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Planning on Thanksgiving holiday travel? Many in the D.C. area are staying put.

residents not to let their guards down and to remain vigilant about wearing masks and social distancing, 89 percent of those surveyed said they would not be traveling. The Maryland Department of Transportation on Monday asked residents to avoid nonessential travel. It’s a significant shift from previous years, when the Thanksgiving exodus would begin a week earlier as people plotted how to avoid the inevitable crush of holiday traffic. Regular commuters were warned to leave their offices early on Wednesday to avoid delays. The Capital Beltway became a sea of brake lights. This will be the first Thanksgiving in more than a decade that fewer people plan to travel for the holiday when compared with the previous year, according to AAA Mid-Atlantic. But not everyone is staying home. Roadways and airports might be more crowded than in previous months, but the volume will be a far cry from previous years, officials said. The Transportation Security Administration reported it screened more than 1 million passengers Friday and again Sunday — something that has happened only three times since the pandemic began in March. “We’re seeing more people on a daily basis than we have in the last few months,” said Christina Saull, spokeswoman for the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, which manages Dulles International and Reagan National airports. Even so, Saull said passenger volumes are down about 60 percent compared with 2019, when trade group Airlines for America projected 30.6 million people would travel over a 12-day period around Thanksgiving. Saull said travelers are largely following requirements to wear masks and practice social distancing. She said free masks are available at airport information desks. Many airlines also are making masks available. In a briefing with reporters last week, TSA Administrator David Pekoske said the agency expected its busiest days around the holiday will be Wednesday and Sunday. He also encouraged those who are traveling to be patient with others because it will be the first time many are traveling since the pandemic began. Pekoske emphasized changes the TSA has made to screening procedures to protect travelers and its workers. Officers are required to wear masks and gloves. Gloves will be changed out following each pat-down and if a passenger requests they be changed, he said. Pekoske said acrylic barriers have been installed in areas where travelers come into contact with TSA officers and passengers are being asked to place their boarding passes

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Maryland football resumes practice in preparation for Indiana game after coronavirus outbreak

resiliency and positive outlook Coach Locksley and our team has had,” Athletic Director Damon Evans said in a statement Monday. “The team went through weight training this morning and will practice this afternoon. We are optimistic that we will be able to play this Saturday at Indiana. As we have done throughout, we will continue daily testing, monitor those results and base all decisions upon those results.” In the statement, Evans said he and Locksley “have stayed in constant communication and he’s feeling good.” Eight players tested positive between Nov. 5 and Nov. 11, and an additional 15 players tested positive between Nov. 12 and Nov. 18. Any player who tested positive after Nov. 7, the day Maryland won at Penn State, will not be available against Indiana. Some players who tested positive later in the two-week span will also miss the Terps’ next game at Michigan. Big Ten protocol requires players who contract the virus to sit out 21 days so they can isolate and then go through health screenings before returning to play. Maryland does not release the names or positions of players who have tested positive, and the school has not provided more specific testing data beyond cumulative results for week-long periods. Since Nov. 19, only one team member had a positive result during daily antigen testing, but the confirmatory PCR test was negative. On Sunday, every player’s PCR test came back negative. Wisconsin is the only other team in the Big Ten that has canceled games because of an outbreak in its program. The Badgers dealt with an outbreak of a similar size and also managed to return to play after missing two games. As cases of the coronavirus rise across the country, the college football calendar is facing more disruption as the season progresses. Eighteen games were canceled or postponed this past week. Before the Terps had to pause team activities, they won back-to-back games against Minnesota and Penn State. After the matchup with Indiana, the Terps have games scheduled at Michigan and vs. Rutgers. The season is scheduled to conclude the weekend of Dec. 19, when all Big Ten programs will face the team in the opposite division in the same spot in the standings, with possible tweaks to avoid rematches. Despite the two-week hiatus, Maryland is still in position to earn a spot in a bowl game for the first time since 2016.

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Maryland and Virginia nursing homes battle explosive covid-19 outbreaks — again

The second wave has reached the region’s most vulnerable. Amid soaring coronavirus caseloads in Maryland, Virginia and D.C., some nursing homes have begun to report explosive new outbreaks of the novel coronavirus among residents and staff, affirming the worst fears of family members and health officials. Despite stringent shutdown measures in place since March, widespread community transmission has allowed the highly contagious virus to creep back into facilities through asymptomatic employees, threatening the elderly residents most at risk of dying. The spike in cases in Virginia, Maryland and D.C. since August has not yet been followed by a notable surge in deaths. But health experts note that fatalities often lag several weeks behind new infections, and warn that the uncontrolled spread of the virus in nursing homes could lead to a significant jump in deaths of covid-19, the disease caused by the virus. In rural localities, a large outbreak at even one long-term care facility could tip the health system into chaos. Some government officials are alarmed. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) on Tuesday severely limited indoor visitation at nursing homes and announced that all facilities must test staff twice a week. Maryland health officials also say they are ramping up on-site visits and doubling the number of employees dispatched to nursing homes as “rapid response teams.” County officials say they’re stockpiling masks and gowns, concerned that the nationwide surge in cases will again disrupt supply chains, as happened this past spring. Nursing homes are better prepared now than they were nine months ago, experts say, but some challenges — such as shortages of staff and protective equipment — persist. Systemic problems, including low wages, mean that many nursing homes are still relying on contract employees to fill shifts, inadvertently enabling the spread of the virus. “We never truly fixed the problems,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “There were just a lot of Band-Aids.” In Virginia, at least 200 staff members and 380 residents have contracted the virus since the start of November, officials say. A disproportionate number of outbreaks are in the southwest part of the commonwealth, where ­cases have been skyrocketing. In Roanoke City, where test positivity is higher than 10 percent, nine of 11 long-term care facilities have active outbreaks. In Maryland, new weekly infections among residents and staff members at long-term care facilities have increased tenfold since the

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Most schools should close and stay closed through winter

the week ending Nov. 19, there were more than 144,000 new cases of covid-19 in children, by far the highest weekly increase since the pandemic began. Imagine you’re a teacher who works in a poorly ventilated classroom for multiple hours a day. It’s challenging to keep physical distancing, and there’s a high likelihood that one of your students has the coronavirus and could transmit it to you. Being told that school transmission isn’t the main driver of community spread is hardly reassuring when you’re the one shouldering the individual risk. One in 4 teachers are older or have chronic health conditions that predispose them to serious illness if they contract covid-19. Others might have household members for whom exposure is more likely to result in hospitalization or death. It’s important to note that many proponents of keeping schools open cite studies that show low risk of transmission when effective mitigation methods are put in place. Some well-resourced schools have implemented measures including decreased classroom capacity, improved ventilation and strictly enforced mask-wearing. Some have even moved entire classes outdoors. With all these measures, students, teachers and staff have a much-reduced risk of acquiring covid-19. But most schools lack the resources to implement such changes. Why haven’t there been more cases in schools if many schools haven’t implemented all those safety measures? A few things are possible. Maybe there have been more infections than we know about. Children with covid-19 tend to be asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic. Testing is limited, and it’s hard for parents to find testing sites for younger children. Parents wishing to keep their kids in school might not want to know the result; some mothers are reportedly forming pacts to not test their kids. Reporting is also an issue, with many states reporting cases only if they are proven to have occurred in school. That kind of epidemiological link depends on robust contact tracing, which is not occurring in many places because of overwhelmed public health systems. (North Dakota, for example, has given up contact tracing.) There is no national dashboard; compilations of school outbreaks are self-reported. Without a national mandate for regular testing and trusted reporting, we simply won’t have evidence that there isn’t greater transmission in schools. As the aphorism goes, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Meanwhile, some metrics indicate dangerously high levels of community spread. Twenty-eight states have test positivity rates over

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Maryland football is back on the field after a coronavirus outbreak, but challenges remain

When Maryland’s football team returned to practice Monday, Coach Michael Locksley watched his players work through plays and could provide input to his coordinators if necessary — all from his home in the Washington suburbs. After back-to-back cancellations, the Terrapins now have a game in sight with Saturday’s matchup at Indiana, but the team is still wading through the challenges spawned by a coronavirus outbreak that infected 23 players and seven staff members, including Locksley. “It’s business as usual,” Locksley said Tuesday during a virtual news conference. “The difference is that I’m just not at the office physically.” The Terps paused practices nearly two weeks ago after positive results began to emerge from daily testing, but they have finally returned to preparation that resembles a typical game week despite the absences of players and staffers. Locksley has to be isolated for 10 days, compared with the required 21-day wait before players can return to play, so he will be available to coach against the No. 12 Hoosiers. Until then, he’ll watch practice on a live stream and attend meetings through Zoom. It’s a familiar setup. That’s how the program operated for months after sports halted in March. Locksley meets with the staff virtually every morning. He sets the practice plan. The coaches develop a game plan together. They convene again after practice. Locksley met with the offensive players as usual Monday. He did the same with the defense Tuesday afternoon. The weekly schedule hasn’t changed, and the program prepared for these circumstances. Chad Wells, the team’s video coordinator, had developed a contingency plan for a situation that prompted the need for a live stream. Drew Hampton, the director of equipment operations, has his phone at practice and can relay messages from Locksley. Plus, three members of Maryland’s staff — offensive coordinator Scottie Montgomery, wide receivers coach Joker Phillips and analyst Ron Zook — have head coaching experience. More than a dozen After Maryland’s players returned to campus in the summer, workouts paused because of nine cases of the coronavirus among athletes and staff. The team had practiced a few days in August before the Big Ten canceled the fall season, only for that decision to be reversed a month later. Just before the conference committed to playing this season, Maryland’s athletic department dealt with a large outbreak across many teams that prompted football practices to again halt. The latest spike

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Which Trump official has coronavirus now? This reporter always seems to know first.

If you want to find out who in the Trump administration has tested positive for the coronavirus, you should probably just set an alert for Jennifer Jacobs’s tweets. The Bloomberg News reporter has emerged as the preeminent source for intel on covid-19 cases in and around the White House. Before she helped break the story on Friday that Donald Trump Jr. tested positive, she was the one who first told the world — and many in the White House — about the positive diagnosis of Trump’s close aide Hope Hicks in early October, a watershed revelation followed hours later by President Trump disclosing his own positive test result. “Jennifer Jacobs owns the White House covid beat,” said ABC chief White House correspondent Jonathan Karl. “She seems to know the test results of the president’s inner circle before just about anybody else on the White House staff knows. It’s really remarkable.” It’s an only-in-2020 beat, covering the health emergencies of White House officials, many of whom have bucked their own administration’s public safety recommendations, such as mask-wearing, as the virus has spread within one of the world’s most secure office spaces. Months before the Hicks diagnosis, Jacobs broke the news that Robert C. O’Brien, Trump’s national security adviser, had tested positive, and before that, that Vice President Pence was self-isolating after an aide was diagnosed with the coronavirus. But it was her bombshell reporting on Hicks, an aide who may spend more time than any other staffer with Trump, that highlighted the White House as a potential covid-19 hot spot. On Oct. 1, at 8:09 p.m., she tweeted that Hicks, who had traveled aboard Air Force One for the first presidential debate and a rally in Minnesota, tested positive. The resulting story by Jacobs and fellow Bloomberg News correspondent Jordan Fabian revealed that Hicks first felt ill while in Minnesota for the rally and quarantined while returning home on Air Force One. “White House officials had hoped to keep the news about Ms. Hicks from becoming public, to no avail,” the New York Times reported at the time. Shortly after the Bloomberg News story broke, Trump acknowledged during an interview on Fox News that he was awaiting his own test result. Hours later, the president revealed he had tested positive, a stunning and destabilizing development that had officials discussing the continuity of governance should his condition worsen. Positive diagnoses were also

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Officials tell public to stay home. Is anyone listening?

Vietnam and China had success with swift measures that combined targeted restrictions with strong communication. Taiwan has never had a full shutdown, Phillips pointed out, because people are conscientious about wearing masks and reducing interactions with others. But in the United Kingdom, where Phillips lives, weeks of a curfew weren’t enough to stop the escalation of cases. “The most expensive way to deal with the virus is to delay the pain until the point when you have to put the economy into a lockdown,” he said. Several vaccines have proved effective and in coming weeks probably will be approved and begin to be distributed. But that will take months. The short-term future of the pandemic in America — and the severity of the crisis that President-elect Joe Biden will inherit Jan. 20 — depends largely on individuals’ choices in the coming days and weeks. Pandemic fatigue, personal hardships and a lack of financial resources have combined with anti-government sentiment and science denialism to drive a wedge between what public health officials say should be done and what people are actually doing. Despite pleas from officials to limit travel, more than 3 million passengers went through Transportation Security Administration checkpoints at airports from Friday to Sunday. And Sunday was the busiest travel day since the pandemic’s start, TSA spokesman Daniel Velez said. Compliance with quarantine guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has also been spotty, spurring the agency to prepare new recommendations that, when finalized, would ask people potentially exposed to the virus to isolate for seven to 10 days rather than the more burdensome 14 days currently recommended. In addition, many people remain unpersuaded that the novel pathogen and covid-19, the disease it causes, warrant sweeping restrictions on commerce, schooling, sporting events and other cultural activities. They don’t think the virus is as dangerous as public health experts claim. These attitudes to some degree echo President Trump’s message that the “cure can’t be worse than the disease.” But they are also shaped by personal experiences over the past nine months, said Michael Mugavero, an infectious-disease physician at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. “What is the public health messaging that aligns with people’s very real, lived experiences?” Mugavero said. “At the end of the day, for most people, their lived anecdotal personal experience supersedes any broader health data.” Political leaders and the general public alike are loath

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Coronavirus is roaring back in parts of Asia, capitalizing on pandemic fatigue

than 300 a day, and Hong Kong recording 73 new confirmed cases on Monday — compared with more than 150,000 a day in the United States. Yet the infection rates are still high enough to ring alarm bells, especially given the high proportion of elderly people in places like Japan, as winter approaches and doors and windows close against the chill. Pandemic fatigue is a key ingredient, experts say. After many months of restrictions and with cases seemingly under control for a while, people have become tired of the rules, bored with staying at home and complacent about the risks. On Tokyo’s streets this past week, everybody has been wearing a mask. But bars and restaurants have been packed with people who have cast their face coverings aside. “Our control measures rely on voluntary behavior change,” said Hitoshi Oshitani, a professor at Tohoku University’s Graduate School of Medicine who is a member of the government’s coronavirus advisory team. “And it’s getting more difficult to persuade people to change behavior. Even though the number of cases is much, much higher than in March or April, people are quite relaxed.” Kang Do-tae, South Korea’s vice health minister, warned Tuesday of a “triple bind” of asymptomatic patients, transmission among young people, and colder weather in which the virus thrives because of increased indoor activity. “The unforeseen development of the third wave forewarns an even harsher and harder winter,” Kang told government officials at a meeting to discuss the coronavirus response. As the peak of flu season approaches and hospital beds fill up, that complacency is increasingly dangerous, experts say. But there have also been policy blunders, U-turns and misfires that have given the virus the opportunity to spread. To rescue its economy from a record slump, the Japanese government launched the Go to Travel and the Go to Eat subsidy programs in July and October, respectively, offering to repay consumers up to half the costs of flights, hotels, meals and other expenses. The aid brought welcome relief to industries floored by the pandemic, but it also helped the virus to penetrate new corners of this island nation. On Monday, the governors of the northern prefecture of Hokkaido and the western prefecture of Osaka announced they were withdrawing their regional capital cities from the subsidy program, a decision the central government reluctantly endorsed the next day. Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike also raised concerns Tuesday.

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Coronavirus is roaring back in parts of Asia, capitalizing on pandemic fatigue

cases,” she said at a news conference. “And we are seeing these situations where in times of eating out, the virus does spread. This is then brought home into the household, where perhaps there are elderly members of the family who have lower immunity.” Opposition politicians slammed the government, saying it was acting too late. Yoshimasa Suenobu, a veteran journalist and a professor of media studies at Tokai University, said it was as though the government was driving a car “without thinking about how to brake.” “A car won’t drive well unless both the accelerator and the brake perform equally well,” he said on Nippon Broadcasting System. In South Korea, which won praise for effectively tamping down the first major epidemic outside China, officials have continued to fight small but persistent outbreaks. Believing it had a second wave under control, the government eased social distancing rules last month. Over the past two weeks, however, more than 60 infection clusters emerged across the country, including at schools, military bases and churches. “Infections from the first and second waves left lingering transmission risks across the South Korean society, which caught fire as social distancing rules were lifted without proper preparations,” said Kim Yoon, a professor at Seoul National University’s College of Medicine, warning the outbreaks could overwhelm South Korea’s contact-tracing regime. “Unlike previous outbreaks which stemmed from few big clusters, the third wave consists of dozens of small clusters that are harder for contact tracers to track,” he added. In Hong Kong, a cluster of infections originating from dance clubs has shattered a weeks-long streak of low to zero local cases. That cluster has emerged as one of the biggest Hong Kong has seen, with more than 130 confirmed cases. The city’s government has moved belatedly to close loopholes that had given the virus a path back, including lax hotel quarantine arrangements for returning residents, who were forced to quarantine for 14 days but could still have visitors. But the financial hub is also battling a similar wave of fatigue and complacency that Japan has experienced. “Seeing videos and photos of the dancing clusters that have gone viral, we can see people totally not respecting the regulations during a pandemic,” Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam said Tuesday, pointing out that people were engaged in close-contact activities without masks on. “It seems like this new wave of infection will be quite severe.”

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Covid-19 has shed light on another pandemic of depression, anxiety and grief

Erin N. Marcus is a professor of clinical medicine at the University of Miami and a Public Voices fellow. Along with the resurgence of covid-19, an insidious and less perceptible pandemic has arisen: one of anxiety, depression and grief. It’s a phenomenon I’ve seen among people seeking help in the primary care clinic where I work. I think of the woman who, after her mother and sister died of covid, lost the motivation to take her diabetes medication, or do much of anything else. The man who recovered from covid but who now can’t sleep because of flashbacks to his time in the hospital. The woman whose adult children recovered from covid — but who is so anxious about venturing out of her tiny apartment that her normally well-controlled blood pressure has rocketed to dangerously high levels. My observations are consistent with those of national surveys, which have found significant increases in depression and anxiety during the pandemic. In one large nationwide survey, U.S. adults were more than three times more likely to screen positive for anxiety and depressive disorders, compared with one year earlier. Another survey found a significant increase in alcohol use. Those surveys were conducted in April through June, before the spread of the coronavirus escalated to encompass the entire nation. Today, it’s likely that the psychological toll is much worse. Every person who dies of covid-19 leaves behind, on average, nine close family members — a grandchild, son, daughter, brother, sister, spouse, mother or father. The grief experienced by those surviving family members and friends is a normal reaction to loss. But some psychologists fear that the circumstances of covid-19 — in which people might die unexpectedly or alone, and without the normal rituals of community remembrance such as a memorial service — may increase the likelihood of prolonged grief disorder, a disabling condition that can last years and raise the risk of suicide or alcohol and drug abuse. More than 1 in 10 adult American workers are employed in the health-care sector, and many of them have witnessed events that leave them vulnerable to post-traumatic stress disorder and other psychological consequences. Other Americans have lost their jobs, which itself can cause anxiety and depression. Mental illnesses increase a person’s likelihood of developing other health problems, such as heart disease. They also significantly affect productivity, costing employers billions annually. To get our country on track toward

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From a warehouse shelf to a family’s Thanksgiving table, the path of a donated bag of rice

To see how a bowl of rice ended up on the Thanksgiving table of a D.C. family that was grateful for it, we have to look back. To when a 9-year-old girl and her mother stepped into a long line to get donated food for the holiday. To when a Seaton Elementary School administrator — a woman who had earlier seen a man drop to his knees when handed a small bag of groceries — stood in front of a wall of cardboard boxes, knowing what the 25 pounds of food in each would mean to the families who got them. To when a volunteer truck driver, who had found herself struggling to feed her own children during the pandemic, showed up at a warehouse to pick up those boxes. We have to look back weeks, and months, to actions taken by city officials, agreements arranged by a nonprofit and a desperate phone call made by a woman who was supposed to spend this school year teaching children about food but instead has filled her days with trying to make sure they have enough in their bellies. “There is just so much need,” Genesis Caplan, the FoodCorps service member at Seaton, says on a recent afternoon, fighting back tears. Right now, in these days surrounding a holiday that calls for gathering around a table, we are all thinking about food: the food we have in front of us. The food we don’t have in front of us. The food others might have, or not have, in front of them. But a close look at the path a single bag of rice took from a warehouse shelf to a family’s Thanksgiving menu shows just how much effort and collaboration it sometimes takes to make sure people don’t go hungry. This is the story of that rice, as told by some of the people whose hands it passed through before reaching that family. The boxes had already been packed and stored in a warehouse in Northwest Washington when Kate Urbank, the D.C. site director for Food Rescue US, learned about them. An interagency team of city employees began collecting the boxes in April, when the unknowns of the coronavirus were leaving grocery store shelves bare. On the team were nutrition experts who could offer guidance on what items should go into each box based on limited supplies. Among the foods they picked:

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As Americans prepare to gather for Thanksgiving, the world watches with dread and disbelief

Foreign observers are watching with trepidation — and at times disbelief — as coronavirus cases surge across the United States, and masses of Americans are choosing to follow through with plans to visit family and friends for this week’s Thanksgiving holiday anyway. It’s been a grueling year. Many have gone months without seeing their loved ones. Thanksgiving travel is down and many families are opting against their usual festivities. But as the pandemic drags on, with shorter days and chillier weather forcing more people indoors, the social isolation is becoming more difficult to bear. Decisions over whether to gather have turned divisive, as experts warn that Thanksgiving includes the key ingredients — a shared, indoor meal and inter-household mixing — that could spark an even worse surge in cases in the coming weeks. It’s a scenario that officials in other countries are trying to avert ahead of other upcoming holidays, such as Christmas and New Year’s. “From Australia, this looks like a mindbogglingly dangerous chapter in the out-of-control American COVID-19 story,” Ian Mackay, an associate professor of virology at the University of Queensland, wrote in an email. “Sadly, for some, this will be a Thanksgiving that is remembered for all the wrong reasons.” Australia has returned to a large degree of normality in recent weeks, with mass sporting events and even the iconic Sydney Opera House reopening. But it only did so after strict regional lockdowns and border closures. Mackay compared large numbers of Americans traveling for Thanksgiving to China’s Lunar New Year celebrations in early 2020 that inadvertently helped spread the virus at a crucial early stage. In some ways, this might be worse. “This time we all know where the virus is, we know how bad it can be, and we can be sure that this event will cause more sickness and some deaths,” Mackay said. The virus “will thrive among all the chances to trigger superspreading events among households and larger gatherings and parties. This is its way.” Yap Boum, a Cameroonian epidemiologist and regional representative for Epicenter Africa, the research arm of Doctors Without Borders, said the willingness of some Americans to risk their and their family’s health to gather for a single day has left him befuddled. “From my perspective, I found it really crazy,” he said of large numbers of Americans choosing to travel for Thanksgiving. “On one hand, you see the people dying,

