coming weeks,” said Saskia Popescu, an epidemiologist at the University of Arizona. As hospitals have become overwhelmed, deaths have risen — not just among covid-19 patients who get insufficient care, but among those facing other medical crises who don’t seek care from an overwhelmed system because they think they won’t receive it. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that since Feb. 1,


Pops Mensah-Bonsu will not return as Capital City Go-Go general manager

program for young players and coaches in the Wizards’ system, the G League does not have quite as clear of an outlook for the foreseeable future. Because of the pandemic, the G League suspended its 2019-20 season along with the NBA’s in March. But while the NBA will restart its season with 22 teams playing in a bubble environment near Orlando this month, the G League officially canceled its season in June. The NBA playoffs are scheduled to end in October, followed by a free agency period and a hopeful start date for the 2020-21 season around Dec. 1. The G League, however, has no scheduled start date for its upcoming season, and it could be as late as January 2021. This uncertainty factored into Mensah-Bonsu’s decision not to extend his contract with the Go-Go and instead follow other opportunities — although he would have been in the organization’s plans for next season, according to a person with knowledge of the situation. The Go-Go turned to Mensah-Bonsu to guide it through its first two seasons, bringing in a well-traveled player whose basketball roots sprouted in north London. Mensah-Bonsu, a member of the George Washington Athletics Hall of Fame, went undrafted out of college but carved out a professional career for almost a decade. He made his NBA debut for the Dallas Mavericks in 2006 and went on to play for four other teams over parts of three additional seasons. He also spent time in what was then known as the NBA Development League, played on the British national team at the 2012 Olympics and finished his pro career overseas. He retired as a player in 2015 and worked as a regional representative with the National Basketball Players Association before joining the San Antonio Spurs in 2016 as an advance pro scout. In 2019, Mensah-Bonsu participated in events leading up to the launch of the Basketball Africa League. Concerns over the coronavirus postponed the league’s inaugural season. “Since I retired,” Mensah-Bonsu said in 2018 after being hired by the Go-Go, “I always wanted to take the road less traveled in regards to life after basketball.” Read more on the Washington Wizards: Bradley Beal is on the fence about playing as Wizards prepare for NBA restart John Wall won’t join the Wizards for NBA restart in Florida Brewer: The Wizards drafted John Wall 10 years ago. Look at how he has grown.


Beijing names hard-liner who crushed protests to head Hong Kong security agency

United States, Britain, Australia and Taiwan. Nathan Law, a prominent Hong Kong democracy activist who addressed a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing this week, announced Thursday that he had fled the city for an undisclosed location. The appointment of Zheng just days after the law’s passage reflects Beijing’s resolve to implement the legislation swiftly despite the backlash. Zheng notably oversaw the Guangdong village of Wukan during its 2011 uprising. After months of clashes over an illegal land grab, villagers forced local officials and police out of Wukan, leading to police putting the village under siege. As part of the truce to end the standoff, Wukan was allowed an unusual experiment in democracy, with residents allowed to elect a new committee of village representatives. Zheng’s disdain for foreign media made headlines during the crisis, with a leaked video showing him saying in a meeting: “Foreign media can be trusted when pigs can climb trees.” His appointment to the new Office for Safeguarding National Security suggested that Hong Kong security issues may have been managed from Guangdong in recent years, Sebastian Veg, a Paris-based professor of modern Chinese history at the School for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences, said on Twitter. Hong Kong’s mini-constitution stipulates that the city should run its own affairs, apart from defense and foreign relations. While Hong Kong and Guangdong province share cultural history, including the Cantonese language and historic trading links, their residents have long had testy relations with each other because of diverging politics. As anti-Beijing protests intensified last year in Hong Kong, Guangdong officials sought to ease tensions by pledging to increase investment in Hong Kong and provide jobs for the city’s youth. But Guangdong also played a major role in Beijing’s intimidation tactics against Hong Kong protesters last year. After Hong Kong police failed to quell sometimes-violent demonstrations week after week, mainland police and soldiers began performing anti-riot drills across the border in Shenzhen, a Guangdong metropolis. Simon Cheng, an employee of the British Consulate in Hong Kong, claimed last fall that he was abducted and tortured in Shenzhen for two weeks, as authorities interrogated him on whether the British government had contributed to fomenting the protests in Hong Kong. He announced on Twitter this week that he had been granted asylum in Britain. Along with Zheng, two deputies were also announced Friday for the new security agency in Hong Kong. One, Li Jiangzhou,


More covid-19 patients are surviving ventilators in the ICU

An increasing number of U.S. covid-19 patients are surviving after they are placed on mechanical ventilators, a last-resort measure that was perceived as a signal of impending death during the terrifying early days of the pandemic. Early reports out of Wuhan, China, But as the pandemic has continued, U.S. hospitals are reporting much lower mortality rates, results on par with death rates for patients with similar severe lung problems caused by other diseases. Experts say that’s because clinicians have become more skilled and are deploying new tactics as they learn more about the course of covid-19; some are using ventilators more selectively; many hospitals are less overwhelmed than when the virus first inundated Wuhan, parts of Italy and New York City; and early data on ventilation and death did not present a true picture. “Being on a ventilator right now in our hands is no different than it would be any day of the year,” said Greg Martin, a professor of medicine at Emory University School of Medicine and president-elect of the Society of Critical Care Medicine. In a May 26 study in the journal Critical Care Medicine, Martin and a group of colleagues found that 35.7 percent of covid-19 patients who required ventilators died — a significant percentage but much lower than early reports that put the figure in the upper 80 percent range. Use of drugs such as remdesivir, which shortens the recovery time for some of the sickest patients, and the steroid dexamethasone have helped as well. “We’ve learned a lot about covid since the beginning of the year,” said Russell G. Buhr, a pulmonary and critical care physician at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. “That means we have a significantly better understanding of how to diagnose, recognize and manage this.” Buhr’s hospital is still putting together data, but he said the mortality rate for ventilated patients is in the 30 percent to 50 percent range. That is about the same as the rate for people who develop acute respiratory distress syndrome, the dangerous buildup of fluid in the tiny air sacs of the lungs caused by diseases such as pneumonia, or injuries such as those suffered in car accidents. Before the pandemic, about 200,000 people developed acute respiratory distress each year and about 60 percent survived. Roughly 20 percent of symptomatic covid-19 patients require hospitalization and about 5 percent end up in the ICU. Most of


patients who required ventilators died — a significant percentage but much lower than early reports that put the figure in the upper 80 percent range. Use of drugs such as remdesivir, which shortens the recovery time for some of the sickest patients, and the steroid dexamethasone have helped as well. “We’ve learned a lot about covid since the beginning of the year,” said Russell G. Buhr, a pulmonary and critical care physician at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. “That means we have a significantly better understanding of how to diagnose, recognize and manage this.” Buhr’s hospital is still putting together data, but he said the mortality rate for ventilated patients is in the 30 percent to 50 percent range. That is about the same as the rate for people who develop acute respiratory distress syndrome, the dangerous buildup of fluid in the tiny air sacs of the lungs caused by diseases such as pneumonia, or injuries such as those suffered in car accidents. Before the pandemic, about 200,000 people developed acute respiratory distress each year and about 60 percent survived. Roughly 20 percent of symptomatic covid-19 patients require hospitalization and about 5 percent end up in the ICU. Most of those in intensive care require ventilators. The devices essentially breathe for the patient, who is sedated with a long plastic tube placed down the throat and into the windpipe. Severely ill covid-19 patients tend to linger on ventilators longer than other intubated patients, some for weeks. The tube inflames tissue, which can interfere with breathing, so later in the course of convalescence it may be removed and replaced by a smaller tube inserted through an incision in the windpipe. While there is widespread agreement that ventilators have saved many lives during the pandemic, clinicians debate whether doctors turned to ventilators too often and too soon, especially at the beginning of the pandemic. “This is a brand new disease we’d never seen before,” said Leora Horwitz, an associate professor of population health and medicine at NYU Langone Health. “We’re generally learning to recognize who needs to be intubated and who doesn’t. We’re avoiding intubation where we can. We’re learning proning,” the technique of placing patients on their stomachs to help them breathe. “We’re learning about blood clots.” At the NYU hospital, 60 percent of patients placed on ventilators between March 1 and May 5 died, according to a paper Horwitz and


Southwest Soda Pop Shop: How a side business became the main attraction

“I went to the developer and said we can work out a deal. I came up with the Soda Pop Shop.” Hoffman assisted Jones and his daughters in developing a business plan and getting the enterprise off the ground. “We had meetings on who we were targeting, what we were going to sell,” Brittany said. “We wanted a simple menu that would not confuse people. A quick treat. That’s how we did the walkaway window. We didn’t have to worry about customers coming inside and having to supply a bathroom. When you finished dinner, we would be the dessert at the end.” Southwest Soda Pop Shop opened May 23, 2018, after blanketing Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. The Wharf opened in 2017 and is still building out, with its Phase 2 expected to finish in 2022, according to its website. “We wanted to let people know we were there,” Brittany said. “When we opened the business, we were the only ones at that end of the development.” The Southwest Soda Pop Shop had 43 customers and grossed just under $300 on opening day. “We went through the roof,” Brittany said. “We were so ecstatic.” The business has settled into a rhythm. Open noon to 7 p.m., it does its strongest sales Thursdays through Sundays and can pull in about $1,500 on a good day. It set a personal best July 4, 2019, grossing $3,500 on 388 transactions. The most popular item is the cake explosion, a $9 heart-stopper that incudes a single layer of chocolate chip cookies, two layers of ice cream, cake and such toppings as sprinkles, brownies or walnuts. “We keep trying new things; some work, some don’t,” Brittany said. The pumpkin ice cream was a dud. The funnel cake fries, at $7.25, a big seller. The $4 hot dogs — which were added later — are also popular. Business was brisk on a recent weekday. Southwest Soda Pop Shop lost about $4,000 last year, but the team is optimistic its numbers will improve in 2020. Darryl Jones said he helps out around the edges, but the Southwest Soda Pop Shop is his daughters’ responsibility. “I’m just a common laborer,” Jones said. “I go out and get the supplies. I get up early in the morning to buy the ice cream. I always wanted to sell ice cream. It was slow starting off, but God works in strange ways.”


