Category: Corona Virus

Workers at the joint-venture Dongfeng Honda in Wuhan, in Chinas Hubei province, eat lunch while sitting 1.5 meters away from each other.

By Dennis NormileMar. 29, 2020 , 1:00 PM

Sciences COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Pulitzer Center.

Life is almost back to normal in much of China. Shops, restaurants, bars, and offices are open for business. Manufacturing activity is picking up. Traffic once again jams the highways of major cities. Three-quarters of Chinas workforce was back on the job as of 24 March, according to one companys estimate. Wuhan, where the COVID-19 pandemic originated, is lagging, as is the rest of Hubei provincebut even there, the lockdown is set to lift 8 April.

China has done what few believed was possible: Bring a blazing epidemic of a respiratory virus to a virtual standstill. On 18 March, the country reported zero locally transmitted cases of COVID-19 for the first time. Since then, only six of such infections have been reported, only one of them in Wuhan. Now, the key question is: Can China keep it that way?

Public health officials worldwide are watching closely. China is addressing an issue every country and location in the world will eventually face: how to normalize and restore societal activities, while at the same time minimizing disease-related dangers from the outbreak, says epidemiologist Keiji Fukuda of the University of Hong Kong (HKU).

New infections now mostly come from outside: More than 500 cases have been confirmed in incoming air passengers since 18 March. At midnight on Friday, China banned virtually all foreigners from entering the country and required all returning Chinese to be quarantined for 2 weeks, whether coming by air or over land. But there is still danger within the country, as well. The smattering of locally transmitted cases shows severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) isnt entirely gone. And the very low case numbers may be deceptive. In its tally, Chinas National Health Commission does not include people who test positive for the virus but have no symptoms, and local authorities are reportedly suppressing information on new infections to meet the target of zero local cases.

Still, I believe that there are few local cases, says HKU epidemiologist Ben Cowling. But with most of the population still susceptible to infection, fresh outbreaks remain a constant danger.How to balance getting back to work and a normal state versus maintaining the current status [of few new cases] is certainly critical, says Ding Sheng, director of the Global Health Drug Discovery Institute and dean of the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Tsinghua University.

Officials are relaxing restrictions very slowly and methodically, Ding says. Many restaurants at first reopened with shortened hours and for a limited number of customers; now, doors are open to all. Primary and secondary schools in several provinces have reopened, but only in communities free of the disease, and schools must check students temperatures and watch for symptoms. Universities, where students from around the country mix, remain closed, with classes taught online. Events that draw crowds are still banned or discouraged. Live music venues and gyms in many cities remain closed. There are temperature checks at subway entrances and factory gates.

A number of local governments had allowed cinemas to reopen, but last week the national government decided it was too early and closed all theaters for the time being. And habits developed during the epidemic persist. Face masks are ubiquitous. People keep their distance in public and at work. Millions continue to work from home.

To guard against flare-ups, investigators trace and quarantine close contacts of every newly confirmed COVID-19 case, including those who may be asymptomatic, Wu Zunyou, an epidemiologist at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC), told the communist party newspaper China Daily earlier this week. In another precaution, everyone visiting fever clinics in Beijing and other major cities is now tested for the virus. And many provinces check the health status of migrant workers and others crossing their borders. Any new transmission will be identified quickly and controlled swiftly, Ding says.

Fridays travel banwhich the government implemented even though it strenuously objected when the United States banned visitors from China in Januaryaddresses the other main risk: reintroduction of the virus from the rest of the world. Flights into China have also been severely curtailed. Chinese citizens who arrive undergo strict screening en route and upon arrival and go into quarantine for 2 weeks.

A European academic who returned to China 1 week before the ban took effect described the process to Science. His temperature was taken twice during the flight and he filled out a form detailing his recent whereabouts, the health status of family members and colleagues, and his use of medications. Another temperature check followed at the Beijing airport, after which the scholarwho asked not to be identifiedwas escorted to his own apartment for a 14-day quarantine. A community official pasted a quarantine notice across the door jamb, which was removed and replaced for grocery deliveries. Authorities ordered him to a quarantine hotel 3 days later, after a fellow passenger on the plane turned positive for COVID-19. The academic remains very understanding, and says he was treated well. (He says he also got a lot of work done on COVID-19related economic studies.)

China is addressing an issue every country and location in the world will eventually face: how to normalize and restore societal activities, while at the same time minimizing disease-related dangers from the outbreak.

Chinas strategy seems to have been effective thus far in preventing a resurgence, says Benjamin Anderson, an epidemiologist at Duke Kunshan University. But with the virus now circulating around the world, repeated importations to China will inevitably lead to local transmission, Cowling says. Authorities will need to get on top of the cases very quickly, he says, in a game of whack-a-mole. Remaining pockets of local infection could be a problem as well, says Ira Longini, a disease modeler at the University of Florida. The models say the disease will come back once the restrictions are lifted. I hope thats not correct, but I cant imagine why it wouldnt be, Longini says.

Much is at stake. Economists predict Chinas gross domestic product may shrink 10% in the first quarter of this year, the worst contraction since 1976. With Europe and the United States wrestling with their own epidemics, demand for Chinas manufactured goods has collapsedaside from masks and medical equipment and supplies. Recurring COVID-19 outbreaks in China would compoundthe damage.