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Amid coronavirus surge, Maryland survey shows many still plan Thanksgiving travel

of the virus has become so widespread in the county that it is increasingly difficult to conduct contact tracing. Officials said they are seeing a growing number of cases associated with family gatherings, youth sports, indoor dining and houses of worship. “It would be easier if there was one type of activity we could isolate,” Gayles said, “but there’s lots of different possibilities now.” In the District, acting D.C. city administrator Kevin Donahue told members of the D.C. Council on a weekly phone call: “We are in the middle of a national wave that’s going to continue to get worse.” A total of 5,522 new infections were reported Wednesday in the greater Washington region: 2,697 in Maryland, 2,718 in Virginia and 107 in the District. The rolling seven-day average of new cases shows Maryland with 2,334, Virginia with 2,495 and D.C. with 150. So far this year, the region’s total case count is just short of 435,000. Deaths reported in the District from covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, increased by four Wednesday to 677. In Maryland, 37 additional deaths were reported, bringing to cumulative total to 4,518. In Virginia, the death toll rose 29, to 4,008. More than 34,000 patients have been hospitalized with covid-19 since the pandemic came to the region. About 3,000 remain in hospitals in Virginia, Maryland or D.C. Maryland continues to lead the region in the number of cases per 100,000 residents. Its seven-day average of cases is 38. D.C. reports 21 cases per 100,000 and Virginia reports an average 29 cases per 100,000 over a seven-day period. While it’s easy to get lost in the statistics, people who watch the numbers closely warn that the data over the next few days may vary greatly. Numbers will probably flatten or drop for several days around Thanksgiving as people put off testing, wrote Erin Kissane at the Covid Tracking Project. Then, next week, testing, case reports and deaths will rise, “which will look like a confirmation that Thanksgiving is causing outbreaks to worsen.” “But neither of these expected movements in the data will necessarily mean anything about the state of the pandemic itself,” Kissane wrote. “Holidays, like weekends, cause testing and reporting to go down and then, a few days later, to ‘catch up.’ ” Any infections resulting from Thanksgiving exposures probably won’t start showing up in the data until the second week of

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Amid coronavirus surge, Maryland survey shows many still plan Thanksgiving travel

different possibilities now.” In the District, acting D.C. city administrator Kevin Donahue told members of the D.C. Council on a weekly phone call: “We are in the middle of a national wave that’s going to continue to get worse.” A total of 5,522 new infections were reported Wednesday in the greater Washington region: 2,697 in Maryland, 2,718 in Virginia and 107 in the District. The rolling seven-day average of new cases shows Maryland with 2,334, Virginia with 2,495 and D.C. with 150. So far this year, the region’s total case count is just short of 435,000. Deaths reported in the District from covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, increased by four Wednesday to 677. In Maryland, 37 additional deaths were reported, bringing to cumulative total to 4,518. In Virginia, the death toll rose 29, to 4,008. More than 34,000 patients have been hospitalized with covid-19 since the pandemic came to the region. About 3,000 remain in hospitals in Virginia, Maryland or D.C. Maryland continues to lead the region in the number of cases per 100,000 residents. Its seven-day average of cases is 38. D.C. reports 21 cases per 100,000 and Virginia reports an average 29 cases per 100,000 over a seven-day period. While it’s easy to get lost in the statistics, people who watch the numbers closely warn that the data over the next few days may vary greatly. Numbers will probably flatten or drop for several days around Thanksgiving as people put off testing, wrote Erin Kissane at the Covid Tracking Project. Then, next week, testing, case reports and deaths will rise, “which will look like a confirmation that Thanksgiving is causing outbreaks to worsen.” “But neither of these expected movements in the data will necessarily mean anything about the state of the pandemic itself,” Kissane wrote. “Holidays, like weekends, cause testing and reporting to go down and then, a few days later, to ‘catch up.’ ” Any infections resulting from Thanksgiving exposures probably won’t start showing up in the data until the second week of December, Kissane said. Succeeding waves of infections from holiday gatherings are likely to roll in for weeks. And that has implications for the future. “This will not dissipate by Christmas, or any of the holidays at the end of December,” Marcozzi said. “I don’t think there’s a recognition that we’re all a risk to each other. We are our brothers’ keepers.”

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How the legacy of colonialism shaped the last global Ebola epidemic

to fight the pandemic this year. In both West Africa and the United States, distrustful populations resisted government edicts: Americans decline to wear masks, despite science that proves they work to slow the coronavirus’s spread. West Africans, similarly, resisted sending loved ones to Ebola treatment units from which they were unlikely to emerge, partly because they believed that the White strangers in their midst were stealing people. (It is hard to blame West Africans for such convictions when that is exactly what had taken place during the slave trade.) The global responses to Ebola and the coronavirus have cast light on the importance of what Farmer calls the “staff, stuff, space and systems” of public health. What good does it do for a well-meaning organization to build a new hospital in Sierra Leone if there are no doctors or nurses to staff it? What about the irony that those few medical professionals in West Africa lacked gloves to protect themselves, when the latex in those gloves is extracted from their soil by American companies that manufacture gloves overseas? How many died because health systems collapsed under the weight of Ebola and therefore could not treat more prevalent diseases like cholera and malaria? Today, the countries that have handled the coronavirus with relative success are those that were prepared with the staff, stuff, space and systems. Germany and South Korea launched massive testing campaigns early and kept their outbreaks relatively small. Taiwan, Thailand and Singapore have had some of the lowest death rates in the world. America, by contrast, had a shortage of personal protective equipment early in the pandemic, a shortage that continues to plague some states and counties. Like others who have examined the toll of pandemics — the 1918 flu, the Black Plague, the AIDS pandemic — Farmer offers the familiar warning that Ebola and the coronavirus are but chapters in the endless story of humankind’s battle with disease. As our world becomes more globalized and interconnected, as the climate changes, and as we urbanize into previously undisturbed natural settings, we will discover new pathogens that challenge our collective health. “Human history is one long messing with the natural world,” Farmer concludes. The zoonotic events that result in health catastrophes will become increasingly common in what he calls nature’s “basket of deplorables.” Ebola and the Ravages of History By Paul Farmer Farrar, Straus and Giroux 526 pp. $35

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Remote school is leaving children sad and angry

the street, which recently shut down because of a lack of customers. When things get too sad or weird, the siblings like to lose themselves in video games. The nice thing about a video game, Creedence said, is that it lets you shape the world the way you want it to look — or, he clarified, the way you need it to look. But as soon as he closes the console, the same fear surges back. “We might never be able to go back to some of our favorite restaurants, because they closed down, and we might never really see our friends again, because they moved away,” Creedence said. “This may never get back to normal.” At the start of the school year, Karen James tried to make things as normal as she could for her 7-year-old daughter, Olivia Gabriela James. She took first-day-of-school photos and dressed her up in nice school clothes. Olivia was right on time to her at-home workstation, in the dining room of the family’s home in Alexandria, Va. But as time went by, James found there were holes she could not fill. Sometimes the mother felt helpless. “Hands tied, I can’t change anything myself,” she thought. “And I’m doing the best that I can. Right? Which on some days doesn’t seem good enough.” A single mom, James had to balance helping her daughter with her own demanding work-from-home responsibilities. Olivia complained about technology (“It’s glitchy”) and missing her friends (“It’s really hard”). She longed to be in the same room with her teacher. The death of George Floyd added a layer of pain that Olivia, who is Black, is barely able to process. The second-grader glimpsed some of the news footage, and her mother felt forced to talk with her about injustices years before she would have liked. “George Floyd died, and it just made me really sad, upset,” Olivia said. She knows exactly what happened. “The officer put his knee in his neck so he couldn’t breathe.” The hardest blow came just before Olivia’s birthday, on Aug. 2, when James had to tell Olivia that her grandfather would not be coming to the house for her party. He comes every year, so when James told her daughter that he wouldn’t be showing up this year, she feared Olivia would think it was a trick, setting up some kind of super-special surprise. “No, baby, really,

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Americans celebrate Thanksgiving, while cities and counties set records for coronavirus infections

population by mid-2021, according to Voice of America. John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said it will cost about $10 billion to $12 billion, including costs for buying vaccines and distributing delivering the vaccines to achieve the goal, the outlet reported. In the meantime, dramatic increases have been reported in many major U.S. cities in recent weeks, with some surpassing even their previous peaks. In Cook County, where Chicago is located, the seven-day average of new cases hit a record high of 4,654 on Nov. 17 — outpacing the peak of 1,690 during the spring. A similar surging trend can be observed in metropolitan areas across the country. In recent weeks, counties home to large cities, including Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Detroit, Las Vegas and Minneapolis, have seen record highs in case numbers. Miami-Dade County has seen a recent uptick, and Salt Lake County is experiencing its first major peak. In Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, the seven-day average of new cases, which hovered around 500 a day in late October, exceeded 2,000 on Monday. “The dreaded fall wave, in many places, is upon us,” said Josh Michaud, an epidemiologist and associate director for global health policy at the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation, told The Washington Post. “And that includes in metropolitan areas.” The country’s two largest states Wednesday broke the nationwide record for most new coronavirus infections reported in a single day, with California tallying 18,350 and Texas nearly 16,100. The records come amid surging trends in infections, hospitalizations and deaths across the country. Wednesday was the 33rd consecutive day that the United States set a record in its seven-day average of reported cases, according to data compiled by The Post. Nearly 90,000 people are in hospitals with covid-19, another record. The United States logged nearly 2,300 coronavirus-related fatalities Wednesday — the highest single-day increase since May 6. Total U.S. deaths now exceed 262,000. In the meantime, the world watches with bewilderment and disbelief as scores of Americans decide to travel to visit family and friends for this weekend’s holiday, despite health officials’ recommendations and a staggering number of cases and fatalities. Others have hesitated over which are the best and safest ways to spend the holiday. As the public experiences fatigue after a grueling year with months of social-distancing measures and disease affecting millions, along with colder weather, experts say it is becoming

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Americans celebrate Thanksgiving, while cities and counties set records for coronavirus infections

cities in recent weeks, with some surpassing even their previous peaks. In Cook County, where Chicago is located, the seven-day average of new cases hit a record high of 4,654 on Nov. 17 — outpacing the peak of 1,690 during the spring. A similar surging trend can be observed in metropolitan areas across the country. In recent weeks, counties home to large cities, including Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Detroit, Las Vegas and Minneapolis, have seen record highs in case numbers. Miami-Dade County has seen a recent uptick, and Salt Lake County is experiencing its first major peak. In Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, the seven-day average of new cases, which hovered around 500 a day in late October, exceeded 2,000 on Monday. “The dreaded fall wave, in many places, is upon us,” said Josh Michaud, an epidemiologist and associate director for global health policy at the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation, told The Washington Post. “And that includes in metropolitan areas.” The country’s two largest states Wednesday broke the nationwide record for most new coronavirus infections reported in a single day, with California tallying 18,350 and Texas nearly 16,100. The records come amid surging trends in infections, hospitalizations and deaths across the country. Wednesday was the 33rd consecutive day that the United States set a record in its seven-day average of reported cases, according to data compiled by The Post. Nearly 90,000 people are in hospitals with covid-19, another record. The United States logged nearly 2,300 coronavirus-related fatalities Wednesday — the highest single-day increase since May 6. Total U.S. deaths now exceed 262,000. In the meantime, the world watches with bewilderment and disbelief as scores of Americans decide to travel to visit family and friends for this weekend’s holiday, despite health officials’ recommendations and a staggering number of cases and fatalities. Others have hesitated over which are the best and safest ways to spend the holiday. As the public experiences fatigue after a grueling year with months of social-distancing measures and disease affecting millions, along with colder weather, experts say it is becoming more difficult for the public to follow precautionary measures. “From Australia, this looks like a mindbogglingly dangerous chapter in the out-of-control American COVID-19 story,” Ian Mackay, an associate professor of virology at the University of Queensland, wrote in an email to The Post. “Sadly, for some, this will be a Thanksgiving that is remembered for all the wrong reasons.”

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Coronavirus cases are skyrocketing again in cities

Bessel said, but the coming weeks are expected to be markedly different from previous years and even the Sun Belt’s summer surge. “The entire country is surging at the same time,” she said. Health officials attribute the virus’s resurgence in cities to several factors, including eased restrictions, increased gatherings and what’s being called “covid fatigue.” Eight months into the pandemic, “there is no longer that sense of urgency,” said Mouhanad Hammami, chief health strategist in Wayne County, home to Detroit. “When you live with something, it is no longer urgent, and you tend to get desensitized to it.” Some authorities in Chicago blamed rock-bottom hotel prices and the state-imposed indoor dining ban, suggesting it may have caused parties to relocate to hotel rooms or other spaces, such as Airbnb rentals. On Nov. 12, Lightfoot told reporters that current restrictions apply to both. “I know the hotel industry was hit hard and is in many instances is on life support, but that cannot include parties,” she said. “I urge the hotel industry to be much more diligent about who is coming in. … People think it’s party time. It’s not.” Officials in many hard-hit cities also point to increasingly widespread transmission across the United States, which has been reporting record-setting numbers of infections. Over the past week, the country had well over 150,000 new cases each day. Ahead of Thanksgiving, traditionally a time of significant travel and extended family get-togethers, health experts feared the number would only continue to climb. “We would love to be that shining city on the hill where we’re avoiding all this,” said Philadelphia Department of Public Health spokesman James Garrow. “But I don’t know that anybody’s going to be able to avoid this.” Mortality rates have improved from earlier in the pandemic — a change attributed to improved therapeutics and knowledge of how to handle covid-19, the disease caused by the virus. Still, authorities in areas that are seeing spiking infections have reacted with alarm, noting that the explosion in cases will inevitably drive up the death toll. In Los Angeles County, where hospitalizations are up and deaths increased slightly last week, Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer on Friday described the data as looking “really bad right now” and added that the county had experienced “three terrible days in terms of case rates and increases in hospitalizations.” She said health officials were hoping deaths “don’t go

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U.S.-made technologies are aiding China’s surveillance of Uighurs. How should Washington respond?

THE SWEEPING surveillance China has brought to bear against its Uighur Muslim minority is staggering. An overwhelming number of cameras generates an overwhelming amount of footage. Until recently, it was unclear how authorities sifted through it to serve their repressive ends. Now the New York Times has provided an answer: with the help of U.S.-made technologies. An investigation published this past week reveals how supercomputers chug away inside a cloud computing complex in the Xinjiang region. Purportedly, these computers can analyze 1,000 video feeds simultaneously and search more than 100 million photos in a single second. The aim is to monitor cars, phones and faces — putting together patterns of behavior for “predictive policing” that justifies snatching people off the street for imprisonment or so-called reeducation. This complex opened four years ago, and it operates on the power of chips manufactured by U.S. supercomputer companies Intel and Nvidia. Intel and Nvidia say they were unaware of this exploitation of their technology — which is entirely plausible and entirely implausible at the same time. On the one hand, the supply chains and sales arrangements in the computing industry are complex. Often, as in this case, a buyer of U.S. products supplies both everyday firms and Chinese military and security forces, and the hops from a chip’s original manufacturer to the state are difficult to map. On the other hand, it doesn’t take much imagination to predict how a dual-use technology will be misused by a government with a record of digital authoritarianism. Many U.S. companies likely are not on the lookout for links between their products and human rights abuses because they don’t want to find those links. President-elect Joe Biden will confront this quandary when he takes office in January: how to impose export controls and sanctions without doing collateral damage to businesses that sell technologies with harmless applications. The current administration got a start on blacklisting entities, including with restrictions on semiconductor sales to certain Chinese companies. The next one will have to refine the flawed list and keep it updated — perhaps in part by requiring companies to track the ultimate destinations of their products and forcing them not to close their eyes any longer. The president-elect will also have to avoid doing collateral damage to the global system more generally. China has already begun to build up its own ability to craft semiconductors . While the commonly

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Transcript: A Washington Post Live Special: Barack Obama In Conversation With Michele Norris and Elizabeth Alexander

has to be lived. But I try to describe to Malia and Sasha one of the great gifts of getting to be my age now is I'm just not afraid of much, because I've kind of--I've been knocked down a bunch of times. I've embarrassed myself. I've, you know, publicly failed and people have written entire articles about my failings, and I've been criticized and ostracized and demonized. And you know, but I'm still here. You know, I'm okay. And that's a hard thing to internalize in your 20s or your 30s. But to the extent that the book can help a young person say, okay, you know what, it's worth me taking a chance, it's worth me trying hard things, it's okay when I screw this up because, you know, that's part of the process, yeah, then I think it's worth it for me to be able to share that to them. MS. NORRIS: Elizabeth has one left, final quick question. MS. ALEXANDER: Yes, the most beautiful moment in the book to me is when you're in Oslo, you've won the Nobel Peace Prize, you look out the window and a sea of people holding candles aloft. And you say--and if I may, I'll read your words--"Whatever you do won't be enough, I heard their voices say. Try anyway." What do those words mean to you now? MR. OBAMA: I think that's what we tell ourselves hopefully every morning when we get up, right? It's--that's not unique to politics. Life will throw stuff at you. There will be disappointments. There will be pain, and there will be loss. And we know at the end of the day, we die. That's the one certainty that we have, that this is temporary. And yet, there's this massive possibility of joy along the way, as long as we try, as long as we're open to it, as long as we experience it. And more than anything, as long as we reach out and are sharing this time on earth with others that we love and we care about and that hopefully we're continually expanding the circumference of that love and concern to reach more and more people, because that fills us up. You know, that's not just a--that's not just a political point of view. That's a writerly point of view, and ultimately, a spiritual point of view, right? That's how--that's how--that's

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Transcript: The Path Forward: Combating COVID-19 with Anthony S. Fauci, Director, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

wearing a mask, you don't have the kind of ventilation and moving of air that you have on the outside, and we are actually seeing, in reality, not hypothetically but in reality, we're starting to see a considerable number of instances of cases where you have that same sort of innocent family-and-friends gathering indoors that are turning into places where the virus is spread. So, to the extent possible, as difficult as it is from a social standpoint, to avoid that, please try to avoid that and constrain the kinds of things you do to the immediate family and people that you're sure that they are being careful. MR. COSTA: Dr. Fauci, are there ways to be vigilant even in small settings? You said people could be asymptomatic, but are there any telltale signs or minor symptoms people should be on the lookout for this week? DR. FAUCI: Well, yes. I mean, obviously, the early symptoms of COVID-19 disease are very similar to a flu-like syndrome. You may or may not have fever, and I don't think you need to rely on fever, that if you don't have a fever, you're okay, because plenty of people in the very early period of time don't have fever. But it's something like a sore throat, kind of a scratchy feeling, maybe some fullness in your upper airway, some muscle aches, a feeling of fatigue. And then many people now have this curious loss of smell and taste. So, if any of those symptoms appear, people should be careful and either stay home, try to get tested if you possibly can, to know whether or not you're infected. And if you are, obviously, you should isolate yourself. If you get into some difficulty you should notify your physician. But the best thing to do is stay home. So, if someone comes in and says, you know, "I kind of feel bushed today. I'm tired. I've got this little scratchy feeling in my throat. I feel a little achy," that's a telltale sign. MR. COSTA: Here is a question from one of our audience members, Kathleen Fauth of Illinois. She wonders, "Can someone who has tested positive and recovered two months ago spread the virus to others if they are exposed to it again?" DR. FAUCI: So, you know, that's kind of a mixed question. If you were infected once and you've tested positive,

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Transcript: The Path Forward: Combating COVID-19 with Anthony S. Fauci, Director, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

travel before Thanksgiving affect the number of cases and the death toll, moving forward? DR. FAUCI: Well that's a very important question, Bob, and that's one of the things that we're really concerned about. If you look at the curves, we are in a very steep escalation of cases right now, in the mid-fall season. If you look at the slope of the increases in the early spring, that we had the northeastern part of the country dominated by the New York City metropolitan area, then we had the early-summer, mid-summer when we were trying to open up the country and the South dominated it. Now what we're seeing, almost the entire map of the country is lighting up with the dark colors, which indicate increased test positivity, and the slope is like that. Which means that if, in fact, you are in a situation, when you do the things that are increasing the risk -- the travel, the congregate setting, not wearing marks -- the chances are that you will see a surge superimposed upon a surge, and you're not going to see the results of that because things lag by a couple of weeks. So, what we're seeing now is what happened two-plus weeks ago. What we are doing now is going to be reflected two, three weeks from now. So, what we want to make sure we don't do, is as we enter into the more risky part of the year -- weather gets colder, more people stay indoors -- that you don't exacerbate the problem that already exists. And the reason I think it's important, doubly sure of that, is that help is on the way. We have at least two highly efficacious vaccines that would likely start to be given to people at the highest risk and the highest priority towards the middle and end of December. As we get into the subsequent months, more and more people will be able to be vaccinated. So I take this not only as good news in and of itself, because of the benefit of adding the vaccine to your toolkit of prevention, but it should be, in my mind, an incentive for people, despite the fact that we all have COVID fatigue, an incentive to double down and be even more conscientious about the public health measures that I've asked. Because if help is on the way,

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Transcript: The Path Forward: Combating COVID-19 with Anthony S. Fauci, Director, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

"We don't want to think in terms of an EUA way, an emergency use authorization, until we get 60 days beyond when 50 percent of the people in the trial have gotten their last dose." So that may seem a little strange to people, but the fact is that is a very prudent way to rule out any overwhelming majority of any serious effects. They are still going to be looking at year or two later, but the bulk of things that might happen have already been looked at by that 60-day wait before you allow the EUA to actually be issued so that people will get the vaccine. Safety is primary, and the FDA, the career scientists who have been doing this in their entire career, for vaccine after vaccine, know what they are doing. And that's why they made that safety clause in the EUA. MR. COSTA: Dr. Fauci, can you walk through the accuracy of current tests? People are wondering this week what to do, which test to take. DR. FAUCI: Yeah. You know, there are a number of tests, three general types: tests for the actual virus itself, it's a PCR, it's a molecular test; tests for a component of the virus, which is an antigen test; and test for the antibody, to see if you've actually been infected and exposed. If you want to find out if a person absolutely is infected or not, for example, if you're doing identification, isolation, contact tracing -- someone comes in with symptoms and you want to know if they're infected and you know to know if the people that they have come in contact with is infected -- those are highly sensitive and highly specific, and they are more expensive, they take a little bit longer to get the results. You'd like to get it in one to two days. Many people, unfortunately, still have to wait multiple days to get it, even though we're doing much better now than we were doing months and months ago. The other one is one that's an antigen test, that is generally done for screening. So, it isn't as sensitive, but if you repeat it over and over again it makes up for the lack of sensitivity. So, if you want to find out, in general, in a college, what is the level of infection of people, you would test them

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Transcript: The Path Forward: Combating COVID-19 with Anthony S. Fauci, Director, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

all and then you do surveillance testing. You don't want to know whether this person or that person or that person is infected. You just want to find out if there's infection in the group. The group could be a college, a nursing home, a school, a factory, or what have you. Those are mostly surveillance tests. So, if somebody wants to know absolutely if they are infected for a particular time, they should go with the more sensitive PCR tests, that may take a little bit longer. If you want to find out if a group is infected or not and you want to do surveillance, that's when you do something that's less sensitive, but if you do it often enough it makes up for that. MR. COSTA: Dr. Fauci, we only have a minute or so left. You've just mentioned the long-term effects possibly of a vaccine, but what about of contracting the virus itself? Are there brain issues, other health issues that you've picked up? DR. FAUCI: Well, there are two aspects of that, Bob. A great question. For those people who really get seriously ill, namely they are in an ICU, intubated, on ventilation, even if it isn't COVID-19, anyone that goes through that is not going to feel perfectly normal for a considerable period of time. But there's something else that's going on with COVID-19, and those are individuals who don't necessarily have had advanced disease. They could have been in the hospital, they could have been home in bed for a few weeks, but they had symptomatic disease. What we are finding is that a certain percentage of them -- and we don't know what that is yet because we're doing a larger cohort study, so we are going to be studying this -- anywhere from 25, maybe 30 percent, we think, have what's called a post- COVID syndrome, namely they no longer have virus in them, they can't infect anybody, but it takes them anywhere from weeks to months, and maybe even beyond, to feel perfectly normal. And they have a constellation of symptoms and signs that seem to be consistent when you talk to different people. It's extreme fatigue. It's shortness of breath, even among people who were athletes and were really very well-conditioned, have trouble going up a flight of stairs. They have temperature control problems. They feel chilly. They feel