A coronavirus vaccine rooted in a government partnership is fueling financial rewards for company executives

up in the markets. Older vaccines relied on deactivated or weakened virus, grown in chicken eggs, in a slow process. The new breed of RNA vaccines like Moderna’s can be designed on computers based on the genetic code of the virus and manufactured quickly. Pfizer also is working to develop an RNA-based coronavirus vaccine and began a Phase 1 trial in May. Still, the delivery system needs to be proved safe and effective in large numbers of people. “There is not a single drug approved with this technology. This is really the bet we are making, that all this is going to work,” said Otello Stampacchia, the founder and managing director of Omega Funds, a life sciences venture capital firm in Boston. The foundation of the Moderna vaccine was laid years before a mysterious respiratory illness was reported in Wuhan, China. In 2012, another deadly coronavirus, Middle East respiratory syndrome, jumped from camels into humans. Barney Graham, the deputy director of the federal Vaccine Research Center, which is part of NIH, said in an interview that he wanted to use cutting-edge technologies that examined the precise shape of a virus — down to individual atoms — to design a vaccine against the threat. But Graham and academic collaborators had to solve a problem. The target the scientists were interested in — the distinctive spiky protein on the virus surface — was unstable and tended to shape-shift. Nianshuang Wang, a postdoctoral researcher then at Dartmouth, spent months trying to identify genetic mutations that would stabilize the shape-shifting spike protein, eventually finding a solution that worked in multiple coronaviruses. The paper, published in 2017, took persistence to publish — it was rejected five times. “People generally at that time said, ‘Coronavirus is not a big concern,’ ” Wang said. “They didn’t get the idea that this can be a great technology in the future, to prevent another coronavirus pandemic.” Graham was interested in using new technologies to speed up MERS vaccine development and in October 2017 began working with Moderna. The company’s technology could deliver messenger RNA to normal human cells that instructs them to churn out the spike protein with the crucial mutations. The presence of the spike protein in the body triggers the creation of antibodies against the virus. But with MERS sparking only small, occasional outbreaks, it wasn’t until January 2020 that the approach drew the world’s attention. Even


Hard-hit industries clamor for regulations during pandemic

America’s most influential power brokers in business increasingly feel that they are fighting more than just the deadly coronavirus to revive the economy. These business interests see a short-term battle against two hard-to-influence forces: individuals acting irresponsibly and a Trump administration that is reluctant to lay down the type of guidelines that would mandate individual behavior during the pandemic. These recent weeks, as infections have soared in the South and West, fueled by younger adults gathering in bars and at house parties in some regions, delivered a gut punch to businesses that had grown optimistic amid back-to-back months of job gains. “Travel can’t come back unless people act responsibly,” said Tori Barnes, executive vice president for public affairs and policy at the U.S. Travel Association. The travel industry knows the high level of scrutiny it is under — most people still don’t fully trust hotels, resorts and airports to be safe enough for them to spend their ever-more-precious dollars for travel during a pandemic. But as they work to make safety improvements, these corporate entities worry those advances will be squandered because so many irresponsible people have continued to spread the virus and those who are trying to play by the rules do not know which rules to follow. “People just really want consistency,” said Michelle Russo, chief communications officer for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber spearheaded a letter to President Trump, Vice President Pence and the National Governors Association, writing in concert with other powerful trade groups such as the Business Roundtable and the National Association of Manufacturers, pleading for a nationwide standard on when masks should be mandatory. It’s not just that industry titans want easy-to-comprehend rules for business managers — they also want a set of regulations clear enough to make it easier for businesses to deny entry to consumers who will not wear face coverings or adhere to social-distance guidelines. U.S. Travel and the Chamber are part of the cluster of influential trade associations that have signed on to a privately run market research consortium they call the “Back to Normal Barometer,” maintained by the Sports and Leisure Research Group, Engagious and ROKK Solutions. What the trade associations learned is that there are two solid blocs of people, those who are “ready to go” right back to those activities that they love and those who are adamantly opposed to taking any risk until there


Covid-19 outbreak reported in 15 fraternity houses at University of Washington

An outbreak of covid-19 cases has been reported at 15 fraternity houses at the University of Washington in Seattle, underscoring the risk that college students could face if they return to campus during the pandemic and fail to follow rules about wearing masks and social distancing. The Interfraternity Council, a student-led governing board for fraternities at the university, reported on Friday that at least 117 residents currently living in 15 fraternity houses have self-reported testing positive for covid, the university said. School officials said they are still collecting and verifying the status of cases — and that there may be more than what has been reported. The Seattle Times quoted “It does make us worry about what might happen this fall,” Duchin told the paper. “We understand there was a lot of socializing, a lot of risk-taking, not a lot of mask-wearing going on. … When you do that and you don’t take precautions, you get a lot of covid.” The outbreak at the fraternities comes as colleges and universities around the country are finalizing fall plans, with many of them opting to allow students on campus, in some cases taking some or even all of their courses online. Concerns are rising about plans to let students back on campus in some parts of the country, including in California, as covid-19 cases are spiking. The University of Southern California announced this week that it was pulling back on plans to welcome students to campus, saying it would offer mostly virtual learning and urging students to find off-campus housing. In a July 1 memo, officials wrote: At the University of Arizona, which had already announced it was reopening campus for in-person classes this fall, President Robert Robbins said last week that the plans may have to change because a spike in covid-19 cases in the state has filled the intensive care units in hospitals. “If I had to say today would we would reopen, no, because … the ICUs are full,” he said during a weekly update on the university’s plans. “We cannot have a situation where we’re bringing students back to campus, asking our faculty and staff to come back to campus when we’re in truly an exponential growth of the number of cases here.” University of Washington President Ana Mari Cauce said in a June 29 letter to new and returning students that the school now plans for students


We asked veterans to respond to The Post’s reporting on Clint Lorance and his platoon. Here’s what they said.

I am disgusted that my honorable service with so many others who served is used as a political statement. — Ann Wells, 60, Air Force, 1980-2008 I have felt the guilt, confusion, and disillusion of surviving war and coming home. At least I can say, our unit did our best, and even though we did not ultimately succeed, we did what the American people asked of us with as much honor as possible. These soldiers are stained forever by the contemptible actions of a ratings-obsessed president. — Dario DiBattista, 36, Marine Corps, 2001-2007 Just 50 years ago, I was in Army officer candidate school, learning to lead and be led. Our training focused from the start on the difficulties of having to make decisions quickly but consistently with the rules of engagement. Lt. Lorance must have missed those sessions. He seemed to enter combat command with a determination to kill Afghans, and it appears he did not respect them at all. — Tom Knutsen, Army, 1969-1972 I spent just shy of a decade in the Army as an infantryman. I went to Iraq twice and was deployed around the same time as first platoon to Afghanistan. I saw combat on two of my deployments. This could have been me. Over two dozen of the men I served with have died, most by suicide. I buried one of my best buddies in November after he took his own life. Suicide is a plague among us. For a platoon to have lost five men and have four more serious attempts signals there is a deep, deep hurt for those men. I served because I thought and still think that the U.S. is a force for good in the world. I wanted to help the people in Afghanistan. I was honored to spend my year in Afghanistan in a role that let me spend time working with the locals to build their nation. The very core of my going there and risking my life was jeopardized by Lorance. — Matthew Kurtz, 32, Army, 2005-2013 My reading of this caused me to weep as I haven’t in a few years. I feel empathy for these young men and their families. Those that serve together in a unit know each other better than those who weren’t there. The feelings of friendship and loyalty as well as disgust and hatred are stronger than most people experience


in their lifetimes. — Cody Francis, 50, Navy, 1993-2006 I’m a former paratrooper of the 82nd Airborne Division and a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, yet I can only relate to some of the experiences of First Platoon. It’s difficult to read about so many enthusiastic young men who enlisted to defend their country only to be left physically and emotionally ravaged by battle, PTSD, suicide, and gut-wrenching betrayal from their “commander in chief.” Trump relied on a bogus Fox News court-martial instead of having faith in the outcome of our military’s justice system. From day one, enlisted soldiers are conditioned to follow commands from their superiors. Any hesitation brings some combination of verbal and physical punishment. Outright refusal of an order can lead to severe nonjudicial or judicial punishment. I’m proud of the men who recognized and defied Lt. Lorance’s unlawful orders, but I completely understand how some of these young men followed them without question. It can be very difficult to determine if an Afghan is a combatant or noncombatant. — Craig Gagel, 41, Army, 2000-2003 Having commanded an infantry platoon and company in Vietnam in the same area that Lt. Calley had committed a terrible atrocity, my men suffered the consequences. When you’re losing your troops regularly in a horrible manner to booby traps and snipers, it’s hard to maintain discipline — but that is a huge part of a leader’s job. When you’ve been there 3 days you have no excuse. — Buck Cameron, Army, 1969-71 active duty; 1971-1988 Army Reserve The truth is, military life in a war zone is basic: it’s kill or be killed, stand up for one another, and get people back home safe. Sometimes you have a person who determines the war given to them isn’t dramatic or brutal enough for their expectations and, in an effort to win medals and feed their egos, they make up their own rules to try and will the war to be more than it is. They’re no longer serving the mission or their soldiers; they’re serving themselves. — Daniel McNamara, 35, Army, 2008-2012 I followed this story last year. I’m so unbelievably sorry that this platoon didn’t receive the support they needed when they returned from this and subsequent deployments. That despite Lorance being found guilty, they were still blacklisted and became victims of disgusting politicization of the military and the Army by


