Trump reveals the problem with our hero worship of the military

Netflix will soon premiere “Space Force,” a sendup of the newest branch of the military starring Steve Carell. At one time, the airwaves were full of military comedies such as “The Phil Silvers Show,” “McHale’s Navy,” “Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.” and “M.A.S.H.” But those humorous portrayals have almost entirely disappeared, as most Americans have lost any personal connection with a military in which 99.6 percent of them do not serve. “Today almost all depictions of the military in popular culture are reverent and sobering,” Army officer Caroline Bechtel noted in the military blog War on the Rocks. “Military personnel are glorified as warrior heroes, from films like “Lone Survivor,” “Restrepo” and “Zero Dark Thirty” to shows like ‘SEAL Team.’ ” Those heroic depictions are preferable to the chants of “baby killers” heard during the Vietnam War but carry their own dangers — especially when President Trump insists on appointing so many veterans to senior positions. As Bechtel writes, those in uniform should be respected, not worshiped. The armed forces include the full gamut of individuals — many admirable, some not. This duality is, in fact, the theme of one of the most popular novels among the troops since its publication in 1968. Anton Myrer’s “Once an Eagle” depicts the competition between Sam Damon, a lead-from-the-front officer who always puts his troops’ well-being first, and Courtney Massengale, a conniving staff officer who sacrifices his men to his own ambition. In real life, of course, few individuals are as saintly as Damon or as corrupt as Massengale; many are a shifting combination of the traits they exemplify. Take Michael Flynn, a retired three-star Army general who briefly served as Trump’s national security adviser. He is back in the news after Attorney General William P. Barr bizarrely dropped the charges against him of lying to the FBI, to which he had already pleaded guilty. Flynn had an impressive career as an intelligence officer in Iraq and Afghanistan. But after President Barack Obama fired him as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014, he went off the rails. He pivoted to the right, embracing anti-Muslim views and leading chants of “Lock her up!” at the Republican National Convention in 2016. He also accepted a hefty speaking fee from Russia’s state-run TV network and worked as an unregistered lobbyist for the Turkish government. Flynn’s fall from grace was complete once he lied about his contacts


Stage Stores files for bankruptcy, says it will liquidate hundreds of stores and search for a buyer

Stage Stores, which operates hundreds of Palais Royal, Bealls and Goody’s department stores, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy late Sunday, making it the third large retailer to do so in the past week. The Houston-based company said it is searching for a buyer and plans to reopen and liquidate its stores beginning Friday. The retailer has 738 stores across half a dozen brands, including the off-price chain Gordmans and the Peebles and Stage department stores, in small towns and rural areas in 42 states. “The increasingly challenging market environment was exacerbated by the covid-19 pandemic, which required us to temporarily close all of our stores and furlough the vast majority of our associates,” Michael Glazer, the company’s chief executive, said in a statement. “Given these conditions, we have been unable to obtain necessary financing and have no choice but to take these actions.” The crisis has ushered in a new wave of trouble for U.S. retailers, many of which were already struggling with large debt loads and dwindling store traffic years before the coronavirus pandemic forced weeks-long store closures. J. Crew and Neiman Marcus filed for bankruptcy protection last week, and analysts say others are nearly certain to follow. The latest bankruptcies and store closures, they say, will disproportionately affect the country’s lower- and mid-tier shopping malls, many of which have also been gutted by widespread vacancies. Losing an anchor department store, analysts say, will only hasten their demise. Stage Stores will begin liquidation sales at 550 stores Friday, with others following suit in coming weeks. The company’s stock plunged 22 percent after the announcement. Its shares are down more than 95 percent this year. Department store chains and mall-based retailers that sell clothing, housewares and other discretionary goods are at particular risk, analysts say. Americans are increasingly shopping online instead of at malls, and analysts say that dynamic is likely to solidify in the coming months, even as states and municipalities begin lifting stay-at-home orders. Since 2017, Stage has spent millions converting its department stores into Gordmans locations to compete with discounters such as T.J. Maxx and Burlington Coat Factory. The efforts had been largely successful: Same-store sales — a closely watched measure at stores that have been open for at least one year — rose more than 17 percent in the most recent quarter. But analysts said those gains were not enough to protect the company from the


Doctors and hospitals are struggling financially in a pandemic. Here’s why.

As politicians and public health officials at the federal and state level dithered and bickered early in the coronavirus crisis, it left individual health-care systems to try to respond to the pandemic. Yet the reality of our public-private health-care model created a fundamental problem: Our hospitals’ financial existence depends on maintaining near-maximal capacity of patients and procedures. Nowhere was this more obvious than in the slow decision to postpone elective medical interventions — pre-scheduled procedures that are often nonetheless serious, ranging from removing a cancerous growth to removing a pesky gallbladder causing repeat inflammation. In mid-March, a month and a half after the first diagnosis of covid-19 in the United States, Surgeon General Jerome M. Adams urged specialists to reschedule elective procedures when possible and medically safe. Such a pause promised to free up operating rooms and post-surgical units for covid-19 patients and to direct limited resources, including personal protective equipment (PPE), to front-line providers. Yet, initially, this suggestion provoked backlash from powerful groups that represent hospitals and medical colleges, because the revenue from such procedures is critical for their financial survival. But while outpatient clinics and surgical centers eventually closed, and for the most part, remain so, the initial delay probably exposed an unknown number of health-care providers and patients to the virus as they performed procedures that initially were not considered risky and used precious quantities of PPE now in short supply. Now, many hospitals face a budget crisis that reveals the extent to which their business model is structured to reward high-cost surgeries over the very type of routine care that covid-19 is demanding. Rapid transformation in medical knowledge and practice in the late 19th century, advances in bacteriology, antiseptic technique and anesthesia all set the stage for a rapid growth in surgery. This increase in surgical capabilities, new laboratory and imaging technologies and a social transformation in the role of hospitals from almshouses to scientific centers of acute care led to ever-rising numbers of surgeries being performed in growing numbers of hospitals. Medical technology and hospital design changed to create clean, appealing spaces for sterile interventions and monitored recovery. This reliance on inpatient stays for scheduled surgeries helped create the hospital system we have today in which hospitals are meccas of medical innovation and knowledge. This fueled a steady rise in the cost of medical care, but also disparities in payment across the medical profession. Primary-care


Tracing South Korea’s latest virus outbreak shoves LGBTQ community into unwelcome spotlight

SEOUL — South Korea is in a race to contain a new coronavirus outbreak in a Seoul party district, prompting a return of social distancing just as the country was easing restrictions. Tracing who was there, however, runs up against the feelings of a gay community that prefers anonymity. The Asian nation reported more than 30 new infections on Monday for the second day in a row, the biggest daily jumps in a month. At least 79 cases have been linked to nightclubs and bars that the cluster’s suspected “patient zero” visited the previous weekend, according to South Korea’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The 29-year-old patient went barhopping across Seoul’s trendy Itaewon neighborhood days before receiving a covid-19 diagnosis Wednesday. His case was the first new local infection in four days, during which only a handful of imported cases were reported. That same Wednesday, Seoul officials announced an end to previous social distancing restrictions and declared the start of “a new everyday life with the coronavirus,” in an attempt to return to normal. The sudden increase in cases dealt a blow to the Seoul government’s confidence about reopening its economy. South Korea has won international acclaim for its early success in containing the epidemic with aggressive contact tracing and widespread testing. South Korean President Moon Jae-in said Sunday that the nation should “brace for the pandemic’s second wave,” warning of a “prolonged” war. The infection tally from the Itaewon clubs and bars is expected to grow as officials track down thousands of visitors there during the holiday week. What complicates this search is that many among those clubgoers may not want to be identified because of the stigma attached to the Itaewon establishments catering to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer clientele. Although homosexuality is not outlawed in South Korea, discrimination and hate speech against LGBTQ people remain rampant in the country. Same-sex marriage is not legally recognized in South Korea, and LGBTQ people have little legal protection. South Korea’s contact tracing officers tracked down detailed pre-quarantine movements of the 29-year-old man and published online the nightlife locations he visited. Those places have been identified as gay bars and clubs by South Korean media outlets including Kookmin Ilbo, a major daily newspaper with links to an evangelical church. “Gay club” and “gay coronavirus” were among the most searched terms on South Korean social media in the days following


Opening schools might be safer than you think

spread is, frankly, encouraging. One compelling set of data comes from Australia. Although it’s not yet peer-reviewed, the study, by the staff of that country’s National Center for Immunization Research and Surveillance, analyzes data from 15 primary and high schools in the state of New South Wales from March to mid-April. Across these schools, nine staff members and nine students had covid-19 and were in close contact with hundreds of other people (specifically, 735 students and 128 staffers). Yet according to the researchers, no staff members or teachers developed covid-19. One primary-school student and one high school student may have contacted covid-19 from these initial cases — a very low spread rate. In general, data from Italy, Iceland and China shows low infection rates in kids. In one Italian town that performed extensive testing, researchers found evidence of coronavirus infection in 2.6 percent of 2,812 people, but none of the 217 children under 10 were infected, and only 1.2 percent of people age 11 to 20 (three out of 250). If kids are infected at low rates, then spread in schools is likely to be limited. Of course, schools do not contain only children. Adults work there, and they are more susceptible. Even if kids do not spread the coronavirus — the rosiest interpretation of the Australia study — adults may infect one another. There is a lot we can do to curb the spread (limiting interactions among teachers, for example), but there will undeniably be some covid-19 transmission in schools when they open. These conclusions are based on small-scale early data. There are also some analyses that use epidemiological models to try to evaluate the role of schools. One, published in April in the Lancet, uses data from other epidemics (notably SARS and the seasonal flu) and from the coronavirus outbreak to evaluate the possible role of school closures in curbing covid-19. It concludes that they have a relatively small impact, with very high societal costs. The model suggested that school closures alone prevent only about 2 to 4 percent of total deaths, much less than other social distancing interventions, such as forcing nonessential workers to stay home. Given those findings, the authors floated the idea of opening schools at least for the children of health-care and other essential workers. A more recent analysis in Science uses current and past survey data on the frequency of contacts among people


So what do international relations scholars think about covid-19 and world politics?