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In managing covid-19, colleges must tend to students’ minds as much as their bodies

sense. Covid-19 is more likely to rattle college-age kids’ minds than their bodies. And the distress may be more difficult to detect. There’s no drive-through swab for depression. Instead, struggles may be hidden away in quiet dorm rooms, as suffering students are unwilling or unable to share their pain on campuses that can feel, by necessity, like minimum-security prisons. My daughter’s travails showed just how challenging colleges’ approaches to managing covid-19 can be. Simply getting her to campus — navigating school and local testing and quarantining requirements — was grueling. On move-in day, parents raced to unpack and rush farewells because of university-imposed time limits. The customary welcoming smiles from other students were hidden behind ubiquitous masks. A string of dorm rooms sat eerily empty. Sofia’s first activity on campus was another covid-19 test beneath a white tent. Orientation was a Zoom affair save for three brief, small, socially distanced in-person chats outside with mask-clad students. Just before school started, classes that were supposed to be in-person were switched to online-only. The clubs Sofia was so eager to join to find “her people” were reduced to squares on a laptop. There were no meals in dining halls, no pool games in rec rooms, no impromptu group hangouts in dorms. Though none of this was entirely unexpected, and much of it was necessary, it still proved more difficult than our imagined worst-case scenarios. This week and in the weeks ahead, college students across the country — many sent home until well after the new year — will weigh whether to return to campus next semester. At the same time, university administrators, considering surging coronavirus numbers nationwide and the arrival of indoor-only weather, are deciding whether to bring students back to campus and, if so, under what restrictions. This limbo is only intensifying the uncertainty and anxiety that have built up over the past few months for students such as Sofia. In the meantime, schools should act on the lessons of 2020 to ensure that, however they choose to educate their students in 2021, they’ve put the necessary social supports in place. Colleges should prioritize safely holding classes in person. Counseling should be more widely available and promoted more aggressively; schools can also do more to dismantle the stigma around seeking help. Resident assistants have an especially difficult job this academic year, but they can make all the difference. A visit or

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The Daily 202: As Moderna submits vaccine for FDA approval, Fauci says ‘close the bars and keep the schools open’

“thank” Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler for “fighting” to deliver pandemic relief to help small businesses. Both face Democratic challengers in Jan. 5 runoffs that will determine which party controls the Senate. The ad will air on broadcast in the Atlanta, Macon and Savannah media markets for nine days, as well as statewide cable for 14 days. “National coronavirus test shortages have emphasized testing’s critical role in containing and mitigating the pandemic, but these inconvenient truths remain: A test result is rarely a definitive answer, but instead a single clue at one point in time, to be appraised alongside other clues like symptoms and exposure to those with confirmed cases. The result itself may be falsely positive or negative, or may show an abnormality that doesn’t matter. And even an accurate, meaningful test result is useless (or worse) unless it’s acted on appropriately. These lessons are not unique to covid-19,” Ishani Ganguli reports. “False positives are especially common for screening tests like hepatitis C antibody tests and mammograms that look for medical problems in healthy people without symptoms." “Some patients have waited months for their olfactory senses and taste buds to return. I had no idea how I’d do my job if I suffered a similar fate. Fortunately, I never had to worry about it. I lost my appetite for a couple of weeks and I lost weight, but I never lost my ability to taste or smell,” Tim Carman writes.”Covid had other surprises waiting for me instead. On Wednesday night, just 24 hours into this nightmare, I woke up around 4 a.m., feeling generally uncomfortable. I sat up in bed, and within a matter of minutes, I could feel my body start to turn against me. I felt warm, so I slid to the floor to let the hardwoods cool my skin. That’s when I experienced a pain so profound and all-encompassing I couldn’t put it into words … Then the nausea hit me. … And then, just like that, as if by divine intervention, the pain and nausea disappeared. It was replaced, almost instantaneously, by an overwhelming anger at the current administration, which would prefer that we all experience our own private covid hell.” “The Greek roots of this word tell a clear story: pan means ‘all’ or ‘every,’ and dēmos means ‘people’; its literal meaning is ‘of all the people.’ The related word epidemic comes

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‘I’ve got you, babe’: How Cher helped save the world’s loneliest elephant

zoo’s conditions “amount to subjecting (animals) to unnecessary pain and suffering,” and called for all animals held at the zoo to be relocated to sanctuaries. The abysmal conditions at the zoo have faced intense scrutiny for years. Officials at the facility have blamed insufficient funding and poor training, but Pakistani authorities have also failed to enforce animal-care regulations. Many of the animals left in the capital city’s zoo are living in cramped conditions that rights groups have described as “abhorrent and unacceptable.” One attempted transfer ended tragically after animal handlers lit a fire in a big-cat enclosure to force two lions into transportation crates. Both died of smoke inhalation. Some of the last animals waiting to be moved include two retired dancing bears, who are suffering from behavioral disorders because of illness and lack of space. The bears are set to be transferred to Jordan in the coming months, according to Four Paws. Kaavan was gifted to Pakistan by Sri Lanka in 1985, when the elephant was just a baby. Elephants are social animals and a solitary lifestyle can lead to boredom and behavioral problems; following the death of Kaavan’s zoo partner, who lived with him, Saheli, his mental and physical health deteriorated, according to experts, who note that along with being malnourished, he has displayed a range of physical and psychological issues. Last week Cher met with Prime Minister Imran Khan, who she later thanked for his help in “making it possible” for her to take the Asian elephant to Cambodia on a flight that left Pakistan on Sunday. Khan thanked Cher for her efforts and invited her to participate further in environmental initiatives in Pakistan, according to a statement from the prime minister’s office. Ahead of his long-awaited departure, supporters at the zoo threw a goodbye party for Kaavan, with balloons, colorful bunting and live music. Then, on Sunday, Four Paws tweeted a photograph of Kaavan’s enclosure, which now lies empty for the first time in 35 years. “Dreams do come true!” the organization wrote as activists celebrated the success of the rescue mission — one that animal lovers, along with Kaavan, the now-not-so-lonely-elephant, will surely never forget. Read more: The coronavirus pandemic has halted tourism, and animals are benefiting from it These haunting animal photos aim to make you reconsider a visit to the zoo What happens when an old elephant dies? Zoo officials have a plan.

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Climate news quiz: Space cooling and green giving

All right: Time to see if you’ve been paying attention to Washington Post coverage of the people, organizations and governments trying to mitigate climate change, found on our Climate Solutions page. If you have, this quiz should be an easy A. Answer: B. Answer: C Answer: D. Answer B. Answer: C. Answer: D. Answer: B Answer: A. Answer: D. Answer: D. 0 to 3 questions correct Climate novice: You still have a lot to learn about climate change. But that’s okay: We’ve got you covered. Have a question? Ask us here. 4 to 7 questions correct Climate curious: Hey, not bad! You know a thing or two about climate change. But there’s still more to learn, and we’ve got you covered. Have a question? Ask us here. 8 to 10 questions correct Climate expert: Well done! You’re super climate-literate. You probably already know that one of the most important things you can do as an individual to combat climate change is to spread the word. Go ahead: Brag a little, share this quiz with your friends, and find out who knows the most about climate change.

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Lawmakers request new GAO studies on pandemic’s effect on the aviation industry

aviation industry has been among those hit hardest by the pandemic, which has grounded tens of thousands of flights and reduced passenger traffic to a trickle. The International Air Transport Association recently estimated that airlines will suffer a net loss of $118.5 billion in 2020, up from a previous estimate of $84.2 billion. DeFazio and Larsen said that they are aware of the pandemic’s effect on the industry but that the risks of air travel at such a time cannot be ignored. “Unfortunately, these losses do not negate the fact that air travel, more than any other mode of transportation, has the greatest potential to carry this disease from one part of the world to another,” they wrote in a letter this month to Gene Dodaro, comptroller general of the United States. The pair said that until a vaccine is widely available, “reducing the spread of COVID-19 through air travel and revitalizing the U.S. airline industry will depend in large part on a better understanding of how diseases, particularly those that are airborne, spread through air travel and identifying technologies and practices that can help mitigate disease transmission.” The lawmakers requested that the GAO conduct three studies: one that examines research by government, academics and the airline industry on disease transmission via air travel; another that looks at the roles and responsibilities of local, state and federal authorities as well as those of airports, airlines and their contractors; and a third that assesses the measures the industry has put in place in response to the coronavirus. “This report should provide lessons learned by aviation regulators and stakeholders that could assist with preparedness planning; identify successful disease mitigation strategies, including operational practices and technologies; and recommend any changes to current laws, regulation, and industry practices,” the lawmakers said. DeFazio and Larsen have asked that the first study be completed within nine months. The three reports will expand on previous GAO work assessing whether the aviation industry is prepared to deal with a global disease outbreak. In 2015, the GAO issued a report calling on the Transportation Department to take the lead in developing a national plan for dealing with an outbreak, but such a plan was never developed, in part because agencies could not agree on which one should take the lead. An earlier version of this story misstated the name and title of Gene Dodaro. This version has been corrected.

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The 2020 Census has faced unprecedented challenges. The deadline must be moved.

Robert L. Santos is vice president and chief methodologist at the Urban Institute and president-elect of the American Statistical Association. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Monday on the Trump administration’s bid to exclude undocumented immigrants from population totals when calculating how House seats are apportioned among the states. This is the latest threat to the quality of the 2020 Census that should worry both the public and the Census Bureau. The 2020 Census has faced unprecedented challenges, including funding shortfalls, natural disasters, high employee attrition and litigation. Census field operations were compressed first by pandemic lockdowns and shortened further by court order. Millions of Americans relocated because of covid-19, intensifying challenges to an accurate count. Typically, processing census data takes about five months. In this chaotic year, data is supposed to be reconciled — with duplicate responses and other errors identified and corrected — over just 10 weeks. Shortcuts are unavoidable if counts are to be submitted as currently required by Dec. 31, elevating the risk of errors. No one should want that. Census inaccuracies risk constitutional conflict, with decade-long ramifications for political representation and federal funding. Given the stakes, the Census Bureau should be relieved of the pernicious burden of submitting counts by year’s end. So far, indicators of 2020 Census performance provide a mixed picture. The Census Bureau has touted a 99.98 percent “resolution” rate of all U.S. housing units and addresses as evidence that the forthcoming count is complete. But this figure relies on data of varying quality. It draws on federal and commercial administrative records, such as tax documents, that could be obsolete; it includes data from proxies such as neighbors or landlords to fill in gaps where census enumerators couldn’t reach households. The self-response rate for the 2020 Census — households that completed their own responses, whether online, by postal mail or telephone — is 67 percent. That exceeds the 60.5 percent rate the bureau had hoped for, a notable achievement during a pandemic. Self-responses provide the most accurate information. Lower self-response rates are associated with lower-quality reporting and net undercounts. But the self-responses, as illustrated in the “hard to count” map, also reveal a complex story. Across metro areas, suburbs exhibit self-response rates of 70 to 80 percent, with some ranging even higher. Meanwhile, core urban neighborhoods — mostly in communities of color — often have self-response rates below 50 percent. These disparities

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Dance hall outbreak takes Hong Kong’s coronavirus fight two steps back

HONG KONG — It takes two to tango. But in Hong Kong, it took dozens of middle-aged women and their young, male dance instructors to spark a coronavirus cluster responsible for the city's worst outbreak, erasing impressive gains in suppressing the pandemic. Described by Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s chief executive, as an “ultra-large cluster,” more than 500 cases — about 10 percent of the city’s total — have been linked to the dancers, prompting officials to reinstate some of the tightest restrictions since the virus was detected here in January. On Monday, Lam announced new measures that will effectively push Hong Kong back into a semi-lockdown, with yoga and other gym classes canceled, diners limited to two per table, entertainment venues shuttered and the suspension of schools until 2021. Civil servants will work from home, a step that private businesses have often followed. The sudden resurgence of the virus has undercut what had been one of the world’s more effective pandemic containment efforts. Hong Kong had been on track to reopen quarantine-free travel with Singapore in November, in what would have been a step toward normalized travel in Asia, but the emergence of the latest wave blew the experiment off course. Those who have contracted the virus from the dance cluster “are all over the place,” spread across every area in the city, Lam said. “Many of the cases have been to many different places, involved in all sorts of activities,” she added. The dance clubs, not to be confused with night clubs, are social venues catering largely to elite, wealthy women. They learn salsa, ballroom and other forms of dance from younger male instructors, involving close contact. Many of those who contracted the virus from these venues later went on to visit bars and restaurants, spreading it further. The Hong Kong government has expanded mandatory testing to include some of those restaurants, as well as the dance halls. A new cluster is emerging, linked to three restaurants, including 8½ Otto e Mezzo-Bombana, the only Italian restaurant outside Italy to be awarded three Michelin stars. Lam admitted in a news conference Monday that these dance clubs were not regulated. Last week, the Hong Kong government shuttered bars, bathhouses and night clubs, but the cha-cha and tango could go on at the dancing venues, a loophole that remains. “Anyone could rent a space” and open a dance studio, Lam said. “We

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Dance hall outbreak takes Hong Kong’s coronavirus fight two steps back

course. Those who have contracted the virus from the dance cluster “are all over the place,” spread across every area in the city, Lam said. “Many of the cases have been to many different places, involved in all sorts of activities,” she added. The dance clubs, not to be confused with night clubs, are social venues catering largely to elite, wealthy women. They learn salsa, ballroom and other forms of dance from younger male instructors, involving close contact. Many of those who contracted the virus from these venues later went on to visit bars and restaurants, spreading it further. The Hong Kong government has expanded mandatory testing to include some of those restaurants, as well as the dance halls. A new cluster is emerging, linked to three restaurants, including 8½ Otto e Mezzo-Bombana, the only Italian restaurant outside Italy to be awarded three Michelin stars. Lam admitted in a news conference Monday that these dance clubs were not regulated. Last week, the Hong Kong government shuttered bars, bathhouses and night clubs, but the cha-cha and tango could go on at the dancing venues, a loophole that remains. “Anyone could rent a space” and open a dance studio, Lam said. “We do not have a regulatory regime [controlling them], but now I will ask for further regulation of such activities on the premises.” Experts who study the novel coronavirus say Hong Kong’s success rested on its ability to perform contact tracing and get close contacts of confirmed cases into quarantine centers right away, cutting down on the need for social distancing. But moving into quarantine facilities, which range in quality and comfort, is something the wealthy socialites involved in this cluster might have been unwilling to do. “There’s been some gradual slippage in compliance with public health measures in Hong Kong and compliance with the guidelines,” said Ben Cowling, professor of infectious-disease epidemiology at the University of Hong Kong. In the dance cluster, he added, “the types of people who were involved and their lifestyles” made contact tracing harder. Across the city, parents, owners of restaurants and gyms, and others affected by the new restrictions were bracing for the impact. Businesses have been hit hard by the pandemic, and parents have struggled with the inconvenience of school closures. Hong Kong had largely returned to normal before this latest wave, but students will now revert to online classes until after the Christmas

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DoorDash aims to raise up to $2.8 billion in initial public offering

FINANCE DoorDash said Monday it is aiming to raise up to $2.8 billion in an initial public offering (IPO), which could double the value of the U.S. food delivery start-up and be one of 2020’s largest public market debuts. DoorDash, the biggest U.S. third-party delivery company for restaurants, plans to sell 33 million shares priced between $75 and $85 apiece, it said in a regulatory filing. At the top of its target range, the IPO would give DoorDash a fully diluted valuation — which includes securities such as options and restricted stock units — of $31.96 billion, nearly double the $16 billion DoorDash was worth in a June private fundraising round. DoorDash’s market capitalization at $85 per share would total $27 billion. The hefty jump in DoorDash’s valuation in a matter of months underscores the increased demand for meal delivery services during the covid-19 pandemic, as well as anticipation of continued investor demand for new stocks that promise growth. Companies have raised over $140 billion in the United States so far in 2020, making it the biggest year ever for IPOs, according to data from Dealogic. Founded in 2013, DoorDash is backed by the Vision Fund managed by Japan tech giant SoftBank Group, venture capital firm Sequoia Capital, and Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund. DoorDash and rivals Uber Eats, Grubhub and Postmates have benefited from a surge in demand for food delivery services because of widespread covid-19 restrictions. — Reuters RETAIL Online shoppers in the United States were expected to drop a record-busting $12.7 billion on Cyber Monday — the busiest ­e-commerce day of the year — presenting a valuable opportunity for retailers whose websites, customer service departments and delivery operations can withstand the period of crushing traffic. Amazon, Walmart, Target, Best Buy and others have been preparing for the 2020 holiday deluge for months. This week will be the ultimate test for their new investments in ramping up delivery capacity and adding features such as parking lot pickup for digital orders. (Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.) The covid-19 surge kept crowd-averse shoppers away from physical malls on Black Friday, reinforcing predictions that online shopping will soar this year. Adobe Analytics predicted that Cyber Monday spending for 2020 would climb by 35 percent — more than double the growth rate in the years before the pandemic. Nearly 30 percent of Cyber Monday spending was set to happen

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DoorDash aims to raise up to $2.8 billion in initial public offering

market debuts. DoorDash, the biggest U.S. third-party delivery company for restaurants, plans to sell 33 million shares priced between $75 and $85 apiece, it said in a regulatory filing. At the top of its target range, the IPO would give DoorDash a fully diluted valuation — which includes securities such as options and restricted stock units — of $31.96 billion, nearly double the $16 billion DoorDash was worth in a June private fundraising round. DoorDash’s market capitalization at $85 per share would total $27 billion. The hefty jump in DoorDash’s valuation in a matter of months underscores the increased demand for meal delivery services during the covid-19 pandemic, as well as anticipation of continued investor demand for new stocks that promise growth. Companies have raised over $140 billion in the United States so far in 2020, making it the biggest year ever for IPOs, according to data from Dealogic. Founded in 2013, DoorDash is backed by the Vision Fund managed by Japan tech giant SoftBank Group, venture capital firm Sequoia Capital, and Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund. DoorDash and rivals Uber Eats, Grubhub and Postmates have benefited from a surge in demand for food delivery services because of widespread covid-19 restrictions. — Reuters RETAIL Online shoppers in the United States were expected to drop a record-busting $12.7 billion on Cyber Monday — the busiest ­e-commerce day of the year — presenting a valuable opportunity for retailers whose websites, customer service departments and delivery operations can withstand the period of crushing traffic. Amazon, Walmart, Target, Best Buy and others have been preparing for the 2020 holiday deluge for months. This week will be the ultimate test for their new investments in ramping up delivery capacity and adding features such as parking lot pickup for digital orders. (Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.) The covid-19 surge kept crowd-averse shoppers away from physical malls on Black Friday, reinforcing predictions that online shopping will soar this year. Adobe Analytics predicted that Cyber Monday spending for 2020 would climb by 35 percent — more than double the growth rate in the years before the pandemic. Nearly 30 percent of Cyber Monday spending was set to happen between 7 p.m. and 11 p.m. Pacific time, when bargain-hunting shoppers finally pull the trigger, the firm said. — Bloomberg News Also in Business Contracts General Motors Coming today 10 a.m.: 10 a.m.: — From news services

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Canada’s covid-19 second wave is a humbling moment after a summer of bragging

be in the midst of a covid-19 spike that flattering stereotypes cannot explain, and might even exacerbate. Toronto, for instance, has now “officially moved into ‘lockdown,’” a minimum 28-day period that will see a shutdown of colleges and universities, in-person dining at restaurants, most in-store shopping and social gatherings involving people outside one’s household. The move, which was imposed by Ontario Premier Doug Ford last Monday, comes in response to consistently record-shattering rates of covid-19 deaths and infections since October. Ontario has more than 116,000 confirmed covid-19 cases and more than 3,600 deaths, a dramatic increase since August, when the death toll was around 2,800 and cases closer to 40,000. It’s a story replicated across Canada. In all of the country’s largest provinces, cases and deaths have steadily climbed since the summer, with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau formally identifying a “second wave” in September. In November, Canada’s number of active covid-19 cases more than doubled in a single month. Strict pandemic regulations similar to Ontario’s have been imposed in Alberta, British Columbia and Quebec, limiting social gatherings, shopping and even inter-provincial travel. The ensuing costs to liberties, livelihoods and mental health will be significant. Anti-American nationalists can take comfort that Canada’s numbers are still lower than the United States’ — though comparing states with provinces can yield more ambiguity — but the experience must be humbling nonetheless. Canada’s public health agency recently warned that the country’s case rates could soon reach 60,000 a day unless public behavior improves — which would be about double what Brazil is experiencing right now. Is this what being the world’s good example looks like? We should remain deeply skeptical of any flavor of commentary that uses armchair sociology or partisanship as a substitute for the intimidating epidemiology that’s required to understand a viral pandemic. That said, the Canadian second wave does possibly reveal something important about the usefulness, or lack thereof, of patriotic mythologies as a tool of pandemic-fighting. To grow up in Canada is to be endlessly bombarded with folk tales of Canadians’ legendary politeness, kindness and obedience. I can’t count how many times I’ve heard some version of the same stupid joke — “How do you get 100 Canadians out of the pool? Tell them to!” — cited as a deep profundity about this country. Yet living day-to-day life in Canada also means experiencing a place dramatically at odds with such sentimentalism,

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Chinese official fuels outrage with doctored image depicting Australian soldier cutting Afghan child’s throat

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Australia summoned the Chinese ambassador on Monday and demanded an apology after a Chinese Foreign Ministry official tweeted a graphic, computer-generated illustration of a grinning Australian soldier holding a knife to the throat of an Afghan child, an image designed to criticize Australia's involvement in the war-torn country. Zhao Lijian, the most prominent of Beijing’s outspoken “wolf warrior” diplomats, was referring in the tweet to an Australian inquiry into alleged war crimes by its soldiers in Afghanistan. As Chinese-Australian relations have plummeted this year, Zhao has sharply criticized Australia regarding both its economic dealings and its conduct in Afghanistan. Russia, too, has cited Afghanistan as an example of what it calls the West’s failings and hypocrisy on the global stage. An Australian government report, published Nov. 19 after a four-year probe, found “credible information” that 25 special forces soldiers unlawfully killed 39 prisoners, farmers and civilians over several years. More than a dozen soldiers have been dismissed, and the preliminary findings will now be followed up by a special investigator and could result in criminal charges. Zhao told a daily news briefing on Friday that the Australian report “fully exposed the hypocrisy of the ‘human rights’ and ‘freedom’ these Western countries are always chanting.” His counterpart in Moscow, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, echoed the sentiment in a jab at the West, saying that the report called into question the “true meaning” of the Australian government’s calls to “protect the rules-based world order.” Zhao went further on Monday by tweeting an illustration by the nationalist Chinese artist known as Wuheqilin that showed an Australian soldier holding a knife to the throat of a child, who is clutching a lamb, while standing over the Australian and Afghan flags. “Don’t worry, we are coming to bring you peace,” the artwork’s caption says. “Shocked by murder of Afghan civilians & prisoners by Australian soldiers. We strongly condemn such acts, & call for holding them accountable,” Zhao said in his tweet, which he pinned to the top of his account. The artwork appeared to be a heavily manipulated composite of a photograph and stylized digital illustration. After Zhao posted it, it immediately sparked an uproar, not only because of its grisly nature but also because it was not immediately clear whether it was based on a real photo of a killing. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison called the tweet a “falsified