The Chinese strategy is aimed at buying time until a vaccine or drugs are available,says George Gao, director ofChina CDC. A group led by Chen Wei of the Academy of Military Medical Sciences has already started a phase I study of a candidate vaccine, according to China Daily. Trials are expected to last at least through the end of this year. Dozens of other vaccine studies are underway around the world.

Ding, who lived in Beijing through the worst of the crisis, believes China can keep its guard up until these efforts bear fruit. Although minor flare-ups could happen any time, he says, a large-scale reemergence of COVID-19 is very unlikely given what we have learned.

With reporting by Jon Cohen, Martin Enserink, and Bian Huihui.

See the article here:

Can China return to normalcy while keeping the coronavirus in check? - Science Magazine

The US is a land divided. Americans have sorted themselves into opposing factions, with different values, sources of authority, and shared understandings. In some ways, there is no longer any meaningful US public, but rather two publics that want and believe different things.

The current state of deep polarization in the US is the subject of a great deal of discussion and research right now, including in an excellent new book by my colleague Ezra Klein. One aspect of it that I have highlighted in a number of posts (start here) is what I call Americas epistemic crisis. Epistemology is the branch of philosophy having to do with knowledge and how we come to know things; the crisis is that, as a polity, we have become incapable of learning or knowing the same things, and thus, incapable of acting together in a coherent fashion.

I have been wondering when that epistemic crisis might spiral out into a full-fledged political crisis. I wondered if it might happen around the Mueller investigation, or when Trump sent 5,000 troops to the southern border to stop a phantom migrant invasion, or when Trump was impeached.

Now the Covid-19 crisis has me wondering again. A new bit of research from three leading political scientists shows pretty convincingly that, in the face of the pandemic, Republicans and Democrats are once again hearing different things, forming different understandings, and reacting in different ways.

But this time, the epistemic gap could have devastating public health consequences.

Voxs Zack Beauchamp, drawing on the work of Tufts University political scientist Brian Schaffner, has written about how partisanship shaped the response to Covid-19 from the very beginning, with Republicans expressing more skepticism and taking fewer precautions, largely following the cues of their political and media leaders (as most people do). Emily Badger and Kevin Quealy at the New York Times recently analyzed data from some similar polls and surveys, finding a wide but closing partisan gap in views.

While suggestive, research thus far cannot precisely isolate partisanships influence from competing explanations like geography, age, or exposure to the virus.

Shana Kushner Gadarian, Sara Wallace Goodman, and Thomas Pepinsky political scientists at Syracuse University, UC Irvine, and Cornell respectively have just released the results of a survey of 3,000 Americans on a wide range of health behaviors, attitudes, and opinions about how to respond to the crisis. (The survey was done March 20-23, a week after the initial declaration of emergency.) Their survey design has allowed them to isolate the effects of different variables on attitudes and behaviors.

Heres how they summarize the results:

Our results collectively describe a broad political divide in reaction to COVID-19: Republicans are less likely than Democrats to report responding with CDC-recommended behavior, and are less concerned about the pandemic, yet are more likely to support policies that restrict trade and movement across borders as a response to it. Democrats, by contrast, have responded by changing their personal health behaviors, and supporting policies that socialize the costs of testing and treatment. Partisanship is a more consistent predictor of behaviors, attitudes, and preferences than anything else that we measure. [emphasis added]

Partisanship shapes everything, even direct experience. What we find is that even when you account for the zip codes people live in, i.e., their actual level of exposure to the disease, Gadarian told me, partisanship still matters. Democrats are more likely than Republicans to wash their hands more often, avoid contact with others, and self-quarantine, more likely to support increased social spending, more likely to worry about getting themselves and others sick, and more convinced that normal life must be temporarily suspended.

Just about the only virus responses that Republicans support more than Democrats are restrictions on movement (closing borders) and trade tariffs policies they support regardless of circumstance.

Disagreements about the wisdom of hand-washing and social distancing are not mere differences of political opinion. They are differences about matters of epidemiology. And in disregarding the reports and recommendations of experts, and trusting Trump and right-wing media instead, Republicans are putting not only themselves but everyone at greater risk.

The spread of a virus can only be stopped by concerted collective action. If a large bloc of the public cannot be convinced of the threat or the need for a response, that bloc can prevent collective action all on its own. It can ensure the virus spreads faster and more widely, no matter what the majority does.

And that, more or less, is what is happening. Americas epistemic crisis is having a direct impact on public health.

This is one survey, a snapshot, so it cannot measure how opinion may be changing. We will do more surveys going forward that track the same respondents, says Pepinsky, and these will allow us to test very conclusively if partisan differences dissipate over time.

In the meantime, surveys up to mid-March analyzed by the New York Times suggest that concern over the virus is rising among Republicans, as do surveys from the Pew Research Center.

One explanation of this shift is that the influence of partisanship, its ability to shelter conservatives from the truth, is waning as the crisis becomes more severe. While the effects of partisanship are incredibly pronounced, Schaffner told the Times, I think they also hit their limits.

Gadarian says that once people become anxious about an issue, they act very similarly in their behaviors and attitudes. In a series of experiments with Bethany Albertson (a political scientist at UT Austin) around the time of the H1N1 scare, they divided students into those who were more and less worried about the virus. The worried group was more likely to trust in health experts to give them information about H1N1, she says, and were slightly more likely to take a hand sanitizer versus a pen on their way out of the lab.

So its at least possible that, as the Covid-19 crisis grows more severe and people become more anxious about it, Republicans will start listening to Dr. Anthony Fauci and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and will continue to do so going forward, mitigating the damage their irresponsible behavior has already done to public health.