The coronavirus pandemic has produced a two-month tsunami of international relations hot takes. They range from the end of U.S. hegemony to the end of globalization to the rise of a new Sino-American Cold War to the observation that a Cold War with China would be a dumb idea. To remain in good standing with the World Pundit League, the hard-working staff here at Spoiler Alerts has proffered a few of these takes. In particular: I am but one international relations professor, however: one who writes about silly subjects such as what happens when world politics has to cope with zombies or toddlers. The point is, I may be an outlier. What does the rest of my discipline think? We have a snapshot answer to that question, courtesy of the latest snap poll from William and Mary’s Teaching, Research & International Policy (TRIP) Project of more than 900 U.S.-based international relations professors. The TRIP folks published their top-line results in Foreign Policy on Friday. All of their results are worth perusing, but a few stand out. When asked to rate the nation’s role in coordinating the international response to the coronavirus pandemic, only 3.2 percent of the respondents said that the United States has been very or somewhat effective. More than 80 percent of respondents said the United States has not been effective at all. There was also a strong consensus that these failures would cause foreign publics to view the United States as less charitable and less powerful in the future. The folks at TRIP were kind enough to let me design three questions to ask in their snap poll. The question that produced the least surprising results: “Five years from now, will barriers to international economic exchange be higher or lower than they are today?” In response, 41.7 percent of those surveyed said “higher,” 31.6 percent said “about the same” and 14.2 percent said “lower.” Given all the talk about nationalizing supply chains and decoupling from China, let me just say that I want whatever that 14.2 percent is smoking. My second question asked respondents to rate the effectiveness of international cooperation in response to a bevy of 21st-century global challenges, including the coronavirus, the 2008 financial crisis and climate change. The response suggests that I am not the only scholar who believed the system worked in 2008, but not in 2020. A full 76.3 percent of respondents


A pandemic playbook for political campaigns

On "Post Reports," Michael Scherer describes how candidates have rewritten their campaign playbooks during the pandemic.


After trade war and pandemic, China and the U.S. step up fight over journalism

Mike Pompeo, who have been the loudest public proponents of the Wuhan lab theory. “Those American politicians who attempt to bring back the spirit of McCarthyism will only further disrupt American epidemic prevention and control and endanger the lives and interests of more Americans,” she said. “Those who are obsessed with playing politics like a power game in ‘House of Cards,’ you’d better save your street tricks.” Instead of trying to sow discord in China, Li said, those in the Trump administration should be asking themselves “why the world’s top scientific and technological power is in such a mess and is so defeated in the fight against the epidemic?” More than 1.3 million people in the United States have caught the virus, and more than 80,000 people have died. That toll far outstrips the 4,637 reported deaths in China, which locked down vast swaths of the country in late January and early February as the virus spread. But China’s recent efforts show that fully stopping the transmission of the virus is an extremely difficult task. New cases are being reported — including six in the original epicenter of Wuhan — despite strict controls on entry into and movement around China. The city of Shulan in Jilin province, near the borders with Russia and North Korea, has declared it is in “wartime mode” after linking 15 new cases to a super spreader. All public places have been closed and all public transport suspended, with residents told to stay home while the outbreak is contained. Separately, in Wuhan, six new cases have been found in two days at a residential compound. They appear to have started with an 89-year-old man who first developed a fever on March 17 but recovered at home within 10 days without ever seeing a doctor. But he started to have health issues again last month, and last week he was confirmed as having the coronavirus. His wife and two other elderly couples in the compound also tested positive for the virus. The compound has almost 5,000 residents, and about 300 returned to it last month once controls in Wuhan were eased. Chutian Metropolis Daily, a local paper, said those moves inflicted “heavy pressure on epidemic prevention and control.” Zhang Yuxin, the chief of the neighborhood committee, the smallest unit of the Communist Party structure, was removed from his post for “perfunctory and ineffective work in compound management.”


In Olympic sports, canceled events mean fewer member fees, which mean trouble

With their competition calendars wiped clean, Olympic organizers in the United States say the financial toll of the novel coronavirus is coming into focus, and the overall economic impact of the pandemic promises to be staggering. The national governing bodies (NGBs) that oversee the individual Olympic sports are nonprofit organizations that have seen their funding sources dry up in recent weeks as thousands of competitions and events have been canceled or postponed indefinitely. Most rely heavily on membership dues and event proceeds for revenue but have been unable to host competitions during what would normally be a busy season. Max Cobb, head of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee’s National Governing Bodies Council, said in an interview this week that lost revenue could reach $100 million. “With the loss of the season so far — and potential loss of it through much of the summer — we’re looking at an enormous drop-off in membership renewals and a huge number of events that have been canceled,” said Cobb, who also is the chief executive of U.S. Biathlon. “A handful of those events might happen at a later date, but most of that revenue is just never coming back.” The NGBs were left to readjust their budgets, scramble for new revenue streams and try to stem their losses. Many resorted to layoffs, furloughs or pay cuts. Cobb said almost all applied for the federal Paycheck Protection Program, and the majority received loans that provided temporary relief. USA Triathlon, for example, had more than 400 of its sanctioned events postponed or canceled in recent weeks, according to Rocky Harris, the body’s chief executive. The organization was granted more than $900,000 in PPP funding, but officials don’t know when their larger revenue streams might open back up. Postponing the Tokyo Olympics to 2021 doesn’t mean the NGBs will be made whole a year from now, and many said it’s too early to forecast the lasting damage. “I’m not sure we’ll ever return completely to the way it was before,” said Phil Andrews, chief executive of USA Weightlifting. “For a couple of reasons: One, some people are finding new ways of working; and two, the financial impact of this thing will be felt for years.” While the organizations are ostensibly charged with grooming elite athletes for the Olympics every four years, their larger mission is to promote their sports by supporting thousands of amateur athletes,


Subways, trains and buses are sitting empty around the world. It’s not clear whether riders will return.

double-decker buses through the middle doors, in an effort to protect the drivers. “We have to accept it, people will have this perception that you can get the virus in public transport,” said Mohamed Mezghani, secretary general of the International Association of Public Transport and a 30-year veteran of the industry. Experts say Seoul provides an early example of how a public transportation network can restart and rebuild commuter confidence. In Seoul’s busy Myeong-dong station, a man in a blue train costume sprays passengers’ hands with sanitizer — part of Seoul Metro’s coronavirus-prevention campaign instructing citizens to wear masks on board and wash hands frequently. Buses and subways in Seoul were running past midnight as per regular schedule, even in late February as the daily infection rate in the country moved toward its peak. No cases of coronavirus transmission from public transit usage have been reported in South Korea, according to the transport ministry. The ministry attributed the success to extensive disinfection measures and widespread mask-wearing among passengers. Subway cars and stations across Seoul are sanitized daily by cleaners in yellow vests labeled “COVID-19 Disinfection.” South Korean health authorities trace pre-quarantine movements of coronavirus patients through in-person interviews as well as scrutiny of phone location data and credit card records. If a patient is found to have traveled via public transport, every passenger car and every station he or she stepped on are identified and subjected to disinfection. In Hong Kong, robots were rolled out in March to help disinfect subway stations with a hydrogen peroxide spray. The MTR Corp., which operates the system, has plastered a new slogan on its posters — “Fighting the virus, traveling at ease” — featuring a cartoon subway car wearing a mask and carrying a mop. On Chinese social media, commuters have started boasting of how they are strong enough to “touch nothing,” even on long metro journeys where they have to stand. “We will have this transition period, and it could last one or two years before things go back to a new normal,” said Mezghani of the international public transport association. “And we really don’t know what this new normal will be.” Kim reported from Seoul and Rolfe from Madrid. Isabelle Khurshudyan in Moscow, Karla Adam in London, Simon Denyer and Akiko Kashiwagi in Tokyo, Liu Yang in Beijing, James McAuley in Paris and John Harden in Washington contributed to this report.