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The Health 202: Obese Americans could be prioritized for coronavirus vaccine

with Alexandra Ellerbeck Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisers will meet tomorrow to discuss who should get coronavirus vaccines first. One population they may consider prioritizing: Americans who are obese — a major risk factor for severe covid-19 that some experts say has gone under-recognized. “Obesity was ignored for the longest time and overweight was completely ignored,” said Barry Popkin, an obesity researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Now the CDC is talking about both, he said. The agency has already laid out four groups that should be considered for priority: health-care personnel, workers in essential and critical industries, older adults, and people with certain underlying medical conditions — including “severe obesity.” But it’s unclear to what extent the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices will prioritize this group. There’s been much discussion about how underlying medical conditions such as hypertension and Type 2 diabetes are associated with higher risk of dying from the coronavirus. But these conditions are most frequently found in people who are obese — making it difficult to discern whether the medical conditions or the obesity were the biggest factors at play. The evidence, Popkin argues, points to extra weight as a bigger risk factor than any individual comorbidity. That’s because people who are overweight or obese have more body fat — which is more hospitable than other tissue to the coronavirus — and they suffer from reduced lung capacity. “Being an individual with obesity independently increases the risk of influenza morbidity and mortality, most likely through impairments in innate and adaptive immune responses,” according to a paper Popkin wrote over the summer, which analyzed 75 studies on the connection between covid-19 and body mass index. Popkin and colleagues found that people with obesity were 113 percent more likely to be hospitalized, 74 percent more likely to be admitted to intensive care units and 48 percent more likely to die of covid-19. The connection helps explain some of covid-19’s impact on Black and Hispanic Americans, who have died at disproportionate rates from the disease and are also more likely than White Americans to be obese. Its public health agency posted guidance last week saying that morbidly obese people — defined as those with a body mass index over 40 — should be prioritized for vaccines ahead of those younger than 65. This “at-risk” group also includes people with asthma, kidney disease

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Hope and darkness during a pandemic

fellow man. We always knew that the pandemic would worsen in the Northern Hemisphere as the weather got colder and more people had to do more activities indoors. Nonetheless, the figures are frightening. The numbers of infected have skyrocketed in my state, in the United States, and in Europe as well. Hospitals are filled to capacity. More disturbing are reports from hospitals about the degree of denial among patients with covid-19. One South Dakota nurse told CNN that "I think the hardest thing to watch is that people are still looking for something else and a magic answer and they do not want to believe covid is real. … Their last dying words are, ‘This can’t be happening. It’s not real,’ ” One Appalachian hospital nurse told NBC News’s Dasha Burns that some patients come in already in severely distress but “when they test positive, they blame the hospital for giving it to them.” All of this was clear before the Thanksgiving holiday and the related travel, which will guarantee further community spread. Two weeks from now, the numbers will be worse. And by the end of the year, they will be worse still. The current moment is akin to the still space of time between knowing a car accident is about to happen, and then the actual collision. For the first time since March, I dread the risks of even routine tasks such as shopping for groceries, I have contemplated stocking our cellar sufficiently to ride out the winter until the vaccines become more widely available. The most frustrating period of this pandemic is yet to come. We are close enough to the end to see it, but after nine months of altered daily life, the fatigue and frustration are just as dangerous as the virus itself. Those feelings are real, but so is the daylight at the end of this tunnel. The problem is that Trump administration officials have been engaged in so much happy talk over the past few months about “rounding the turn” that any messaging about buckling down for a few more months will not have the needed impact. Unfortunately, the failure of public leadership affects coronavirus deniers and everyone else the same way. Individual acts of weariness and stubbornness guarantee that all Americans will have to endure more months of hardship. I hope that my fellow Americans can marshal their fortitude for one last

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Hope and darkness during a pandemic

infected have skyrocketed in my state, in the United States, and in Europe as well. Hospitals are filled to capacity. More disturbing are reports from hospitals about the degree of denial among patients with covid-19. One South Dakota nurse told CNN that "I think the hardest thing to watch is that people are still looking for something else and a magic answer and they do not want to believe covid is real. … Their last dying words are, ‘This can’t be happening. It’s not real,’ ” One Appalachian hospital nurse told NBC News’s Dasha Burns that some patients come in already in severely distress but “when they test positive, they blame the hospital for giving it to them.” All of this was clear before the Thanksgiving holiday and the related travel, which will guarantee further community spread. Two weeks from now, the numbers will be worse. And by the end of the year, they will be worse still. The current moment is akin to the still space of time between knowing a car accident is about to happen, and then the actual collision. For the first time since March, I dread the risks of even routine tasks such as shopping for groceries, I have contemplated stocking our cellar sufficiently to ride out the winter until the vaccines become more widely available. The most frustrating period of this pandemic is yet to come. We are close enough to the end to see it, but after nine months of altered daily life, the fatigue and frustration are just as dangerous as the virus itself. Those feelings are real, but so is the daylight at the end of this tunnel. The problem is that Trump administration officials have been engaged in so much happy talk over the past few months about “rounding the turn” that any messaging about buckling down for a few more months will not have the needed impact. Unfortunately, the failure of public leadership affects coronavirus deniers and everyone else the same way. Individual acts of weariness and stubbornness guarantee that all Americans will have to endure more months of hardship. I hope that my fellow Americans can marshal their fortitude for one last act of restraint before the spring thaw and a return to normalcy. The fog of depression surrounding me last month has dissipated. I have seen too much in 2020, however, not to fear the worst-case scenario.

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The Technology 202: Biden could face a deadlocked Federal Communications Commission

overdue and critical to broadly shared economic success,” Biden wrote on his website. The Biden transition team has not yet said who it intends to tap to lead the agency. Some Democrats in Congress have expressed support for Rosenworcel to take the chair. She's been a prominent advocate for initiatives to close the digital divide, especially during the pandemic. “Jessica Rosenworcel would make an excellent FCC Chair,” Blumenthal said in a statement. “She is a devoted public servant with a proven track record as a progressive voice on net neutrality, competition, and consumer protections against robocalls.” Biden may face an uphill battle in pushing through Democrats' tech priorities. The battle over the FCC's future is indicative of the kind of gridlock Biden can expect on many fronts if Republicans are successful in maintaining control of Congress. It's unlikely Biden would be able to push through some of the Democrats' proposals to overhaul antitrust laws, for instance. Tech issues, such as comprehensive national privacy legislation, could fall victim to the same partisan fault lines that have prevented legislative action for years. The Alphabet-owned company developed a computer system that can help identify the precise shape of a protein in potentially just hours compared to traditional scientific methods, which take years or decades, Cade Metz at the New York Times reports. Computer scientists have been trying to build a system like this for more than 50 years. The technology could help drugmakers and researchers more quickly identify vaccines for new pandemics such as the novel coronavirus. It could also help predict some problems that might arise from clinical trials. “We could start screening every compound that is licensed for use in humans,” said Andrei Lupas, director of the department of protein evolution at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Germany, who worked with the technology. “We could face the next pandemic with the drugs we already have.” The breakthrough could also give the medical community a better understanding of genetic diseases such as Alzheimer's. DeepMind's chief executive Demis Hassabis said the company probably would publish its findings next year and is exploring ways to share the technology with other researchers. Facebook confirmed its purchase of the start-up Kustomer on Monday but did not disclose the terms of the deal, Cara Lombardo and Dana Cimilluca at the Wall Street Journal report. The company has been valued between $710 million and $1

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The Daily 202: Ousted U.S. attorney, removed by Barr as he investigated Trump associates, lands new job

at 4:23 p.m., from complications caused by covid-19,” Meryl Kornfield reports."After months of feeling trapped amid coronavirus restrictions in Michigan, the two had let their guard down: Shortly before they fell ill in November, they visited a restaurant where people weren’t wearing masks and were walking around among tables. The McWaters, like many others, had developed an attitude of ‘I want to get out and live my life, and if I get covid, so be it,’ [one of their daughters, Joanna] Sisk, said. ‘But I can tell you after they got covid, they were both extremely regretful because they didn’t really take their own words to heart that it would actually take their lives,’ she said.” “For more than a decade, psychologists have written about the ‘friendship crisis’ facing many men,” Samantha Schmidt reports. “Male friendships are often rooted in ‘shoulder-to-shoulder’ interactions, such as watching a football game or playing video games, while women’s interactions are more face-to-face, such as grabbing a coffee or getting together for a glass of wine, said Geoffrey Greif, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Social Work … Because of this, many men have probably had a harder time than women figuring out how to adapt their friendships in a pandemic that is keeping them apart. … ‘Guys don’t want to seem too needy,’ [Greif said.] … “Dozens of men shared stories about Zoom poker games, backyard cigar nights, neighborhood-dad WhatsApp chains, Dungeons & Dragons groups and Fantasy Football leagues where casual chats about sports and politics have suddenly led to deep conversations — about the struggles of virtual schooling, family illness, breakups, births, wedding postponements and job losses. The moment feels heavier and so do the conversations. Some men said their friendships have begun to look more like those of their wives and girlfriends. For the first time in their lives, they’re going on walks with male friends just to catch up. They’re FaceTiming old college friends and checking in on neighbors — not only to talk about the NBA draft picks or their children’s soccer schedule — but to ask how they’re doing.” Scientists found evidence of infection in 106 of 7,389 blood donations collected by the American Red Cross from residents in nine states between Dec. 13 and Jan. 17, according to new research published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases. “The findings significantly strengthen evidence suggesting the virus

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The Trump era could have been even worse

Someday, a book will be written titled “It Could Have Been Worse” that will record all the instances of people in government ignoring or defying absurd and abusive proposals from President Trump. It would need to cover former White House counsel Donald McGahn, who resisted the effort to fire special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, and former defense secretary Mark T. Esper, who opposed the deployment of active-duty troops to “dominate the streets” during political protests. There should also be a chapter on how members of Congress — including Republicans — avoided doing the insanely stupid and destructive things in Trump budget proposals, particularly when it comes to public health. The president’s 2018 budget plan (titled “A New Foundation for American Greatness”) would have cut funding for the National Institutes of Health by 18 percent and reduced funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to its lowest level in 20 years. This would have decimated medical and scientific research and public health programs on the eve of the covid-19 pandemic. Congress wisely ignored this invitation to “greatness.” And a similar story can be told on a global scale. Year after year, Trump has recommended dramatic reductions, including a proposed 21 percent cut to foreign assistance in the 2021 budget. Year after year, Congress has ignored this cruel and short-sighted assault on the United States’ global role, generally holding budgets roughly flat. Here, as elsewhere, things could have been worse. Global health programs such as the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) — created during the George W. Bush administration, and augmented in the Barack Obama era — have survived the Trump era. As World AIDS Day 2020 comes around, that is worth celebrating. But now all this difficult work — all this brilliantly improvised effort — is threatened by the covid-19 pandemic that is swamping fragile, developing-world health systems. Nearly 20 percent of countries are experiencing covid-related disruptions in AIDS testing and treatment. The economic consequences of the pandemic could push an additional 40 million Africans into extreme poverty, making them harder for health efforts to reach. And the eventual provision of vaccines in the developing world is going to be a complex and ambitious effort in itself. But we have a few things going for us. The global AIDS response has provided the example of a complex and ambitious health program in the developing world succeeding

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Sephora is opening mini shops in Kohl’s stores

Sephora is ending its longtime partnership with J.C. Penney and heading to Kohl’s. The beauty giant said Tuesday it will open makeup stands inside 850 Kohl’s department stores starting next year to reach new shoppers in middle America. Executives said there is very little overlap between their stores. Sephora’s 500 U.S. locations tend to be in busy downtown areas and urban shopping malls. Most of Kohl’s 1,150 locations, meanwhile, are situated in stand-alone suburban shopping centers. “For us, it’s all about reach,” Jean-André Rougeot, chief executive of Sephora Americas, said in an interview. “We’ve been limited by the size and locations of our store network. The partnership with Kohl’s will allow us to leapfrog many years. We can now deliver the Sephora experience right where consumers live.” Each Sephora mini shop will be about 2,500 square feet — roughly the size of a small 7-Eleven — and staffed by Kohl’s employees who are trained by Sephora. The first 200 locations will open in fall 2021, with the rest coming on board by 2023. Kohl’s also will sell Sephora cosmetics on its website beginning next year. Sephora is owned by the luxury conglomerate LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton. Sales of high-end beauty products have slowed during the pandemic, forcing retailers to rethink where and how they sell items such as makeup and fragrances. With many consumers avoiding shopping malls, big-box stores have increasingly become destinations where shoppers can buy essentials, as well as clothing and cosmetics. Target last month announced that it is partnering with Ulta Beauty to open mini shops inside more than 100 of its stores next year. For Kohl’s, the 10-year deal with Sephora represents a way to attract younger customers to its stores, according to chief executive Michelle Gass. In recent years, the Menomonee Falls, Wis.-based retailer has built partnerships with big brands such as Nike, Under Armour and Levi Strauss, which have helped draw shoppers to its department stores. Last year, it began accepting online returns for Amazon at its stores, which executives say has also helped increase foot traffic. Cosmetics sales are a small but fast-growing part of the company’s business, Gass said: “That’s a signal that our customers — who are 70 percent female — are saying they want beauty at Kohl’s.” The partnership replaces an earlier tie-up between Sephora and J.C. Penney, which announced it would close nearly 300 of its 850 stores

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China lands a spacecraft on moon for third time, continuing ambitious exploration push

China landed a spacecraft on the moon Tuesday on a mission to mine rocks and soil and return them to Earth, the latest in a series of lunar missions demonstrating the country’s emergence as a force in space exploration. The landing, without a crew aboard, was China’s third on the lunar surface since 2013 and came almost two years after China pulled off a historic first — landing a spacecraft on the far side of the moon. And it comes as NASA is gearing up to send a series of scientific missions, and astronauts, to the lunar surface. If China’s Chang’e-5 mission succeeds, it would mark the first time a nation has retrieved samples from the moon since the United States and Soviet Union did it several decades ago. The mission, which includes a lander, an ascent vehicle, a service capsule and a return capsule, was launched Nov. 23 on China’s powerful Long March-5 rocket. Chinese state media reported Tuesday that the probe “successfully landed” at its targeted site, an area called Oceanus Procellarum. China did not immediately announce any other details about the landing. On the lunar surface, the probe is expected to dig about seven feet deep, collecting as much as 4.5 pounds of rocks and lunar soil into the ascent vehicle, which would then meet up with the service capsule in lunar orbit and return to Earth. Once the material is back on Earth, scientists would be able to calculate its age and examine it to determine its composition. On Twitter, Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s associate administrator for the science mission directorate, congratulated China. “This is no easy task,” he wrote. “When the samples collected on the Moon are returned to Earth, we hope everyone will benefit from being able to study this precious cargo that could advance the international science community.” As part of its lunar exploration mission, NASA has been working to get countries around the world to adopt what it calls the Artemis Accords, a legal framework that would govern behavior in space and on celestial bodies such as the moon. The accords are named for NASA’s current lunar program, Artemis. The rules would allow private companies to extract lunar resources and create safety zones to prevent conflict and ensure that countries act transparently about their plans in space, while sharing their scientific discoveries. Several countries have signed on to the bilateral agreements, which NASA

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Government should take bigger role in promoting U.S. technology or risk losing ground to China, commission says

a proposal from Chinese telecom giant Huawei after an initial vote showed that many favored a compromise combining Huawei’s plan with one from Qualcomm, a U.S. semiconductor maker, the report said. The founder of Chinese computer company Lenovo "faced tremendous public scorn in China for initially voting in favor of Qualcomm’s proposal, even after changing his vote to favor Huawei in the final round,” the commission said. China also offers individuals and companies money and other perks for successfully adopted technical standards, the report said. China has gone from having almost no leadership positions within the International Standards Organization in 2006 to leading 64 of roughly 740 technical committees and subcommittees, compared to 104 for the United States. Melanie Hart, a tech-industry veteran with extensive experience working in China, says the government could boost U.S. success at standards bodies by subsidizing smaller companies’ participation. It costs about $300,000 a year for one engineer to work on standards proposals and attend meetings all over the world, a price many small companies can’t afford, Hart said in an interview. “Chinese companies have support to do this and American ones don’t. You could have grants to cover travel and membership fees so it’s not just the Intels and the Qualcomms showing up” from the United States, said Hart, who is director of China policy at the Center for American Progress think tank, where she detailed her standards recommendations in a recent report. The commission’s report says a new government committee would include representatives from the White House and departments of State, Commerce and Defense. It would “identify the technical standards with the greatest potential impact on American national security and economic competitiveness,” and would work with industry, academia and allies to promote those standards. Congress created the 12-person U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission in 2000 to advise it on the national security implications of trade and economic relations with China. Made up of appointees named by the Democratic and Republican leaders of Congress, the commission has helped spark legislative action through its past recommendations, including bipartisan bills aimed at revising trade, finance, and tax provisions relating to China. The commission also helped prompt Congress to expand the powers of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which vets Chinese and other foreign investors. And it worked closely with Congress to implement bans on Huawei telecom equipment in the United States.

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In 13 days, a total solar eclipse will plunge a sliver of South America into darkness

45,000. The popular lakeside resort town lies directly on the centerline of totality, and should have about 2 minutes, 9 seconds of peak eclipse viewing. Modest Airbnbs are running at between $200 and $500 a night now as astrotourists prepare to congregate there and in neighboring Pucón. Chile has instituted a “Paso a Paso,” or “step-by-step” program, which categorizes coronavirus travel and commerce restrictions in varying municipalities on a 1-to-5 scale. Level 3 demarcates “preparation,” which entails nightly quarantines from midnight to 5 a.m., inter-communal travel, and the allowing of social gatherings of up to 25 indoors or 50 outside. The eclipse will bring about a sudden nightfall atop three volcanoes along the Chilean-Argentine border, including the Villarrica volcano, where the Villarrica National Park is selling tickets to campers on a first-come, first-served basis. Thereafter, the shadow slides into Argentina, where weather prospects are better but international admission largely impossible. Only small communities dot the path of totality before the shadow exits offshore into the Gulf of Saint Matias and eventually the open Atlantic. Those within the path of totality can expect a deep twilight to set in within a matter of just 30 seconds or a minute, transforming the early afternoon into a dusky scene with pastel hues of orange about the horizon and azure overhead. More spectacular than the abrupt darkening will be the emergence of the corona — the sun’s vaporous atmosphere that traces the sun’s magnetic field with visible light. Tendrils of milky-white luminosity highlight the corona, protruding millions of miles into space. Over the years, scientists have used eclipses as one of the best possible opportunities to study the sun’s corona. Even the best instruments and technology aboard satellites can’t replicate or resolve the corona with the exquisite level of fine detail visible from the ground during a total solar eclipse. Some scientists work to predict what the corona will look like during totality, producing striking three-dimensional models. Predictive Science, a San Diego-based company specializing in visualizations of the solar atmosphere, recently released its simulation of what the upcoming eclipse may look like. They did the same for the August 2017 and July 2019 total solar eclipses with relatively accurate results. By using a detailed digital map of the sun’s estimated magnetic field and time on NASA supercomputers, the team was able to model how the field might evolve into mid-December — and what form

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In 13 days, a total solar eclipse will plunge a sliver of South America into darkness

Villarrica volcano, where the Villarrica National Park is selling tickets to campers on a first-come, first-served basis. Thereafter, the shadow slides into Argentina, where weather prospects are better but international admission largely impossible. Only small communities dot the path of totality before the shadow exits offshore into the Gulf of Saint Matias and eventually the open Atlantic. Those within the path of totality can expect a deep twilight to set in within a matter of just 30 seconds or a minute, transforming the early afternoon into a dusky scene with pastel hues of orange about the horizon and azure overhead. More spectacular than the abrupt darkening will be the emergence of the corona — the sun’s vaporous atmosphere that traces the sun’s magnetic field with visible light. Tendrils of milky-white luminosity highlight the corona, protruding millions of miles into space. Over the years, scientists have used eclipses as one of the best possible opportunities to study the sun’s corona. Even the best instruments and technology aboard satellites can’t replicate or resolve the corona with the exquisite level of fine detail visible from the ground during a total solar eclipse. Some scientists work to predict what the corona will look like during totality, producing striking three-dimensional models. Predictive Science, a San Diego-based company specializing in visualizations of the solar atmosphere, recently released its simulation of what the upcoming eclipse may look like. They did the same for the August 2017 and July 2019 total solar eclipses with relatively accurate results. By using a detailed digital map of the sun’s estimated magnetic field and time on NASA supercomputers, the team was able to model how the field might evolve into mid-December — and what form the visible light of the corona might take. This year, increased activity and storminess on the surface of the sun could make for a more dynamic, roiling corona, with loops and prominences. Predictive Science is calling for three or four such excursions of the solar corona, radiating off the sun into the darkness of the shadow-induced somber. Last year’s eclipse featured a less-exciting corona since solar activity was minimal, making this year’s likely to be even more spectacular. And the best part for those who venture into the path of totality? The date of the eclipse coincides with the peak of the Geminid meteor shower, meaning totality could be punctuated by green meteors streaking across the sky.