At the risk of being predictable, let me offer a more pessimistic prediction.

Since Covid-19 came on the scene, Americans getting their news from mainstream sources have heard that:

Meanwhile, Republicans who, as a landmark 2017 Harvard study of media consumption found, get their information from a small cluster of ideologically extreme sources, now including the president have heard that:

Republican concern about the virus is increasing, but theres an alternate explanation: The right-wing base is still listening exclusively to conservative political and media elites; its just that those elites have now decided that it is in their best interests to begin acknowledging the threat.

In late March, according to the New York Times, Trump was finally convinced that the data on the coming death toll could not be bent to his will, so he begrudgingly extended social distancing measures through April 30. It wont be long before conservative media is echoing his claim that 100,000 or more US deaths from Covid-19 would be an indicator of his success.

While conservative elites may have changed their tune about the existence and severity of the crisis, they have not ceased searching for a scapegoat against which to turn their credulous followers. Trump and his allies are still blaming the media, blaming China, and blaming Democratic governors. Trump has also floated the idea that New York is spreading the virus and should be isolated.

The details of the dangerous myths being fed to the conservative base are changing, but they are still being fed dangerous myths. They are still disregarding experts and following shifting narratives built around venerating Trump and shielding him from accountability. As they come to believe those myths and act on them, the anti-social nature of their behavior will not be quite so self-evident as their failure to wash their hands, but it will still be anti-social.

Progressive reformers tend to cling to the myth that a sufficiently dramatic shock or disaster will have the effect of dispelling misinformation and propaganda, like a mighty wind blowing dust from all the lenses. I hear it around climate change all the time, the notion that people will wake up to the threat when there is a bad enough storm, or a series of storms.

And Ive heard it about the epistemic crisis again and again. Surely the Iraq War is a big enough disaster to puncture the bubble. Surely the botched response to Katrina. Surely the Great Recession. Surely 10 fruitless investigations of Benghazi. Surely Trumps impeachment. It never happens.

People forget, but the response to H1N1 flu in 2009 was also split along partisan lines it was visible in vaccination rates. So was the response to Ebola in 2014. Conservative political and media elites were spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories then, too. Its just that they werent in charge, so their ability to amplify their message and do real harm to public health was limited.

Now they are running things, spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories live on primetime TV every night, leading the US into a historic catastrophe in which more Americans have already died than died on 9/11. And the death toll seems fated to rise for the foreseeable future.

The epistemic crisis has been underway for many years now. It was inevitable that it would spill over into a full-fledged political and health crisis. If it were not clear before, it has become unmistakably clear now: Right-wing misinformation is a direct and immediate threat to the American public.

Continued here:

Coronavirus in US: Partisanship is the strongest predictor of public response - Vox.com

SEOUL, South Korea Shin Dong-yun, a scientist from the North Korean Institute of Virology, rushed to the northwestern border with China in early February. There, he conducted 300 tests, skipping meals to assess a stream of people so that the country is protected from the invasion of the novel coronavirus.

Stories like this, carried in the state-run newspaper Rodong Sinmun, focus attention on one of the stranger oddities surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic: How could North Korea claim to not have a single coronavirus case while countries around the world stagger under the exploding epidemic?

North Korea has taken some of the most drastic actions against the virus and did so sooner than most other nations. It sealed its borders in late January, shutting off business with neighboring China, which accounts for nine-tenths of its external trade. It clamped down on the smugglers who keep its thriving unofficial markets functioning. It quarantined all diplomats in Pyongyang for a month. The totalitarian states singular ability to control the movement of people also bolsters its disease-control efforts.

But decades of isolation and international sanctions have ravaged North Koreas public health system, raising concerns that it lacks the medical supplies to fight an outbreak, which many fear has already occurred.

You can see immediately whats going to happen if you get a surge of Covid-19 patients streaming in, said Dr. Kee B. Park, a lecturer at Harvard Medical School who has worked alongside North Korean doctors to help improve the countrys health system. It will overwhelm the system very quickly.

Many observers of North Korea doubt its claims of not having any coronavirus cases. But a lack of testing equipment may mean it literally has not detected a single case, Dr. Park said.

Its because they may have cases but they just dont know how to detect it, he said. So they can say, We have not confirmed it.

Some accuse North Korea of hiding an outbreak to preserve order.

Its a blatant lie when they say they have no cases, said Seo Jae-pyoung, secretary-general of the Seoul-based Association of North Korean Defectors, who said he heard from his North Korean contact that a family of three and an elderly couple died of the virus in the east coast city of Chongjin in mid-March. The last thing the North wants is a social chaos that may erupt when North Koreans realize that people are dying of an epidemic with no cure.

The Norths leader, Kim Jong-un, is clearly aware of the threat the virus poses to his countrys decrepit health system. Around when Washington announced on Feb. 13 that it would allow coronavirus-related humanitarian shipments, North Korea made a rare request for urgent help from relief groups, including diagnostic kits, according to people familiar with the matter.

In recent weeks, the Norths official media outlets have carried alarming reports detailing the coronaviruss toll around the world: a snowballing caseload in South Korea; bodies piling up in Italy; panicked citizens hoarding guns and ammunition in the United States.

They contrast such reports with pictures of North Korean disease-control officials in full protective gear spraying disinfectant in buses, trams, playgrounds and hotel gyms in Pyongyang, the showcase capital city. Garment factories are shown making masks instead of clothes. There is a national drive to send eggs, meat and fish to those under quarantine.