These towns love their federal prison. But covid-19 is straining the relationship.

bureau’s fumbling of the crisis, which enabled the virus to percolate within the prisons and beyond, is stoking fear and resentment of the prisons — and sometimes of prison staff who live in those communities. So far, 45 inmates across the country have died. The Bureau of Prisons announced April 29 that 70 percent of tests of inmates for the coronavirus have come back positive. As of Friday, 3,701 of the bureau’s roughly 140,000 inmates had tested positive. No prison personnel have died, but 527 have tested positive nationwide, according to federal data. Residents in Lompoc and other prison towns, including Butner, N.C., and Oakdale, La., say having a prison with a high infection rate unnerves them, especially when they encounter unmasked and ungloved prison staff in grocery stores, pharmacies or restaurants. “We have people who come in with prison uniforms two to three times a week,” said Antonio de Jesus Rodriguez, owner of Floriano’s Mexican restaurant, which provides pickup orders to customers. “Some are wearing a mask, but some are without one. It’s kind of mind-boggling. As I’m taking their order I’m thinking, ‘You are in a hot spot; why aren’t you taking this more seriously?’ ” The Washington Post reported last month that the Bureau of Prisons allowed the virus to fester in dozens of prisons before taking action to stop its progress. The bureau did not provide masks to correctional officers or inmates until after dozens of inmates were quarantined, and often after inmates had died. Prisoners with coughs and body aches continued to line up, just a few feet apart, for their meals and medication. And temperature checks, for both inmates and staff, did not become routine until the disease had permeated dormitory-style settings where 100 or more prisoners sleep and live within a few feet of one another. In a statement, the bureau said it began responding to the coronavirus threat as early as January and is using “screening, testing, appropriate treatment, prevention, education, and infection control measures.” It also said that starting April 1, it began to minimize gatherings and that “inmate movement in small numbers” is being allowed for essential activities, such as visits to the commissary, laundry, showers, telephone and health care. The Bureau of Prisons’ mishandling of the coronavirus threat prompted Rep. Frederick B. Keller (R-Pa.) to introduce legislation May 1 that would require the bureau’s director to be confirmed by


have to be separated from them.’ ” The church’s prison ministry regularly offered Mass, confession and one-on-one spiritual guidance to inmates until March, when prisons banned visitors. Butner and Granville County officials say they don’t expect the covid-19 outbreak will alter appreciation for the prison as a local employer offering good-paying jobs. But correctional officers who live in and around Butner say they know some people fear them, said William Boseman, a retired Butner correctional officer and union representative for the officers. When people see the prison workers in their dark-gray uniforms walking down the street, they cross to the opposite side. In grocery stores, people scoot to the next aisle. “They are being ostracized,” Boseman said. “When people know you work at this place where there has been an outbreak, they treat you different. They treat you as if you are automatically contagious.” The first covid-19 death of a federal inmate took place six weeks ago — on March 28 — at a prison in Oakdale, La. As of Friday, six more of the 1,800 inmates had died. There have been 115 cases of covid-19 among the prisoners and 26 among the staff. In the boot-shaped state of Louisiana, Oakdale sits just above the ankle. About 110 miles west of Baton Rouge, past the flooded rice-field crawfish ponds of the Cajun prairie, a meandering country road lined with towering Southern pines subtly opens into a meticulously planned four-lane highway that drops you into the town of fewer than 8,000 people. It only takes five minutes to drive from the center of town to the Oakdale Federal Correctional Complex. Along an access road to the complex, a long row of fluorescent pink and white signs with handwritten biblical psalms and motivational quotes flickers in the spring breeze: “Fear is a reaction. Courage is a decision.” Jane Willis and her husband, Greg Willis, are in their mid-50s and have been the pastors at the Christ Church of Oakdale for 15 years. They broke ground on a new church near the prison to house their growing congregation a few months ago, before the pandemic. As the news broke of the covid-19 outbreak at the prison, Jane Willis felt called to do something for the shift workers driving in and out of the prison complex, past their property each day. So she made signs. “I saw the workers going back and forth and


One way the coronavirus could transform Europe’s cities: More space for bikes

PARIS — When residents of Europe's major cities finally emerge from weeks of lockdowns later this month, they'll be met with at least one enduring change from the pandemic: miles and miles of new bike lanes. Officials across the continent, from Paris to Brussels to London to Milan, are scrambling to provide commuters with alternatives to the public buses and trains that millions once used for transportation each day but that don’t allow for social distancing. Leaders and urban planners also see a unique opportunity to advance green policy goals. The result may fundamentally transform the European city. “There’s a positive aspect of this horror,” said Jean-Louis Missika, deputy mayor of Paris, one of the cities leading the charge. “Never has the city been less polluted. Parisians have much appreciated it, and I think there will be strong changes in the behavior of people, in terms of movement.” This sentiment is shared in Europe’s other major urban centers. “It’s a strange window of opportunity, a window that of course we wouldn’t have asked for had we known the consequences,” said Henk Swarttouw, vice president of the European Cyclists’ Federation, a Brussels-based advocacy group. “But now that it’s here, we need to jump into it.” In some parts of Europe, such as the Netherlands, cycling has long been a way of life and a source of regional pride. But in countries where that’s not the case, governments are already reclaiming portions of busy thoroughfares to install new bike lanes. In the United States, the city of Seattle is going as far as closing 20 miles of streets to most cars to allow for more space to walk and bike. The changes in Europe build on existing plans to beef up cycling infrastructure, part of many countries’ green policy goals aimed at reducing emissions and curbing pollution. Cycling is just one aspect of a bigger push, with some leaders, notably German Chancellor Angela Merkel, insisting that climate protection should be a key part of covid-19 stimulus relief packages. But new cycling lanes — and new bikers — are likely to be the most immediate change people will see when lockdowns end, officials say. “Yes, there will be a huge acceleration in number of those who bike, as something good for the environment and good for public health, at the occasion of a terrible pandemic,” said Pierre Serne, the French transportation ministry’s point


The iconic brands that could disappear because of coronavirus

restaurants and car dealerships, which have notoriously low profit margins, also have been hard hit. (Jeff Bezos, the founder and chief executive of Amazon, owns The Washington Post.) “The companies with the thinnest margins are the most vulnerable,” said Hugh Ray, a bankruptcy attorney for the Dallas-based law firm McKool Smith. “The bread and butter for bankruptcy lawyers is restaurants, grocery stores, and automobile businesses with margins that are too thin to sustain much of an interruption.” Agencies like Moody’s and S&P Global Ratings have slashed credit ratings for a number of struggling retailers, scuttling their chances of accessing corporate bonds or government stimulus money reserved for companies in good financial shape. This means that some of the nation’s weakest retailers, including Neiman Marcus, Gap and J.C. Penney, have little recourse against mounting losses. “The question becomes how strong you were going into the crisis,” said Mickey Chadha, a senior credit officer at Moody’s. “A lot of retailers that were already weak are going to come out of this even weaker, if they come out at all.” In recent weeks, S&P Global has downgraded 50 of the 125 retailers and restaurants it tracks, including Jo-Ann Stores and Party City. “The traditional retail sector has been distressed for many years, and now this intense shock is pushing more companies to the brink,” Sarah Wyeth, sector lead for retail and restaurants at S&P Global. The proportion of retailers the company considers “distressed” has risen from 15 percent to about 30 percent since the pandemic began, she said. The most vulnerable companies, Chadha said, tend to have two things in common: large swaths of debt and little cash. Many, like Neiman Marcus and J. Crew, have struggled for years to pay back billions of dollars from leveraged buyouts. Another at-risk category: mall-based department stores like Macy’s, Belk and J.C. Penney, which are losing customers to online retailers and direct-to-consumer brands. Neiman Marcus filed for bankruptcy Thursday, following in the footsteps of Sears and Barneys New York. J.C. Penney this week failed to pay a $17 million interest payment on its debt, while Nordstrom announced plans to permanently close 14 percent of its namesake department stores. “Retailers have furloughed employees. They’re taking salary cuts. A lot of them have stopped paying rent, but it’s still not enough,” Chadha said. “Stores are shut, so there is zero revenue coming in. And they’re burning through cash."


The coronavirus pandemic emptied America’s roadways. Now speeders have taken over.

stress. They turn to drinking or to drugs or in this case, speeding is a drug.” [The coronavirus pandemic is pushing America into a mental health crisis] There is some truth to that theory, said Hanson of Minnesota’s traffic safety office, recalling a case from two weeks ago when a driver who was pulled over while traveling at 110 mph in a 60 mph zone in the Minneapolis area could only come up with one answer to why he was speeding. “He said, ‘I am just out for a joyride,’ ” Hanson recalled. “It’s a selfish attitude,” Hanson said. Especially during the pandemic when hospitals are stressed, people are dying from the virus, and a preventable crash would add another burden to first responders. “We just can’t afford to make bad decisions behind the wheel,” he said. Sam Schwartz, a former New York City traffic commissioner, said he is puzzled by the surge in speeding offenses in the city, which has become an epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic. “There is no logic,” he said, noting that speeding citations have more than doubled in the city over the course of two months. The average number of citations issued daily went from 10,800 in early February to 24,800 in April. FDR Drive, typically one of the slowest in Manhattan because of congestion, has now been nicknamed the FDR 500 — as in the Indy 500, said Schwartz, whose firm analyzes traffic data. “These people are not only creating a danger to themselves, a danger to others, but it’s at a time when New York needs every hospital bed it could get for a victim of the virus. This is just not only dumb, but incredibly selfish,” Schwartz said. [More airlines move to make masks mandatory for travelers to combat covid-19] Traffic safety advocates are pushing for more enforcement and education, concerned that the bad behavior could continue as states reopen and more people return to the roads. Adkins wants elected leaders to add another message to residents in their coronavirus briefings to the public. “When you’re out socially distanced, wear a mask,” he said. “And when you get behind the wheel, slow down.” Read more: With ridership down 95 percent and losses of $700 million, Amtrak looks to pandemic’s recovery phase White House is reviewing guidelines for reopening transit Work on region’s big projects continues amid coronavirus, with construction an ’essential’ business


Tracing South Korea’s latest virus outbreak shoves LGBTQ community into spotlight

People wearing protective face masks walk through the street at night in the Itaewon area of Seoul, on Saturday, May 9, 2020. (Seongjoon Cho/Bloomberg) SEOUL — The Asian nation reported more than 30 new infections on Monday for the second day in row, the biggest daily jumps in a month. Some 79 cases have been linked to night clubs and bars where the cluster’s suspected “patient-zero” had been the past weekend, according to South Korea’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC). The 29-year-old patient went barhopping across Seoul’s trendy Itaewon neighborhood days before getting diagnosed with covid-19 on Wednesday. His case was the first new local infection in four days during which only a handful of imported cases were reported. That same day on Wednesday, Seoul officials announced an end to previous social distancing restrictions and declared the start of “a new everyday life with the coronavirus,” in an attempt to return to normality. [Japan uses targeted coronavirus testing; South Korea goes big. The U.S. faces a choice.] The sudden jump in cases dealt a blow to the Seoul government’s confidence about reopening its economy. South Korea has won international acclaim for its early success in containing the epidemic with aggressive contact tracing and widespread testing. South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Sunday said the nation should “brace for the pandemic’s second wave,” warning of a “prolonged” war. The infection tally from the Itaewon clubs and bars is expected to grow as officials are tracking down thousands of visitors there during the holiday week. What complicates this search is that many among those clubgoers may not want to be identified due to stigma attached to the Itaewon establishments catering to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer clientele. A man wearing a face mask walks past a night club, now closed following a visit by a confirmed covid-19 patient, in the popular nightlife district of Itaewon in Seoul on May 10, 2020. (Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Images) Although homosexuality is not outlawed in South Korea, discrimination and hate speech against LGBTQ individuals remain rampant in the country. Same-sex marriage is not legally recognized in South Korea and LGBTQ individuals have little legal protection. South Korea’s contact tracing officers tracked down detailed pre-quarantine movements of the 29-year-old man and published online the nightlife locations he visited. Those places have been identified as gay bars and clubs by South Korean media outlets including Kookmin


Young patients at D.C. children’s hospital experience rare syndrome linked to coronavirus

Doctors at D.C.’s Children’s National Hospital say two young patients have contracted a severe inflammatory illness that could be linked to the novel coronavirus. Symptoms of the unknown syndrome, which resembles the rare childhood illness called Kawasaki disease, include inflammation of the skin, eyes, blood vessels and heart.