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Why health officials are terrified of a pandemic Christmas

figures from the Transportation Security Administration. The agency screened nearly 4.6 million passengers between Nov. 25 and Nov. 29 this year. That’s down almost 61 percent compared with the same time frame last year, when the number was 11.7 million. Still, the days around Thanksgiving made for some of the busiest travel times since mid-March, and many airports saw large crowds. At Chicago O’Hare and Phoenix Sky Harbor International airports, people crammed into security lines and around check-in kiosks, with little space separating them, local TV outlets reported. Experts say airports should be prepared for holiday surges and more stringently enforce mask-wearing, speed up check points and space out boarding gates so travelers can stay several feet apart. Meanwhile, top officials are trying to mitigate the damage already done for this holiday. Those who traveled during the holiday should get tested and avoid crowds, said Assistant Secretary for Health Adm. Brett Giroir. “Make really sure you adhere 100 percent to mask-wearing, to avoid crowds because you could inadvertently have gotten covid and spread it,” Giroir said on CNN. During this small window between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the thing most in need of course correction is the country’s messaging, many experts say. “If we see a post-Thanksgiving surge of cases and deaths, is that going to change people’s minds for Christmas?” Rasmussen, the Georgetown virologist, asked. “I kind of doubt it, because cases and deaths were going up already before Thanksgiving.” Many people seem to be continuing to indulge in a kind of magical thinking and denialism, as they have all year long. “It’s like ‘I know this is a bad idea, but I want to do it, so I’ll find a reason and way,’ ” Rasmussen said. To counter that, some health departments put out messages ahead of Thanksgiving designed to shock and scare residents into paying attention. Among the bluntest messages were images posted by the Salt Lake County Health Department on Twitter. One showed a family smiling for a photo around a Thanksgiving table. “Everybody say, ‘I was just exposed to COVID!’ ” a text bubble says. The caption offers a stark warning: “Thanksgiving leftovers won’t taste as good if you’re on a ventilator.” The campaign was intended to shock people out of pandemic fatigue, said health department spokesman Nicholas Rupp. “It’s kind of time for gloves off, to be really direct and to say, ‘You need to

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What World AIDS Day reminds us during the covid-19 pandemic

Dec. 1, 2020 is the first World AIDS Day commemorated since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. As the country focuses on the rollout of covid-19 vaccines to address the devastating public health crisis of 2020, Tuesday offers an opportunity to reflect on the very real persistence of HIV/AIDS. In fact, 40 years after its first appearance, AIDS is still firmly implanted in our present moment; and medicine, alone, will never be the silver bullet to end disease and ill health. What’s more, the history of AIDS reminds us that blaming individuals for their actions distracts from the real issue: how the deep structures of economic and racial inequality actually spread disease. History can provide us with guideposts to better health, but only if we look beyond superficial explanations. In the case of AIDS — and likely ultimately for covid-19 as well — survival can depend on political mobilization and demands by patients to receive more than biomedical solutions to disease. This was particularly the case for women living with HIV/AIDS, and a new archive provides a set of reflections on how women, the majority of whom are Black and brown, have survived with HIV for decades. Among the 39 women featured in “I’m Still Surviving,” is Marta Santiago, a straight Latina who grew up on Chicago’s west side in the 1960s and 1970s. Santiago remembers saying to herself in the early 1980s that she and her newborn son had nothing to worry about when it came to gay-related immunodeficiency (GRID, the initial name given to AIDS). What she didn’t know, as she reassured herself, was that both she and her not yet born son were already infected with HIV in 1980. Santiago’s neighborhood in the 1970s held few options for her. Facing a combination of mounting racial segregation and systemic racism in Richard J. Daley’s Chicago, and intensifying economic inequality fueled by national stagflation, Santiago found herself without a high school degree and needing to flee an abusive marriage. She sought employment where she could: garment factories where women received low wages and faced consistent sexual harassment. In an attempt to find respite from these circumstances, Santiago found people and places that made her feel free but also introduced her to new harm, specifically sex work and heroin. By 1979, Santiago married her second husband. They had a son together in 1981 and divorced by 1984. Five years later,

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Why Ethiopia’s conflict could spill beyond its borders

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed ordered troops into the northern region of Tigray on Nov. 4, accusing a powerful faction of traitorous behavior. On Saturday, the government claimed its military took control of the region’s capital city, Mekele. On Monday, the Tigray leadership accused Ethiopian troops of launching a “genocidal campaign” in the region. Tensions have been brewing with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), once a dominant force in Ethiopia’s regime, since Abiy gained power. The conflict erupted soon after Abiy claimed that the TPLF crossed a “red line” when Tigrayans attacked a federal military base in early November. Fears of mass atrocities grew after Abiy’s 72-hour ultimatum for the TPLF’s surrender expired last week. Could Abiy’s offensive turn into a broader civil war, and draw in neighboring countries? Tens of thousands of civilians have fled into Sudan, threatening its stability. And earlier this month, Tigray forces reportedly fired multiple rockets into Eritrea, a long-standing rival of the TPLF. If Sudan or Eritrea decides to intervene, other outsiders may follow. My research explains why foreign interference in Ethiopia’s conflict is predictable — and why interventions by external militaries tend to make bad situations worse. Civil wars are rarely purely domestic affairs Foreigners often meddle During the Cold War, most interventions were shaped by the U.S.-Soviet rivalry. After the fall of the Soviet Union, countries focused on finding negotiated settlements and deploying peacekeeping forces to keep the peace. But the United States, regional powers and neighboring countries became less hesitant to intervene after Sept. 11, 2001, and as the U.S.-led liberal order began showing signs of decay. Most full-fledged civil wars today include foreign militaries, groups and fighters. Why do foreign militaries intervene? Foreign militaries are not innocent bystanders to civil wars. In fact, internal conflicts attracted external militaries last year more often than at any time since World War II. We may have been underestimating the extent of external involvement in African conflicts in particular. One reason for these interventions is because the ill effects of a localized conflict are never neatly contained within the confines of a war-torn country. Refugees, rebels and weapons — along with drugs and other illicit materials — can spread easily beyond national borders, threatening the stability of nearby countries. A record number of refugees are living abroad — the highest totals in the post-World War II period — as recent civil wars displace

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Australia discovered that its special forces committed war crimes in Afghanistan

oversight, may have made compliance with official military rules and norms less likely. Here’s the research on reducing violence against noncombatants A key finding from recent research is that compliance with international humanitarian law requires not just simple instruction but also socialization — changing combatants’ internal beliefs on appropriate conduct in war. This involves a combination of intensive training, exercises, enforcement, military doctrine and other mechanisms to align combatants’ attitudes with official norms, override toxic unit subcultures and reduce out-group biases. However, new research by one of us suggests that intensive socialization focused specifically on the noncommissioned officers (NCOs) who directly supervise junior soldiers could be particularly effective. Here’s why: Socialization within the military involves a “paradox of rank”— the junior NCOs who hold the greatest influence in shaping the attitudes of the lowest-ranking front-line enlisted soldiers are themselves more resistant to adopting norms of restraint. Of course, leadership is vital to such socialization. Study after study suggest that the promotion of norms of restraint by the military's top commanders is essential in shaping how soldiers conduct themselves. It’s important to underscore that the ADF, as an institution, already makes extensive efforts to emphasize ethics and the law of war. Indeed, the overwhelming majority of Australian service members have served with honor in Afghanistan, and ADF regular forces appear to have adhered to international law throughout deployments to Iraq, East Timor and the Solomon Islands. Despite this, commanders can take steps to rectify deficiencies in socialization processes, improve accountability and reinforce efforts to uphold core rules across units. Australian commanders, for example, authorized an International Committee of the Red Cross study of law and ethics training in the army (which one of us helped lead), revealing a rare degree of openness that has significantly enhanced scholars’ understanding of combatant socialization and restraint. The ADF investigation, along with the publication of the report’s findings, signal a commitment to transparency over defensiveness. Such transparency is a step — but only the first step — for the ADF, the U.S. military and other armed forces seeking to achieve restraint toward civilians on the battlefield. Professors: Don’t miss TMC’s expanding list of classroom topic guides. Andrew M. Bell Thomas Gift (@TGiftiv) is an associate professor of political science and director of the Centre on US Politics (@CUSP_ucl) at University College London. Charles Miller is a lecturer in strategic studies at the Australian National University.

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Yes, coronavirus testing works. But not in the way you might expect.

to hold covid-19 at bay: testing and masks and hand-washing and distancing and good ventilation (or best of all, staying outdoors). Because if you instead try to use testing as a substitute for other safety measures, then eventually the virus is likely to slip through your lone line of defense and wreak mayhem within. But even better than group testing would be mass testing. Because somewhat paradoxically, even this slipshod strategy might work if we could just test enough people. And with the advent of inexpensive — though somewhat less accurate — home tests, we’re now at a point where we might be able to put a serious dent in transmission just by using tests. To understand how that might work, imagine that we start with 100,000 infected people, and on average, they’ll each infect three more people if nothing is done. But we don’t do nothing; instead, we start testing that misses 10,000 infections and catches 90,000 of them. If those people who test positive do the patriotic thing and immediately quarantine themselves, then in the second round of transmission, we would end up with 30,000 infections, instead of 300,000. In the third round, having caught 27,000 of the second round of infections, we end up with 9,000 new infections, instead of 900,000. Repeat that a few more times, and we’ve basically wiped out the novel coronavirus without doing much else. Of course, it’s not practical to test the whole country at once, and even if it were, many people would refuse. But it’s still true that the more tests we do, the safer we will all be, so long as we all understand what we’re doing. Unfortunately, the White House, which ought to have been leading the way, instead chose the road to disaster — and even now, too many Americans appear to be following in its path. Read more: Megan McArdle: What changes after covid-19? I’m betting on everything. Emily Oster: Schools are not spreading covid-19. This new data makes the case. Lizette Alvarez: In managing covid-19, colleges must tend to students’ minds as much as their bodies Dana Milbank: At the White House, Capitol and Supreme Court, Trump goes on a spree of sabotage The Post’s View: Trump’s latest Fox News rant was one of his most dangerous. Republicans can’t ignore it. Greg Sargent: Georgia Republicans beg Trump to release them from his prison of lies

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Plan for Australian Open includes three-week delay, strict coronavirus measures, and fans

After lengthy deliberation and close consultation with health authorities, Australian Open officials are circulating a plan for holding the tennis season’s first Grand Slam beginning Feb. 8 — three weeks later than its planned Jan. 18 start — under strict safety protocols to guard against the spread of the coronavirus. The plan is outlined in a letter that Craig Tiley, chief executive of Tennis Australia and director of the Australian Open, transmitted this week to players for their consideration and feedback. Follow-up discussions were held with player representatives and relevant stakeholders. The tone of the letter, which was reviewed by The Washington Post, is positive. Assuming the government of the Australian state of Victoria signs off and the feedback is equally positive from the top 100 players and their agents — meaning they agree to strict conditions to guard against the spread of the virus — the tournament will proceed as proposed, according to a stakeholder who took part in the discussions. The 2020 Australian Open was the last Grand Slam staged in unfettered fashion with packed grandstands, held in January and early February before the global pandemic wreaked havoc on sports scheduling around the world. In tennis, the men’s and women’s pro tours were halted for five months, starting in March. The French Open was delayed about five months. Wimbledon was canceled for the first time since World War II, and spectators were barred from the U.S. Open. Under the protocols proposed for the 2021 Australian Open, competitors must arrive in the host city of Melbourne between Jan. 15 and Jan. 17 via chartered flights arranged by Tennis Australia. Players must be tested for the coronavirus within 48 hours before boarding the flight and remain quarantined in a designated hotel upon arrival in Melbourne for two weeks, during which time they will be tested five times. During the quarantine, they will be subject to limits on the location and duration of their training and practices, as well as the number of coaches (initially one) and players they may practice with. Those limits gradually increase with subsequent negative tests. After the quarantine period, players would be free to stay and go where they like. Australia has among the strictest quarantine procedures in the world. It went into a lockdown and curfew, with strict limits on travel from home, after a second wave of the virus in the summer. The measures

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National Digest: Radio telescope first damaged in August collapses

ranged in age from 17 to more than 60 years old, survived the fire. The boat sank quickly and, by the time Coast Guard rescue teams arrived from the mainland about 20 miles away, much of it rested on the seabed 65 feet below. Boylan and four other crew members survived. — Scott Wilson PUERTO RICO A huge, already damaged radio telescope in Puerto Rico that has played a key role in astronomical discoveries for more than half a century collapsed Tuesday. The telescope’s 900-ton receiver platform and the Gregorian dome — a structure as tall as a four-story building that houses secondary reflectors — fell onto the northern portion of the vast reflector dish more than 400 feet below. The U.S. National Science Foundation had earlier announced that the Arecibo Observatory would be closed. An auxiliary cable snapped in August, causing a 100-foot gash on the 1,000-foot-wide dish and damaging the receiver platform that hung above it. Then a main cable broke in early November. The collapse stunned many scientists who had relied on what was until recently the largest radio telescope in the world. The telescope was built in the 1960s with money from the Defense Department amid a push to develop anti-ballistic missile defenses. It had endured hurricanes, tropical humidity and a recent string of earthquakes. The telescope has been used to track asteroids on a path to Earth, conduct research that led to a Nobel Prize and determine if a planet is potentially habitable. — Associated Press PENNSYLVANIA A federal appeals court on Tuesday reinstated former Penn State president Graham Spanier’s conviction for child endangerment over his handling of a report that former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky had sexually abused a boy in a team shower. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit ruled that a lower-court judge had improperly vacated Spanier’s misdemeanor jury conviction in the 2001 incident. A federal magistrate judge in April 2019 threw out Spanier’s conviction a day before he was to begin serving a two-month jail sentence, followed by two months of house arrest. U.S. Magistrate Judge Karoline Mehalchick in Scranton, Pa., had agreed with Spanier that he had been improperly charged under a 2007 law for allegations dated from 2001. Prosecutors had argued that the 1995 and 2007 versions of the law criminalized the same conduct. Sandusky is serving a lengthy state prison sentence. — Associated Press

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Proposed historic designation for ‘forgotten’ D.C. slaughterhouse may block new halfway house

Ward 5 near the National Arboretum amid public outcry, Core purchased a structure in Ward 7, at 3701 Benning Road NE. Neighborhood opposition followed the contractor to its latest proposed location. The Benning Road property, set off railroad tracks behind a Minnesota Avenue strip mall, is a former home of the D.C. Eagle — which the Washington Blade says is the city’s longest-operating gay bar, operated out of different locations from 1971 until its closure this year. Last month, the Eagle’s trademark and social media accounts were auctioned for more than $32,000 in a bankruptcy proceeding. (The auctioneer said this week he can’t reveal the buyer.) But a National Register of Historic Places application, filed Sept. 25 by an advisory neighborhood commissioner who represents the area, focuses on another incarnation of the building. It states the Benning Road property was constructed about 1915 for the A. Loeffler Provisions Co. and is “the last remnant of the once vibrant industrial meat packing complex” that produced up to 75 percent of the meat produced and packaged in the nation’s capital. Between 1924 and 1928, the application says, the complex annually processed up to 190,000 hogs and 20,000 cattle. The building closed in 1933 for improvements, according to the application, before sustaining damage in a fire and permanently closing as Congress sought to eliminate slaughterhouses in the District. The building was sold in 1941. The application says the “abattoir provided jobs to the men and women living in the adjacent working-class neighborhoods of Northeast Washington” and is “the tangible record of these activities and their importance to our city’s past.” “For Washington’s historical record to be complete, historians must embrace the city’s unpleasant offal — like the city’s nuisance industries — and incorporate it into the rich neighborhood histories being written for academic and popular consideration,” the application said. “This building stands alone to convey a record of this forgotten chapter of Washington’s history.” Tyrell M. Holcomb, the advisory neighborhood commissioner who filed the application, said bestowing the historical designation on the building would honor the neighborhood’s past. The Advisory Neighborhood Commission has approved a plan to “save the property,” according to the minutes of an August meeting, and a petition to block the halfway house has garnered more than 3,600 signatures. “DC’s meat packing industry was destroyed by an overt act of federal intervention without concern for the local citizenry,” he wrote

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The Energy 202: In an unusual move, Trump administration will protect a pine tree due to climate change

with Alexandra Ellerbeck In an unexpected decision, the Trump administration announced that a lethal fungus, a rapacious beetle and even a changing climate jeopardize the survival of an iconic tree of the American West. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is set to propose Wednesday listing the whitebark pine as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Granting federal protections to the tree is a “watershed decision," said Diana Tomback, professor of integrative biology at the University of Colorado at Denver who has studied the tree for decades. The whitebark pine's habitat spans over 80 million acres across seven states and Canada. In its official filing, the agency acknowledged that rising temperatures are pushing the high-elevation tree’s habitat up to higher altitudes, hurting the chances of survival for a pine whose nutritious seeds provide sustenance for everything from red squirrels to black bears. “It’s found over the largest geographic area of any other tree listed,” she added. “It tells you how significant and obvious the threat is,” said Rebecca Riley, legal director of the nature program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, which first petitioned for the pine to be protected in 2008. The tree is also a key food source for grizzlies that raid pine seeds stored by squirrels when bulking up for winter. Giving threatened status to the pine could complicate efforts to remove grizzly bears around Yellowstone National Park from the endangered species list. In 2017, wildlife officials said the bear had recovered. But a federal judge in Montana reversed that decision the following year. The listing may also have implications for loggers who would have to work around the protected pine on U.S. Forest Service land. About 88 percent of the tree’s range in the United States is on land managed by the federal government. The trees are vulnerable to a foreign fungal infection, which took root in North America a century ago, as well as to native beetles that burrow into the bark of pine trees. And more frequent and ferocious fires — themselves fueled by climate change — are also scorching the pine and its habitat. The result of those many threats, according to a 2018 study by the U.S. Forest Service, is that more than half of all whitebark pines left standing in the United States are already dead. The wildlife officials, however, stopped short of saying which forests are critical to the tree's

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The Health 202: Operation Warp Speed chief predicts coronavirus vaccines for all Americans by June

officially identified in China and about a month earlier than public health authorities found the first U.S. case, according to a government study published Monday,” the Wall Street Journal’s Betsy McKay reports. Scientists at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say they found antibodies specific to the new coronavirus in blood samples donated to the American Red Cross in mid-December. The study, published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, found evidence of infection in 106 of 7,389 blood samples collected between Dec. 13 and Jan. 17. Some critics, however, argue that the early “positive” results for the novel coronavirus identified in the study are actually the result of cross-reactivity with other types of common coronaviruses. Trevor Bedford, a professor in the vaccine and infectious-disease division of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center: “The policy would hasten the return to normal activities by those deemed to be ‘close contacts’ of those infected with the virus, which has infected more than 13.5 million Americans and killed at least 270,000,” the Associated Press’s Zeke Miller reports. The new guidelines, which were presented Tuesday at a White House coronavirus task force meeting for final approval, reflects a deeper understanding of the incubation period for the virus. Scientists have found that most individuals become infectious and develop symptoms between four and five days after an exposure. “Private EMS services, both in urban and rural centers across the country, collectively received $350 million in Covid-19 relief funds in April, but those companies said that money ran out within weeks. Months later, the need remains great as they face another coronavirus surge,” NBC News’s Phil McCausland reports. Ambulance companies have seen their revenue strained for a number of reasons. Providers have been forced to buy expensive personal protective equipment and have seen less revenue from hospital transfers, as people put off surgeries and other medical procedures. Ambulances are also expected to treat people in place whenever possible during the pandemic, but they often don’t get reimbursed if the patient isn’t actually transported. The end result is that many of the private ambulance companies, which look after about a third of communities in the United States, are on the verge of going under. “[T]he 911 emergency medical system throughout the United States is at a breaking point. Without additional relief, it seems likely to break, even as we enter the third surge of the virus in

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Ivory Coast reelected its president. Opposition candidates boycotted the voting.

Bédié won in 1995 with 96 percent of the vote. Before the 2000 presidential election, Bédié was overthrown in a coup that brought Gen.l Robert Guéï to power, and a newly FPI-dominated National Assembly adopted a constitution that enshrined the Ivoirité rule, blocking Ouattara and others from the ballot. After an unsuccessful attempt by Guéï to declare victory, Gbagbo won the presidency and extended Ivoirité to new policy areas, including procurement of any identification document, sparking a civil war between north and south in 2002. Amid the ongoing war, Gbagbo canceled the 2005 election. A negotiated agreement in 2007 brought the war to an end, and Ouattara, Gbagbo and Bédié faced off for the first time in the 2010 election. After no candidate captured a majority in the first round, confusion reigned in the runoff results. The independent electoral commission declared Ouattara the election winner while the Constitutional Court called it for Gbagbo. A second civil war broke out, ending with Gbagbo’s capture and transfer to the International Criminal Court for trial on crimes against humanity charges (he was acquitted and released in 2019), and Ouattara became president. A peaceful, democratizing interlude After presiding over a second economic miracle, marked by three years of rapid growth, Ouattara led his multiparty coalition, the Rassemblement des Houphouëtistes pour la démocratie et la paix (RHDP), to win reelection in 2015. Despite less competition and lower voter participation than in 2010, the lack of party bans or boycotts, and a broadly accepted outcome without a coup, civil war or mass protests signaled a step forward toward democratic consolidation. The run-up to the 2020 presidential election appeared to promise further democratic progress, as continued economic prosperity laid the groundwork for stability. A new constitution adopted via a 2016 referendum removed the Ivoirité restriction and included a presidential two-term limit. In March, Ouattara made good on his promise not to seek a third term by designating Prime Minister Amadou Gon Coulibaly as the RHDP coalition’s presidential candidate. But the positive trajectory did not last Despite economic growth, inequality persisted in Ivory Coast. And security forces used tear gas to disperse protesters opposed to the 2016 referendum for the new constitution, which included eliminating age limits that would have prevented Ouattara (who was 74 at the time) from running again. Bédié, after withdrawing his party from Ouattara’s coalition, announced his candidacy for president in June. When Gon

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California Democrats urged people to stay home — and then did the opposite at restaurants and holiday parties

As the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors debated last week whether to ban outdoor dining, Democrat Sheila Kuehl was quick to speak up in favor of restrictions. It was “a bit of magical thinking,” the county supervisor said, to believe restaurant staffers could safely wait on unmasked diners amid a surge in coronavirus infections. “This is a serious health emergency, and we must take it seriously,” she said, casting one of three votes that would again prohibit the practice across the county of more than 10 million people. Hours later, according to KTTV, she was spotted dining alfresco at an Italian restaurant in Santa Monica, Calif. Kuehl is one of at least four high-profile California Democrats who have landed in hot water in recent days for failing to abide by their own public health recommendations. Despite pleading with residents to stay home to slow the spread of coronavirus — which has killed at least 269,000 people in the United States — those very same lawmakers have ignored state and local rules, attending large holiday gatherings or indoor birthday celebrations. In one case, two politicians’ dinners took place on consecutive nights at the same pricey restaurant in Napa Valley. Their transgressions come as infections are climbing and hospital beds are filling up fast in California, according to data tracked by The Washington Post. More than 81,000 new cases have been reported statewide in the past week, with about 9,000 patients currently hospitalized — a 36 percent increase from last week. Barbara Osborn, a spokeswoman for Kuehl, confirmed to The Washington Post that the supervisor had dinner at Il Forno in Santa Monica on Nov. 24, the last day outdoor dining was permitted in Los Angeles County. “She loves Il Forno, has been saddened to see it, like so many restaurants, suffer from a decline in revenue,” Osborn said in a statement. “She ate there, taking appropriate precautions, and will not dine there again until our Public Health Orders permit.” Four hundred miles and three Michelin stars away, the lure of fine dining also created public-relations headaches for two of California’s most prominent politicians. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) and San Francisco Mayor London Breed (D) both traveled to Napa Valley for birthday dinners last month at the French Laundry, a venerable eatery where reservations are famously hard-won, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. The parties took place on Nov. 6 and 7,

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The Daily 202: Trump’s threat to veto NDAA follows pattern of tenuously invoking ‘National Security’

the initial inoculations should be given to an estimated 21 million health-care workers and 3 million residents and staff of nursing homes and other long-term-care facilities. "These groups were deemed the highest priority by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, because the vaccine will initially be in extremely short supply after it is cleared by federal regulators,” Lena Sun and Isaac Stanley-Becker report."Residents and employees of long-term-care facilities were prioritized because they account for nearly 40 percent of deaths from covid-19 … The recommendations for the highest-priority groups, known as Phase 1a, will be sent to CDC Director Robert Redfield, who also informs Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar. If the recommendations are approved, they will become official CDC recommendations on immunization in the United States and provide guidance to state officials, who are scrambling to meet a Friday deadline for vaccine distribution planning. “The committee voted 13 to 1 to prioritize the two groups. Helen Keipp Talbot, an associate professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University, was the sole dissenting vote. Unease over the recommendations centered on the inclusion of long-term-care residents, with several panel members saying there was insufficient vaccine safety and efficacy data to support immunizing them right away. … What the committee will probably recommend may differ from what some Trump administration officials want, according to three federal health officials.” “An influx of new covid-19 patients could lead to hard decisions in the worst-hit hospitals about how to allocate medical resources and care,” Ariana Eunjung Cha, Lenny Bernstein, Sun and Jose Del Real report.“Tom Moore, an infectious-disease doctor in Wichita, said cases had been rising steadily throughout the summer because of outbreaks at meatpacking plants. But over the past few days, the number of positive cases has reached shocking levels. … Moore described a nurse in the intensive care unit breaking down crying … Sixteen states and Puerto Rico reported record numbers of hospitalizations on Tuesday, and four states tied with their highest days. Arizona, California, Maine, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and West Virginia each reported more than a 25 percent increase in the average number of hospitalizations compared with one week ago." Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) moved to increase hospital staff capacity. The state has 1,583 people in hospitals being treated for the virus, the most since early May. “The move reflects the agency’s recognition that the two-week quarantine rule is onerous for many people