By its own account, North Korea has quarantined 10,000 people. International disease-control officials have all been amazed how North Korea could have done it, the state-run Rodong newspaper said this month.

But video clips shot in Hyesan, a town on the Norths central border with China, in February and early March depict a far less flattering picture of the Norths disease-control efforts.

A red wooden marker on a sidewalk covered with a dirty slush of ice said disinfection station, according to a clip, which was smuggled to the Rev. Kim Seung-eun, a human rights activist in South Korea, and viewed by The New York Times. A lone official in a green plastic suit with a tank of disinfecting liquid on his back stood idly. A silver van raced through the town blaring the importance of wearing masks. In another clip, a sign saying Quarantined was stuck on the door of what looked like a tenement house where Reverend Kim said people with possible symptoms were kept.

Reverend Kim said one of his North Korean contacts had been unable to return home for a month after visiting another town because the government controlled internal movement. Such restrictions were needed for disease control because of North Koreas crowded public transportation network.

The countrys information blackout and the inability of outside health experts to get into the country leave the rest of the world largely in the dark about how North Korea is coping with the virus.

Last month, Daily NK, a Seoul-based website that hires anonymous informants inside the North, reported the deaths of 200 soldiers, as well as 23 others, who were suspected of contracting the coronavirus. But Kang Mi-jin, a North Korean defector-turned journalist in Seoul, said that no matter how hard they searched, her contacts in the North could not find a death officially ascribed to the coronavirus.

In the past, the country has hushed or played down epidemics, military rebellions, man-made disasters or anything else that could undermine the peoples faith in the government.

But this time, the Norths unusually aggressive moves, as well as its unique ability to detain people, may have prevented a devastating outbreak, said Jung Gwang-il, a North Korean defector who leads No Chain, a North Korean human rights activist group in Seoul. As soon as an outbreak was reported in China, North Korea rounded up all Chinese visitors in its northeastern town of Rason and quarantined them on an island for a month, Mr. Jung said.

Its safe to say that there are cases in North Korea, but I dont think the outbreak there is as large as the ones we have seen in South Korea, Italy and the U.S., said Ahn Kyung-su, the head of the Seoul-based Research Center of DPRK Health and Welfare, which monitors the Norths health system. North Koreans are trained to obey government orders in a shipshape way during crises. But there is the risk of the virus running out of control if it starts spreading among its malnourished people.

Mr. Ahn said testing kits from China were available in big cities like Pyongyang. Telltale evidence came when Kim Jong-un inspected a missile test this month and military officers surrounding him did not wear masks, which Mr. Ahn said would not have happened had they not tested negative.

But the coronavirus has put Mr. Kim between a rock and a hard place, analysts say.

On March 17, he broke ground on a modern Pyongyang General Hospital to be completed by October. But such projects in the North rely on mass mobilizations of soldiers who sleep and eat together for months at a stretch, and raise the risk of mass infections during an epidemic.

By this month, some help began reaching North Korea in its efforts to confront the virus. Russia donated 1,500 test kits. China is also believed to have sent diagnostic tools. The United Nations has begun waiving sanctions for aid groups like the Red Cross to ship testing machines and diagnostic kits, as well as ventilators and protective equipment. But the shipments have been slow.

Given the global shortage of supplies and items being available in different locations, we are still in the process of procuring the items, said Ellie Van Baaren, a Red Cross spokeswoman.

Read the original here:

North Korea Claims No Coronavirus Cases. Can It Be Trusted? - The New York Times

Consumer spending is 70 percent of GDP, said Torsten Slok, chief international economist at Deutsche Bank Securities. An important part of what drives your and my consumer spending is your wealth and whether you have a job.

The decline was not as bad as some economists were expecting consumers were surveyed between March 1 and March 18 but with more than 3 million people joining the unemployment ranks in just one week this month, that number is sure to drop much further.

The survey period is almost entirely before the shutdowns/mass layoffs began, said Megan Greene, an economist at Harvard Kennedy School. I would also expect the next set of consumer confidence numbers to be a whole lot worse.

Consumer confidence was consistently one of the bright spots in the U.S. economy under Trump before the pandemic hit; even when business investment shrank and the manufacturing entered a recession, healthy spending by Americans helped drive unemployment down to lows not seen since the 1960s.

That confidence could be difficult to recover, depending on the effectiveness of the relief measures pursued by Congress and the administration, economists say.

Continued here:

Coronavirus hits the economy where it hurts: Consumer confidence - POLITICO

Some senators had wanted to put a provision in the coronavirus bill to protect patients from surprise out-of-network billing either a broad clause or one specifically related to coronavirus care. Lobbyists for hospitals, physician staffing firms and air ambulances apparently helped ensure it stayed out of the final version. They played what a person familiar with the negotiations, who spoke on condition of anonymity, called the Covid card: How could you possibly ask us to deal with surprise billing when were trying to battle this pandemic?

Even without an E.R. visit, there are perilous billing risks. Not all hospitals and labs are capable of performing the test. And what if my in-network doctor sends my coronavirus test to an out-of-network lab? Before the pandemic, the Kaiser Health News-NPR Bill of the Month Project produced a feature about Alexa Kasdan, a New Yorker with a head cold, whose throat swab was sent to an out-of-network lab that billed more than $28,000 for testing.