As states get testing funds, Trump paints rosy picture

showed a more steady rate of concern. In that poll, 63 percent of Americans said that they were very or somewhat worried that they would get seriously ill, while 36 percent said they were not too worried or not at all worried. The percentage of Americans who say they have avoided small gatherings dropped some during the past month — but significantly more among Republicans than Democrats, according to Gallup survey results released Monday. The new survey found 86 percent of Democrats say they have avoided small gatherings, a modest drop since a high of 90 percent in late March. By comparison, 60 percent of Republicans in the new survey say they have avoided small gatherings, a drop from a high of 76 percent in late March. The current 26-point gap between Democrats and Republicans is the largest it has been since Gallup started asking the question in mid-March. In China, new coronavirus cases have been reported — including in the original epicenter of Wuhan — despite strict controls on entry into and movement around the country. The city of Shulan in Jilin province, near the borders with Russia and China, has declared it is in “wartime mode” after linking 15 new cases to a super-spreader. All public places have been closed and all public transport suspended, with residents told to stay home while the outbreak is contained. Two weeks after Spanish children were allowed to venture outdoors in a first step to ease the nationwide lockdown in effect since March 15, Spain’s Health Ministry said Monday the outings have not provoked a significant change in the spread of the virus. “We haven’t seen a substantial rise,” said Fernando Simón, who heads Spain’s coordinated emergency health response. With another record one-day increase in confirmed cases, Russia has now overtaken Italy and the United Kingdom for the third-most coronavirus infections in the world. Russia announced 11,600 new cases Monday, putting the country’s total at more than 221,000. The number of new cases per day has continued to rise despite six weeks of strict stay-at-home orders that prohibit even outdoor exercise. Officials attributed the surge in cases to more testing — Russia’s consumer health watchdog said more than 5 million tests have been conducted — and nearly half of the new diagnoses are considered asymptomatic. Chris Mooney, Lateshia Beachum, Marisa Iati, Anna Fifield, Pamela Rolfe and Isabelle Khurshudyan contributed to this report.


Outbreak, fear of being outed

People walk down a street in the popular nightlife district of Itaewon in Seoul on Saturday. (Seongjoon Cho/Bloomberg News) SEOUL — The Asian nation reported more than 30 new infections on Monday for the second day in a row, the biggest daily jumps in a month. At least 79 cases have been linked to nightclubs and bars that the cluster’s suspected “patient zero” visited the previous weekend, according to South Korea’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The 29-year-old patient went barhopping across Seoul’s trendy Itaewon neighborhood days before receiving a covid-19 diagnosis Wednesday. His case was the first new local infection in four days, during which only a handful of imported cases were reported. That same Wednesday, Seoul officials announced an end to previous social distancing restrictions and declared the start of “a new everyday life with the coronavirus,” in an attempt to return to normal. [Japan uses targeted coronavirus testing; South Korea goes big. The U.S. faces a choice.] The sudden increase in cases dealt a blow to the Seoul government’s confidence about reopening its economy. South Korea has won international acclaim for its early success in containing the epidemic with aggressive contact tracing and widespread testing. South Korean President Moon Jae-in said Sunday that the nation should “brace for the pandemic’s second wave,” warning of a “prolonged” war. The infection tally from the Itaewon clubs and bars is expected to grow as officials track down thousands of visitors there during the holiday week. What complicates this search is that many among those clubgoers may not want to be identified because of the stigma attached to the Itaewon establishments catering to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer clientele. A man walks past a club, now closed following a visit by a confirmed covid-19 patient, in the Itaewon area on Sunday. (Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Images) Although homosexuality is not outlawed in South Korea, discrimination and hate speech against LGBTQ people remain rampant in the country. Same-sex marriage is not legally recognized in South Korea, and LGBTQ people have little legal protection. South Korea’s contact tracing officers tracked down detailed pre-quarantine movements of the 29-year-old man and published online the nightlife locations he visited. Those places have been identified as gay bars and clubs by South Korean media outlets including Kookmin Ilbo, a major daily newspaper with links to an evangelical church. “Gay club” and “gay coronavirus” were among the most


The Energy 202: GOP lawmakers accuse Wall Street of 'discriminating' against fossil fuels during coronavirus pandemic

with Paulina Firozi Republican members of Congress are coming to the defense of oil, gas and coal companies they say face “discriminatory” lending practices from Wall Street banks that have caved to pressure from environmentalists. They are worried that oil and gas companies, suffering from the economic shockwaves of the coronavirus pandemic, are not getting their fair share of $2 trillion in stimulus funding because many of the big banks playing a part in distributing the funds have policies against lending to certain fossil fuel projects. In a letter sent late last week to President Trump, three dozen lawmakers urged the administration to take action against big banks that have decided to limit such lending. Demonstrators chained themselves together in front of a Wells Fargo Bank branch in Washington, D.C., in 2019. (Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post) The letter is the latest volley in a battle over cutting off the flow of financing to firms contributing to climate change. Since the 2016 election, green groups have increasingly put pressure on lenders, insurers, asset managers and other private-sector players to curb support for fossil fuels as their urgent calls about reducing greenhouse gas emissions over the next decade have been ignored by the White House. But now, GOP lawmakers are concerned that fossil-fuel based companies are being put at a disadvantage when it comes to the once-in-a-century pandemic jeopardizing their businesses. “As every sector of our economy struggles to survive the COVID-19 pandemic and seeks financial stability from the federal government, environmental extremists are using the pandemic to accelerate their goal of putting America's energy jobs in the grave,” read the May 7 letter, which was led by Several top ranking members on Senate and House energy committees signed the letter, including Sens. John Barrasso of Wyoming and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Reps. Rob Bishop of Utah and Greg Walden of Oregon. They specifically point to a decision by BlackRock, the world’s largest money manager, to limit its investment in the coal power business and make managing for sustainability and climate risk a key part of its investing strategy. The firm, along with other big banks, is playing a key role in distributing stimulus funds under the CARES Act. Last month, Cramer, Sullivan and Young, along with Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), raised concerns about whether the asset manager could impartially lend money given its climate pledges. Caribou migrate onto the


news North Dakota's largest coal power plant is closing. The Minnesota-based owned of the 1,151-megawatt Coal Creek Station in North Dakota announced it is closing the plant in the second half of 2022, years ahead of schedule, the Bismarck Tribune reports. Great River Energy said it plans to add 1,100 megawatts of wind power by the end of 2023, and the “added wind power would effectively replace the 1,100-megawatt capacity of Coal Creek.” California officials will study the impact of gas stoves on indoor air. The California Air Resources Board is working toward two research projects to assess indoor air pollution in multifamily housing and disadvantaged communities, analyzing how stove types contribute to cooking pollution, Bloomberg News reports. (iStock) “Researchers have been studying risks associated with gas cooking emissions for about 40 years,” per Bloomberg. Advocacy groups also tell Bloomberg the pandemic-related stay at home orders add urgency to the issue of cooking pollution, as more people spend time inside. “Murder hornets?” Now there is legislation for that. House Natural Resources Chairman Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.) introduced a bill to pay for eradicating the invasive hornet that captured headlines this month, and for restoring bee populations that may have been affected. The Murder Hornet Eradication Act sets aside $4 million a year to grant to states with the Asian giant hornet, such as Washington state, where they were spotted last year. The “murder hornet” could find a more suitable environment as climate change worsens. “Previous research has found that honeybees — a main target of the hornets — are threatened by climate change as environmental stress decreases their ability to ward off infection and forage for food,” E&E News reports. “And the Asian giant hornet can more easily adjust to a changing climate than honeybees because it makes its nest underground, limiting the hornets' exposure to extreme temperature changes.” “This hornet can exist in temperate regions anyway, simply broadening its range,” James Carpenter, a curator of wasps at New York City's American Museum of Natural History told E&E. “It would be allowed by a warming climate to do that." h5{font:bold 24px/125% 'FranklinPro', sans-serif !important;text-transform: initial;margin-bottom:10px !important;}p + h5 {margin-top:32px !important;}blockquote p{font-style:italic !important; border-left:solid 5px #ccc !important;padding: 0 0 0 15px !important;margin-bottom:35px !important;}.signup-box-rr p{font:bold 22px/115% 'PostoniWide', serif !important;}#newsletter-signUp-button{width: auto !important;padding: 11px 14px !important;}.signup-box-rr .nl-wrapper{padding: 20px 0px !important;border-bottom: 1px solid #ccc !important;border-top: 1px solid #ccc !important;}@media only screen and (max-width: 61.9375em){ h5{margin-left:6%;margin-right:5%;}}