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The Technology 202: ACLU sues DHS over purchase of cellphone location data used to track immigrants

who want to appeal content decisions. The pieces of content removed by Facebook for hate speech that will be reviewed include: The other three cases involve questions about content Facebook determined violated its adult nudity; dangerous individuals; and violence and incitement policies. All but one case was referred for review by users. Facebook referred a video in a group “claiming hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin is a cure for COVID-19 and criticizing the French government’s response to COVID-19.” The independent board has received 20,000 cases since opening for requests in October, according to a news release. Hate speech made up “the most significant proportion of appeals," Facebook told Reuters. All of the cases will be open to public comment. The board has another big question to answer: What do horses have to do with all of this? If you have an answer, please let us know! The ruling is a win for the tech industry, which largely spoke out against the restrictions. Twitter and more than two dozen other tech companies and organizations filed an amicus brief on behalf of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's legal challenge last month, arguing that shutting out foreign talent would hurt U.S. companies. A California federal judge says the administration ignored key procedural steps including allowing affected parties to weigh in before enacting the rule. “High-skilled work visas are vital to American businesses’ continued efforts to battle the COVID-19 pandemic and rebuild our economy, Salesforce plans to combine the popular chat interface with its existing enterprise software, Heather Kelly reports. Slack CEO Steward Butterfield will stay on to lead Slack within Salesforce. Slack is Salesforce's largest acquisition in the company's 21-year existence. The technology would give Salesforce a stake in the growing workplace communications technology market, which includes Microsoft Teams, Google and Zoom. The company's leaders, including chief executive Ben Silbermann, and members of the company's board “personally engaged in, facilitated or knowingly ignored the discrimination and retaliation against those who spoke up and challenged the Company's White, male leadership clique,” the shareholders allege in the complaint. The investors say that the misconduct harmed the company's financial position and reputation with users. The lawsuit brought by the Employees' Retirement System of Rhode Island also accuses Silbermann of “abdicating his fiduciary duties” by allegedly ignoring discrimination. “He repeatedly placed himself before the Company, surrounding himself with yes-men and marginalizing women who dared to challenge Pinterest’s White, male

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Black households were saving more. Then came covid-19.

according to the Federal Reserve’s 2019 Survey of Consumer Finances. CFA notes that the Fed data found many Black households negatively impacted by the Great Recession had begun to make a slow but steady recovery. Although only 35 percent of Black households had retirement accounts, the median assets in those accounts increased 67 percent to $35,000 in 2019 from $20,900 in 2013. “Black households were better prepared than years earlier to cope with an accompanying recession in which many were fired, furloughed, or had work hours cut,” write Barany and Stephen Brobeck, a senior fellow at CFA. With Congress stalled on another stimulus package, people are left to figure out how to meet their expenses without additional government support in an economy still struggling for a comeback. Having some savings — even a small amount — can help in a crisis. You may not have enough to pay the rent, but you can buy a bag of groceries perhaps. The problem is that only 42 percent of Blacks have a traditional savings account and/or a money market deposit account. “It’s not easy for people with lower incomes to save, but the current crisis demonstrates how important it is to make it a top priority,” Brobeck said. America Saves has partnered with the Association for Financial Counseling and Planning Education (AFCPE), utilizing the Yellow Ribbon Network. This online platform normally serves veterans, active military and their families but has expanded to connect anyone impacted by the pandemic with certified financial counselors and coaches at no cost. To sign up for a virtual session, go to yellowribbonnetwork.org/afcpecovid19. The best way to save is to do it automatically. Set up direct deposits to a savings account when you get paid. Keep your savings away from your regular household account. I don’t carry the debit card connected to my emergency fund. “We encourage people, even if it’s $5 per paycheck or $10 per paycheck, to set up an automatic system, because it’s the system that’s key,” Barany said. Maybe you truly don’t have the ability to save now, and there’s no shame in that. But for those who can, do it now. The pandemic is a harsh reminder for all Americans — but especially Black households — that having an emergency fund is critical in a financial crisis. — Readers can write to Michelle Singletary c/o The Washington Post, 1301 K St., N.W., Washington,

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The struggle to document covid-19 for future generations

In the era of Instagram, how do we build a visual archive of the multiple forms of human suffering wrought by the covid-19 pandemic? As countless individuals across the world document the impact of covid-19 on their own lives, universities, museums and other nonprofits actively solicit materials to build future collective archives of the pandemic. In some instances, like that of the Bentley Library at the University of Michigan, the focus of the collected materials remains resolutely local, in this case documenting the campus experience. Other projects, like Arizona State University’s “A Journal of the Plague Year,” adopt a much broader aim in their invitation to collaborators to serve “not just as historians, but as chroniclers, recorders, memoirists, as image collectors” in sharing “how the pandemic has affected our lives, from the mundane to the extraordinary.” Although this call to document our current moment stresses the active role played by potential participants, it reduces the work of visualizing the pandemic to assembling images. Yet historians of the present do not merely collect images but also make deliberate selections and, in some instances, may even generate those images. As Susan Sontag noted nearly a half century ago, taking a photo “is to be in complicity with whatever makes a subject interesting, worth photographing” — including, sometimes, the subject’s “pain or misfortune.” Writing in the aftermath of shocking images from the Vietnam War and the famine in Biafra, Sontag recognized the power of such visuals but also the danger of becoming inured to them. The histories of what Sontag called the “photographed images of suffering” offer us both tools and cautionary tales as to how we curate images of the contemporary moment. The strategic use of images to highlight suffering and to mobilize for humanitarian action dates to photography’s beginnings in the 1830s and 1840s. Abolitionists in the United States and Britain, for example, quickly adopted the new technology, using photographs to depict both the horrors of slavery and the humanity of its victims. Similarly, at the turn of the 20th century, the outrage over the atrocities committed in the Belgian Congo and King Leopold’s decision to give up his private landholdings there owed as much to the traveling lantern slide shows depicting mutilated bodies as it did to Sir Roger Casement’s report exposing systemic abuses in the colony. Despite the absence of technologies like the Internet, such images spread with surprising

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There is no reason to wait. Cancel your holiday travel plans now.

invite families from other homes to join us each night on Zoom.” And, of course, President Trump and President-elect Joe Biden have major roles to play. Trump can help make up for his poor messaging to date by keeping quiet and not contradicting public health experts. Biden delivered an inspiring Thanksgiving message that emphasized how Americans must unite to get through this difficult period; now, he can ask Americans to commit to the same shared sacrifice for Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and Christmas. He can guide families through difficult conversations by sharing the hope of vaccines and reiterating why we must hold off seeing one another for a few more months. Many governors are already imposing restrictions on high-risk activities to avoid overwhelming hospitals. They can go further by implementing mandatory quarantines for out-of-state visitors and returning residents. In the absence of statewide mandates, local officials can issue orders of their own: Santa Clara County in Northern California is requiring quarantine for those traveling from more than 150 miles away. Officials should prohibit indoor gatherings for those in different households. Enforcement will be challenging, of course, but the presence of these restrictions alone will help convey the gravity of the crisis. Congressional leadership matters, too. People will not heed public health guidance to stay home if their jobs are at risk. It’s long past time for Congress to pass a package to assist workers and small businesses. In addition, local and state health departments urgently need funding to implement the vaccination programs that are essential to ending the pandemic. Other entities — including schools — must take aggressive action, as well, such as requiring quarantine and testing after the holidays before returning to in-person instruction. Americans still have a small window of opportunity to avoid the total collapse of our health-care system. We need to wait just a little longer to be with our loved ones. Let’s plan for quiet celebrations in our own homes this winter. Spring is not far away. Read more Michael Gerson: The Trump era could have been even worse J.J. McCullough: Canada’s covid-19 second wave is a humbling moment after a summer of bragging Megan McArdle: What changes after covid-19? I’m betting on everything. Lizette Alvarez: In managing covid-19, colleges must tend to students’ minds as much as their bodies Fareed Zakaria: The pandemic upended the present. But it’s given us a chance to remake the future.

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Could a travel bubble between New York and London be on the horizon?

Several months into the coronavirus pandemic, few travel bubbles have successfully allowed passengers to fly internationally without quarantining. Many international destinations still do not allow Americans to visit for nonessential reasons, or they require Americans to quarantine for 14 days upon arrival. But in recent months, trial programs for preflight coronavirus tests have emerged for Americans traveling abroad — most notably for flights to London via Newark on United and American Airlines routes shared with British Airways. British Airways and American Airlines aim to use the testing data from such programs to aid the British government’s decision-making on covid-19 measures, the Guardian has reported. Now, emerging from a nationwide lockdown on Dec. 2, England has announced it will shorten its required 14-day quarantine for travelers from high-risk countries to five days if they acquire a negative coronavirus test. (Americans can enter the United Kingdom without a coronavirus test in hand but must quarantine on arrival or face penalties, according to the U.S. Embassy in London.) The testing programs might signal a travel bubble to come, as officials say they are in talks about a New York-London travel bubble. But doctors say rigorous testing and some degree of quarantine would still be required for opening up work travel between New York and London, especially if a projected rise in coronavirus cases this winter doesn’t ultimately derail the effort. “Conversations are ongoing between the Federal government, international partners, and industry stakeholders on these matters,” a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Transportation said of the New York-London travel bubble in an email. “The Department stands ready to support the safe resumption of international flights to and from the U.S.” A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security also told The Washington Post that it is “in close collaboration with our interagency and international partners and industry to safely reopen and encourage transatlantic travel while mitigating public health risks.” Officials in the United Kingdom and United States have been in discussions about a London-New York travel corridor since October, at one point with hopes of an opening in time for Christmas, according to the Wall Street Journal. While quarantine-free travel between the United States and London has not materialized with one month left in the year, shortened quarantines will begin for U.K. arrivals on Dec. 15. Visitors who acquire a negative coronavirus test five days after their arrival will not be required to

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In high-profile #MeToo case, an intern takes on a celebrity TV host in China

has denied the accusation and has sued Zhou, who is seeking a publicly apology and $7,600 in damages, for defamation. While the #MeToo movement swept around the world in recent years, Zhou's allegations broke ground in China. She presented records of a contemporaneous police complaint she filed in 2016 and her case gained traction online because she moved ahead with a lawsuit even though a deluge of other allegations against famous men in the nonprofit, academic and business worlds — and even a prominent Buddhist monk — fizzled out, were settled out of court or suppressed by censors. Zhou's lawsuit was always a long shot. She said police discouraged her from filing a complaint in 2018. Chinese sexual harassment lawsuits were rarely heard of before Zhou's, and judges have sided with the accuser only once: Last year, a social worker in Sichuan province successfully sued her nonprofit employer. In June, China passed a law that specified what constitutes sexual harassment. On Wednesday, government censors took down posts about the case on the popular forum Douban and WeChat, while Zhou's supporters flooded the platforms hoping their sheer volume would overcome the algorithms. Outside the courthouse, plainclothes police milled among the crowd. Uniformed officials hustled away foreign news crews and asked the young demonstrators to stop holding signs or filming videos to share on social media, according to people present. The atmosphere was less tense than some of China's politically sensitive cases — and at times fun, Li said. By nightfall, the crowd had grown to 100 people, and Zhou's online supporters nationwide — including a core group of about 2,500 members in five chat groups — used apps to deliver milk tea and hamburgers to supporters holding vigil. One group of supporters arrived from Guangzhou in southern China; some flew out the same night. "The case was 99 percent likely to end in defeat, but because everybody was watching and persisting outside the courthouse, the judges at least delayed the result so we get another shot at that 1 percent," said a woman who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she organizes online support for Zhou, which can be politically sensitive. "It's difficult to get a fair, open trial in China, but Xianzi showed you can choose the legal route. You at least have a chance, even if it's not big." In a statement on social media early Thursday, Zhou

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Austin’s mayor told people to stay home. He was vacationing in Cabo after hosting his daughter’s wedding.

and state leaders have been caught flouting their own coronavirus warnings by dining out and attending parties after issuing guidance discouraging the public from doing those same activities. Texas broke the nationwide record for new coronavirus cases reported in a day about two weeks after Adler posted the Nov. 9 video, when it reported 16,100 new cases on Nov. 25, about 1,000 more than the previous record. (California reported 18,350 new cases that same day, also breaking the previous record.) Some areas of the Lone Star State have been hit harder than others. Near the border with Mexico and New Mexico, El Paso has resorted to airlifting patients to other cities as its hospitals have been overwhelmed with critically ill people. The state paid prisoners to move hundreds of bodies to mobile morgues in the city, then it deployed Texas National Guardsmen to help. As of early Thursday, more than 9,000 people are hospitalized with covid-19 in Texas. Yet even as the numbers mount, officials in the state have been inconsistent in enacting and enforcing coronavirus restrictions. El Paso County Judge Ricardo Samaniego, a Democrat, ordered a shutdown of the hard-hit city, but El Paso Mayor Dee Margo and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, both Republicans, challenged the legality of those restrictions. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) declared last month that he would not institute a statewide shutdown, even as cases spiked. He has issued a statewide executive order allowing restaurants to reopen at 75 percent capacity and allowed bars to partially resume business with permission from local county leaders. Even where bars have been ordered closed by county officials, many have kept their doors open under a loophole that allows them to be classified as restaurants if they serve food and if alcohol sales account for less than half of their revenue, the Texas Tribune reported. Although Adler defied his own advice to stay home when he took a family vacation in Cabo last month, the Democrat has asked Austin residents to stay home, practice social distancing and wear masks. The Austin mayor said neither the wedding nor the trip to Mexico violated local or statewide coronavirus guidelines in place at the time. He told the American-Statesman that the wedding guests had taken rapid coronavirus tests before the event and said masks were provided for the attendees to wear at Hotel St. Cecilia. He noted Wednesday that he took

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PM Update: Seasonable and increasingly cloudy, with showers possible late Friday

Highs in the low to mid-50s are actually a bit on the warm side for this date, believe it or not. With clouds slowly increasing, the first signs of the next storm system to affect the area are making themselves known. We should stay dry for about another 24 hours, then it’s another deluge. Listen to our daily D.C. forecasts: Apple Podcasts | Amazon Echo | More options Through Tonight: View the Tomorrow (Friday): See David Streit’s forecast through the beginning of next week. And if you haven’t already, join us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter and Instagram. For related traffic news, check out Gridlock. Rain watch: Want our 5 a.m. forecast delivered to your email inbox?

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Maryland crime report

Due to concerns over the novel coronavirus and social distancing, •Destruction to a vehicle •Destruction of property/vandalism •Theft from a vehicle •Thefts of vehicle parts and accessories •Tampering with a vehicle •Attempted vehicle theft •Credit or debit card theft •Identify theft •Lost property •Telephone misuse •Trespassing The following were among incidents reported by Anne Arundel County police. For information, call 410-222-8050. Brooklyn Park Area Wasena Ave., Crofton Area Freemont Ct., Wilkshire Dr., Fillmore Ct., Angus Ct., Carry Pl., Walleye Dr. and Farmington Ct., Glen Burnie Area Hiddenbrook Dr. and Mystic View Turn, Hospital Dr. and Fox Spring Dr., Due to concerns over the novel coronavirus and social distancing, Dogwood Rd., City Gate Lane, Conduit St., Hillsmere Dr., Hilltop Lane, Lafayette Ave., Main St., Riverview Ave., W. Washington St., Due to concerns over the novel coronavirus and social distancing, Columbia Area Symphony Way, Cloudleap Ct., Little Patuxent Pkwy., Harpers Farm Rd., Murray Hill Rd., Red Branch Rd., Rushlight Path, Woodside Ct., Gerwig Lane, Elkridge Area Bonnie View Lane, Pirch Way, Ellicott City Area Centennial Lane, Old Annapolis Rd., N. Ridge Rd., Marriottsville Area Mount View Rd., Savage Area Lincoln St.,

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Are layovers riskier than long-haul flights during the pandemic? Here’s what doctors say.

As coronavirus cases rise across the United States this winter, completing any air travel will be full of fraught decisions — which airlines still have social-distancing protocols, whether to lounge in the airport, and when (if ever) it’s safe to take off your mask. But longer flights and those that require a layover at another airport will be perhaps the most anxiety-inducing, as they prolong your window of risk for picking up the virus. Recent studies on in-flight transmission of the coronavirus make clear that longer flights have been superspreader events; the longer a group of people is gathered, the higher the risk of the virus becoming airborne. But health experts have also warned travelers that airports and public transportation can facilitate the spread of the coronavirus, as well. “The problem is not only the plane — it’s the airport, the transit before the airport, anywhere that gets crowded, really,” says Carlos Acuña-Villaorduña, an epidemiologist at Boston Medical Center with expertise in modeling the projected spread of viruses. “This is a respiratory virus, and it only needs close proximity to spread.” So what is a traveler to do if the options are either boarding a long, potentially crowded flight or breaking up the journey with a precautionary layover? Doctors say it depends but that one option will typically be better than the other. Here’s what to think about before a long flight during the coronavirus pandemic. Consider if you’re taking a flight that’s several or more hours long, similar to the seven-hour journey Irish researchers said this summer was linked to 59 cases in the country. Is it wise to reduce your time in a single air cabin by including a stopover at an intermediary airport, or is there greater risk in introducing another ground stop? David Freedman, an infectious-disease expert at the University of Alabama at Birmingham who frequently reviews travel-related covid-19 studies, says the risky boarding and deboarding process almost always outweighs the benefits of breaking up the journey. “If you change planes, you’re hitting one more airport. And there is a huge amount of risk in the airport, but boarding and deplaning is the riskiest part of that,” Freedman says. “So doing that process an extra time really increases the risk. … The only advantage of breaking it up would be that, if you’re sitting next to somebody on your flight who is infected, it would cut

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The Trump administration is putting more fresh fruit and vegetables in the hands of low-income Americans

adjacent to the hardware store. The number of vendors has been cut in half to accommodate social distancing, and live music and food trucks “came to a screeching halt,” Linda Cottin said, but there’s been an uptick in SNAP usage. “We’ve seen some new customers,” she said. “They have said an outdoor market is a safer place to shop than a grocery store, and it could also be that people have more time because they are working at home. It ran from 4 to 6 p.m., so for people working at the office that was hard for them.” SNAP and Pandemic EBT recipients come into the hardware store, run their card and receive tokens to spend with the market vendors — and a regional grant doubles their money. Many small farmers did not qualify for Paycheck Protection Program loans, because small farms tend to have few employees. Nor did they get the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program payments, because the program largely leaves out those who rely on direct-to-consumer sales or wholesale accounts. The uptick in SNAP use provides a welcome new revenue stream for many farmers. Kim and Chad Spangler grow and sell sweet corn, tomatoes, cabbage, peppers, summer and winter squash, melons and some berries at a farm stand in Yorktown, Ind. They have six or seven families regularly using their food assistance benefits but have also seen a small uptick in newcomers. Ryan and Alycia Salvas of Radical Roots Farm in Canterbury, Conn., have seen a more dramatic change. They raise American mulefoot hogs, shipping their pork across the country and selling it right off the farm. They have a subscription service — like a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) produce program — for their pork: 10 pounds is a half-share for $100; a full share, a 20-pound box, is $180. Having a SNAP and Pandemic EBT card reader has transformed their business. “It’s dramatically increased our sales over the past year,” Alycia said. “It went from 10 people over last winter to 56 customers” using SNAP. “Sales have quadrupled in the past six months,” Ryan added. “With supermarkets being so low on inventory and with price gouging, we’ve seen customers who have never gone to the market.” Online ordering options, Ryan said, has removed one more barrier. “People on food stamps would come to the market and be ashamed,” Ryan said. “This removes the whole stigma behind it.”

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The Washington Post joins other news organization in new Forbidden Stories investigation

The Washington Post today announced its participation in “The Cartel Project,” a collaborative investigation coordinated by Forbidden Stories, an international network of investigative journalists whose mission is to continue the work of other journalists facing threats, imprisonment or murder. The investigation involves 25 organizations in 18 countries and will include five stories, the first of which will be published by The Post. The Post’s investigation focuses on Regina Martinez, a journalist who was murdered in 2012 in the Mexican state of Veracruz. Her killing was part of a wave of violence against journalists in Mexico, where more than 90 percent of press freedom cases go unpunished. Since her death, more than 20 journalists have been murdered in Veracruz, which is now considered the most dangerous place in the world for journalists. “As journalists, we have a responsibility to inform readers about what we learn through reporting. That is being challenged in many corners of the world and journalists are increasingly at risk for doing this important work,” said Jeff Leen, investigative editor at The Washington Post. “At this critical time for press freedom, we are pleased to be the United States partner for an important investigation that brings to light vital information about the dangerous task of being a journalist in Mexico.” “The Cartel Project” will publish Dec. 6 at 12pm ET.