How Fauci, 5 other health specialists deal with covid-19 risks in their everyday lives

As Americans learn to live with the coronavirus, many are struggling with decisions about which practices are safe or risky for them. The Washington Post asked six public health/infectious diseases specialists about their own behavior choices. Q: Anthony S. Fauci, Elizabeth Connick, Paul A. Volberding, Linda Bell, Barry Bloom, David Satcher, Q: Fauci: Connick: Volberding: Bell: Bloom: Satcher: Q: Fauci: Connick: Volberding: Bell: Bloom: Satcher: Q: Fauci: Connick: Volberding: Bell: Bloom: Satcher: Q: Fauci: Connick: Volberding: Bell: Bloom: Satcher: Q: Fauci: Connick: Volberding: Bell: Bloom: Satcher: Q: Fauci: Connick: Volberding: Bell: Bloom: Satcher: Q: Fauci: Connick: Volberding: Bell: Bloom: Satcher: Q: Fauci: Connick: Volberding: Bloom: Satcher: Q: Fauci: Connick: Volberding: Bell: Bloom: Satcher: Q: Fauci: Connick: Volberding: Bell: Bloom: Satcher: Q: Fauci: Connick: Volberding: Bell: Bloom: Satcher: Q: Fauci: Connick: Volberding: Bell: Bloom: Satcher: Q: Connick: Volberding: Bell: Satcher: Q: Fauci: Connick: Volberding: Bell: Bloom: Satcher: Q: Fauci: Connick: Volberding: Bell: Bloom: Satcher: Q: Fauci: Connick: Volberding: Bell: Bloom: Satcher: Q: Fauci: Connick: Volberding: Bell: Bloom: Satcher: Q: Fauci: Connick: Volberding: Bell: Bloom: Satcher:


Prospect of a coronavirus vaccine unites anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists and hippie moms in Germany

Daimler and Porsche. During the peak of Germany’s shutdown protests in May, the largest crowds congregated in the regional capital of Stuttgart. More than 5,000 people marched through the streets, bolstered by a contingent of anti-vaxxers. Those tracking growing resistance to a hypothetical vaccine say people may feel a vaccine has become less urgent since Germany managed to flatten its coronavirus curve. But vaccine attitudes in Germany are complicated by the country’s political history, with the Third Reich leaving behind a legacy of unease over government mandates. Resistance is also tied up with the country’s alternative and holistic medicine traditions. Samuel Hahnemann, the father of homeopathy — whose statue sits on Washington’s Scott Circle — was a German from the eastern state of Saxony. And it was in Stuttgart that Rudolf Steiner, an Austrian who devised anthroposophical medicine, opened his first Waldorf School 100 years ago. While the Waldorf institution has distanced itself from anti-vaxxers, the Steiner philosophy is rooted in free will and independence of thought, and some of his followers are vaccine skeptics. In Baden-Württemberg, infectious-disease specialist Piechotowski said, low vaccination rates can be attributed, in part, to “quite a high number of people who are following the anthroposophic philosophy.” “It’s become very common, in the past 20 years, to think that typical child illnesses are good for healthy development,” said Natalie Grams, formerly a practicing homeopathic doctor who now speaks out against what she sees as pseudoscience. “People are trying to avoid early vaccinations, and this comes from homeopathic and anthroposophic thinking, very much. There’s a common thought that early vaccinations harm little babies.” Grams said she is concerned how the movement appears to have expanded in just the past few months. “The movement is getting far more political influence,” she said. It’s no longer just 2 to 4 percent of the population against vaccines, she added. “It’s far more people. The situation is much more intense than if it was just the anti-vax movement spreading disinformation about a coronavirus vaccine.” The government needs to build support for a coronavirus vaccine even before one exists, she added, so people wary of a hastily developed medical intervention don’t turn to conspiracy theorists or hardcore anti-vaxxers to fill the knowledge gap. Christoph Hueck, a Waldorf educator who has spoken at shutdown protests, said he sees a chance to get his message out and doesn’t mind who is in the


Coronavirus will undermine trust in government, ‘scarring body and mind’ for decades, research finds

Two new working papers present complementary data showing that the coronavirus pandemic will leave a deep psychological scar on the nation for years to come. The first, led by Julian Kozlowski of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, finds that the experience of the coronavirus and ensuing recession could make people and businesses less likely to resume their previous spending and investment patterns, which would have an extended stunting effect on economic growth. The second, led by Cevat Giray Aksoy of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, finds that people who endure a pandemic in young adulthood tend to be more distrustful of government institutions for the rest of their lives, an outcome that makes it more difficult for governments to effectively respond to future pandemics. Taken together, the studies bolster a view increasingly voiced by experts: there may never be a “return to normal.” Rather, the ill effects of the pandemic will resonate long after an effective coronavirus treatment is discovered. The first paper, by Kozlowski and his colleagues, investigates the likelihood of a covid-19 “scarring effect,” or a “persistent change in beliefs about the probability of an extreme, negative shock to the economy.” Severe economic events such as the Great Recession have caused individuals, institutions and businesses to permanently change behavior. Experiencing one recession, for instance, makes people sensitive to the possibility of another. The authors construct a complicated economic model to quantify how this scarring process may work in the context of the current crisis, incorporating data on the economic damage to date, the likely spread of the virus in the future, and how policy responses have altered those parameters. They concluded that the bulk of the economic damage will not come from short-term impacts, such as job losses and business closures, but rather from long-term effects. If the pandemic costs the U.S. economy between 6 and 9 percent of gross domestic product in 2020, for instance, the authors expect the long-term losses from behavioral changes, such as reduced business investment and lower consumer spending, to be between five and six times as large. As with other research examining the effects of the pandemic on fertility, these economic losses would be permanent. “Even if a vaccine cures everyone in a year, the Covid-19 crisis will leave its mark on the US economy for many years to come,” the authors wrote. Similarly lasting effects are visible


such as the Great Recession have caused individuals, institutions and businesses to permanently change behavior. Experiencing one recession, for instance, makes people sensitive to the possibility of another. The authors construct a complicated economic model to quantify how this scarring process may work in the context of the current crisis, incorporating data on the economic damage to date, the likely spread of the virus in the future, and how policy responses have altered those parameters. They concluded that the bulk of the economic damage will not come from short-term impacts, such as job losses and business closures, but rather from long-term effects. If the pandemic costs the U.S. economy between 6 and 9 percent of gross domestic product in 2020, for instance, the authors expect the long-term losses from behavioral changes, such as reduced business investment and lower consumer spending, to be between five and six times as large. As with other research examining the effects of the pandemic on fertility, these economic losses would be permanent. “Even if a vaccine cures everyone in a year, the Covid-19 crisis will leave its mark on the US economy for many years to come,” the authors wrote. Similarly lasting effects are visible in the realm of politics in the second paper. Aksoy and his colleagues combine a global database of epidemics since 1970 with country-level Gallup survey data on trust in institutions. Their primary research question: How does the experience of an infectious-disease outbreak in a person’s young adulthood shape their trust in institutions later in life? The findings are substantial: “An individual with the highest exposure to an epidemic (relative to zero exposure) is 7.2 percentage points less likely to have confidence in the honesty of elections; 5.1 percentage points less likely to have confidence in the national government; and 6.2 percentage points less likely to approve the performance of the political leader,” the authors wrote. The general population averages for those values hover around 50 percent, so that represents more than a 10 percent reduction in trust. “Citizens expect democratic governments to be responsive to their health concerns,” study co-author Orkun Saka wrote in an email, “and where the public-sector response is not sufficient to head off the epidemic, they revise their views in unfavorable ways.” The authors contend such an erosion of trust can become self-reinforcing. “One can envisage a scenario where low levels of trust allow an epidemic


Covid-19 has come to our migrant camp. It makes ending the MPP policy even more urgent.

the camp is crowded with people who for now are not going anywhere. And nevertheless, this camp has recorded just one case — a young woman from the interior of Mexico, newly arrived here along with a cousin and a friend. Following procedures then in place, they were placed in quarantine and those who showed symptoms were tested. We can attribute the singularity of the case to the efforts of the many volunteers from Dignity Village Team, a collaborative effort of several amazing groups, who have committed to care for the asylum seekers since the U.S. government established the Migrant Protection Protocols in January 2019 and initiated MPP in the Rio Grande Valley the following summer. While their success of fending off covid-19 up to now is laudable, the most important thing to realize about the larger situation is that it simply should not be happening. This MPP policy fails to address people with dignity. We should not have people forced to wait for asylum — trying to find safety for themselves and their families — while camped outside in the elements for months at a time. It is contrary to our laws and the dictates of humanity. The story of these asylum seekers has faded from the front pages of U.S. newspapers and from television screens but the cruel and unfair situation continues. Meanwhile, the pandemic has made it more difficult to care for those who are arriving at the border each day. Since that lone covid-19 case was identified, Mexico’s National Immigration Institute has not allowed the camps to accept any new arrivals. So refugees are being turned away and have no place to go. Some are being placed in hotels or churches, and volunteers are desperately looking for other options. Within the camp, we have had to limit the volunteers’ activities — there are 10 to 20 volunteers allowed to enter and help provide the people with food, water and basic health care. We have set up areas for washing hands, and try to provide hope and reassurance amid the uncertainty. All this makes it even harder to keep the camps safe from the cartels and gangsters who continue to prey on these largely defenseless asylum seekers. That young woman who tested positive for the coronavirus has been transferred to a covid-19 center operated by Doctors Without Borders. We pray for her recovery, and we pray for