Even patients who do not contract the coronavirus are at a higher risk of incurring a surprise medical bill during the current crisis, when an unrelated health emergency could land you in an unfamiliar, out-of-network hospital because your hospital is too full with Covid-19 patients.

The coronavirus bills passed so far and those on the table offer inadequate protection from a system primed to bill patients for all kinds of costs. The Families First Coronavirus Response Act, passed this month, says that the test and its related charges will be covered with no patient charge only to the extent that they are related to administering the test or evaluating whether a patient needs it.

That leaves hospital billers and coders wide berth. Mr. Cencini went to the E.R. to get a test, as he was instructed to do. When he called to protest his $1,622.52 for hospital charges (his insurers discounted rate from over $2,500 in the hospitals billed charges), a patient representative confirmed that the E.R. visit and other services performed would be eligible for cost-sharing (in his case, all of it, since hed not met his deductible).

This weekend he was notified that the physician charge from Emergency Care Services of New York was $1,166. Though covered by his insurance, he owes another $321 for that, bringing his out-of-pocket costs to nearly $2,000.

By the way, his test came back negative.

When he got off the phone with his insurer, his blood was at the boiling point, he told us. My retirement account is tanking and Im expected to pay for this?

The coronavirus aid package provides a stimulus payment of $1,200 per person for most adults. Thanks to the billing proclivities of the American health care system, that will not offset Mr. Cencinis medical bills.

Elisabeth Rosenthal, a former New York Times correspondent, is the editor in chief of Kaiser Health News, the author of An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back and a contributing Opinion writer. Emmarie Huetteman is a correspondent at Kaiser Health News.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. Wed like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And heres our email: letters@nytimes.com.

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He Got Tested for Coronavirus. Then Came the Flood of Medical Bills. - The New York Times

So what has happened? Well, several different things. From the Wuhan outbreak through somewhere in mid-February, the responses to the coronavirus did seem to correspond very roughly to theories of conservative and liberal psychology. Along with infectious-disease specialists, the people who seemed most alarmed by the virus included the inhabitants of Weird Right-Wing Twitter (a collection of mordant, mostly anonymous accounts interested in civilizational decline), various Silicon Valley eccentrics, plus original-MAGA figures like Mike Cernovich and Steve Bannon. (The radio host Michael Savage, often considered the most extreme of the rights talkers, was also an early alarmist.)

Meanwhile, liberal officialdom and its media appendages were more likely to play down the threat, out of fear of giving aid and comfort to sinophobia or populism. This period was the high-water mark of its just the flu reassurances in liberal outlets, of pious critiques of Donald Trumps travel restrictions, of deceptive public-health propaganda about how masks dont work, of lectures from the head of the World Health Organization about how the greatest enemy we face is not the virus itself; its the stigma that turns us against each other.

But then, somewhere in February, the dynamic shifted. As the disease spread and the debate went mainstream, liberal opinion mostly abandoned its anti-quarantine posture and swung toward a reasonable panic, while conservative opinion divided, with a large portion of the right following the lead of Trump himself, who spent crucial weeks trying to wish the crisis away. Where figures like Bannon and Cernovich manifested a conservatism attuned to external perils, figures like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity manifested a conservatism of tribal denial, owning the libs by minimizing the coronavirus threat.

Now we are in a third phase, where Trump is (more or less, depending on the day) on board with a robust response and most conservatives have joined most liberals in alarm. Polls show a minimal partisan divide in support for social distancing and lockdowns, and some of that minimal divide is explained by the fact that rural areas are thus far less likely to face outbreaks. (You dont need a complicated theory of the ideological mind to explain why New Yorkers are more freaked out than Nebraskans.)

But even now, there remains a current of conservative opinion that wants to believe that all of this is overblown, that the experts are wrong about the likely death toll, that Trump should reopen everything as soon as possible, that the liberal media just wants to crash the American economy to take his presidency down.

Read more from the original source:

The Coronavirus and the Conservative Mind - The New York Times

But there was a voice of caution:

Not to rain on the parade, but P/F is also much more institutionally OK at MIT (all first year classes are P/F, to allow people to acclimate to college). So Im not saying its impossible to do, could be HUGE for the program, but also the institutional view on P/F is very different.

Another Chicago student brought up the problem of students who really did need the grades they expected to earn.

Some students might have low GPAs that theyre looking to increase, which they wouldnt be able to do under a P/F policy something to keep in mind.

A third student interjected that in these extraordinary times, professors might be more flexible than usual:

I strongly suspect it wont be hard to get Profs who just give wall to wall As in the spring ? Probably not in certain departments (we all know who Im talking about), but I genuinely think its likely most Professors are more willing to grade inflate everyone.

Tellingly, there is a precedent for that last students theory.

Patrick Healy, then a reporter with The Boston Globe and now the editor of the politics desk of The New York Times, wrote a story in 2001 recounting how some historians trace grade inflation at Harvard to the War in Vietnam.

Students realized they needed evidence to show they werent just messing around in college to avoid the draft, George Flynn, a historian and author of The Draft, 1940-1973, told Mr. Healy.

The war just set off inflation at Harvard, Henry Rosovsky, who joined the economics faculty in 1965, was quoted as saying. Professors gave higher grades to protect them.

In case you were wondering, N.Y.U. Law announced last Wednesday that it was adopting a Credit/Fail grading policy for all Spring 2020 semester courses. The announcement to students admitted that the policy could come at a cost to incentives and fairness, and urged everyone to try to mitigate those. The announcement read:

Where students are aware that they will receive the same credit for a course almost regardless of their performance, they may not invest significant effort in their work. This is particularly so when a health crisis places other demands on their time and attention. In adopting this shift in grading policy, the Law School faculty are counting on everyone in our community to encourage participation of students who might be disengaged.