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Army museums have tens of thousands of artifacts. They’re looking to downsize.

said. Some have already begun the process. The Yuma Proving Ground Heritage Center, at the Army weapons testing range in Yuma, Ariz., is one, according to the project schedule. The center has among other things a rare 1950s-era atomic cannon. “We are not moving the atomic cannon,” Rohal said. Artifacts that are deemed excess will be further reviewed by subject experts. Items then marked for “divestiture” would be made available through federal disbursement programs to groups such as the Smithsonian Institution and the National Park Service, as well as state museums, nonprofit museums, municipalities and educational institutions, Rohal said. “That’s really our hope and goal, is that it gets to another museum or educational institution,” he said. And private individuals and collectors? “That’s one thing we’re still trying to work through,” he said. “There’s further rules and restrictions particularly on anything that has an offensive or defensive capability,” Rohal said. “Small arms, or knives, things of that nature, can’t get out to the general public other than through controlled programs.” As for “macro” artifacts, “tanks, vehicles, howitzers, cannons,” the Army Museum Enterprise is tracking about 7,000 items like that, and checking for duplicates. But the Army’s Tank-automotive and Armaments Command would handle any donations, Rohal said. “They have a screening process for those specific types of assets,” he said. “There are institutions that [can make] requests through that program.” But a donated tank, for example, can’t move under its own power and must have the gun barrel filled with concrete and the hatches welded shut, according to the command’s website. Available items that go unclaimed could be destroyed or recycled, or put up for auction or sale, via a contractor. One day last week, Rohal, along with Paul M. Miller, chief of the artifact collection, and Lindsey M. Davis, the artifact registrar, showed examples of excess items at the Museum Support Center, where the project is being tested. The things the Army has the most of are insignia, Miller said. “Shoulder sleeve insignia, distinctive unit insignia,” he said. “It’s a huge segment.” The center has drawers full of them, some famous, some not so famous. One drawer held several copies of the eagle and arrow patch of the 734th Regional Support Group, an Iowa Army National Guard outfit. There are also thousands of rifles, especially the legendary M1 Garand from World War II. “Simply because of how many were produced,”

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8 facts about the coronavirus to combat common misinformation

Living through a pandemic in the Internet age means misinformation can sometimes spread more rapidly than facts. Faced with a deluge of claims about the coronavirus and the illness it causes, covid-19, you may be wondering whether gargling with saltwater is a cure or if the pathogen was man-made in a Chinese laboratory. (Spoiler: Saltwater doesn’t work, and scientists believe the virus occurs in nature.) To help you out, we rounded up eight facts about the coronavirus to keep in mind if you see claims to the contrary. Several studies Part of the confusion about face coverings seems to have come from President Trump’s false claim in October that 85 percent of people diagnosed with covid-19 wore masks — a mischaracterization of a CDC study. As The Washington Post’s Fact Checker explained, that study compared groups of people who had tested positive and negative for the coronavirus and found that a much higher percentage of the positive cases had had close contact with someone known to have covid-19. The people in the positive group were also more likely to recently have eaten at a restaurant. In the 14 days before they got sick, the study says, 71 percent of positive cases and 74 percent of the negatives reported “always” wearing a mask in public. Those numbers are almost the same, with the main difference between the groups being that a higher percentage of the positive cases had contact with an infected person. Masks, of course, work only when you’re wearing them. It matters what you do when you take them off. Someone can say they “almost always” wore a mask and still could have had instances when they needed to take it off in a public setting — say, while dining out. While a cure for covid-19 would be more than welcome, no drug or other treatment has been found to eliminate the illness. Since the coronavirus emerged in China late last year, myriad false rumors have circulated about potential cures, ranging from drinking bleach to snorting cocaine. The Food and Drug Administration has issued nearly 150 warning letters to companies fraudulently promising a cure, treatment, prevention method or diagnostic tool. In reality, “the pharmaceutical toolbox for physicians to treat covid-19 is seriously restricted,” as The Post’s Christopher Rowland put it in September. The FDA so far has authorized only two drugs for the illness: remdesivir, for in-hospital use, and

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8 facts about the coronavirus to combat common misinformation

consider the patient’s infection, response to treatment and medical history. They also look at whether underlying conditions, which exist in most people who die of covid-19, contributed to the death. Covid-19 is usually listed as a contributing cause of death, with the primary cause being a problem precipitated by the illness, like pneumonia. The official coronavirus death toll includes those fatalities because covid-19 spurred the other health issues that killed the patient. Two vaccine candidates on the table for FDA approval — one from pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and German biotechnology company BioNTech, and another from biotechnology company Moderna — are examples of a new technology that uses a piece of genetic material called messenger RNA. That mRNA teaches the body’s cells to build the protein on the surface of the coronavirus, therefore making the immune system recognize and block the true virus. This groundbreaking technology stands in contrast to traditional vaccines, which introduce into the immune system an inactivated or weakened version of a virus. But despite allegations suggesting otherwise, the coronavirus vaccine candidates using mRNA do not “affect or interact with” a person’s DNA, according to the CDC. Additionally, reputable news and fact-checking sources, including the Associated Press, the BBC, PolitiFact and Poynter, have confirmed with various scientists that mRNA vaccines do not change DNA. “That’s just a myth, one often spread intentionally by anti-vaccination activists to deliberately generate confusion and mistrust,” Mark Lynas, a visiting fellow at Cornell University’s Alliance for Science group, told Reuters. “Genetic modification would involve the deliberate insertion of foreign DNA into the nucleus of a human cell, and vaccines simply don’t do that.” None of those behaviors, which are recommended for preventing the spread of the coronavirus, pose a risk to our immune systems, despite claims that they do. The incorrect notion that limiting time with people outside our households could damage our ability to fight diseases may stem from the “hygiene hypothesis,” or the idea that young children who are exposed to germs are less likely to develop allergies and autoimmune conditions. But this concept does not apply to adults, whose immune systems have already been strengthened by exposure to bacteria, according to MIT Medical, a clinic at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. While the hygiene hypothesis is probably also the cause of the false assumption that hand sanitizer and hand-washing weaken our immune systems, scientists at the Cleveland Clinic say there

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In Armenia and Azerbaijan, desperate families search for news of the Nagorno-Karabakh war dead

plastic bottles of homemade vodka or brandy. A man sobbed upon learning that his son had been killed. In Azerbaijan, families of the missing face secrecy from authorities and conflicting accounts. Khadija Ismayilova, a well-known investigative journalist who was jailed by authorities in 2014 after reporting on corruption, had to search for her missing nephew in a morgue in Yevlakh, about 150 miles west of Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital. The remains of many soldiers there were burned beyond recognition. “It’s a devastating process that we’ve been through,” she said. “Nobody wants to believe,” she said referring to people’s fears that their loved ones were killed. “The families are still looking. Most of them have to go through the pain of looking for their siblings among corpses,” she said. “But most of these search efforts are useless. Basically, it’s happening because we don’t want to believe.” Her brother’s son, Rovshan Ismayilov, 21, was drafted after graduating in June from the Azerbaijan University of Cooperation in Baku,where he studied finance. After fighting broke out Sept. 27, he was sent to the front where some of the toughest fighting occurred. His last call home was Oct. 12. It was not until late last month that official confirmation came and Ismayilov’s body was returned and buried in the Alley of Martyrs in his local area. Ismayilova said the family was told he died with a group advancing ahead of the main body of Azerbaijani soldiers. “He wanted to be a hero, and he died a hero,” she said. Ismayilova said that there was little government information on war casualties, but that relatives and civil society groups had set up WhatsApp channels with information on where to provide DNA to help identify the casualties. In Stepanakert, the trips from the restaurant to the morgue cannot even bring clarity. Some soldiers’ bodies are unrecognizable. “Yesterday, they told us they had brought 20 bodies, so we went to the morgue to see if we could identify them,” said a man who spoke anonymously because he was sensitive about discussing grief. “We are sitting there being tortured, and when they call out the names, you are hoping your son’s name is not on the list.” Vaniskhian does not go to the morgue. He keeps a distance from the other men — out of respect for their pain, he said. “The difference between them and me is that I know

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BibleGateway searches trend toward politics and, unsurprisingly, the pandemic

In the midst of a strange and stressful year, people turned to the same place they have for decades in their search for answers. The Internet. But once online, many looked to a much older source: the Bible. The website BibleGateway.com, which allows users to read and search the text of multiple translations of the Bible, saw unusual spikes in related searches around the first covid stay-at-home orders in the spring, the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police and the protests that followed in the summer, and the U.S. presidential election this fall, according to Bible Gateway’s Year in Review. Users searched for Bible verses related to politics, social issues, the end times and — perhaps not surprisingly — pandemics at least 10 times more this year than they did in 2019, according to the website. It’s not unusual to see current events reflected in the website’s search results, according to Bible Gateway content manager Jonathan Petersen. “People are trying to find answers in situations that are difficult to see the answers. They do tend to turn to the Bible for whatever answers they can find,” Petersen said. Searches for terms such as “racism,” “justice,” “equality” and “oppression” multiplied by more than 100 after Floyd’s death. Search results for those terms include such verses as Proverbs 21:15: “When justice is done, it brings joy to the righteous but terror to evildoers,” and Isaiah 1:17: “Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.” “Pandemic” was the second major search theme Bible Gateway identified this year, including searches for what the Bible has to say about such topics as disease, pestilence and plague. Those searches spiked sharply in March, according to the website, when many places across the United States enacted measures to slow the spread of covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. The site also saw a surge in searches related to politics — such as praying for government and obeying government authority — that came around the U.S. presidential election in early November. Some things, even amid uncertainty, never change, though. The most-read verses on Bible Gateway have remained the same for years: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” (John 3:16) and

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Marijuana decriminalization just took a big step forward in Congress

we seen this kind of wholesale shift in the public’s thinking in recent years. Look at how steadily support has increased in Gallup polls: In 2000, 31 percent of Americans thought “the use of marijuana should be made legal.” By 2010, the number was 46 percent. And in October 2020, it was 68 percent. Majorities in every age and income group now support legalization; even 48 percent of Republicans support it. There are a number of factors contributing to this change, all interacting with each other. The first is generational replacement: Very few of those older than baby boomers had any exposure to cannabis in their youth. That means that not only haven’t they tried it themselves (and survived), but they also didn’t have friends and family who used it and so were more likely to believe propaganda about the drug’s effects, like this terrifying 1952 episode of “Dragnet” in which Los Angeles is overrun with senseless violence and mayhem committed by teens in the grip of the vile weed. As the older generations die off and are replaced by those who grew up with very different ideas, public opinion shifts. Add in popular culture and change in state laws, and you have an environment in which prohibition advocates inevitably find support for their position shrinking more and more. You can see it most clearly at the state level. This November, voters passed laws legalizing marijuana in New Jersey, Arizona, South Dakota and Montana; in Mississippi, a medical marijuana initiative passed. The latter three states were all won easily by President Trump. There are now 15 states (plus D.C.) that have approved recreational use, and 36 states that allow medical use. What about the incoming president? Joe Biden — who, by the time the kids gathered at Woodstock, was already a parent working as a lawyer and planning his political career — has displayed a reticence to go too far on the issue of cannabis. But, as in many other areas, he has been pulled left by the evolution of the public and his party. During the campaign, he supported the kind of decriminalization embodied in the More Act, even as many of his opponents advocated outright legalization (you may remember this amusing exchange between him and New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, an advocate of legalization, during a primary debate). And while Harris has acknowledged getting high in her youth

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Widening 270 and 495 is a bad plan on many fronts

The Nov. 29 Metro article “Md. toll lane plan may face lawsuits” explained that the Maryland Department of Transportation and Gov. Larry Hogan (R) are pushing forward with their plan to widen Interstates 270 and 495 by using a public-private partnership to build and operate private toll lanes despite strong opposition. This plan would likely cost taxpayers a great deal of money, destroy fragile parkland and increase traffic congestion. The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments says the toll from Frederick to Rockville could be nearly $50 each way. The plan would adversely affect six national park sites and dozens of local parks, 1,500 acres of forest canopy, 30 miles of streams and 50 acres of wetlands. The plan to widen the highways could increase greenhouse gases. In the draft environmental impact statement, a chart shows that afternoon northbound traffic on 270’s regular lanes will be slower if the toll lanes are built. The plan to widen 495 and 270 makes absolutely no sense and should be stopped. Rebecca Batt The Nov. 29 Commuter A future of highway expansions serving giant fleets of electric cars won’t sufficiently reduce greenhouse gas emissions — or improve roadway safety, help working-class households afford multiple cars to access jobs and services, or keep us from spending our days sitting in traffic. The good news is building walkable, inclusive, transit-oriented communities and addressing the east-west jobs imbalance will not only lower emissions; they will also offer equity, livability and many other co-benefits — and people want this, unlike an expanded Beltway and more traffic. Bill Pugh The writer is a senior policy fellow with the Coalition for Smarter Growth. Read more letters to the editor.

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The people of Belarus are still marching against dictatorship. The U.S. can help.

I was forced to temporarily relocate to neighboring Lithuania, where I remain safe and ready to stand in a new round of elections that should be conducted under the watchful eye of the international community. My friend and fellow fighter for free Belarus Maria Kolesnikova remains imprisoned without trial or conviction, along with many others. It is our duty to keep fighting in her name and the names of others facing similar fates. I demand her release and the release of the thousands of activists, journalists and ordinary people who were detained without cause. We remain grateful to the European Union and the United States for their vigorous moral and technical support. We appreciate the efforts of the current American administration, which has recently expanded sanctions on Belarusian officials responsible for undermining democratic processes in our country. I am personally thankful to Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun for meeting with me and expressing his commitment to help Belarus’s democracy movement. Yet we cannot stop there. We need more help from the United States, even in this complex transitional period. I appeal to the U.S. Congress to swiftly pass the Belarus Democracy, Human Rights, and Sovereignty Act of 2020. This bill will expand the scope of those who can be sanctioned under U.S. law for their complicity in the repressions. At the same time it will provide support to independent media and technology for circumventing state censorship. Access to information is the strongest weapon in our possession. Lukashenko’s efforts to stifle the free flow of information and hide his violent crackdown cannot go unanswered. I hope the House and Senate can reach agreement before the end of the year. Time is of the essence. The regime is brittle and in dire need of financial support. Under Lukashenko, the Belarusian economy has not grown for the past decade. The economy has entered a financial crisis; the exchange rate has plummeted by 20 percent this year. The United States is not the only country watching. As of last month, the European Union approved sanctions on 59 individuals while at the same time introducing personal sanctions against Lukashenko. But as Belarusian people continue to flood the streets despite appalling weather conditions and escalating violence from the state, we need the international community to intensify its support. Congressional action in Washington would have the additional effect of encouraging Brussels to issue its own robust

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A military victory is cause for cautious optimism in Ethiopia

Regarding the Nov. 29 news article “In defiant Tigray region, Ethiopia says its military now controls the capital”: The victory of Ethiopia’s federal defense forces in the Tigray region is a milestone. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and his government took a decisive action that is as commendable as it was necessary. Ethiopians, however, should be cautiously optimistic about the defeat and eventual demise of the criminal group in Tigray. Mr. Abiy’s administration must resolve many issues to secure the well-being of the country. Repeated mass murders in the Oromia region during the past two years have been well-documented. The gruesome attacks targeted Amhara and Orthodox Christians. Many churches have been burned down and priests killed. The government’s response to the horrific crimes has been very disappointing, at minimum. Those who perpetrated the evil acts have not been held accountable. Hundreds of victims and their families are still denied justice. The number of people displaced by the attacks is staggering. The victory in Tigray will remain meaningless unless the government and its defense forces have the resolve to deal with such issues and prevent ethnic violence in all regions of the country. Let’s hope the victory in Tigray will open a new chapter of stability, national unity and rule of law in Ethiopia. Tewodros Abebe Read more letters to the editor.

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House votes to decriminalize marijuana as GOP resists national shift

Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), a longtime liberalization advocate. “We need to catch up with the rest of the American people.” Top Republicans — including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) — made derisive public comments about the bill this week, painting the measure as a frivolous diversion from the task of funding the federal government and delivering a new round of emergency coronavirus aid to Americans. One headline from McConnell: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) decides to “puff, puff, pass” on emergency coronavirus relief. “It’s just unbelievable how tone-deaf they are to these small businesses and the jobs, the families that are tied to them,” House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) said in a Fox News Channel interview Thursday, slamming Democratic leaders for holding the vote. But some are warning that Republicans risk finding themselves out of step with their own voters, who are increasingly embracing the loosening of marijuana restrictions — including outright legalization. On Election Day in South Dakota, for instance, 54 percent of voters opted to legalize marijuana, while only 36 percent of voters chose the Democratic presidential ticket. In Montana, the 57 percent who voted to legalize marijuana nearly matched the number who voted to reelect Trump. And Mississippi became the first state in the Deep South to legalize marijuana for medical use, with 62 percent of voters approving a ballot measure in a state where Trump won 58 percent of the vote. Fifteen states have legalized recreational cannabis to some degree, and 36 states have approved medical marijuana programs, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Decriminalizing marijuana at the federal level would not end the vast majority of cannabis-use prosecutions, which occur in state courts. But it would end troublesome conflicts between state and federal law for those states that have loosened pot restrictions and would greatly ease commerce for the multibillion-dollar cannabis industry. Public opinion appears to be in line with the state-level electoral trend. In October, Gallup found that 68 percent of Americans said the use of marijuana should be legal, the highest support for marijuana legalization since the polling organization first asked in 1969. Only 8 percent of Americans say marijuana should be completely illegal While overwhelming proportions of Democrats and independents supported legalization, Republicans were split: 52 percent for legalization and 48 percent against — figures that have changed only slightly in recent

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How my online mom group sent me down a rabbit hole of direct-sales supplements for kids

have funds for it. "So what I hear you saying is that I haven't shown you how to make this work in your budget and get products paid for?" I never responded after that, and decided to look into other methods to help my kid with his gut. Finding other products wasn’t hard. There are so many kid-targeted vitamins on the market right now, from brands such as the Honest Co., Zarbee’s Natural, Natural Vitality Calm, Smarty Pants, Culturelle, Garden of Life, L’il Critters, Feel Great Vitamin Co., Nordic Naturals and dozens more. Yes, Bayer’s Flintstones vitamins are still an option, as they have been since 1968. Though now customers can choose from nine varieties in chewable and gummy versions. In general, both Rothman and Gebbia suggest knowing what’s inside the items you’re buying. Also, find out from your pediatrician what your little one needs, be that more iron, vitamin D, calcium, protein and so on. Before purchasing, look at the labels to check how much sugar the supplement has in it (gummy vitamins are often mainly corn syrup). And when in doubt, ask your child’s doctor what he or she recommends. “With social media, we are buying a lot of products from friends versus going to the store; it’s changing the landscape of what we are doing,” said Rothman, noting that multivitamins and supplements aren’t regulated to the extent that pharmaceuticals are. “I always want to make sure parents are buying a reputable brand and that it contains what the package says it contains.” So how did I get my kid to poop? In the end I went with a the most recommended remedy from moms who weren’t trying to sell me anything, a mix of old and new: prunes in a fruit shake and a side of gummy magnesium supplements. I’m not making any extra cash for the family through these grocery store purchases, but our lives were certainly changed to run smoother. Linnea Covington lives in Denver with her partner and two little kids. She has been writing about food, drink, travel and the glories of life in general for more than 15 years and doesn’t plan to stop. Join our More reading: Experts are worried about covid-19′s effect on childhood obesity. Here’s what we can do. Four things to keep in mind when posting about your kids online Kids and protein powder: What you should know

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The lights are on, and the performances go on at Madrid’s Teatro Real, with a few changes

Teatro Real opera house is open for business, and the show is going on. Spain trails the United States significantly in the number of confirmed coronavirus infections and deaths attributed to covid-19, the illness caused by the virus. As of this writing, according to Johns Hopkins University, Spain has recorded more than 1 million cases and some 45,000 deaths, while the United States has had 13 million cases and more than 279,000 deaths. According to the Associated Press, the Teatro Real was closed during a national lockdown from March to May but has reopened while taking measures to keep audience members and performers safe. In addition to the venue seating smaller audiences, the Associated Press reports, “Everyone entering the theater has their temperature taken automatically by machines. Hand sanitizers abound and surgical masks are supplied to all. There are ultra-violet lamps to disinfect the main theater, dressing rooms and clothing, and the air conditioning has been adapted to ensure a healthier air flow and temperature.” The performers and musicians are tested regularly and, when they are not onstage, mask-wearing is strictly enforced. Associated Press photographer Bernat Armangue takes us into the inner workings of the Teatro Real. His photos show us how the opera house has changed some of its operations, including masked performers in backstage rehearsals, and new cleaning and testing protocols. With vaccines on the way, the world can hopefully get back to functioning much as it did before the pandemic. To be sure, there will be indelible changes. And, of course, we’re not sure what all of the changes will be. But maybe we’ll all be able to get out of our apartments and houses to enjoy each other’s company and maybe even take in a performance or two. It has been a long, hard, depressing and tragic year under the thumb of the covid-19 pandemic. In Sight is The Washington Post’s photography blog for visual narrative. This platform showcases compelling and diverse imagery from staff members and freelance photographers, news agencies and archives. If you are interested in submitting a story to In Sight, please complete this form. More on In Sight: These photos are a stark reminder of how we leave traces of ourselves even after we’re long gone Despite being ravaged by the coronavirus, life goes on in the North Caucasus These photos show how the coronavirus has changed how Peruvians commemorate the dead

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Vaccines offer hope for end to pandemic, but brutal months lie ahead

well.” Biden also said that on the day of his inauguration he will ask Americans to wear masks for 100 days. “Just 100 days to mask — not forever, just 100 days. And I think we’ll see a significant reduction” in infections, Biden said. On Thursday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) announced that regions in the state where intensive care unit capacity fell below 15 percent would be put on strict stay-at-home orders for three weeks. As of Thursday afternoon, about 18,600 new covid-19 cases were counted in the state, the second-highest single-day record, which was set Wednesday. About 9,700 people in California are hospitalized with covid-19. The mayor of the city of Los Angeles, Eric Garcetti, has forcefully urged the city’s residents to stay at home except for essential activities like buying food. “My message couldn’t be simpler. It’s time to hunker down. It’s time to cancel everything. And if it isn’t essential, don’t do it,” Garcetti said during a news conference. “Don’t meet up with others outside your household, don’t host a gathering, don’t attend a gathering.” Even if vaccines roll out quickly, daily death tolls may not peak in the United States until mid- to late January, Murray said. Emily Allen, a registered nurse at St. Joseph’s Hospital in St. Paul, Minn., said the intensive care unit where she works the night shift has become a “revolving door” of increasingly sick covid-19 patients. If the trajectory of the pandemic was grim in the spring, she said, it has reached an altogether new low in recent weeks. “We cannot get beds cleaned fast enough by the time we have another patient coming in. On the night shift we have two doctors for 50 ventilated patients. We can have three patients crashing at the same,” she said. “It’s every single shift that is overwhelming. It doesn’t shut off.” Patients are now sometimes held in the emergency room because beds are not readily available, she said. Others are sent to rural hospitals. There is often not enough space to readily accept transfer patients who need specialized care. She described the exhausting process of correctly handling a covid patient with severe lung problems who must be placed carefully on his or her stomach. “We just took a patient from a facility 15 minutes from us and right away we were proning, which takes 11 or 12 people do safely. The patient

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Africans are embracing digital media, but they’re wary of the downsides

Editors’ note: Our biweekly Afrobarometer Friday series explores Africans’ views on democracy, governance, quality of life and other critical topics. In Nigeria, thousands have taken to the streets in recent weeks, calling for the abolition of the police’s Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) and other police reforms. On social media, #EndSARS has been a rallying cry for those protesting how the unit has extorted, harassed, illegally detained, tortured and even killed with impunity for decades. This social movement has demonstrated how disenfranchised groups, in this case youths and women, can harness the power of digital media to fight endemic problems like police corruption and brutality. Earlier this year, Ethiopians took to social media after the killing of singer Hachalu Hundessa. While many shared expressions of sadness, others spread speculation and rumors. Some asserted that government agents killed Hachalu as retaliation for his activism on behalf of displaced ethnic Oromo. Others blamed the government of Egypt, reasoning that the country was trying to sow chaos as Ethiopia proceeded with plans to construct a controversial dam on the Nile. Riots followed, leaving as many as 230 dead. These examples highlight the promise and peril of social media in Africa. WhatsApp, Twitter and Facebook are providing new platforms for social mobilization. But they are also making it easier to spread disinformation, rumors and hate speech, sometimes with deadly consequences. New data from Afrobarometer show that the use of digital media (news from the Internet and social media) is growing fast across Africa. But access is uneven, and many Africans are well aware of the pitfalls of getting their information online. Africa has a large digital divide The past decade has seen significant growth in Africans’ use of digital media. Surveys by Afrobarometer, an independent African research network, offer a way to track this growth. On average across 16 countries surveyed in both 2014/2015 and 2019/2020, the proportion of people who said they used either the Internet or social media to get their news at least a few times a week nearly doubled over five years, from 22 percent to 38 percent. But are groups benefiting equally from the spread of digital media? Survey responses show that some traditionally disadvantaged groups — such as rural residents, women and those with primary education or less — are seeing big gains in their regular use of digital media (see Figure 1). But so are already-privileged groups. Between

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As the pandemic tears through California, some counties begin shutdowns

new rules are not as strict as the March order. But the need for another round of severe restrictions this long into the pandemic has left many residents angry and frustrated, especially after recent missteps by the governor and other prominent political leaders up and down the state. Newsom (D) was widely criticized last month after it was revealed that he dined in a partially enclosed room at a restaurant in Napa Valley, which cut against the social distancing guidelines he has implored the state’s residents to follow. That he broke those guidelines to take a meal at a famously upscale French restaurant further galled many who have lost paychecks and made sacrifices because of the pandemic. The governor later apologized, calling it a “bad mistake.” This week, photos from October surfaced of Breed, the San Francisco mayor, dining at the same restaurant on a different night. “This criticism is fair. It doesn’t matter whether something is technically allowed or not--I need to hold myself to a higher standard and I will do better,” she tweeted. In Los Angeles, county supervisor Sheila Kuehl was spotted last week dining outdoors in Santa Monica hours after voting to put a temporary ban on the practice. “The spirit of what I’m preaching all the time was contradicted, and I’ve got to own that, and so I’m going to apologize to you because I need to preach and practice, not just preach and not practice,” Newsom said in a news conference. “I’ve done my best to do that. We’re all human. We all fall short sometimes.” Andrew Noymer, an epidemiologist at the University of California at Irvine, is among the Californians dismayed by Newsom’s decision to share a meal with people from outside his household last month at the French Laundry, a posh Michelin three-star restaurant. “I’ve been cooking my own meals for nine months. So I do think it takes away some of his moral authority to issue strict new public health orders,” Noymer said. But Noymer also pointed out that many people simply refuse to believe the pandemic is a serious public health crisis and are ignoring the mandates on wearing masks and social distancing. “There’s a lot of people who are actively defying the public health orders. They think it’s a hoax,” Noymer said. “There’s a part of the country that’s treating the pandemic as though it’s a conspiracy theory foisted