He was convicted of murder, then pardoned by Trump. His troops suffered a different fate.

severing Ruhl’s femoral artery. He died before paramedics arrived. Zettel came back for the funeral, then returned to Missouri to finish his five-month leadership course. Four years had passed since the war crimes, but the murders and their aftermath still seemed inescapable. A captain teaching Zettel’s class on rules of engagement used Lorance as a case study, telling the new officers that Lorance had been trying to impose discipline on a platoon that had lost control after one of its soldiers was shot in the neck. The captain was referring to Hanes, who had given Zettel his first salute when he was commissioned as an officer. Lorance’s soldiers, the captain continued, had violated the rules of engagement and now Lorance, who hadn’t fired a shot, was serving a 19-year prison sentence. Zettel blew up. “I was there and you need to stop running your mouth,” he recalled shouting at the instructor. The instructor suggested they step out of the classroom. Zettel grew angrier. “If I ever see Lorance on the street,” he said. “I am going to rip his f---ing throat out.” Six days after Trump was inaugurated as president, Hannity asked him in a White House interview about pardoning Lorance. “He got 30 years,” Hannity said incorrectly. “He was doing his job, protecting his team in Afghanistan.” “We’re looking at a few of them,” said Trump of the case. In the months after his conviction, Lorance had begun to receive support from United American Patriots (UAP), a nonprofit group that represents soldiers accused of war crimes. UAP helped Lorance find new lawyers who claimed in an appeals court filing that they had uncovered evidence showing that the younger victim was “biometrically linked” to a roadside bomb blast that occurred before his death. The sole survivor, the lawyers said, took part in attacks on U.S. forces after the Americans tried to kill him. “The Afghan men were not civilian casualties . . . but were actually combatant bombmakers who intended to harm or kill American soldiers,” the lawyers wrote in their appeal. In 2017, a military appeals court dismissed the biometric data as irrelevant because Lorance had “no indications that the victims posed any threat at the time of the shootings.” The judges found that the surviving victim’s decision to join the Taliban after the platoon tried to kill him probably would have helped prosecutors by demonstrating “the direct impact


RNA experiments leap to the front in coronavirus vaccine race

Plus, research finds that the coronavirus will undermine trust in government, and historians question Trump’s choice of ‘heroes’ for national garden monument.


Changing a home title from ‘tenants in common’ to ‘joint tenants’

Q: Would this trigger any adverse consequences in our state? For example, would this invalidate the title insurance that we purchased 42 years ago? Would this trigger a reassessment of our property? A: In the most basic of situations, a couple can own a home as joint tenants with rights of survivorship When you own a home in joint tenancy, when any one of the owners dies, that owner’s interest automatically goes to the surviving joint tenant. On the other hand, when people own a home as tenants in common, each owner owns a specific share of that home. In your situation, you and your wife each own a 50 percent stake in the home. If either of you die, your 50 percent interest in the home would be distributed as provided in your will or as provided by law. When people buy a home and fail to designate how they would like to own the property, in most situations, the law will say when the deed is silent on how the parties will take title to the property, they must have decided to take it as tenants in common. Did you originally intend to own the property as joint tenants with rights of survivorship and now want to correct that situation? That's one set of decisions to make, but since it's likely that you and your spouse are now well into your 70s (or perhaps older), you might want to spend a few minutes thinking about what will happen to the home in the event you still own it at the time of your deaths. It would be simple for us to say that you can simply record a new document putting both of you onto title to the home as joint tenants with rights of survivorship. Usually, when you make a simple change in the title from tenants in common to joint tenants, the taxing authorities will ignore that change. You might have a similar result if you end up putting the property into a living trust. When you put your home in a living trust, the trust becomes the owner of the home and you and your wife would become the beneficial owners of the trust. For practical purposes, there isn't much difference as to how you would handle the home, and most taxing authorities allow homeowners to transfer title to trusts for estate planning purposes without


Some say Northern Virginia’s jump to Phase 3 of reopening threatens region’s progress against virus

Northern Virginia’s jump to Phase 3 in relaxing covid-19 restrictions, earlier than its neighbors, risks stalling or reversing the region’s progress in containing the disease, according to Maryland and District officials and public health experts. The region has had noteworthy success so far in reducing infection rates, in sharp contrast with many parts of the country in the south and west. That’s partly because jurisdictions here have moved mostly together as they gradually emerge from the strict shutdowns imposed in March. Both Northern Virginia and the Maryland suburbs of Montgomery and Prince George’s counties waited longer than other parts of their states to reopen because of high infection rates at the time in the Washington area. But that regional unity appears to have come to an end, as Northern Virginia agreed to go along with the rest of Virginia in moving to Phase 3 on Wednesday. The District and Maryland suburbs show no signs of matching that in the immediate future. Montgomery officials say they will wait until at least a week after July 4 to see if holiday festivities lead to a spike in cases. The divergence is significant. Among other changes, under Phase 3, Northern Virginia restaurants can now be fully occupied indoors, providing people distance physically. Gatherings of up to 250 people are permitted. The rest of the region, under Phase 2, allows restaurants only 50 percent occupancy indoors and limits gatherings to 50 or 100 people. Given that many residents cross the Potomac regularly for work or entertainment, the relaxed rules on one side of the river are worrisome, the officials and experts said. “It is concerning because we try to make sure that we all move at the same speed and at the same level that things are open,” Travis A. Gayles, Montgomery’s public health chief, said. “The counties in Northern Virginia have more in common with D.C. and the counties in Maryland [than with the rest of Virginia], because our populations move back and forth.” Said a senior District official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the matter was politically sensitive: “With Virginia moving to Phase 3, any loosening of restrictions increases the risk of spread. . . . We operate as a region, so that’s why we’re concerned.” The official said the District is “okay being cautious,” and added “We’re not rushing to get to the next phase.” Top experts at


Virginia reports no daily coronavirus deaths as region sees smallest case increase since April

Virginia reported no known coronavirus-related deaths Monday for the first time in more than three months, while the District lost ground in a key metric after identifying a weeks-old spike in cases. The District, Maryland and Virginia reported 659 new known coronavirus cases Monday, bringing the regional total to more than 146,000 since the start of the pandemic. The daily increase is the smallest number in the three jurisdictions since April 3. The region recorded five new fatalities Monday, with no daily deaths reported in Virginia for the first time since March 28. It is also the lowest regional number of deaths since that date. Mondays typically have some of the lowest daily numbers following the weekend, with this Monday also coming after a holiday. The District on Monday reported 33 new cases and two deaths. In Maryland, 272 new cases and three fatalities were reported. Virginia had 354 new cases. Several key measures of the virus have been improving in the Washington region, experts say, and the daily average caseload has plateaued after weeks of decline. Officials have cautioned that the gradual lifting of restrictions could increase the rate of transmission as more people interact in public places. Officials also cautioned that the region could have an increase in cases after celebrations tied to the Fourth of July holiday. The number of new cases on a seven-day average has generally hovered below 1,000 since mid-June. The District on Monday also announced that it had lost some ground as it measures community spread of the virus after identifying a spike in mid-June. Officials want to see 14 days of declining community spread before lifting more restrictions. City health officials count new cases by the date patients first reported experiencing symptoms — which usually lags behind positive test results. As of Sunday, the District had measured eight days of declining spread, starting June 12 with about 40 new cases. But the city reset that clock to five days on Monday after identifying another 40 patients or so who developed symptoms about a week later. Officials are counting the new peak as the start of a two-week decline period. The changes mean the District cannot move to the third phase of recovery until the middle of next week at the earliest. Northern Virginia has moved to its third phase, raising concerns about whether D.C. residents patronizing reopened businesses in the state could