The Cybersecurity 202: Internet-based voting is the new front in the election security wars

include testimony from a spectrum of witnesses, including top officials from the Clinton and Trump campaigns, as well as Obama administration officials. CBS News Chat room Organizers of the DEF CON summer hacking conference in Las Vegas make an annual gag out of declaring it’s been canceled. But the conference is canceled for real this year because of the pandemic. The organizers, who are planning an online conference, still managed to have some fun with the setback. Here’s DEF CON Content Director Nikita Kronenberg: Yes, for really real this time. #DEFCONisCanceled https://t.co/11Z2bn3zQk — Nikita Kronenberg (@Niki7a) May 8, 2020 It does help take the sting off, you have no idea how hard it’s been to hold back. My only regret is not making a bunch of memes in advance. — Nikita Kronenberg (@Niki7a) May 8, 2020 Here are more details: The @thedarktangent blog post on the #defconiscancelled situation is here: https://t.co/ievA4S9cKL Please read and share. Thank you. #defconlovesyou #StaySafe pic.twitter.com/tBFe9E3WDl — DEF CON (@defcon) May 8, 2020 Daybook House Homeland Security Committee Vice Chairwoman Lauren Underwood (D-Ill.) and Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) will hold a virtual forum on coronavirus misinformation at 1:30 p.m. today. The IT Sector Coordinating Council Chair Jamie Brown will talk with CISA’s National Risk Management Center Director Bob Kolasky in a webinar titled "IT Industry Briefing on CISA COVID-19 Response Efforts"hosted by CompTIA and ITItoday at 3 p.m. The Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committeewill hosta virtual roundtable to discuss U.S.cybersecurityand the Cyberspace Solarium Commission Report on Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. The Senate Commerce Committee will host a hearing on the state of broadband amid the covid-19 pandemic on Wednesday at 10 a.m. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace will hold an online event on “next steps for encryption policy” at 11 a.m. Wednesday. The Information Technology and Innovation Foundationwill hosta webinar “Mind the Gap: A Design for a New Energy Technology Commercialization Foundation” on Wednesday at noon. The Open Technology Institutewill hostan event on the role of technology in pandemic response efforts on May 14 at 11:30 a.m. Secure log off In memoriam: h5{font:bold 24px/125% 'FranklinPro', sans-serif !important;text-transform: initial;margin-bottom:10px !important;}p + h5 {margin-top:32px !important;}blockquote p{font-style:italic !important; border-left:solid 5px #ccc !important;padding: 0 0 0 15px !important;margin-bottom:35px !important;}.signup-box-rr p{font:bold 22px/115% 'PostoniWide', serif !important;}#newsletter-signUp-button{width: auto !important;padding: 11px 14px !important;}.signup-box-rr .nl-wrapper{padding: 20px 0px !important;border-bottom: 1px solid #ccc !important;border-top: 1px solid #ccc !important;}@media only screen and (max-width: 61.9375em){ h5{margin-left:6%;margin-right:5%;}}


schools

spread is, frankly, encouraging. One compelling set of data comes from Australia. Although it’s not yet peer-reviewed, the study, by the staff of that country’s National Center for Immunization Research and Surveillance, analyzes data from 15 primary and high schools in the state of New South Wales from March to mid-April. Across these schools, nine staff members and nine students had covid-19 and were in close contact with hundreds of other people (specifically, 735 students and 128 staffers). Yet according to the researchers, no staff members or teachers developed covid-19. One primary-school student and one high school student may have contacted covid-19 from these initial cases — a very low spread rate. In general, data from Italy, Iceland and China shows low infection rates in kids. In one Italian town that performed extensive testing, researchers found evidence of coronavirus infection in 2.6 percent of 2,812 people, but none of the 217 children under 10 were infected, and only 1.2 percent of people age 11 to 20 (three out of 250). If kids are infected at low rates, then spread in schools is likely to be limited. Of course, schools do not contain only children. Adults work there, and they are more susceptible. Even if kids do not spread the coronavirus — the rosiest interpretation of the Australia study — adults may infect one another. There is a lot we can do to curb the spread (limiting interactions among teachers, for example), but there will undeniably be some covid-19 transmission in schools when they open. These conclusions are based on small-scale early data. There are also some analyses that use epidemiological models to try to evaluate the role of schools. One, published in April in the Lancet, uses data from other epidemics (notably SARS and the seasonal flu) and from the coronavirus outbreak to evaluate the possible role of school closures in curbing covid-19. It concludes that they have a relatively small impact, with very high societal costs. The model suggested that school closures alone prevent only about 2 to 4 percent of total deaths, much less than other social distancing interventions, such as forcing nonessential workers to stay home. Given those findings, the authors floated the idea of opening schools at least for the children of health-care and other essential workers. A more recent analysis in Science uses current and past survey data on the frequency of contacts among people


schools

in Wuhan and Shanghai, China. The researchers combine this data with a model that takes into account lower infection rates among children — but assumes similar rates across age groups. They then conclude that schools may be important: that closures could reduce the peak incidence of infections by 40 to 60 percent and delay the pandemic. The assumption that children and adults are equally infectious, however, does not seem supported by current data on the coronavirus, as other scholars have pointed out. More generally, when we have direct data on infectivity, as in the Australian study, it doesn’t make sense to give equal weight to models that do not draw on such data. And so far, the data is reassuring. On the other side of the ledger, there are compelling economic and even public health reasons to consider opening child care. For essential workers, child care will help them keep their jobs. It is also crucial for lower-income parents who cannot afford to forgo work outside the home. Paradoxically, opening schools could also persuade parents who can work at home to continue their quarantines longer. Lots of kids rely on schools and camps for meals : Thirty million children in the United States get free or reduced-price school meals each weekday, and governmental and charitable replacements, which require families to travel to distribution sites (and are not available every day), are inadequate substitutes. New research suggests that hunger is on the rise. Lengthy social isolation harms mental health, too, and the burdens on both adults and children are mounting. Specialists foresee a rise in mental health disorders among children and teenagers who don’t attend school; children in abusive households face especially grave risks. When kids fall behind academically or drop out, there can be long-term consequences for work opportunities and for health, among other things. We know that academic “summer melt” is an issue — kids forget what they’ve learned during the break — especially for low-income students and students of color. Summer this year started in April. More-educated adults have fewer health problems than less-educated adults, meaning we may see long-term health effects of the pandemic that have nothing to do with covid-19. It is also inevitable that, without better alternatives, people will seek their own child-care solutions. Unsanctioned neighborhood summer camps will crop up. It will be difficult to police this, and such gatherings may be more hazardous


U.S. Won’t�Tolerate Technology Fence-Sitters Any Longer

America, citing the steep costs. I concluded: “TSMC won’t be able to sit on the fence forever. While Liu may want to just make chips, he’ll eventually have to make a choice.” That day has come. The coronavirus pandemic has highlighted Washington’s need to protect supply chains from disruption, and heightened concerns about reliance on Taiwan, as the Wall Street Journal reported over the weekend. To that end, the administration is pushing hard to get chipmakers, including Intel Corp., TSMC and Samsung Electronics Co., to expand in the U.S., and to use their best technology, the WSJ wrote. Unsurprisingly, Intel is making the case that the U.S. should strengthen its domestic production for “geopolitical” reasons. The company has most of its staff, and more than half its plants and equipment, in the U.S., including manufacturing in Arizona, New Mexico and Oregon. While best-known for supplying processors used in PCs and servers under its own name, Intel also operates a foundry business that does contract manufacturing using clients’ own designs. Once the world leader in chip production, the Santa Clara, California-based company has fallen behind and now trails TSMC and South Korea’s Samsung. Intel clearly sees an opportunity. If it can convince defense and commerce officials that it’s in the interest of national security to mandate that at least some chips be made domestically, then it may have a shot at getting back into the foundry game. TSMC has been trying to push back, or at least to get a seat in the policy discussions. It recently hired former Intel lobbyist Peter Cleveland to coordinate its efforts in Washington. As the old saying goes, “If you’re not at the table, then you’re on the menu.” But the other aspect of American strategy may be harder for the Taiwanese company to negotiate. Beyond expanding domestic capacity, Washington wants to limit Chinese access. To do so, the Trump administration is considering new rules to curb the use of U.S. equipment and materials in making chips for the likes of Huawei, arguing that the Chinese company is a conduit for Beijing’s espionage. That’s put TSMC and numerous other companies in a difficult position. The American market accounted for 59% of its sales last year, against 19% for Chinese clients. Yet the growth momentum clearly favors the world’s largest country, which is focused on developing components used in artificial intelligence, 5G communications, surveillance and possibly