The University of Chicago has yet to announce any changes.

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The Human Stories of the Coronavirus Pandemic - The New York Times

michael barbaro

From The New York Times, Im Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily.

Today: As the pandemic quickly spreads across the U.S., hundreds of hospitals are now confronting their first serious cases of the coronavirus. Susan Dominus on the lessons from the first confirmed case in New Jersey.

Its Monday, March 30.

Sue, tell me how you first heard about James Cai.

Well, a few weeks ago I heard about this young guy, a 32-year-old physician assistant, who was the very first patient in all of New Jersey to test positive for Covid-19.

And so I reached out to him while he was still at the hospital. And I was sort of wondering, would it possibly be OK, could you maybe find some time to talk? And he said, sure, call me now. Im in isolation, in other words, and I have time.

Hello? [COUGHING]

Are you there?

Yes. [COUGHING]

OK.

And what was the story that he told you?

So James lives and works in New York City.

So my name is James Cai, and Im a physician assistant.

And his mother and grandfather live in New Jersey, and so he spends quite a bit of time there as well.

And I work as a primary care, urgent care and nursing home P.A.

He came to this country when he was about 16 from Shanghai. And hes married and has a 20-month-old daughter, whom he adores.

Why did you go into medicine in the first place? Why were you drawn to medicine?

Oh, because of my grandparents. They are doctors. My grandfather is an anesthesiologist in Shanghai. And when I was young, I always sick, so I always went to his hospital. So I had a good impression.

And as someone working in the medical field, was James expecting to interact with this epidemic, the coronavirus? Was he maybe even thinking he would end up treating coronavirus patients?

Well, he doesnt work in a hospital. And because he works in private practice, I think he probably imagined he might be working remotely with telemedicine.

I actually heard about coronavirus many months ago when China had outbreak. But I always followed the disease.

But because of the family background and because he does work in medicine, when news of the coronavirus did start coming out of Wuhan, he definitely understood how quickly the virus could spread. And he definitely understood that the only way to guarantee that you could survive this was by not getting it in the first place.

Around end of February, I started to pile up all the food, like canned foods, frozen vegetables, dumplings.

So soon after the coronavirus landed on the west coast, he and his family went to Costco and stocked up

Our family plan is to stay home for two months.

for like, two months worth of supplies.

Right. So they were going to avoid any meaningful exposure to the virus?

Yeah, if there was communal spread and it had become widespread, their plan was to shelter in place.

And well ahead of the rest of us.

Yeah, I think thats right.

So you werent sure at what point you would start doing that, but you felt youd know when it was time?

Yes.

But, you know, hes stocking up at the end of February. You know, people in the U.S. were still flying all over the country. Kids were going to school. Bloomberg was in the race for president. People were planning vacations and weddings and all sorts of conferences and events. And the same was true of James. So like everybody else, hes going about his life. And around this time, without really too much concern about his health, he went to a medical conference in Times Square.

So I changed diaper for my daughter and gave her morning milk. And I kissed my wife and to go to conference.

On the fourth day of the conference, Monday, March 2, he comes down with a cough. And he starts to realize hes actually getting sick.

I start to cough and a fever and tired.

So he leaves and texts his wife that hes going to go to New Jersey, where his mom has a house. His moms away. And he doesnt want to come home and get his wife and the baby sick.

Because of my daughter, when I went home, she always hugged me and kissed me. And she will catch it.

And whats running through his head at this moment? Is he thinking, I have a bad cough? I might have the flu? Is coronavirus even on his mind?

Not really. I mean, there had not been a single case in all of New Jersey. He thought he probably had the flu. By then, he was mostly feeling this bad cough. He had an elevated heart rate. His eyes were really runny. He had diarrhea. He was not feeling well at all. But he also was not alarmed. You know, he decided to go to one of those drop-in centers to get a flu test, because he wanted to be told he didnt have the flu so he could go home. So the doctor gives him a strep test and a flu test. They discuss whether he should get a coronavirus test, in fact, but the doctor didnt have one. So they moved on. And the results came back that although the strep and the flu tests were negative, his symptoms were consistent with something called a pulmonary embolism, which is a clot in your lung that can be fatal.

So this could potentially be even more serious than just a seasonal flu or

Yes. Certainly more serious than the flu.

So after, I went direct to the Hackensack emergency room.

So the doctor sends him to the E.R. at the Hackensack University Medical Center, which is not far from that doctors office.

And in the emergency room, they asked me questions. Asked me if I cough. I said, I do, I do have cough. I do have shortness of breath.

So as called for, the doctors do a CT scan. And after they do, they realize that, no, he does not have a pulmonary embolism. But that in fact, because of the symptoms hes having and the way his lungs look in the scan

They see a ground glass nodules. So this can be coronavirus.

he might actually have coronavirus.

And how do the doctors at this hospital react to that?

Well, at this point, they havent seen any coronavirus patients. So they dont seem to him terribly alarmed. That said, they do put him in a tiny isolation room, a windowless room on the floor of the emergency room. Thats where he spends the night, texting his friends and his wife and getting increasingly unnerved and feeling quite ill.

I was nervous. And at the same time, since Im in the hospital, Im going to check everything. Make sure Im OK and then I go home.