Christopher Buckley’s ‘Make Russia Great Again’ is the Trump satire we’ve been waiting for

was at ground zero,” Herb tells us from prison where he’s composing this memoir, like so many other members of the Trump White House Alumni Felon Association. The madcap plot reads like Nancy Pelosi’s birthday wish. U.S. Cyber Command discovers that one of its artificial intelligence programs called Placid Reflux has gone rogue. Noticing that the United States never responded to Russian interference in our 2016 election, Placid Reflux secretly retaliates by interfering in the Russian election. The U.S. intelligence community is terrified that Trump will find out and shut them down, or that Putin will find out and reveal what he has on Trump. (Spoiler alert: The “grabbing” was videotaped. Eighteen times.) As the president’s most dedicated servant, Herb is charged with placating Putin by secretly negotiating with Oleg Pishinsky, a Russian oligarch who dispatches his enemies with a nerve agent the CIA calls “Oil of Oleg.” Herb has little training in high-level espionage, but his years in the hospitality field have prepared him to deal courteously with murderous personalities. There’s much to choose from here, but perhaps the funniest aspect of “Make Russia Great Again” is how calmly Herb conveys the craziness of the Trump administration. With the unruffled decorum of a five-star resort manager, he describes all the complicated maneuvers needed to entertain a president who does not read, who cannot concentrate for more than a few minutes and who will not listen to anything but soliloquies comparing him to “Napoleon, or God.” The big rally that Trump wants in Testicle, Ohio, may strain the staff’s organizational expertise, but Herb is never anything less than brightly complimentary as he watches his boss strong-arm Sen. Biskitt into attending. “I marveled at the president’s powers of persuasion,” he says. “Come with me to Testicle, Squiggly, is up there with ‘I have seen the promised land.’ I got goose bumps.” “Make Russia Great Again” usually stays cloistered within the padded cell that has become our executive branch, but periodically Buckley peers out at the red-capped zealots cheering on the president across the country. Herb notes that “the Ever Trumpers started showing up on Fifth Avenue with their bull’s-eye shirts saying, ‘Shoot me, Mr. Trump!’ . . . Politics is supposed to be a cynical business, but it warmed my heart to see such devotion.” There’s a Twain-like quality to this loyal naif who skewers without intending to. While “Make Russia


Woman found fatally shot in College Park hotel room

MARYLAND Prince George’s County police are investigating the fatal shooting of a 26-year-old Greenbelt woman who was found dead in a College Park hotel room on Sunday. Authorities were called to a hotel in the 9100 block of Baltimore Avenue at 11:30 a.m. Sunday, the department said in a news release. They found the woman, later identified as Tyesha Henry, unresponsive and suffering from a gunshot wound. She was pronounced dead at the scene. Henry’s death is being investigated as a homicide. The department has released no further details about the case, but a spokesman said detectives are “working around the clock” on the investigation. — Katie Mettler A man is facing criminal charges for riding one of the wild horses at a national park where the Maryland herd of feral animals is protected. National Park Service spokeswoman Kelly Taylor told news outlets that charges were filed against the man, but she did not release his name or specify the charges. The Salisbury Daily Times reported Sunday that a video of the man riding a horse on Assateague Island circulated on social media. “I think that’s one thing to point out is that this gentleman was very, very lucky that he was not thrown from the horse or stepped on,” Taylor said. Taylor said the man faces a possible fine of up to $5,000 and a maximum of six months in jail if he is convicted. The wild horses are split into herds in Virginia and Maryland and separated by a fence on the state lines. The National Park Service manages the Maryland herd, while the Chincoteague Volunteer Fire Company manages the Virginia herd. The park service says the horses occasionally kick and bite visitors who get too close to them. — Associated Press VIRGINIA Two men were fatally shot on Saturday after an apparent road rage incident, the Spotsylvania County Sheriff’s Office said, and a man has been arrested in connection with the deaths. The killing of the victims “appears to be related to a road rage incident,” the sheriff’s office said in a statement Sunday. The victims, two brothers, were identified as Fred Swick, 39, and Joe Swick, 38, both of Spotsylvania, authorities said Monday. Authorities found the brothers in a car in the middle of the road in the area of Fox Run Drive about 10:15 p.m., the sheriff’s office said. The site is about 75 miles


The Daily 202: Trump is running a negative campaign. For his own reelection.

coronavirus cases over the weekend, Austin Mayor Steve Adler (D) told CNN’s ‘State of the Union’ that there won’t be enough medical personnel to keep up with the spike in cases if the rate of increase continues unabated in his city. ‘If we don’t change this trajectory, then I am within two weeks of having our hospitals overrun,’ he said, adding that intensive care units in the city could be overflowing within 10 days. He said he was not sure that Texas needed a statewide shelter-in-place order but that he wanted the authority to impose one locally. The number of deaths and the morbidity rate have not increased with the surge in new cases, in part because the spike in infections has been among younger, more resilient victims. And health officials say they now know more about the disease than they did when deaths were on the rise. … Said Hahn: ‘We are in a fundamentally different place now than we were in March and April.’” “In a forthcoming paper titled ‘It is Time to Address Airborne Transmission of Covid-19,’ 239 signatories attempt to raise awareness about what they say is growing evidence that the virus can spread indoors through aerosols that linger in the air and can be infectious even in smaller quantities than previously thought,” James McAuley and Emily Rauhala report. “Until recently, most public health guidelines have focused on social distancing measures, regular hand-washing and precautions to avoid droplets. But the signatories to the paper say the potential of the virus to spread via airborne transmission has not been fully appreciated even by public health institutions such as the WHO. … The fact that scientists resorted to a paper to pressure the WHO is unusual, analysts said, and is likely to renew questions about the WHO’s messaging. … A spokesperson for the organization said it is aware of media reports about the issue and will have technical experts review the matter.” “This promising — but unproven — new generation of vaccine technologies is based on deploying a tiny snip of genetic code called messenger RNA to trigger the immune system. It has never before been approved for use. But almost overnight, these cutting-edge RNA vaccine efforts have leaped forward as top candidates to fight covid-19. Some developers plan to have tens of millions of doses ready by the end of the year,” William Booth and Carolyn Johnson


aerosols that linger in the air and can be infectious even in smaller quantities than previously thought,” James McAuley and Emily Rauhala report. “Until recently, most public health guidelines have focused on social distancing measures, regular hand-washing and precautions to avoid droplets. But the signatories to the paper say the potential of the virus to spread via airborne transmission has not been fully appreciated even by public health institutions such as the WHO. … The fact that scientists resorted to a paper to pressure the WHO is unusual, analysts said, and is likely to renew questions about the WHO’s messaging. … A spokesperson for the organization said it is aware of media reports about the issue and will have technical experts review the matter.” “This promising — but unproven — new generation of vaccine technologies is based on deploying a tiny snip of genetic code called messenger RNA to trigger the immune system. It has never before been approved for use. But almost overnight, these cutting-edge RNA vaccine efforts have leaped forward as top candidates to fight covid-19. Some developers plan to have tens of millions of doses ready by the end of the year,” William Booth and Carolyn Johnson report. “Elegant in theory, efficacious in the laboratory but untested in the real world, the possible RNA vaccines are especially attractive because they might be cheaper, easier and faster to manufacture on a massive scale — at least one team boasts it could partner with producers in developing countries to provide millions of vials for as little as $5 a pop. … At least 17 teams are now testing their potential vaccines in humans — and at least five of these are betting on RNA vaccines.” “New federal data — made available after The New York Times sued the CDC — reveals a clearer and more complete picture: Black and Latino people have been disproportionately affected by the coronavirus in a widespread manner that spans the country, throughout hundreds of counties in urban, suburban and rural areas, and across all age groups,” the New York Times reports. “Latino and African-American residents of the United States have been three times as likely to become infected as their white neighbors, according to the new data, which provides detailed characteristics of 640,000 infections detected in nearly 1,000 U.S. counties. And Black and Latino people have been nearly twice as likely to die from


Inside the troubling legacy of displacing poor communities for the Olympic Games — and one village’s resistance in Brazil

If the coronavirus pandemic had never happened, the Summer Olympics would be opening in Tokyo on July 24. The Olympic torch would be making its way across Japan right now, and we would all be waiting for Tokyo’s National Stadium to erupt with happy pandemonium on the night of the Opening Ceremonies. The stadium will be silent this summer, though. The Games won’t happen until next year, if they happen at all, and myriad news stories have detailed how the break from the Olympics’ quadrennial rhythm will wreak havoc on the lives of athletes, coaches and sponsors, as well as the Games’ organizers and hosts. The coverage has, however, overlooked a whole category of people whose lives are thrown into chaos by the Olympics every four years: poor people who find themselves living in the wrong place, on land that the Games need for stadiums and parking lots. Poor people who are, per Olympic tradition, evicted and sent packing into a difficult new life. In the lead-up to the 1988 Games, in Seoul, 720,000 people were forcibly moved, according to the Geneva-based Center on Housing Rights and Evictions. Before the 2008 Games, in Beijing, the Center has reported, 1.5 million Chinese were shunted out of the way; resisters were handed one-year “reeducation through labor” sentences. You could tell this story in either Seoul or Beijing, or in London, where a low-income housing development, Clays Lane, was erased to make way for the 2012 Games. But I traveled instead to the western fringes of Rio de Janeiro, because it’s there I knew I’d find a tale of Olympics displacement that was not only fraught and heartbreaking, but also inspiring. The date is June 3, 2015. Rio is readying to host the 2016 Olympics, and at the moment, on a warm, overcast morning, a bulldozer is idling on a dusty dirt road on the edge of a small favela, or improvised community: Vila Autódromo, population 700 families. The dozer is there because the Olympics need wide-open land on which to build stadiums, parking lots, swimming pools and media centers. And Vila Autódromo is in the way. Brazil’s second-largest city is midstream in its campaign to level the favela — every last house. The dozer sits at the edge of the neighborhood, surrounded by camouflage-clad officers from Rio’s Municipal Guard. Facing it is a tightly clumped crowd of 50 protesters. These Vila Autódromo


The pandemic is Sissi’s latest weapon against the press in Egypt

Egypt’s government is used to stifling press freedom. During Abdel Fatah al-Sissi’s presidency, the country has become one of the world’s most dangerous places to report from, consistently ranking as a top jailer of journalists. Predictably, the covid-19 pandemic has made reporting in Egypt even riskier. Cairo’s initial response to combating the virus was a failure by most accounts, and like so many countries that botched their handling of the virus’s first appearance within their borders, it looks as though Egyptian authorities have not learned from previous mistakes. Although new infection rates reached their highest levels in mid-June, the government is hastily pressing forward with reopening plans. On July 1, international airports resumed flight services, and famed tourist attractions like the Pyramids at Giza and the Egyptian Museum accepted visitors for the first time in months. But questioning the wisdom of those plans to restart normal activity is not a debate that will be allowed in the Egyptian press. Developments about the spread of the coronavirus is one of four topics that are now illegal to report on unless the coverage supports official government narratives. The state is using these new laws to silence journalists and their families. One of them is Mohamed Monir, a 65-year-old journalist with a long and distinguished career, who suffers from diabetes and high blood pressure. He was arrested on June 15 after he wrote a column, published the previous day, that criticized the government’s handling of the pandemic. Monir was charged with “joining a terrorist group, spreading false news, and misusing social media.” Such allegations are often leveled at journalists to justify long periods of pretrial detention. But for older detainees with underlying health conditions, like Monir, such charges could become an unofficial death sentence. A few days later, Nora Younis, a former Washington Post contributor and the founding editor of Al-Manassa, a popular news site, was also arrested over critical coverage and held overnight before posting bail. Media workers aren’t the only people affected. Doctors publicly criticizing government efforts to control the pandemic are being arrested and face threats to their personal safety. In addition to the threat of prosecution, these individuals are also at higher risk of contracting the coronavirus in detention. There have been covid-19-related deaths of a government employee and detainees at Tora prison, where many of Egypt’s political prisoners are held. Prison officials have forbidden family visits to the


increasing the number of arrests. Sissi is clearly using the public health crisis as a convenient pretext to further silence any sign of dissent. “There have been so many waves of crackdowns on journalists in Egypt, but this one seems like the worst. The number of journalists in jail has been steadily rising. In December, there were 26. Since March, at least nine more journalists have been arrested. All of them specifically for their covid coverage,” Sherif Mansour, Middle East and North Africa coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists, told me. Given the United States’ long-standing support for Egypt, the Trump administration has leverage to do something about this. But, so far, it has done nothing to signal that there will be any consequences for Sissi’s ill treatment of the press. In recent years, the alleged spread of “false news” has become Egypt’s go-to charge to justify the arrest and prosecution of journalists. Labeling any criticism as a lie didn’t start with the election of Donald Trump, but the U.S. president’s own overuse of the allegation and his abusive treatment of the press have essentially greenlit authoritarians like Sissi. An intolerance for truth is might well be the defining political trend of this era. But calls are growing for the U.S. government to speak out against Egypt’s repressive campaign against “peaceful opponents,” including journalists. Last week, the Working Group on Egypt, a Washington-based bipartisan group of foreign affairs analysts, published an open letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, pressing the U.S. government to do more. “Sisi may believe that the COVID-19 pandemic has diverted the international community’s attention. The United States should make clear it is watching. As one of Egypt’s most important international partners, the United States has a responsibility to use its influence with Sisi to halt these egregious abuses of internationally recognized human rights,” the letter stated. The reality, though, is that the current U.S. administration’s silence continues to enable Sissi’s attack on the press. Read more: Mohamed Soltan: Don’t forget our loved ones, trapped in Egyptian prisons during this pandemic Samuel Tadros: ‘Egypt has found a cure for covid-19’ — and other outlandish tales from Cairo’s propaganda machine Ahmet Altan: I’m watching the coronavirus crisis unfold from a Turkish prison. This is why I’m hopeful. Jason Rezaian: The pandemic is a hard enough story for journalists to cover. Leaders like Trump make it harder.


Two cruise giants assembled a panel of health experts to give them a path back to sailing

join forces, although they are fierce competitors in all other areas. “We want to make sure that we do everything possible, without exception, without any shortcuts, [to show] that cruising is safe,” said Frank Del Rio, president and CEO of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings. “And we think that the panel is going to help inform us in how to do that.” Co-chairs of the panel are former Utah governor Mike Leavitt, who served as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency and secretary of Health and Human Services under President George W. Bush, and Scott Gottlieb, former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration under President Trump. Neither is new to cruising; both said they have sailed before. The group also includes Julie Gerberding, a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who is now chief patent officer at the pharmaceutical company Merck; Helene Gayle, who spent 20 years at the CDC and is now CEO of the Chicago Community Trust, and other experts in public health, infectious disease, pandemic preparedness, epidemiology, hospitality and cruise operations. A no-sail order extended by the CDC in April expires July 24; it calls for cruise lines to submit detailed plans to “prevent, mitigate and respond to the spread of covid-19 on board cruise ships.” Leavitt said the expert group has broken its work into two phases, first finding improvements that cruise lines can use as they craft their responses for the CDC and later looking for innovations that could require more time and research. “All of the cruise lines have to present plans, and so we want to get information to them as quickly as possible that’s reliable [and] scientifically based so that information can populate the plans that they submit to the CDC — and then we’ll keep working,” he said. “Because obviously this situation is evolving and it will require us to iterate as we go and as science develops, and we see this as not just a short-term commitment but a long-term need.” A Washington Post analysis in April found the virus infected travelers on 55 ships worldwide and killed at least 65 people, though the full impact is unknown. In its no-sail order, the CDC says cruise travel “markedly increases the risk and impact of the covid-19 disease outbreak within the United States,” and an agency official has called cruise ships “uniquely vulnerable” to the virus because


Death of triathlete Choi Suk-hyeon sparks a reckoning in South Korea

SEOUL — The death of a South Korean triathlete who had reported abuse from her coaching staff has renewed scrutiny of the country's sports industry, long plagued by allegations of violence and toxic behavior. South Korea’s government on Monday issued a public apology and called for an investigation into the death of Choi Suk-hyeon, who joined the national team as a teenager in 2015. The 22-year-old was found dead at the team dorm late last month after sending text messages to her family to “disclose sins” of people who she said abused her. The team’s coach, Kim Kyu-bong, and two athletes accused of abusing Choi have denied the allegations. Her death, which has been ruled a suicide, is drawing renewed scrutiny of the treatment of elite athletes in South Korea’s hypercompetitive sports scene, where aspiring stars are subject to an intense regimen of training and pressure from a young age. Park Yang-woo, South Korea’s minister of culture and sports, said he feels “heavy responsibility” for Choi’s death and vowed to set up measures to root out abusive treatment against athletes. Choi had reported the abuse allegations to law enforcement and sports bodies but had been frustrated by the slow pace of investigations, her family said in media interviews. The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism said it will conduct a probe into whether the complaints had been handled properly. At a news conference Monday, two former teammates of Choi spoke out about the physical and verbal abuse they said they endured at hands of the team’s coach, physiotherapist and fellow athletes. They gave harrowing accounts of beatings, harassment and verbal abuse at a triathlon team run by the Gyeongju city government. “It was a closed and secretive setting where physical and verbal abuse was taken for granted,” said one teammate who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect her identity. She also said the coach forced them to eat about $166 worth of bread in one sitting as a penalty for gaining weight. “I was afraid of the brutality and oppression in the team, but the silent complicity made me believe this is what the world of athletes is like,” another teammate of Choi’s said at the news conference, held in South Korea’s legislature. Analysts said Choi’s death highlights an entrenched culture of abuse in elite sports that has not been properly addressed even after repeated accusations by athletes.


Companies are hiring their own epidemiologists to help deal with the pandemic

professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. “You can get anyone to advise you on this,” he said. They can tell you to install Plexiglas or advise on disinfectants — the Environmental Protection Agency has a list of approved cleaners. But there are nuances to consider, he said, such how to remove protective gear correctly or whether it makes sense to use ultraviolet light for sanitization. “The analogy I like to use is that if you’re having chest pains and having a heart attack, do you go to an internist? Or do you go to a cardiologist?” Harris said. “It can get complicated pretty quickly,” said David Weber, an epidemiologist and professor at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, who has been helping the university figure out how to reopen classrooms and has been hired by consulting firms in recent weeks to provide his expertise to companies and investment groups. Facing a new virus that scientists are still learning about, it can seem like everyone is playing the role of epidemiologist now — making their own decisions about precautions for going to the grocery store, about whether to take a plane or visit an older relative. The situation has given rise to the term “armchair epidemiologist” to highlight the kind of second-guessing and prognosticating people are doing from home, like Monday morning quarterbacks without football games — or sports of any kind — to opine on. Grubhub spokeswoman Katie Norris said Trivedi helped the company create rules requiring delivery drivers to wear masks — as well as providing them with masks and hand sanitizer — along with ways to reduce the amount of touching during delivery pickups and drop-offs. Drivers who do come down with covid-19 are provided with two weeks of pay, Norris said. Trivedi said the pandemic is challenging because the virus is new and information about best practices has occasionally been conflicting. “Things come up where you have employees wanting to do certain things. I’ve got to go straight to the data that backs up what I’m saying,” she said. But the profile of epidemiologists has probably never been higher. “It used to be that no one ever understand what an epidemiologist did,” said Mel Kramer, chief executive of EHA Consulting Group in Baltimore, which has been busy with new clients in pharmaceuticals and food processing. “But now, it’s coming out of the woodwork.”