The Price of Covid Freedom May Be Eternal Spying

Much of our pre-coronavirus lives may be reclaimable with some modifications around how we work, socialize and travel. In one crucial way, though, the post-pandemic landscape will be very different: The individual’s autonomy over her data may be lost forever. Our mobiles will keep us safe — by spying on us. This will have important consequences for the relationship not just between citizens and governments, but also between consumers and businesses. Blame the coming end of privacy on success. South Korea and Taiwan have won acclaim for flattening the Covid-19 curve by digitally tracking infected persons. As my colleague Anjani Trivedi described in March, no government was using dispersed databases as extensively to fight the spread of the disease as Seoul. Before an explosive outbreak in its worker dormitories, Singapore earned praise for TraceTogether, which claims to be the first Bluetooth contact-tracing app covering an entire nation. The 1.4 million users represent roughly a fourth of the island’s population. It hasn’t gone unnoticed that enthusiastic adapters of such software are in East Asia where, as MIT Sloan School of Management professor Yasheng Huang and others note, “a collectivist spirit may encourage civic-minded embrace of and a more willing compliance with governments’ infection control.” But while cultural differences can help explain the beginning, the end game may be more universal: power and profit. Safely restarting economies will require governments to restore trust in people mingling in factories, offices, cafes and trains. It can supposedly be done with data more granular than what can be obtained from cellphone networks. Hence states want access to phones, with or without informed consent. Turning the clock back will be hard, if not impossible. Take India’s Aarogya Setu, or Bridge of Health, Covid-19 contact-tracing app. It’s got privacy warriors worried because the country lacks a data protection framework. Among other things, activists want the government to ensure that “any data collected in an external server is designed to be deleted and that it won’t be integrated with other databases,” according to a working paper by the New Delhi-based Internet Freedom Foundation. For now, there are only assurances that the app will wither away once the outbreak is contained, but no legal guarantees. The Singaporean app records physical proximity in an anonymized form on smartphones. Minimal data is stored on servers. Only if a user falls sick are his contacts tracked and alerted. Given that it’s been


The Technology 202: Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt takes on new role in coronavirus response

remote monitoring, we can actually measure everybody and do it remotely. And then only if you have to, you go in to see the doctor.” 5. The government will need to update its computer systems. The surge in unemployment requests has exposed how ill-prepared government computer systems were for an economic crisis. Schmidt says the problems underscore the need for an overhaul, especially as state and local governments will need more advanced systems to tackle new challenges such as transportation planning in a pandemic. “They're still using COBOL systems, which is a system I programmed in 45 years ago, 6. Tech companies will move more manufacturing back to the United States. Schmidt says the current crisis has underscored that global supply chains are not as resilient as once believed. He thinks that will cause more companies, especially high-tech manufacturers, to bring those operations back to American shores. His comments come as the Wall Street Journal reports the Trump administration and companies such as Intel are growing more concerned about relying on factories in Asia. “We have better control, Welcome to The Technology 202, our guide to the intersection of technology and politics. Our top tabs Tesla sued Alameda County for prohibiting it from manufacturing electric cars during the pandemic. Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX and chief executive officer of Tesla Inc. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg The company is seeking an injunction that will allow it to continue to operate its Fremont manufacturing plant. The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleged that the county where its manufacturing plant is located violated the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, my colleagues Faiz Siddiqui and Tony Romm write. Earlier on Saturday, Tesla chief executive Elon Musk unleashed a series of erratic tweets saying he planned to move Tesla’s headquarters and future programs to Texas and Nevada. He said it's possible the company would maintain some operations in Fremont depending “on how Tesla is treated in the future.” Tesla is filing a lawsuit against Alameda County immediately. The unelected & ignorant “Interim Health Officer” of Alameda is acting contrary to the Governor, the President, our Constitutional freedoms & just plain common sense! — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 9, 2020 Tesla said Saturday it would resume production at its facility, with social distancing measures and on-site temperature screenings in place. The company said the


Inflammatory illness found in 2 children with covid-19

http://www.washingtonpost.com/video/local/young-patients-at-dc-childrens-hospital-experience-rare-syndrome-linked-to-coronavirus/2020/05/11/2e945628-852d-45eb-966f-16aaf88c159f_video.html (REF:ribasjl/The Washington Post) The latest medical mystery surrounding the novel coronavirus’s impact on children has arrived in the District. Over the past month, health-care providers across the country have noticed a possible link between the virus and Kawasaki disease, a relatively rare inflammatory condition that affects blood vessels — forcing medical professionals to reconsider how the pandemic is affecting kids. Kawasaki disease — which causes swollen hands and feet, a rash, red eyes, and fever — has appeared recently in two covid-19 patients at Children’s National Hospital, according to Michael Bell, the hospital’s chief of critical care medicine. Kawasaki disease “has been an enigma for several decades, but every pediatrician sees it a few times a year, so it’s not that uncommon,” Bell said. “But what’s uncommon now is with these patients coming in after being exposed to [the coronavirus], we’re seeing a much more severe form of it where people actually have Kawasaki disease as well as additional symptoms like shock.” In some patients suffering from Kawasaki disease, the condition can cause inflammation of coronary arteries, leading to a greater risk of blood clots, aneurysms, and other heart damage. Doctors typically only see Kawasaki disease in children, and the causes of the condition remain unknown. http://www.washingtonpost.com/video/national/a-girl-survived-two-heart-attacks-doctors-are-linking-them-to-coronavirus/2020/05/12/d139b05b-45f0-4cf0-8139-eee7e29f391f_video.html (REF:thomas-moore,REF:joplinam/The Washington Post) The presence of Kawasaki-like symptoms among covid-19 patients has only underscored the need for more careful scrutiny of how the coronavirus is manifesting itself in children, Bell said. Earlier this month, both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Heart Association alerted health-care providers about the condition’s possible ties to the virus. Medical professionals initially believed the novel coronavirus did not affect children as much as older adults as the pandemic began sweeping through the United States. Statistics continue to show most children who contract the virus do not face serious harm or even present serious symptoms. But the actual hospitalization numbers from American health facilities — including from Children’s National — suggest the virus’s impact on children could be greater than initially thought. Between March 15 and April 22, the hospital saw 105 children who were sick with covid-19. Twenty-eight required hospitalization. The patients who arrived at Children’s National came with symptoms of the virus — but as the doctors looked closer, they saw additional red flags pointing to Kawasaki. “The first kid that came in here was at the exact right age — around


the causes of the condition remain unknown. http://www.washingtonpost.com/video/national/a-girl-survived-two-heart-attacks-doctors-are-linking-them-to-coronavirus/2020/05/12/d139b05b-45f0-4cf0-8139-eee7e29f391f_video.html (REF:thomas-moore,REF:joplinam/The Washington Post) The presence of Kawasaki-like symptoms among covid-19 patients has only underscored the need for more careful scrutiny of how the coronavirus is manifesting itself in children, Bell said. Earlier this month, both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Heart Association alerted health-care providers about the condition’s possible ties to the virus. Medical professionals initially believed the novel coronavirus did not affect children as much as older adults as the pandemic began sweeping through the United States. Statistics continue to show most children who contract the virus do not face serious harm or even present serious symptoms. But the actual hospitalization numbers from American health facilities — including from Children’s National — suggest the virus’s impact on children could be greater than initially thought. Between March 15 and April 22, the hospital saw 105 children who were sick with covid-19. Twenty-eight required hospitalization. The patients who arrived at Children’s National came with symptoms of the virus — but as the doctors looked closer, they saw additional red flags pointing to Kawasaki. “The first kid that came in here was at the exact right age — around 5 years of age,” Bell said. “He had classic symptoms of a rash, [swollen] lymph nodes, cracked lips, swollen tongue. And if covid was not involved at all, we would have just said he had Kawasaki and that was it. But he tested positive for covid in his first day here.” Unlike usual covid-19 patients, the 5-year-old was suffering from a “tremendous amount of shock,” Bell said. “His heart was in failure when he got to us. He needed a lot of therapy to get over that. He’s doing quite well now but it took three or four days of intensive work to get him into the right state.” Children’s National’s second patient with the condition was about 9 years old, according to Bell. Although his symptoms were less severe than the other patient’s, Bell said, “he also had the heart abnormalities and his coronary arteries were also dilated, so we’re concerned about him.” Bell said he and other doctors at Children’s National have been keeping tabs on the condition as other cities report similar patients. “There’s probably 20 to 30 cases abroad that have been very well-described and now cases in New York City that have been described,” he


The Daily 202: Infections and isolations of top government officials undercut Trump’s coronavirus messaging

focuses on cybertheft and action by ‘nontraditional actors,’ a euphemism for researchers and students the Trump administration says are being activated to steal data from inside academic and private laboratories.” Updates from the front lines Doctors keep discovering new ways the virus attacks the body. “Often it attacks the lungs, but it can also strike anywhere from the brain to the toes. Many doctors are focused on treating the inflammatory reactions it triggers and its capacity to cause blood clots, even as they struggle to help patients breathe,” Lenny Bernstein and Ariana Eunjung Cha report. “More than four months of clinical experience across Asia, Europe and North America has shown the pathogen does much more than invade the lungs. ‘No one was expecting a disease that would not fit the pattern of pneumonia and respiratory illness,’ said David Reich, a cardiac anesthesiologist and president of Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. It attacks the heart, weakening its muscles and disrupting its critical rhythm. It savages kidneys so badly some hospitals have run short of dialysis equipment. It crawls along the nervous system, destroying taste and smell and occasionally reaching the brain. It creates blood clots that can kill with sudden efficiency and inflames blood vessels throughout the body. … “Many scientists have come to believe that much of the disease’s devastation comes from two intertwined causes. The first is the harm the virus wreaks on blood vessels, leading to clots that can range from microscopic to sizable. Patients have suffered strokes and pulmonary emboli as clots break loose and travel to the brain and lungs. … The second is an exaggerated response from the body’s own immune system, a storm of killer ‘cytokines’ that attack the body’s own cells along with the virus as it seeks to defend the body from an invader. … Inflammation of those endothelial cells lining blood vessels may help explain why the virus harms so many parts of the body, said Mandeep Mehra, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School … That means defeating covid-19 will require more than antiviral therapy, he said. ‘What this virus does is it starts as a viral infection and becomes a more global disturbance to the immune system and blood vessels — and what kills is exactly that,’ Mehra said. ‘Our hypothesis is that covid-19 begins as a respiratory virus and kills as a cardiovascular virus.’” Paramedics


after the United States. The prime minister said travelers flying into Britain from abroad would be required to quarantine upon arrival. The government has not described how these periods of isolation would be enforced. Starting on Monday, Johnson said, Britain would take ‘the first careful steps to modify our measures’ by encouraging those who cannot work from home — but are employed in construction and manufacturing, for example — to return to their jobs. How those workers will get there is unclear, as the prime minister said they should avoid ‘public transport if at all possible’ but instead travel by car, bicycle or on foot. At work, he said, employers should establish strict social distancing solutions.” France began easing its strict lockdown measures after eight weeks. Hair salons and small shops began reopening today after the number of daily deaths and people in intensive care has fallen sharply from the epidemic’s peak in mid-April. The country is mandating masks in high schools, shops and public transportation. Video cameras integrated with artificial intelligence will monitor overall compliance on the Metro. All this has been accepted will little controversy. Still, burqas remain banned, an irony many Muslims and religious freedom advocates made sure to point out, James McAuley reports from Paris. While some countries open up, Brazil can’t find a way to shut down. “Brazil, which has registered nearly 11,000 dead and become the world’s latest coronavirus hot spot, still cannot find a way to properly shut down,” Terrence McCoy reports from Rio. “In hard-hit urban centers such as Rio de Janeiro, people still pack the streets. The boardwalks are still populated by beachgoers, including the elderly. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is still downplaying the threat, declaring last week he would celebrate the weekend with a massive barbecue. Following pushback, he rode a water scooter instead. Rather than unifying the country against a common threat, the pandemic response is further dividing this deeply polarized society. Bolsonaro, whose instinct has been to do nothing, has deferred to state governors, who in turn have punted the responsibility of implementing the strictest measures to municipalities. The result has been a confederacy of conflicting and contradictory measures that change not only by state and city, but also by city section." As the virus spreads, Egypt's strongman sees an opportunity to strengthen his grip on power. On Friday, President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi “approved amendments to the nation’s


emergency law, giving himself and security agencies additional powers. The stricter measures, the government claims, are needed to address a legal ‘vacuum’ and prevent the spread of covid-19,” Sudarsan Raghavan reports from Cairo. “But activists say some of the measures open the door to more abuses of rights and freedoms. … Only five of the 18 amendments to the law clearly involve public health issues, Human Rights Watch said. For example, the changes allow Sissi to shut down schools, universities, courts and businesses, as well as quarantine people returning from overseas. Other amendments allow him to postpone tax and utility payments as well as provide economic support to affected communities and business sectors.” An Iranian warship was hit by a missile in a training accident, killing 19 sailors and wounding 15 others, Iran’s navy said. (Reuters) Beijing is testing temperature-monitoring bracelets. The wearable technology monitors students’ body temperatures in real-time and transmits the data to an app that can be monitored by parents, teachers and authorities. If the bracelet records a spike in temperature, it sends an alert. (Allyson Chiu) Russia announced 11,600 new cases today, for a total of 221,000, meaning it has overtaken Italy and the U.K. for the third-most reported covid-19 cases in the world. (Isabelle Khurshudyan) Social media speed read Trump promoted one of his private golf courses on his Twitter account: Historians will write about the corrupt merger of the executive branch and the Trump Organization, and congress and the courts not summoning the will to stop it. pic.twitter.com/Vu2WvdYyK8 — southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) May 10, 2020 A civilian appears to have interrupted Boris Johnson’s coffee (tea?) break: it’s a privilege to live in a country where you can do this to the premier with zero repercussions, don’t ever take it for granted pic.twitter.com/B38ouSE9uB — Jim Pickard (@PickardJE) May 10, 2020 A Brazilian newspaper remembered those who have died from the virus even as its president minimizes it: As Brazil passes the milestone of 10,000 dead in six weeks — with no peak in sight — O Globo memorializes the names of the victims. pic.twitter.com/G4b7Ld8NZu — Terrence McCoy (@terrence_mccoy) May 10, 2020 And the husband of Joe Biden's campaign manager, Jen O’Malley Dillon, would like people to respect some boundaries: A thing I didn’t really expect is random folks who find our home address (or phone numbers even) and send ideas for the campaign. Some of it


Children’s National reports two cases of rare illness in children with covid-19

The latest medical mystery surrounding the novel coronavirus’s impact on children has arrived in the District. Over the past month, health-care providers across the country have noticed a possible link between the virus and Kawasaki disease, a relatively rare inflammatory condition that affects blood vessels — forcing medical professionals to reconsider how the pandemic is affecting kids. Kawasaki disease — which causes swollen hands and feet, a rash, red eyes, and fever — has appeared recently in two covid-19 patients at Children’s National Hospital, according to Michael Bell, the hospital’s chief of critical care medicine. Kawasaki disease “has been an enigma for several decades, but every pediatrician sees it a few times a year, so it’s not that uncommon,” Bell said. “But what’s uncommon now is with these patients coming in after being exposed to [the coronavirus], we’re seeing a much more severe form of it where people actually have Kawasaki disease as well as additional symptoms like shock.” In some patients suffering from Kawasaki disease, the condition can cause inflammation of coronary arteries, leading to a greater risk of blood clots, aneurysms, and other heart damage. Doctors typically only see Kawasaki disease in children, and the causes of the condition remain unknown. The presence of Kawasaki-like symptoms among covid-19 patients has only underscored the need for more careful scrutiny of how the coronavirus is manifesting itself in children, Bell said. Earlier this month, both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Heart Association alerted health-care providers about the condition’s possible ties to the virus. Medical professionals initially believed the novel coronavirus did not affect children as much as older adults as the pandemic began sweeping through the United States. Statistics continue to show most children who contract the virus do not face serious harm or even present serious symptoms. But the actual hospitalization numbers from American health facilities — including from Children’s National — suggest the virus’s impact on children could be greater than initially thought. Between March 15 and April 22, the hospital saw 105 children who were sick with covid-19. Twenty-eight required hospitalization. The patients who arrived at Children’s National came with symptoms of the virus — but as the doctors looked closer, they saw additional red flags pointing to Kawasaki. “The first kid that came in here was at the exact right age — around 5 years of age,” Bell said. “He had


Covid-19 predictive models aren’t destiny

should be a certain calculable method by which one could inquire about vitally important personal matters. In the end, neither the cold calculation of the deaths, nor the astrological models, did much to stop the disease. The numbers initially gave people a false sense of control, only to fail them later. The astrological models could only disappoint when prediction upon prediction failed, either positively or negatively, to match reality. What did work? According to Defoe, practical wisdom. Particularly effective were the ambulatory teams of examiners that used a sort of “test and trace” routine to identify new cases, quarantine afflicted houses and provide support in the form of watchmen and nurses to care for those they locked up. Domesticated animals were curbed and possessions were impounded. Travelers were quarantined and the border with Scotland closed. Precaution and simple public health campaigns worked. After peaking between August and September, when thousands died every week, the epidemic dwindled off by the first frosts in November. During the Great Plague, a total of 68,596 Londoners died, or about 15 percent of the city’s population. Then as now, people suffering through a dramatic epidemic sought objective statistics and made reasonable (yet invalid) attempts to predict the span and impact of the affliction. However, it was not the theoretical control of the problem in its enormity that brought the pestilence to heel, but the no-nonsense method of managing that which could be managed: isolating and supporting the sick, controlling the panic, eliminating the causes of the infection and mobilizing the examiners, watchmen and burying parties that kept the epidemic at bay. All this was done by the local authorities, especially the parish councils. In Defoe’s account, the king was a remote presence, having taken refuge at Oxford. The Londoners, the lord mayor and his council were the main actors of the drama. In our own hour of pandemic emergency, we also seek certainty in theoretical modeling of covid-19’s spread. Although our tools are more refined that those of the 17th century, their variability is still great — as the University of Washington and Imperial College examples demonstrate. Diffusion curves seem to be better at predicting what already happened than what will happen. Now, as more than 350 years ago, we should use theoretical models not to fuel our worst fears but to check the outcome of our best practical efforts. This piece has been updated.


World’s fastest blind athlete and his running partner try to stay in sync as they remain apart

rope at times and often relying on a stationary bike — and some strength training, but he has been unable to sprint or work on his starts. “I look at it as an extended basic training period,” Brown said. “What I’m missing is the speed portion. But I’m a sprinter, so that’s not really difficult to get that firing. Right now, I look at it as a gain. I’m gaining more endurance, which is going to help me in the long run.” As restrictions ease and traditional workouts resume, the pair will lean heavily on training that still incorporates social distancing measures, including some techniques and drills they already regularly used. As they run intervals — 30 meters at a time, for example — Avery will run a few feet ahead, yelling instructions and allowing his voice to lead his partner down the track. If they’re sprinting 60 meters, Avery will wait at the finish, clapping his hands to guide Brown. He’ll shout “right” or “left” if he notices his runner drifting. While they are apart, their coach, Joaquim Cruz, keeps close tabs on both runners. Fourteen years older than his partner, Avery knows it’s important that he stays in shape, too. He was an elite sprinter himself, competing at the U.S. Olympic trials in 2000 and 2004. He didn’t qualify but was invited to assist the U.S. Paralympic team in Athens. He now has worked as a guide runner at the past four Paralympics. “I just enjoy the sense of me being needed,” Avery said. “It’s being a part of something that’s bigger than me, the fact that my eyesight is important for someone else. That’s a big thing, to help get somebody across that finish line.” With the Tokyo Paralympics postponed until August 2021, Brown and Avery know they have an extra year to train. They have extra support on their journey — they recently signed on as brand ambassadors for Swiss sportswear company On — and have been monitoring state guidelines to see when they can get back together. Nearby beaches recently reopened for exercise, which might give them a venue for some light running. “Soon there will be less restrictions so we can link up and do more together,” Brown said, “because that’s obviously important. … We definitely wanted to keep moving forward, to keep going, but we also want to be as safe as possible.”