So then on Tuesday, March 3, which is the second day in the hospital

They decide to do a test on me. So the test takes about 24 hours or 48 hours.

they do a Covid-19 test. And they tell him hes going to have to wait a few days for the result, but he shouldnt worry, hes young and healthy. At the same time, hes wildly Googling symptoms for Covid-19 and realizing that he has almost every one of them.

I had maybe lied to myself, was like, trying to calm myself down. I dont have the Covid-19, I shouldnt have it.

And so, its day three for James in the hospital. Its Wednesday, March 4. Hes still waiting for the results in his tiny little room with a TV. And

[SOUND OF LOCAL NEWS THEME]

a local news report comes on.

We we begin tonight with breaking news regarding the coronavirus.

Yeah, that virus arriving in the Garden State tonight. Governor Phil Murphy announcing the first presumptive positive case of the virus right here in New Jersey.

And the news report says

A man in his thirties is hospitalized in Bergen County.

Theres a guy in his thirties in Bergen County, which is where he is, whos tested positive for coronavirus. Its the first case in New Jersey.

Governor Murphy saying

Theres even a tweet from the governor of New Jersey confirming it.

We take this situation very seriously and have been preparing for this for weeks. I urge residents to remain calm

And it occurs to James, they really might be talking about him.

And then I asked the doctor, saying, is this me? And the doctors saying, no, your test is not back yet.

And of course, he hasnt heard anything about the results of his test yet?

No, he has not heard anything.

Wow. So you found out from the news from the governor of New Jersey?

Yes. On TV. And I asked the doctor. The doctor say, the result is not back yet.

And then the next day, his doctors come to him and say, yes, you have tested positive. And he is the first person in New Jersey to have tested positive for Covid-19.

Right. And perhaps the first person in the history of the universe to find out he has a disease, not from his doctor, but from TV news.

Lets hope so.

And how does the hospital react in this moment?

So hes really scared. But the hospital is telling him that he really has nothing to worry about. Hes a 32-year-old guy. Hes got no preexisting conditions.

Even Dr. [INAUDIBLE] was telling me, oh youre so young. Its like a flu.

In fact, one doctor even told him

If its not because everybody is talking about corona, you can go home already.

You know, if it werent for all this attention about the coronavirus, youd be home right now, just getting better in the comfort of your own bedroom.

In other words, it would probably just self-resolve in somebody of his health?

That was definitely the expectation.

I mean, that day, I was so depressed.

I think he felt that as a medical professional, he actually he knew that he was quite vulnerable, that nobody was invulnerable. And there was this disconnect between his own concerns and their own insistence that he was overly anxious.

America is not ready.

It also dawns on him that he is the first person in this hospital to be treated for coronavirus.

I feel like, Im in real trouble. Why I come to this hospital? Because I feel they dont know how to treat this disease, and they dont have deep understanding about this disease.

Nobody there has any experience. Nobody there can make good predictions. Nobody there has institutional knowledge about what happens when this goes wrong or something unexpected happens. Hes the first person, and thats a very frightening position to be in.

Well be right back.

So Sue, James is newly diagnosed. Hes in isolation at this hospital in Hackensack, New Jersey. Hes been there for about four days. Physically, how is he doing at this point?

When you first got the results of the positive test, on a scale of 1 to 10, how bad did you feel physically? 10 being the worst?

I would say 10.

Wow.

He is feeling worse by the day.

Getting worse. So my heart is compensating, beating very fast.

He definitely has that cough. And he also is having real trouble breathing.

Its like Im in the water.

Tell me more about that.

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How Much Should the Public Know About Who Has the Coronavirus? - The New York Times

The casinos are deserted and thousands of hotel rooms are empty. But when Las Vegas, gripped by the coronavirus, needed space for a temporary homeless shelter, officials chose a location that does not have walls, or even a roof: an outdoor parking lot.

The City of Las Vegas and Clark County on Saturday opened the shelter, on the upper floor of a convention center parking lot, after the temporary closure of a 500-person homeless shelter run by Catholic Charities after a homeless man there tested positive for the coronavirus.

Medical students from Touro University, wearing protective gear, have been tasked with screening each homeless person for coronavirus symptoms before they enter the parking area, which has been partly covered with blue mats and closed off by metal barriers. The shelter will remain open until Friday, when the Catholic Charities shelter is expected to reopen, according to a joint statement by the city and county.

More than 6,500 Las Vegas residents lack permanent housing and nearly 70 percent of the citys homeless population sleeps outside, according to the Las Vegas government. With a nearby homeless shelter overflowing, officials decided to expand into the parking lot, at the Cashman Center convention complex about seven miles from the Las Vegas Strip.

More than 50 volunteers laid out 24,000 square feet of carpet for the homeless to use as sleeping mats, which have been spaced six feet apart to abide by social distancing protocols, said David Riggleman, a spokesman for the City of Las Vegas. The shelter also has portable toilets and washing stations.

It was a logistical heavy lift, said Mr. Riggleman, describing the effort, which was accomplished with essentially a days notice. That was a lot to pull together in a very short amount of time.

Officials chose to use the parking lot instead of the buildings at the convention complex to reserve the space indoors for possible hospital overflow, he said.

Still, the city has struggled to provide the temporary services while also addressing concerns about sanitation and the virus. Initially, officials had hoped to have the carpeting cleaned each day, but later found that the service provider was unable to adequately disinfect the material, Mr. Riggleman said, and so many are sleeping on concrete.