Mexican president’s visit to Trump draws questions, criticism in both countries

economists say the trade deal is unlikely to drive much new foreign investment, given uncertainty created by the López Obrador administration. He has canceled a new Mexico City airport project and a U.S. firm’s $1.4 billion brewery in Mexicali on allegations of corruption, and backpedaled on reforms to open the energy sector to more private investment. The Washington trip carries potential peril as well as benefits for López Obrador. Trump was an outspoken critic of Mexico during his first campaign and early days in office. He slammed NAFTA as “the worst trade deal in history” and accused the country of sending drugs and criminals to the United States. During the 2016 campaign, then-President Enrique Peña Nieto received Trump at Los Pinos, the Mexican White House. Within hours, the Republican candidate enraged his hosts by declaring he would build a “great wall” on the border — and make Mexico pay for it. Peña Nieto was excoriated for having hosted Trump. Trump remains deeply unpopular in Mexico. But López Obrador appears to have paid little price for accommodating him. The Mexican leader said Monday that Trump had changed his tune toward the country. “Our adversaries say, ‘How can I go if he’s offended Mexicans?’ ” López Obrador said. “I want to tell the people that, since we have been in government, there has been a relationship of respect, not only toward the government, but above all, toward the Mexican people.” Mexican officials say Trump has provided more than 400 ventilators during the pandemic and assisted the country in negotiations with OPEC on cuts in oil production. The Washington visit could allow López Obrador to emphasize a successful trade negotiation at a time when he’s been widely accused of mishandling the pandemic. More than 30,000 Mexicans have died of covid-19, the world’s fifth-highest toll. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who was also invited to the meeting in Washington, has declined to attend. López Obrador tweeted Monday that Trudeau would visit Mexico “as soon as possible.” In keeping with his image of austerity, López Obrador said he would be tested for covid-19 before he left Mexico and repeat the exercise in Washington if asked. Officials said last week that López Obrador had never been tested. He has no plans to meet with migrant groups or with Biden or other Democrats. If Biden wins, said Luis Rubio, president of the Mexican Council of International Affairs,


Nationals cancel Monday morning workout because of testing concerns

The Washington Nationals canceled workouts Monday morning, General Manager Mike Rizzo announced in a statement, citing a lag in testing results that could put players, coaches and staff members in danger of contracting the novel coronavirus. “Per MLB’s protocol, all players and staff were tested for Covid-19 on Friday, July 3rd. Seventy-two hours later, we have yet to receive the results of those tests,” Rizzo said in his statement. “We cannot have our players and staff work at risk. Therefore, we have canceled our team workout scheduled for this morning. We will not sacrifice the health and safety of our players, staff and their families. “Without accurate and timely testing it is simply not safe for us to continue with Summer Camp. Major League Baseball needs to work quickly to resolve issues with their process and their lab. Otherwise, Summer Camp and the 2020 season are at risk.” The Nationals have shut down training until they receive those Friday results. When they do, they will assess how to move forward. Summer training began Friday, once the first wave of players passed intake screening for the coronavirus. But since then, there have been widespread doubts about baseball’s testing model, which were raised by Nationals closer Sean Doolittle on Sunday. While speaking with reporters around noon, Doolittle had yet to receive results for a Friday test. He had, however, been tested again, and the unprocessed samples were piling up. MLB is using one lab in suburban Salt Lake City to process tests performed every other day for all players, staff members and coaches of 30 clubs. The return plan hinges on frequent results to mitigate possible spread of the virus. But there is skepticism about whether using just one lab to process so many samples can work. Washington’s canceled workout is one example of the model’s fragility. Two Nationals players tested positive for the coronavirus during intake screening last week. They were never at the team facility, according to Manager Dave Martinez, but others who came into contact with them have been unable to join workouts, according to people with knowledge of the situation. “Even the intake tests, there were clubs that couldn’t work out as a team on Friday because they were still waiting for our results,” Doolittle said Sunday. “We got our results at like three in the morning, so we all just kind of set our alarms and then


Housekeepers and custodians, fearful as campuses reopen, demand more protection from their schools

screening protocols used in Maryland state buildings, including a list of questions about symptoms and interactions with others. Staff members also want more supplies: N95 or Chinese-made KN95 masks, goggles, face shields, gowns, booties and extra cleaning agents. In a letter to the campus community, U-Md. President Wallace D. Loh, who retired at the end of June, said extensive procedures are being put in place to protect housekeeping and residential facilities employees. Faculty and staff members and students will be asked to report their temperatures daily, and officials say they want to make testing available to employees who want it. Staffers who want more equipment, such as N95 masks or disposable gowns, will be addressed on a case-by-case basis, Perillo said. “For housekeepers, that’s not necessary,” she said. “But for some of them, there might be a legitimate reason because of fear or uncertainty.” The anxiety in College Park is heightened by memories of the adenovirus outbreak that exploded on campus in 2018, said Holden, the interim union president. The university faced local and national scrutiny after waiting 18 days to tell students the respiratory virus was present on campus. Olivia Paregol, an 18-year-old freshman with a compromised immune system, died of complications from the virus, and more than 40 students and residence hall staffers were sickened. “Now we’re in covid-19,” Holden said. “The stakes are higher, especially for the College Park campus.” But the pressure colleges face to return to normalcy are high, too, even before fall. U-Md.’s decision to restart its football program has stoked fears for workers who clean gyms, locker rooms and offices. Reyna Reyes, a 58-year-old housekeeper who cleans facilities for the university’s football and basketball teams, said she doesn’t know what to expect when she returns to work. But she’s fearing the worst. “I’m worried about getting sick, especially because I lost a close family member,” Reyes said, choking back tears. Her 29-year-old nephew, who had a job installing windows in homes, recently contracted the coronavirus and died of complications from covid-19, Reyes said. For Shernette Lyons, who makes $12.50 an hour as a housekeeper, it may just not be worth it. She’s considering other work — specifically, hairdressing. “We are the front-line staff on the campus. We are the ones who are doing the most work, and we get the lowest pay,” she said. “I’m not coming there for $20 to kill myself.”


When it’s time to cruise again, think small

in a week’s time. A boat that sleeps 12 guests may have a staff of anywhere from two to six, depending on how high-touch the level of service. These will include the captain (who is often the boat owner), a cook, and sometimes a steward or a naturalist/guide. Comfort levels vary vessel to vessel, ranging from the equivalent of a perfectly acceptable guest room at your in-laws’ to a floating five-star hotel suite. Bathrooms are usually en suite, except on some budget-priced cruises. Onboard amenities are limited and typically include a dining room, a lounge, an observation deck and, with any luck, a hot tub. Depending on the type of boat and itinerary, a day on board may start with a few hours of cruising through canals, tributaries and locks, where passengers have the option of biking or walking alongside the boat — whose top speed maxes out at 4 mph. On Secret Atlas expeditions, a morning excursion in a Zodiac raft may take guests up close to glaciers or seabird rookeries or to explore the remains of early human settlements. Plus, co-founder Andy Marsh says they’ve never run a Svalbard cruise where they haven’t spotted polar bears. Passengers are back on board for lunch, then off for an afternoon excursion — more nature or anthropological outings for Secret Atlas guests, and visits to castles, villages and wineries for barge-goers. Evenings are spent stargazing on deck or gathered in the passenger lounge to share stories and photos from the day. Meals aboard range from simple and satisfying to full-on decadent — like grand cru wines and four-course meals on Barge Lady’s upper-end cruises, with ingredients guests sourced that day as the barge passed a market town or an artisanal cheesemaker. Not to be outdone, luxury brand Belmond offers a seven-day Burgundy, France, cruise with daily pit stops at Michelin-starred restaurants. As the level of poshness and individualized service might suggest, a hosted barge or expedition micro cruise does not come cheap. Secret Atlas’s Svalbard voyages start at $6,000 per person for an eight-day expedition. Barge Lady offers sailings on three-star barges from $4,000 per person per week, while six-star barges begin at $6,500 per person. A six-night Belmond cruise through the Rhone Valley with 11 other guests is priced at $7,900 per person. Most vessels are available for exclusive buyout, though that doesn’t result in much cost savings. But micro


We’re No. 1! In a pandemic, that’s no cause for celebration.

to the levels we saw two months ago, when the pandemic was raging out of control in the New York metropolitan area. But U.S. covid-19 deaths have stopped declining — we lose about 500 to 600 Americans to the disease each day — and medical experts fear the number will soon begin to rise. We have already seen more cases and more deaths, by far, than any other nation. Rather than even make a serious attempt to banish this plague, we have invited it to settle in. The European Union, which was ravaged by the pandemic, now is in a position to send children back to school and to ease travel restrictions to allow visitors from countries that have the pandemic under control. If you live in, say, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Uruguay or Rwanda, you are most welcome to vacation in Europe. If you live in the United States, you are not. It is clear at this point that we would have fared better with no president at all than the one we have. From the beginning, Trump has not only failed to make Americans safer from covid-19 but also actively put all of us in greater peril. Any positive impact from the travel bans he implemented against visitors from China and Europe has long been nullified by his stubborn denial of even the most common-sense responses to the pandemic. A good president, or even a mediocre one, would have believed world-renowned experts such as Anthony S. Fauci when they warned that the first few cases of covid-19 had the potential to mushroom into a global crisis. Any reasonably competent president would have seen the way the pandemic gripped northern Italy and resolved to take any available steps to avoid such devastation in the United States. Any president with an ounce of empathy or compassion would have realized that swift, bold, nationwide action, rather than a lackadaisical federalist approach, was the only way to minimize suffering and death. Any president with rudimentary knowledge of science, or a willingness to listen to his own top scientists, would have understood that the goal had to be to lower infections, hospitalizations and deaths as close to zero as possible, then keep them there. But we don’t have even a mediocre president. We have Trump, focused more on minimizing damage to the economy, and his reelection hopes, than on saving lives. Trump essentially


About halfway through their historic mission, a pair of NASA astronauts are preparing for their return

They’ve been up there about a month now, floating around on the International Space Station, keeping tabs on their ride home. One, NASA astronaut Bob Behnken, has taken a pair of spacewalks. The other, Doug Hurley, has turned his Twitter feed into a startling exhibition of Earth art photography. Both have been monitoring the health of the Dragon spacecraft that ferried them to the station, and will, in a few weeks, carry them home in a perilous second leg of their historic test mission. On May 30, the pair became the first NASA astronauts to launch on a commercial rocket to the station, hitching a ride on vehicles manufactured by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, not NASA. A day after lifting off from the Kennedy Space Center, their Dragon spacecraft, which they named Endeavor, docked with the station autonomously, and the duo were greeted on the station by fellow NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy, as well as Russian cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner. The journey marked the end of a long fallow period of launches for NASA, which had not flown humans from United States soil since 2011, when the space shuttle program was retired. “Certainly, the highlight for both Doug and I was the initial arrival at space station, coming through the hatch again and being on board after several years of working on a new spacecraft,” Behnken said in an interview from the station this week. Since then, he has performed two spacewalks with Cassidy, successfully replacing batteries on the outside of the station. During the spacewalk, they were able to see the Dragon spacecraft docked to the station, and Cassidy turned and took a photo. “It was just awesome to be able to look back and snap a picture, and I think we got a good daylight shot,” Behnken said. Hurley has spent a fair amount of time in the station’s cupola, a small dome with six windows that provide some of the best views. As the station orbits the Earth every 90 minutes, traveling 17,500 mph, he’s captured stunning images from all around the globe, posting them to his Twitter account. Here was the Saharan dust plume and the western Atlantic Ocean. Here were clouds coiled like Rorschach inkblots over the South Pacific; Iran’s Lake Oroumieh, also known as Lake Urmia; clouds framing the St. Lawrence River; the tan expanse of the Middle East; and the deep blue


agency from endorsing “a commercial product, service or activity.” Nyberg, who was featured in the ad with her son, said on Twitter that she found it “disturbing that a video image of me and my son is being used in political propaganda without my knowledge or consent. That is wrong.” The ad was taken down. Now, NASA and the astronauts are turning their focus to the return trip. At the moment, the space agency says the soonest Behnken and Hurley could return is Aug. 2. If all goes well, the Dragon would undock from the station, fire its thrusters and descend through the atmosphere. The entire mission is a test to see how SpaceX’s Dragon capsule performs, and while NASA said its ascent went flawlessly, there still are many risks ahead. As it plunges down, the thickening air will cause friction and generate enormous heat, testing the capsule’s heat shield. Then the spacecraft’s parachutes are to deploy to slow the vehicle further. SpaceX has struggled with its parachute designs in the past, however. “Parachutes are way harder than they look,” Musk said in an interview with The Post before the launch. “The Apollo program actually had a real morale issue with the parachutes because they were so damn hard. They had people quitting over how hard the parachutes were. And then you know we almost had people quit at SpaceX over how hard the parachutes were. I mean they soldiered through, but, man, the parachutes are hard.” Another risk will be landing in the ocean. American astronauts have not splashed down in the water since 1975 — the space shuttles landed on land, as do the Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Behnken said he and Hurley expect to spend about an hour bobbing on the ocean surface before they are hoisted on the deck of a ship. SpaceX has been training extensively for the recovery mission, working to get the astronauts to safety as quickly as possible, but that will also be a key test. “I wouldn't call it nervousness,” Behnken said. “But one of the areas that both Doug and I really need to make sure that we're prepared for is that if something doesn't go as smoothly as expected with that recovery operation and we end up in that capsule for a little bit longer.” He added: “We need to be on top of our game, both physically and mentally.”


Mexican governors want tighter border controls to keep Americans from bringing coronavirus south

weekend, a dangerous vector for the virus to enter the country from the United States. As cases have increased in Southern California, Arizona and Texas, Mexican border states have increasingly come to see the outbreak in the United States as their biggest threat in controlling the epidemic. Citing no evidence, President Trump has said that the border wall would keep infections from entering the United States from Mexico. But given the soaring U.S. caseload, it is Mexico that has more reason to fear the virus coming across the border. On Thursday, the Mexican government said it would be installing “sanitary filters,” where travelers from the United States will have their temperatures checked at several border crossings. Those checkpoints have “the goal of protecting the health of the Mexican population, particularly those in the border states,” said a statement from the Mexico Foreign Ministry. Officials in Mexico’s border states have gone further, pleading for people not to cross the border at all. Enrique Clausen, Sonora state’s health minister, said he would seek to apply more stringent controls on border crossings than those mandated by Mexico’s federal government. “It’s so important to implement the necessary measures to protect the health of Sonorans. And one of them, at this moment, has to be reducing the border crossings from the United States toward Mexico,” Clausen said during a news briefing Tuesday. Two days later, he too tested positive for the virus. On Thursday, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Christopher Landau, echoed that message in Spanish, addressing U.S. citizens living along the border in a video posted on Twitter. He advised Americans to avoid cross-border travel during the Fourth of July weekend. “In recent weeks, hundreds of thousands of people have crossed the land border every day and 90 percent of them are U.S. citizens or green-card holders,” he said. “If this traffic doesn’t decline, there will be an increase, not a decrease, in travel restrictions.” The U.S. government has continued deportations to Mexico throughout the pandemic. In many cases, deportees have tested positive for the coronavirus after entering Mexican territory. Those deportations have further infuriated Mexican officials who have tried to restrict Americans from visiting the country. “Why are they continuing these deportations in the middle of a deadly pandemic, including people who are already sick and who knows how many asymptomatic people,” Maki Ortiz, the mayor of the Mexican city Reynosa, told The


With few rules in place, airlines, airports adopt their own strategies for combating the coronavirus

if some airports allowed a whole gallon of shampoo and others only let you bring three ounces,” said Lee, who is also an associate vice president for research and innovation at the university. “It’s hard enough to get people to change behavior, and it’s really hard when the rules are confusing and unclear.” Though passenger volumes are nowhere near where they were pre-pandemic, recent statistics from the TSA show the number of people screened at U.S. airports daily is slowly increasing after it dropped below 90,000 in mid-April, which some argue underscores the need for a unified response. The uptick comes as the number of confirmed cases is spiking in many states forcing some, including Texas and California, to rollback their reopening plans and restore some restrictions. The coronavirus poses a risk to people in many settings, but air travel has been of particular concern in part because of the speed in which it can move infected people from one place to another, potentially seeding new clusters of infections. “Airports and airlines are mass gathering and mass dissemination events,” said Ali S. Khan, dean of the College of Public Health at the University of Nebraska Medical Center and former director of the CDC’s Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response. “You bring all these people together, which markedly increases the risk [of transmission].” This month, 26 passengers on a flight from Pakistan to Hong Kong tested positive for the virus. They were identified because Hong Kong requires that incoming passengers be tested. After 24 days with no new cases, New Zealand reported two new infections — both of them women who traveled to the country from the United Kingdom. Airports may play a role in the spread of infectious diseases, but if managed correctly, health experts say, history has shown they can also serve as useful settings for controlling and tracking outbreaks before they gain a foothold in the larger community International groups including the International Civil Aviation Organization and the International Air Transport Association have called for a coordinated approach. Earlier this month, in consultation with the United States and other governments, the ICAO published guidelines it recommended all airports and airlines follow, including using technology to reduce the amount of time people spend at the airport, temperature scans and detailed health questionnaires to identify sick travelers. “The restart will go much more smoothly if governments cooperate,” said Alexandre


With 5 million tests a day, the rest of us can get back to work

have admirably stepped into the breach, along with countless businesses, nonprofits, front line workers and enterprising volunteers. So as we get about the business of reopening the economy and preparing for the next wave of the virus, this might be a good moment to take a short break from all the hand-wringing and finger pointing and give ourselves a collective pat on the back. While things are certainly not as good as they could have been, neither are they as bad as some would have us believe. It’s also a good time to move on from what has now become a stale debate over when to reopen the economy and get on to a more reasoned and less polarized discussion of how to do it. The White House seems to have largely abdicated its responsibility for providing a blueprint for how to do it. Fortunately for us, however, for us one has now been provided by a group of medical and economic experts organized by the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University and funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. Titled “Pandemic Resilience: Getting It Done,” the report recommends that it is time to move on from blanket stay-at-home orders to a massively scaled-up program of testing, tracing and targeted-isolation that “would save both lives and livelihoods.” (A good account of it by two of its authors, Alex Tabarrok and Puja Ohlhaver, appeared in The Washington Post’s Outlook last weekend). Contrary to what you hear from the sky-is-falling critics on the left, most of what can be accomplished by having everyone stay at home has now been achieved. Curves have been flattened and the number of deaths and infections are slowing declining, albeit from levels that are still too high. To reduce those levels further, the only effective and affordable strategy is not to extend the lockdown for another month, or until the end of summer, or until a vaccine is discovered. Rather, it is to focus on the people most likely to be infected and the places they are most likely to be infected, testing frequently and isolating those who are infected and the people with whom they have had significant contact. The rest of us, meanwhile, could return to most normal activities while still taking care to wear masks, keep distances and keep hands and surfaces clean. What’s refreshing about the Safra Center report is that it