Bristling at calls for coronavirus inquiry, China cuts Australian beef imports

auspices of WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying, and only at an “appropriate time” after the global pandemic is over. The Chinese ambassador’s threats of a boycott last month sparked an uproar in Australia that only grew this week as Beijing appeared to follow through, underlining its willingness to use its economic might as political leverage. China has previously linked trade with political issues, punishing South Korea over its installation of a U.S. missile-defense system and Norway over a decision by a Nobel committee to award the Nobel Peace Prize to dissident Liu Xiaobo. Australian officials said they were notified that four major slaughterhouses were decertified on Monday night, a day after Australian agriculture lobbies conveyed a warning that China was weighing a new round of 80 percent tariffs on barley “within 10 days” as part of an anti-dumping investigation. Chinese authorities cited improper labeling and health concerns when they enacted the beef suspension, according to Trade Minister Simon Birmingham. He said thousands of Australian factory workers and farmers could be affected by the suspension, which covers Australia’s largest beef plant in Dinmore, Queensland state. Birmingham said Tuesday that Australia would treat the agricultural trade matters as independent from the dispute over the covid-19 inquiry and “expects that other governments would do likewise.” At a daily briefing in Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian did not directly answer a question about whether the beef decision was linked to the inquiry proposal. He told reporters that the move was made out of concern for the health and safety of Chinese consumers, adding that any attempts to use the virus as a “political maneuver” would hurt global public health cooperation. China’s relations with Australia should be founded on mutual respect and equality, Zhao said. “We hope the relevant parties will do more to enhance mutual trust instead of talking one thing while doing the other,” he said. Australian political analysts widely saw the Chinese agricultural freezes as directly linked to Cheng’s warnings weeks earlier, even though Canberra has treated the matter with ambiguity and not directly pointed fingers at Beijing. “If you threaten to shoot someone, no one will believe when you stand over his body a week later and claim he accidentally fell on a bullet — of course it’s linked,” said Jeffrey Wilson, research director at the Perth USAsia Center at the University of Western Australia.


Arlene Chesley, who charted a new life after a brain aneurysm and stroke, dies of covid-19

Chesley died of covid-19 on May 6 at Charles Regional Medical Center. She was 78. She was one of 34 Sagepoint residents who have died of covid-19, according to state data released last week. The facility has the highest death toll of any nursing home in Maryland. The 165-bed facility in La Plata, Md., was fined $10,000 a day by the state for violating infection control protocols. “She wasn’t ready to go when this coronavirus took her,” said Patrick Chesley, who is among family members who say Sagepoint failed to protect their loved ones or communicate what was happening at the facility. Patrick Chesley, 55, said that when he demanded to visit his mother at the nursing home in late April — donning full personal protective gear — he could see that many of the rooms that usually had two residents only had one. Behind closed doors, he said, he could hear people groaning. “That was the eeriest feeling I had ever had in my life,” he said. “It was stifling.” Sagepoint did not respond to requests for comment. Chesley was born in Philadelphia and moved to La Plata after the first grade. After high school, she went to cosmetology school and became a licensed cosmetologist, doing hair for a living. Later in life, she also became an assistant special-education teacher, her son said. She raised him and his brother as a divorced single mother. He said she loved cooking, planting flowers and, after he and his brother had children, seeing her grandchildren. Even though she never regained the ability to speak, Chesley was protective of her fellow residents at Sagepoint, he said. She would often instruct her son to wheel her around the facility to check on them. “She would keep pointing, and we would get to someone’s room on the other side of the nursing home, and she would sit there and look at them to see how they were doing,” he said. “She was persistent. She cared about others more than she did about herself.” He said he knows that he wants justice for his mother and the other Sagepoint residents who died, even though he is not yet sure what that would look like. Mostly, he knows that he wants them to be remembered. “I want to make sure that my mother and the other 34 people who died do not become forgotten ghosts,” he said.


Covid-19 conspiracy video goes viral, flamingos in Venice — and other lessons on fake news

Purporting to be a preview of an upcoming “documentary,” “Plandemic” relies on a single source — Judy Mikovits, a scientist whose work has been discredited — to vaguely contend that a powerful cabal of public health officials and others is exaggerating the current outbreak and seeking to exploit it for profit. Mikovits also makes a number of demonstrably false medical statements, including that wearing a mask “activates” viruses that people might be carrying and that “healing microbes” in seawater and “sequences” in sand can boost immunity. The video, posted May 4, garnered more than 8 million views and hundreds of millions of engagements on social media before YouTube, Vimeo and Facebook started to remove it three days later. Produced by filmmaker Mikki Willis, whose Ojai, Calif.-based production company, Elevate Films, creates “transformative media,” Plandemic positions Mikovits as a victim-turned-whistleblower, presenting a highly misleading and one-sided account of her career that includes a number of accusations made against Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a member of the White House coronavirus task force. It paves over the retraction in 2011 of a controversial study of chronic fatigue syndrome that Mikovits had co-authored two years before; it also falsifies details about her arrest in 2011 on two charges related to the theft of a computer, flash drives and other materials from the Whittemore Peterson Institute in Reno, Nevada, where she had worked as research director. (The charges were dropped.) Footage of the interview with Mikovits, who in recent years has been an outspoken critic of vaccinations, is interspersed with a number of video segments that seem to bolster her claims but are actually highly misleading or unreliable. The “b-roll” footage includes out-of-context clips of Fauci, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and other public figures; a portion of a report from CGTN, the Chinese state global news network; and several clips of people in medical scrubs calling into question the scientific consensus about the pandemic, including YouTube footage of Eric Nepute, a St. Louis chiropractor who suggested that the quinine and zinc in tonic water could treat covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. Also prominently featured is footage from an April 22 news conference held by two physicians, Dan Erickson and Artin Massihi, who own urgent care facilities in Bakersfield, Calif., and have made a case to reopen California based on deeply flawed


Judy Mikovits, a scientist whose work has been discredited — to vaguely contend that a powerful cabal of public health officials and others is exaggerating the current outbreak and seeking to exploit it for profit. Mikovits also makes a number of demonstrably false medical statements, including that wearing a mask “activates” viruses that people might be carrying and that “healing microbes” in seawater and “sequences” in sand can boost immunity. The video, posted May 4, garnered more than 8 million views and hundreds of millions of engagements on social media before YouTube, Vimeo and Facebook started to remove it three days later. Produced by filmmaker Mikki Willis, whose Ojai, Calif.-based production company, Elevate Films, creates “transformative media,” Plandemic positions Mikovits as a victim-turned-whistleblower, presenting a highly misleading and one-sided account of her career that includes a number of accusations made against Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a member of the White House coronavirus task force. It paves over the retraction in 2011 of a controversial study of chronic fatigue syndrome that Mikovits had co-authored two years before; it also falsifies details about her arrest in 2011 on two charges related to the theft of a computer, flash drives and other materials from the Whittemore Peterson Institute in Reno, Nevada, where she had worked as research director. (The charges were dropped.) Footage of the interview with Mikovits, who in recent years has been an outspoken critic of vaccinations, is interspersed with a number of video segments that seem to bolster her claims but are actually highly misleading or unreliable. The “b-roll” footage includes out-of-context clips of Fauci, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and other public figures; a portion of a report from CGTN, the Chinese state global news network; and several clips of people in medical scrubs calling into question the scientific consensus about the pandemic, including YouTube footage of Eric Nepute, a St. Louis chiropractor who suggested that the quinine and zinc in tonic water could treat covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. Also prominently featured is footage from an April 22 news conference held by two physicians, Dan Erickson and Artin Massihi, who own urgent care facilities in Bakersfield, Calif., and have made a case to reopen California based on deeply flawed statistics. Note: Related: Discuss: Idea: ----------------------------- NO: YES: NO: YES: YES: YES: NO: YES: Note: Related:


April saw the sharpest increase in grocery store prices in nearly 50 years

Grocery prices showed their biggest monthly increase in nearly 50 years last month, led by rising prices for meat and eggs, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Tuesday. U.S. consumers paid 4.3 percent more in April for meats, poultry, fish and eggs, 1.5 percent more for fruits and vegetables, and 2.9 percent more for cereals and bakery products, the Labor Department said. Overall, consumers paid 2.6 percent more in April for groceries, the largest one-month jump since February 1974. The jump in food prices came in a month when more than 20 million Americans lost their jobs, driving 1 in 5 households into food insecurity. The increase in food prices was in marked contrast to a broader decline in the basket of goods that makes up the U.S. consumer price index, which fell 0.8 percent in April, the largest single-month decline since 2008. The hike in cereal and bakery products was the steepest single-month increase on record, which goes back to 1919, according to Geri Henchy, director of nutrition policy for the Food Research & Action Center, a nonprofit organization working to eradicate poverty-related hunger and undernutrition. She attributes the inflated prices to two things: a shift in where consumers are purchasing their food, and supply chain disruptions due to covid-19 outbreaks in food production facilities as well as slowdowns related to social distancing and sheltering in place. “It’s a tipping point for people who are already really struggling with resources.” she said. “Their budgets are taxed and now add increases in the price of food. There’s been a big increase in food insecurity, which is twice as bad for people of color and families with young children. People can’t go on with those lowered resources forever.” Food at home price increases normally lag behind those of restaurants and food service, according to David Henkes, a senior principal at food industry research firm Technomic. He says this was not the case this time because of the short-term shock to the supply chain delivered by the mass shutdown of restaurants and food service companies, which reduced demand by 90 percent. “I do think this will probably continue for several months,” Henkes says. “There are production issues in some parts of the food industry, and it’s hard to realign the supply chain overnight. At the same time, each of these manufacturers and distributors needs to figure out how to start re-servicing