Las Vegas officials said they are concerned about the long-term financial impacts of the coronavirus shutdowns. Gov. Steve Sisolak of Nevada issued a 90-day moratorium on Sunday on all evictions and foreclosures in the state in an effort to stave off some of the most severe economic consequences.

But Mr. Riggleman said it was not clear whether that will be enough to prevent a rise in the citys homeless population.

We know were in for a rough road, Mr. Riggleman said.

Original post:

Las Vegas and Coronavirus: Homeless People Placed in a Parking Lot - The New York Times

Powells, a beloved bookstore chain in Portland, Ore., laid off more than 300 people in mid-March, temporarily closed its five storefronts and issued a dire warning for the years to come. When we do open our stores again, we expect the landscape of Oregon, and all of our abilities to spend money on books and gifts, will have changed dramatically, wrote Powells chief executive, Emily Powell. We see the path ahead more clearly: it is dark and scary.

While millions of Americans shelter at home, stores have been forced to close and lay off or furlough employees. The most vulnerable companies are those that failed to prepare for a future dominated by e-commerce.

Unfortunately, the federal $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus package does little to mitigate retailers woes, despite their executives pleas for relief, though the Federal Reserve is working to ensure that larger companies have continued access to credit markets. The aid plan gives tax relief for prior property improvements, and it establishes a $350 billion fund for small-business loans that could help those firms maintain payroll and rent, but little else.

Though the cracks in bricks-and-mortar retail began forming years ago, the widening coronavirus outbreak stands to hasten physical retails decline and strengthen the monopoly hold of Amazon and other online giants. Such a consolidation of power among just a few retailers threatens to leave consumers with higher prices and less choice.

During the pandemic, reliable delivery of essentials like milk, eggs, toilet paper and cleaning supplies has been a lifeline for those who are reluctant or unable to venture outside their homes Amazon-branded trucks have remained a familiar sight in residential neighborhoods. The competitive advantages of Amazons meticulously constructed worldwide logistics network, built to shuttle nearly every imaginable item to customers in as little as an hour, are especially evident in this crisis.

While many other traditional retailers are struggling with falling demand, Amazon has pledged to hire 100,000 temporary workers to keep up with it. Several other retail giants, including Walmart and Target, have kept pace with coronavirus quarantine demands by keeping physical stores open and leaning on their own delivery networks for grocery shipments and other necessary items. Walmart plans to hire 150,000 new workers.

After a surge in online orders after its physical stores closed, Powells is rehiring some of its workers, though the nationwide loss of some 3.3 million jobs in March spells darker times ahead for retailers.

While Amazon and Walmart deserve credit for preparing for a calamity such as the coronavirus pandemic, some of their ability to deliver during the crisis may come at the cost of employee protections.

Both companies are offering two weeks of paid leave to workers diagnosed with Covid-19, though some employees told The Atlantic that the policies are confusing. Walmart has been reluctant to give employees sufficient leave if they get sick or are fearful about coming to work.

At Amazon, white-collar employees were sent home while the companys army of pickers and packers have had to brave outbreaks in at least 21 facilities. Some 1,500 Amazon employees signed a petition this month seeking workplace improvements in the face of Covid-19. And attorneys general in 14 states and the District of Columbia sent a letter to Amazons chief executive, Jeff Bezos, urging him to loosen its sick leave policy.

A few workers at a Staten Island Amazon warehouse walked off the job Monday in protest, after one employee tested positive for coronavirus, prompting Amazon to fire one of the organizers. New York States attorney general said Monday she was investigating the dismissal.

Others were planning to skip work at the companys Whole Foods grocery stores Tuesday over its sick leave policies.

Contract drivers for those ubiquitous Amazon delivery vans say the frantic pace of the job requires them to forgo preventive measures like the use of gloves, sanitizers and masks, potentially imperiling customers and other drivers.

Consumers may be at a disadvantage, too. Because Amazon relies on smaller sellers for the majority of sales, price gouging remains a problem. And while prioritizing storage and delivery of products it deems essential during the pandemic such as household staples, medical supplies, and other high-demand products Amazon has also appeared to include its own branded devices in the essential category.

Though it may seem a lifetime ago, before the coronavirus struck, Amazon was in the throes of a congressional antitrust investigation and was a frequent target of elected officials who criticized it for its workplace conditions and for evading corporate taxes. To quell a steady drumbeat of criticism, Jay Carney, Amazons head of communications and policy, wrote a New York Times Op-Ed article in February extolling the companys $15-an-hour minimum wage and arguing that what we do can generate positive ripple effects across the country.

That may be true, but it can also compel competitors to adopt Amazons strong-arm business practices. Last month, a group of labor unions petitioned the Federal Trade Commission to open an inquiry into Amazons market power.

Even in less frantic times, Amazon has been criticized for its workplace culture and its heavy-handed tactics with sellers. Last year, The Wall Street Journal contended that Amazon may be losing control of its own marketplace, allowing dangerous counterfeits to appear on its virtual shelves that would never pass muster at traditional retailers. Both Walmart and Amazon have quashed unionization efforts.

Amazon and Walmart have offered critical delivery services during this crisis, but regulators and elected officials should not lose sight of the dangers of monopoly power falling into the hands of the fortunate few that survive the coronavirus fallout.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. Wed like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And heres our email: letters@nytimes.com.

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We Need Amazon During the Coronavirus. Thats a Problem. - The New York Times