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Ethiopia’s war in Tigray shows no signs of abating, despite government’s victory claims

NAIROBI — Clashes continued across Ethiopia's Tigray region and humanitarian aid remained paused at its border Friday, despite government claims that military operations had ceased and pledges to allow U.N. agencies access to hundreds of thousands of people who rely on them for food. The conflict exploded a month ago between Ethiopia’s new leader, Abiy Ahmed, a young and reform-minded ex-soldier who won last year’s Nobel Peace Prize, and the country’s old ruling faction: the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, a powerful regional political party that dominated Ethiopian affairs for 27 years until Abiy’s rise. Abiy had begun to dismantle the TPLF’s grip on state institutions, deepening their political rivalry. It spilled into warfare over control of vast amounts of federal military equipment stationed in Tigray, and the TPLF’s decision to go ahead with regional elections despite a government ban amid the pandemic. Abiy has so far rejected international attempts to mediate. Diplomats, aid workers and analysts said in interviews that the war in Tigray, Ethiopia’s northernmost region, was far from over even with government troops in effective control of the region’s main city, Mekele. The fighting has shifted to Tigray’s many craggy mountain ranges — difficult terrain where TPLF leaders and militia hold the advantage of familiarity and have been able to regroup. “We have reports of fighting still going on in many parts of Tigray,” said Saviano Abreu, spokesman for the United Nations’ humanitarian coordination office, adding that security concerns were preventing aid missions from crossing into the region. “We have not, indeed, been able to send personnel or relief items to Tigray [yet].” The TPLF’s leadership remains largely intact despite abandoning Mekele last week. On Thursday, in a message aired on a regional television network, one prominent leader called on supporters to “rise and deploy to battle in tens of thousands.” TPLF officials did not respond to requests for comment and have kept their whereabouts secret. The fighting has prevented a full assessment of what is almost certainly a dire humanitarian crisis. “Those displaced by this conflict are living on borrowed time,” said Nigel Tricks, regional director for the Norwegian Refugee Council. Agencies such as the NRC, International Committee of the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders were not granted access to Tigray in the Wednesday agreement between Addis Ababa and the United Nations. But hundreds of workers from non-U. N. relief groups have been stranded there since

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During the pandemic holidays, be aware of the limits of what the coronavirus tests can do

accurate [negative] result,” said Lauren Kucirka, a resident physician at Johns Hopkins Hospital and lead author of the study. The analysis does have some limitations, with wide confidence intervals that mean the percentages mentioned in the study can vary quite a bit in real life. The study also didn’t look at false negatives among those who never developed symptoms. If you haven’t developed symptoms, it can be particularly difficult to rule out infection. That’s because the tests are designed for symptomatic people, and without symptoms, it’s hard to know how long you’ve had the virus — which means you might be tested too soon or too late after exposure to get an accurate negative. This is particularly important because nearly half of people never develop symptoms, yet they are responsible for the majority of transmissions, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said recently. What’s more, Muge Cevik, a clinical lecturer in infectious diseases and medical virology at the University of St. Andrews, said, “We don’t yet understand exactly when a person who’s infected will start testing positive for the virus. So there are situations when a person could test negative, but they could still be contagious.” Usually, it takes about four to five days after exposure for the viral load to peak and for symptoms to set in, and the viral load is highest for the next five days — which tracks with Kucirka’s finding that this period is the most accurate time for tests. But the most important finding of that study is “there’s never a time that you can rely on it 100 percent” to know whether you’re negative, Kucirka said. Alex Zorach had several common covid-19 symptoms in March — an elevated temperature just shy of a fever, a slight cough, shortness of breath, chest pain. After two days of intense breathing difficulties, Alex drove to the nearest emergency room in Christiana, Del. In the ER, though, a nasopharyngeal swab was negative. The ER doctor said the test result should be treated as a false negative, because all of the symptoms pointed to covid-19. Zorach isolated at home and successfully avoided spreading the virus to colleagues and friends. After months of debilitating symptoms even after a relatively mild illness, Zorach had a simple message: “Be warned, people. If you get a negative test, it doesn’t mean you don’t have it.” Another testing option, antigen tests, which

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In politics, as in sports, if the final score isn’t accepted, the whole game is lost

fixing scandal (exposed quickly) nearly killed baseball, the sport has obsessed on preventing fixes — a team trying to lose a World Series, something vastly easier than finding a way to cheat to win one. Pete Rose, the hit king, was banned for life for gambling on the team he managed — to win. That was enough. Integrity of the game is the third rail. If it’s incredibly hard to throw a title series or cheat to win one, if a face-of-the-sport star can’t get away with gambling on his team to win because so many eyes and so many people’s jobs and interests are aligned with keeping the game clean, then how unfathomably hard, with a massive number of culprits, would it be to orchestrate cheating on a massive scale in a presidential election? Yet the human mind operates in curious ways. We are reasonably good analysts of events that happen in the scale of our own lives — for example, cheating in a game. We can imagine how it might be attempted. But as knowledgeable sports fans, we also know how many levels of cops are built into the fabric of the institution. But human imagination also has limits — different limits for different people. Some subjects seem too vast for many people to believe they can grasp them on their own. They are paralyzed by size and stop trusting their own judgment, just when they should be relying on that common sense most. Yes, a World Series and a presidential election are similar — except in size and importance. America’s whole political system is just as dependent for its viability, for its very life as a democracy, on the credibility of the final score of its elections as sporting events are on the integrity of their final scores. And everyone in politics, just like everyone in sports, knows it. So from inside and outside the system, they are watching and have been watching since the maturation of our modern political enterprise — to spot cheating and fraud, to catch dead voters and duplicate voters, to check and cross-check the accuracy of any machines that might be tampered with. This isn’t new. Each generation improves the methods to watch and catch the other side if it tries to play outside the lines. This isn’t about tactics — some legal, some not — such as voter suppression and redistricting.

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A nurse and her entire family contracted covid-19 under one roof. It started with a ‘selfless’ car ride.

a mother and her three sons in New Orleans. In New Jersey, a 73-year-old mother, three of her 11 children and her sister died of covid-19 complications, according to the New York Times. Burke, who treated covid patients through the first wave of the pandemic in New Jersey, told WPIX that both Matias and her mother’s friend wore masks inside her car, which had the windows down for extra ventilation. But shortly after that car ride, Burke’s mother began exhibiting symptoms. She quarantined in her room with her son, Burke told NorthJersey.com, but both contracted the virus. “We tried to wear masks in the house and did everything we could to keep my father safe,” Burke told the local paper. But one after another, every member of her house fell ill. “This virus is so transmissible,” her husband, Brian, 43, told the paper. “There’s almost no way to stop from spreading it.” Burke’s husband was fortunate enough to suffer a mild case of the virus, with symptoms including fever and fatigue. Mild symptoms were also exhibited by her 29-year-old brother, 20-year-old daughter and 6-year-old son. But not everyone was that lucky. Burke’s mother spent six days at the hospital and is now at home recovering with supplemental oxygen. The same day Matias was discharged, her father’s condition worsened. Bowless was admitted to the hospital after experiencing shortness of breath. He died Nov. 23 after being on a ventilator for a week, NorthJersey.com reported. Burke’s 2-year-old daughter, Elena, who suffers from diabetes, was also taken to the emergency room because of a recurring fever, but she was not admitted. Soon thereafter, Burke was admitted to the hospital, where she was diagnosed with pneumonia and given a mask to increase her oxygen levels. Burke told the local paper that she expects to remain in the hospital for several more days as she is still unable to breathe on her own. Every time she removes her mask, her oxygen levels dip below 80 or 70, she told WPIX. “Right now I feel like everything has been swept from under my feet literally," Burke told CNN’s Lemon on Wednesday. “Something so simple as breathing has become so difficult.” The nurse said her message for those people defying coronavirus restrictions and pushing for businesses to reopen is that you can’t put a price on the lives of loved ones. “Wouldn’t you want to walk away

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The difference in how the pandemic has affected the U.S. and South Korea remains staggering

that drop with a dotted line.) While both the United States and South Korea detected their first cases on Jan. 20, South Korea moved much more quickly to expand testing. You can see it on the chart above, with that little blip in early March. The United States’ slow expansion of testing was in part a function of production problems that contaminated early efforts. We’ve never really caught up to the number of tests conducted by South Korea as a function of cases. In March and November, South Korea conducted about 48 tests for every detected case, the lowest monthly figures the country saw. In the United States, we’ve never conducted more than 22 tests for each confirmed case, according to this data. South Korea has other advantages, too. Its only land border is with North Korea, which is among the most strictly controlled borders in the world. South Korea also had recent experience with a highly contagious respiratory disease, MERS, which helped boost cultural familiarity with wearing face coverings to protect against infections. Part of it, too, has been the response. The government’s effort to track and contain outbreaks has been effective, in part leveraging personal data, which might raise privacy objections in the United States. Its research, though, has offered repeated insights into the nature of the virus. Sociologist Zeynep Tufekci on Friday highlighted a remarkable study from the country that demonstrates how central that airflow is to the likelihood of infections. (You are strongly encouraged to read the full article, incidentally, given its disconcerting revelations about the risks of indoor spaces.) Reading the study, she writes, “is an exercise in what it means to do a study really, really well, with the resources of a government that’s committed to generating useful information.” The consistent link between new coronavirus cases in this country and covid-19-related deaths has meant that the death toll has risen and fallen in sync with new infections. The last time the United States saw fewer recorded covid-19 deaths in one day than did South Korea was Nov. 8. Since April 1, the United States has recorded more deaths in a single day than South Korea has over the course of the pandemic 204 times. Since Jan. 20, 515 Americans have died from covid-19 for every South Korean who has. The population of the United States is less than seven times that of South Korea.

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How athletes built a voter-turnout machine for 2020 and beyond

the faces of those franchises were ready to voice their frustration with the inequality they had witnessed or encountered before and after they reached celebrity status. The groundwork had been laid three years before, when sports executives and voting rights advocates started working toward using athletes and arenas to increase Black turnout. Then a tumultuous 2020 brought a perfect storm of events to initiate change — a president who ignited culture wars to deride athletes and sports leagues; a deadly virus that would require bigger, safer polling places; and a police killing that energized marginalized communities that often approach elections with apathy. The outcome was an election that saw record voter turnout and yet was still decided by close ballot counts in a handful of critical states. Athletes chose not to sit this one out, then witnessed how their competitiveness could translate beyond the field or court — in 2020 and for years to come. “I think people are going to look back on this election as one of those tipping points where players became engaged and, I think, changed the course of events in our country for the better,” said Detroit Pistons vice chairman Arn Tellem, whose franchise used its training facility as a voting place and receiving board for ballots. “I don’t think it’s going to stop here.” The concept of turning massive sporting facilities, many of which are funded with public money, into vehicles to promote democracy goes back to a conversation in the summer of 2017 between former NFL executive Scott Pioli and Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson. Pioli and Benson were working together with the Ross Initiative in Sports for Equality, a coalition of pro teams and college programs set up by Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross to encourage athlete advocacy. Among their shared interests: expanding voting access. As chief executive of the initiative, Benson said she created RISE to Vote to get more athletes to “roll up their sleeves and get more involved in the actual support of elections.” Pioli, then the assistant general manager of the Atlanta Falcons, presented the sports-facilities-as-polling-sites idea during a board meeting, arguing that franchises and universities had a moral obligation to help people who face obstacles to voting, who are more often poor and racial minorities. It wasn’t until a few years later that the concept began to become a necessary strategy. With the Democratic primaries in

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The bubble kept the NBA safe from the coronavirus. The real world will be much tougher.

solution that would more closely resemble a typical season. Rather than hoping for the pandemic to wane or delaying the start of the season to wait for a vaccine, the owners and players sought a plan that would return the league to its normal calendar for the 2021-22 season next fall, when the national health situation should be improved. “The owners wanted their arenas back, and the players wanted their lives back,” said an Eastern Conference executive, who, along with other executives quoted in this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to freely discuss the upcoming season. Indeed, finances and personal freedom were among the chief drivers of the NBA’s plans. In interviews, front-office executives from several teams said their owners wanted to be in position to safely welcome fans back into their buildings as quickly as possible to recoup revenue losses, which they said totaled 10 percent in 2019-20 and could reach 40 percent in 2020-21. Meanwhile, the players had little interest in extending the isolated bubble environment — which restricted access to their families and the outside world — across a full season, especially in light of mental health concerns. With both sides seeking to limit the financial damage to the league, they made several compromises. First, they would rush through an abbreviated offseason and play a truncated 72-game schedule. The regular season and playoffs would take seven months, and the schedule would be split into two parts to account for the possibility of postponed games. Second, they would open the season in December to capitalize on the traditional Christmas showcase and wrap by mid-July to restore the league’s typical summer offseason and to enable players to participate in the Tokyo Olympics. Finally, they would use home arenas rather than a neutral site. Teams would return to cross-country travel, although they would cover fewer total miles by playing consecutive games in the same market when possible. “The goal isn’t zero positive tests [during the season],” an Eastern Conference executive said. “That’s not realistic. The goals are creating safe environments and quickly identifying cases [to prevent uncontrolled spread].” To accomplish those goals, the NBA issued teams a 158-page health and safety protocol that features guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and many of the same rules that governed life at Disney World. One key difference from the bubble is a decentralization of responsibility. In the

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Banned almost everywhere else in Europe, U.S. tourists are finding their way to Croatia

The “Pearl of the Adriatic” had waited 28 years for a direct line to America, and when it arrived, it was historic. Last year, American Airlines began operating three weekly trips between Dubrovnik, Croatia’s seaside vacation hub, and Philadelphia, serving travelers from June until September — at which point it added a fourth trip. According to data from the Croatian National Tourist Board, Americans were the second-most numerous guests in Dubrovnik in 2019, with nearly 160,000 arrivals and more than 442,000 overnight stays. It was yet another record-setting year of overall visitors to the city. Plans for this year were even bigger. “Americans are one of the most desirable guests in Dubrovnik,” said Slavica Grkeš, the owner of Dubrovnik-based Dominium Travel, an agency that does frequent business with Americans. “When on vacation, they are always in a good mood: very interested in getting to know the people and culture they are visiting, and willing to pay for a good experience.” The pandemic, and harsh disappointment, materialized in 2020 instead. As American Airlines grounded its Philadelphia-to-Dubrovnik line indefinitely, tourism in the city cratered to a point not seen since the war of the early 1990s. And in a country like Croatia, which draws one-fifth of its gross domestic profit from tourism, such a drop-off is a hard blow. But Americans, even without a direct flight, have softened it. “This summer I guided around 20 tours — not a lot, really — but the majority of my guests were Americans,” said Tomislav Matana, a longtime Dubrovnik tour guide. “They all had a big will and desire to come to Croatia. And although it was [anything] but simple for them to come to Croatia and Dubrovnik, they all say that it was worth it.” Croatia, which closed itself off early in the spring to keep coronavirus infections low, hit zero reported cases within its borders in May and reopened to visitors from all countries in July, with testing requirements in place. The move made Croatia the only nation in the European Union to accept travelers from the United States. That continental distinction has not changed, even as Croatia’s cases have risen and as it implemented a partial national shutdown last week that included closing bars and restaurants and banning weddings through Christmas. A largely seasonal location, Dubrovnik expects fewer visitors this time of year anyhow. But the closures have made Americans’ warmer-weather spending

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Nursing home staffers attended a 300-person superspreader wedding. Now six residents have died.

a wedding in a small Maine town with about 65 guests sparked an outbreak resulting in nearly 200 infections. Six residents of an assisted-living facility who did not attend the party died of covid-19 complications after being infected in the outbreak, the state’s CDC director later announced. The continued fallout from the Washington state wedding comes as cases continue to surge across the state, which saw reported covid hospitalizations increase by about 20 percent in the past week, according to data collected by The Post. During that same seven-day period, Washington’s new daily reported deaths rose by about 167 percent. The wedding, which according to local authorities took place at a private location near Ritzville on Nov. 7, attracted guests from multiple communities, making it difficult for the Grant County Health District to track all attendees. A little over a week later, local authorities announced the scale of the event and the outbreaks, asking attendees to get tested for the coronavirus and quarantine for two weeks. “Your choice to gather with those outside your household could lead to additional cases of COVID-19 and even death,” the Dec. 3 statement read. “Please protect those you love, by staying home.” Last week, the health district determined “long term care staff” from two nursing homes had also attended the wedding and later tested positive for the coronavirus; it’s not clear how many staffers were infected. Six residents have now died of covid-19 at the Lake Ridge Center and Columbia Crest Center, both in Moses Lake, according to the department’s news release. Neither facility immediately responded to a message from The Post as of early Monday. Two unidentified men — one in his 70s, another in his 80s — and two men in their 90s, died at Lake Ridge Center, the department said. At Columbia Crest Center, one man in his 70s and another in his 80s died. All men suffered from underlying conditions. The department will have to do more investigating to definitively link the deaths to the wedding, Adkinson said, noting officials for now “can not state that all these deaths are [directly] associated with the wedding because staff care for all residents.” A month after the Washington state wedding, the department is still urging state residents to stay home “as much as possible” to save the lives of the elderly as well as those with underlying and chronic conditions. “Our most

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The Health 202: Xavier Becerra has been defending the ACA in court. Now he could manage it.

group of biotechnology industry trade organizations, including Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO), in federal courts in Maryland and California, respectively,” Reuters’s Carl O’Donnell and Michael Erman report. The Trump administration’s “most favored nation” rule says that the U.S. government won’t pay drugmakers more for certain drugs than the lowest rate that they charge other comparatively wealthy countries in Europe or elsewhere. The rule, which is slated to go into effect on Jan. 1, would affect the price of 50 drugs. Both lawsuits claim that the Trump administration did not follow proper procedures in passing the rule. PhRMA’s lawsuit also claims that the rule change is illegal because it goes beyond the administration’s authority to test out new drug pricing models. The Association of Community Cancer Centers, a network of cancer treatment providers, joined PhRMA’s lawsuit over concerns that lower reimbursements for drugs could push some treatment centers out of business. “The measure is not expected to pass into law, and, because of political skittishness, it was voted on only after the November election and more than a year after it emerged from committee,” The Post’s Mike DeBonis reports. “But the House took a stand at a moment of increasing momentum, with voters last month opting to liberalize marijuana laws in five states — including three that President Trump won handily.” The bill would remove marijuana from the federal schedule of controlled substances and expunge federal convictions for nonviolent marijuana offenses. It also would put in place a 5 percent federal tax on marijuana sales aimed at funding programs for people “adversely impacted by the War on Drugs.” The bill passed largely along party lines with opposition from all but five Republicans and is not expected to advance in the Republican-controlled Senate. Republicans denounced Democrats for spending time on what they portrayed as a frivolous political gesture amid negotiations over a coronavirus relief package. House Minority Leader “Still, advocates of marijuana legalization say the passage of the bill in the House is a watershed moment in the long struggle to roll back marijuana prohibition, and many see it as only a matter of time before it becomes an issue of bipartisan concern.” While support for eliminating marijuana restrictions is isolated to a small number of Republican lawmakers, about half of GOP voters support legalization. At least 15 states have legalized recreational cannabis to some degree, while 36 have approved medical marijuana programs.

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Brexit negotiators ‘very gloomy’ over trade deal, with talks on ‘knife’s edge.’ Again.

the E.U. capital, later this week to try to close a deal. If they fail, Britain and Europe could soon see new customs duties, tariffs, border checks and quotas on goods — and an ignominious end to decades of free, frictionless trade. Britain crashing out without a deal could also undermine the open, invisible border between the Republic of Ireland, a member of the E.U., and Northern Ireland, a part of the United Kingdom. President-elect Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) have both warned Johnson not to do anything that could force a hard border to return to the island. But the specific sticking points of the talks appear far more narrow. The two sides are arguing over European access to fish in British waters, an emotional issue that taps into issues of sovereignty, even though the fisheries sector accounts for a tiny fraction of Britain’s gross domestic product. There have been proposals to slowly reduce the number of European fishing trawlers in British seas. Should the phaseout be three years (a British proposal) or 10 years (a French proposal)? Stay tuned. The Europeans, too, are pressing to maintain a “level playing field,” to stop Britain from undercutting worker protections and environmental safeguards, or granting state subsidies to British businesses, potentially giving U.K. companies unfair advantages over their European competitors. Meanwhile, the Johnson government on Monday pushed its controversial Internal Markets Bill through the House of Commons. The legislation is supposedly designed as a safety net to protect trade among England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. But its provisions break international law by reversing the original Brexit treaty signed last year. On Monday, the government offered an olive branch, saying it would ditch the controversial clauses in the bill if the two sides reach an agreement. Ireland’s foreign secretary, Simon Coveney, described the overall mood as “very gloomy.” The Irish minister told his state broadcaster, RTÉ, “I’d like to be giving more positive news, but, at the moment, these negotiations seem stalled, and the barriers to progress are still very much in place.” The British Foreign Office was a little less glum. Minister James Cleverly told the BBC the U.K. would keep negotiating “for as long as we have available time or until we get an agreement.” He said negotiations “often go to the last minute of the last day.” “We are a global player. We are one

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The Daily 202: Xavier Becerra’s bet pays off as Biden picks him for HHS secretary

are either unaware or unbothered by the alarming health warnings. While many European countries opted for lockdowns in November to bring down soaring numbers, Germany opted for a “lockdown light," allowing hair salons and most businesses and retail to remain open. These restrictions will be loosened in much of the country over the holiday week. But, as cases in countries like France and Belgium start to drop, Germany‘s number of daily cases has barely budged, hovering at around 20,000 per day, Loveday Morris reports. Eight years after Mexican journalist Regina Martínez, who reported on corruption and cartels in her home state of Veracruz, was murdered in her home, a team of reporters from Mexico, Europe and The Washington Post picked up where she left off. The team continued her investigations into two Veracruz governors — Fidel Herrera and Javier Duarte — and examined her homicide inquiry. The team of reporters discovered that law enforcement authorities in Mexico, the United States and Spain had opened inquiries into allegations that Herrera colluded with leaders of the Zeta cartel while he was governor and took money from them for his campaign. The story of Martinez's death and work will be published in five parts by Forbidden Stories and its partners. (Dana Priest, Paloma de Dinechin, Nina Lakhani and Veronica Espinosa) A new agreement struck with Chinese officials grants a three-year extension to the stay of the adult giant pandas, Mei Xiang, a female, and Tian Tian, a male, who have been at the zoo for 20 years. But they and their 4-month-old cub, Xiao Qi Ji, a male, are to go to China by the end of the extension on Dec. 8, 2023. “The agreement means the zoo and the adoring public will have the popular black and white animals for three more years. But it leaves the future of the National Zoo’s almost 50-year giant panda program unsettled,” Michael Ruane reports. A Republican state representative in Florida mocked those who worry about a surge in covid cases, but at least 1 in 33 people who live in his county have been infected And this may be the perfect Christmas tree ornament for this terrible year: “Saturday Night Live” tried to help millennials explain to their parents why they can’t come home for the holidays: For quite a crossover episode, Steve Kornacki brought his magic wall to look at the NFL’s playoff picture: