newyorker--2020-04-01--The Life and Death of Juan Sanabria, One of New York City’s First Coronavirus Victims

At 860 Grand Concourse , a residential apartment building in the Bronx , the doorman ’ s post is just inside the front door , on a landing between two flights of stairs .
One of them leads up to the offices of a dentist and a lawyer , who , along with several physicians , rent commercial space .
The other leads past two pairs of gold-painted columns into the main lobby , where an elevator services seven floors with a hundred and eleven apartments .
Tuesday through Saturday , between eight in the morning and five in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from the lobby could expect a greeting from a trim , punctilious man with close-cropped hair .
He wore a navy-blue uniform that hung loosely off his narrow shoulders .
His name was Juan Sanabria .
There was an art to Sanabria ’ s salutations .
Dana Frishkorn , who ’ s lived in the building for three and a half years , appreciated that he called her by her first name when she entered , and never failed to tell her “ Take care ” when she left .
Yet somehow Sanabria @ @ @ @ @ @ @ spent five years in the building , preferred to be called by his last name .
“ Hey , Tuck , ” Sanabria would say , extending his hand for a fist bump .
When Tony Chen , who runs a boutique tour company and lives on the seventh floor , limped into the building one morning , addled by plantar fasciitis , Sanabria showed him a foot stretch that helped .
On another afternoon , when a tenant showed up at the front door with a large couch to take up to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s rules mandated the use of a side door , Sanabria stood watch to make sure a meddlesome neighbor didn ’ t wander over .
“ With Juan , you always got the sense that he was more knowledgeable than he let on , ” Georgeen Comerford , who has lived in the building for nearly fifty years , told me .
A photography professor at CUNY , she described Sanabria as a “ mensch who appreciated the ironies.
” He would call her mámi , and wink , when she passed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t just that you were glad to see him , she said .
“ If you didn ’ t see him , you wanted to know where he was .
When he wasn ’ t around , you felt it.
” Uncharacteristically , Sanabria wasn ’ t around the last week of February .
His eighty-two-year-old mother , with whom he shared an apartment on Ogden Avenue , was suffering from emphysema ; he ’ d been taking her to a nearby hospital .
When word got around the building that Sanabria ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was surprised to learn that he was by her side .
“ It was who he was , ” Jimmy Montalvo , one of the other doormen , told me .
Montalvo and Sanabria were neighbors—Montalvo got his job at the building through Sanabria , three years ago—and frequently had breakfast together at their corner bodega ; Sanabria was always bringing food back for his mother , Montalvo said .
“ He took good care of her.
” Even when Sanabria was away from 860 Grand Concourse , during a break or on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ impression that he was never far .
James Tirado , the youngest and newest doorman on staff , used to get calls and texts from Sanabria , checking up on him .
“ How ’ s the day going ?
” Sanabria would ask .
“ Is everything going O.K .
for you ?
” By the time his mother ’ s health had improved , and Sanabria returned to work , on March 3rd , he was beginning to feel ill himself .
There were still very few publicly known COVID-19 cases @ @ @ @ @ @ @ symptoms—dizziness and fatigue—were not yet widely associated with the disease .
He wasn ’ t coughing , and he didn ’ t have a fever .
He went home anyway , to rest for a few days .
On Monday , March 9th , his day off , he returned to 860 Grand Concourse , to consult with a doctor on the first floor—his “ doctor friend , ” he called him .
He was feeling worse , and had developed a cough .
Tirado noticed him wheezing as he passed the doorman @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for the doctor , Sanabria called one of his stepdaughters , Walkiris Cruz-Perez , a nurse at Columbia-Presbyterian .
She was in the Dominican Republic at the time , getting dental work done , but she was concerned enough to call him an ambulance .
“ He would never call one for himself , ” she said .
“ But I made him promise me one thing .
I said to him , ‘ Go to Columbia .
Go to my hospital .
Don ’ t go to Lincoln.
’ ” She was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was born , and which he held in almost superstitiously high esteem .
Lincoln was where he took his mother a week earlier , and where one of his best friends had died a few years before .
He ’ d even considered applying for a part-time job there as a security guard .
It took about twenty minutes for the ambulance to arrive and for the orderlies to load him into the back .
Not yet feverish , he insisted—in his usual , stoic way—that he was feeling just fine .
What @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the fact that he did not object to being taken to the hospital ; almost compulsively protective of others , he was finally ceding control to someone else , which struck Walkiris as worrisome .
She talked him through the situation on FaceTime , as Tirado watched from the door .
It would be the last time anyone from the building saw Sanabria .
In the days after Sanabria ’ s death , his former tenants and co-workers staggered between shock and grief .
Contributing to the over-all sense of loss was their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ felt extremely close to him , they actually knew little about him .
Montalvo , for instance , was vaguely aware that Sanabria had served in the military , yet he never learned any of the details .
One tenant in the building , a thirty-eight-year-old nurse and Navy reservist named Frankie Hamilton , knew about Sanabria ’ s time in the Navy because they swapped stories about training at a facility near Throgs Neck , in the Bronx .
But he didn ’ t know anything about Sanabria ’ s family .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ me , “ I kept hearing that he had a daughter who was a nurse , but also that his daughter was a cop .
Which was it ?
” He had two stepdaughters , actually—a nurse and an N.Y.P.D .
officer .
He spoke about each of them constantly , with an unabashed and even grandiloquent sense of pride .
Yet he shared stories about them in different ways to different people .
Julia Donahue-Wait , a registered nurse herself , knew all about Walkiris ’ s career .
But she would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ when Sanabria ’ s other stepdaughter , Waleska , often dropped in to meet him for lunch .
Waleska ’ s precinct , the Forty-fourth , includes the stretch of Grand Concourse where Sanabria worked .
Several times a week , they went to a deli down the street and ate in his break room at the building .
“ When I didn ’ t have time , we would stand at the front door and talk about my son , ” Waleska told me .
Their conversations revolved around one of three @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , her mother , or her work .
“ He loved that I was a cop .
He was always telling me about things that would happen around the neighborhood.
” Sanabria , the son of Puerto Rican parents , grew up near the old Yankee Stadium , in the Bronx .
After high school , he joined the Navy , where he served for the next twenty years .
Travelling was an obsession of his—in the service , he spent time in the Philippines and the Bahamas—but he also loved structure and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ used to say to him , ‘ Juan , you ’ re just weird !
’ ” Mimi Roman , his oldest friend , told me .
( The two of them were born on the same day : August 13 , 1967 . )
“ He had to have everything in order .
He ’ d always have his way of doing things.
” After he was diagnosed with celiac disease , a digestive disorder that rendered him allergic to gluten , he adjusted his diet and stuck to it .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Roman said .

This story was first published on newyorker.com on April 1, 2020, at 6 A.M. The version below appears in the April 20, 2020, issue.
At 860 Grand Concourse, a residential apartment building in the Bronx, the doorman’s post is just inside the front door, on a landing between two flights of stairs. One of them leads up to the offices of a dentist and a lawyer, who, along with several physicians, rent commercial space. The other goes down past two pairs of gold-painted columns and into the main lobby, where an elevator services seven floors with a hundred and eleven apartments. Tuesday through Saturday, between eight in the morning and five in the evening, tenants going down to or coming up from the lobby could expect a greeting from a trim, punctilious man with close-cropped hair. He wore a navy-blue uniform that hung loosely off his narrow shoulders. His name was Juan Sanabria.
There was an art to Sanabria’s salutations. Dana Frishkorn, who’s lived in the building for three and a half years, appreciated that he called her by her first name when she entered, and never failed to tell her “Take care” when she left. Yet somehow Sanabria knew that Anthony Tucker, who has spent five years in the building, preferred to be called by his last name. “Hey, Tuck,” Sanabria would say, extending his hand for a fist bump. When Tony Chen, who runs a boutique tour company and lives on the seventh floor, limped into the building one morning, addled by plantar fasciitis, Sanabria showed him a foot stretch that helped. On another day, when a tenant showed up at the front door with a large couch to take up to his apartment, even though the building’s rules mandated the use of a side door, Sanabria stood watch to make sure a meddlesome neighbor didn’t wander over.
“With Juan, you always got the sense that he was more knowledgeable than he let on,” Georgeen Comerford, who has lived in the building for nearly fifty years, told me. A photography professor at CUNY, she described Sanabria as a “mensch who appreciated the ironies.” He would call her mámi, and wink, when she passed through the lobby. It wasn’t just that you were glad to see him, she said. “If you didn’t see him, you wanted to know where he was. When he wasn’t around, you felt it.”
Uncharacteristically, Sanabria wasn’t around the last week of February. His eighty-two-year-old mother, with whom he shared an apartment on Ogden Avenue, was suffering from emphysema; he had taken her to a nearby hospital. When word spread in the building that Sanabria’s mother was ill, no one was surprised to learn that he was by her side. “It was who he was,” Jimmy Montalvo, one of the other doormen, told me. Montalvo and Sanabria were neighbors—Montalvo got his job at the building through Sanabria, three years ago—and frequently had breakfast together at their corner bodega; Sanabria was always bringing food back for his mother, Montalvo said. “He took good care of her.” Even when Sanabria was away from 860 Grand Concourse, during a break or on his days off, he gave the impression that he was never far. James Tirado, the youngest and newest doorman on staff, used to get calls and texts from Sanabria, checking up on him. “How’s the day going?” Sanabria would ask. “Is everything going O.K. for you?”
By the time his mother’s health had improved, and Sanabria returned to work, on March 3rd, he was beginning to feel ill himself. There were still very few publicly known COVID-19 cases in New York City, and his symptoms—dizziness and fatigue—were not yet widely associated with the disease. He wasn’t coughing, and he didn’t have a fever. He went home anyway, to rest for a few days. On Monday, March 9th, his day off, he returned to 860 Grand Concourse, to consult with a doctor on the first floor—his “doctor friend,” he called him. He was feeling worse, and had developed a cough. Tirado noticed him wheezing as he passed the doorman’s post.
While he waited for the doctor, Sanabria called one of his stepdaughters, Walkiris Cruz-Perez, a nurse at Columbia-Presbyterian. She was in the Dominican Republic at the time, getting dental work done, but she was concerned enough to call him an ambulance. “He would never call one for himself,” she said. “But I made him promise me one thing. I said to him, ‘Go to Columbia. Go to my hospital. Don’t go to Lincoln.’ ” She was referring to the Bronx hospital where Sanabria was born, and which he held in almost superstitiously high esteem. Lincoln was where he had taken his mother a week earlier, and where one of his best friends had died, a few years before. He’d even considered applying for a part-time job there as a security guard.
It took about twenty minutes for the ambulance to arrive and for the orderlies to load him into the back. Not yet feverish, he insisted—in his usual, stoic way—that he was feeling just fine. What was most telling, though, was the fact that he did not object to being taken to the hospital; almost compulsively protective of others, he was finally ceding control to someone else, which struck Walkiris as worrisome. She talked him through the situation on FaceTime, as Tirado watched from the door. It would be the last time anyone from the building saw Sanabria.
In the days after Sanabria’s death, his former tenants and co-workers staggered between shock and grief. Contributing to the over-all sense of loss was their collective realization that, while they each felt close to him, most of them actually knew little about him. Montalvo, for instance, was vaguely aware that Sanabria had served in the military, yet he never learned any of the details. One tenant in the building, a thirty-eight-year-old nurse and Navy reservist named Frankie Hamilton, knew about Sanabria’s time in the Navy because they swapped stories about training at a facility near Throgs Neck, in the Bronx. But he didn’t know anything about Sanabria’s family. Another tenant told me, “I kept hearing that he had a daughter who was a nurse, but also that his daughter was a cop. Which was it?”
He had two stepdaughters, actually—a nurse and an N.Y.P.D. officer. He spoke about each of them constantly, with an unabashed and even grandiloquent sense of pride. Yet he shared stories about them in different ways to different people. Julia Donahue-Wait, a registered nurse herself, knew all about Walkiris’s career. But she would be at work during the day, when Sanabria’s other stepdaughter, Waleska, often dropped in to meet him for lunch. Waleska’s precinct, the Forty-fourth, includes the stretch of Grand Concourse where Sanabria worked. Several times a week, they went to a deli down the street and ate in his break room at the building. “When I didn’t have time, we would stand at the front door and talk about my son,” Waleska told me. Their conversations revolved around three things, she said: her child, her mother, and her work. “He loved that I was a cop. He was always telling me about things that would happen around the neighborhood.”
Sanabria, the son of Puerto Rican parents, grew up near the old Yankee Stadium, in the Bronx. After high school, he joined the Navy, where he served for the next twenty years. Travelling was an obsession of his—in the service, he spent time in the Philippines and the Bahamas—but he also loved structure and a sense of routine. “I used to say to him, ‘Juan, you’re just weird!’ ” Mimi Roman, his oldest friend, told me. (The two of them were born on the same day: August 13, 1967.) “He had to have everything in order. He’d always have his way of doing things.” After he was given a diagnosis of celiac disease, a digestive disorder that rendered him allergic to gluten, he adjusted his diet and stuck to it. “It was always everything in moderation,” Roman said.
In his mid-thirties, Sanabria retired from the military and returned home, finding a job as a janitor at a local elementary school. The youngest of four children, he was fanatically devoted to his parents; he worked overtime so that they’d have money to take vacations. In 2003, looking for an additional source of income, he began working part time at 860 Grand Concourse, covering odd shifts and filling in for the other doormen when they were sick or on vacation. He was perfectly suited for a job that rewarded dependability and charm. Unflaggingly serious about work, he also had a mischievous side, playing practical jokes and making people laugh. “He had goals in life,” Roman said. “He wanted to achieve things. He didn’t want to ever be stuck. He knew all about his surroundings. He was up on things. I used to call him ‘the news’ because he always knew what was going on.”


newyorker--2020-04-01--A Chaotic Week for Pregnant Women in New York City

Early on Sunday , March 22nd , Lauren Pelz got a text from a friend who ’ d heard that the NewYork-Presbyterian ( N.Y.P . )
hospital network had decided to bar partners from accompanying women in labor , due to concerns about the spread of COVID-19 .
It was the day before Pelz was scheduled to be induced to deliver her second child at N.Y.P .
Lower Manhattan Hospital .
She searched the hospital ’ s Web site and Twitter feed for news about the change in policy , but found nothing .
She tried calling her obstetrician but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ later , her husband , Matthew , got through to someone on the hospital hotline , who confirmed that he would not be allowed to attend the birth of his daughter .
Pelz , a corporate event planner , spent the rest of the day crying .
She considered cancelling the induction , which her doctor had recommended because she is thirty-nine and had some complications with her pregnancy , but she was also mindful that local hospitals were about to be inundated with coronavirus patients .
“ We just wanted to have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ get back home safely , ” she said .
So , at 8 p.m. on Monday night , her husband brought her as far as the hospital lobby , hugged her tight , and told her not to worry .
“ You ’ ve got this .
You ’ ve done this before , ” he said .
He watched as a security guard led his sobbing wife to the maternity ward , where she immediately received a mask .
Once Pelz was settled in her room , a nurse swabbed her nose @ @ @ @ @ @ @ night , Pelz was aware that the ward was short-staffed—several nurses were out sick .
She tried to limit how often she asked for water or made other requests ; for several hours , the hospital halted her drip of Pitocin , the medication used to induce her labor , because no staff were available to track her progress .
All the while , Matthew was visible via FaceTime on an iPad at her bedside .
Pelz found it difficult to breathe through her contractions under her mask ; by late morning , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , she was permitted to remove it .
Her obstetrician and a physician assistant coached her through ninety minutes of pushing , and Pelz delivered her daughter just before 1 p.m. on Tuesday .
When the doctor put the baby on her chest , Pelz began crying again , overwhelmed by the bittersweet experience of greeting her daughter , Skylar Lucille , alone .
Pelz was one of the first women in the city to labor without a partner after both the N.Y.P .
hospital network and the Mount Sinai Health System—which together @ @ @ @ @ @ @ year—announced the banning of all visitors for obstetric patients last Monday .
Now it looks as if she may have been among the last .
In the chaotic days following the N.Y.P .
and Mount Sinai announcements , many expectant mothers began leaving town , seeking home births , or showing up in active labor at city hospitals , where partners were still allowed .
But , on Saturday , Governor Andrew Cuomo caught many hospital officials off guard by issuing an executive order mandating that all maternity units allow women to have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
All labor-and-delivery ( L. & D. ) units will have to screen visitors for COVID-19 symptoms and conduct temperature checks every twelve hours .
Hospitals are asked to provide partners with masks from their dwindling supply .
“ I ’ m elated , ” Georges Sylvestre , an obstetrician who specializes in high-risk pregnancies at N.Y.P.-Weill Cornell Medicine in Manhattan , told me after Cuomo ’ s decree .
Forcing women to labor alone seemed “ harsh , ” Sylvestre said , and many medical staff were uncomfortable with the rule .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ s position .
The virus is both unpredictable and extremely contagious , he said , and the presence of even one extra person on the unit increases the risk of transmission , particularly as there is so little personal protective equipment ( P.P.E . )
to go around .
“ You don ’ t want to have the partner who gives a healthy newborn COVID , never mind the staff , ” Sylvestre said .
In New York , the national epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic , Governor Cuomo has asked for all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are deferring and revising cancer treatments , and fertility specialists have halted in-vitro-fertilization cycles .
As the state ’ s coronavirus cases double every four days , health officials are working to limit the spread of infection and reduce other demands on hospital beds .
But childbirth is not easily postponed , and the delivery of maternal health care amid this crisis differs considerably from hospital to hospital , and sometimes from hour to hour .
“ I ’ m at ease for now , ” Sylvestre said , “ but no one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” The impact of COVID-19 on pregnant women and infants is not yet well known , which helps explain the conflict and confusion .
The initial news had been reassuring : research from China showed that pregnant women who tested positive for the virus did not transmit it to their babies , and all had good outcomes .
But the study included a mere nine women , all of whom had only mild symptoms .
A more recent study , of forty-one pregnant women with COVID-19 , found that they had a higher @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and preëclampsia ( along with a higher rate of C-section ) , particularly if they had been hospitalized for pneumonia .
“ I ’ ve never been so dependent on such shaky data to make what are fundamentally life-or-death decisions , ” Neel Shah , an assistant obstetrics professor at Harvard , told me .
The messages new mothers are receiving are therefore jumbled .
Hyein DeGannes , a thirty-six-year-old Mandarin teacher at a Brooklyn charter school , is another woman whose delivery date fell in the week between the private hospital ban @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s reversal .
She gave birth to her daughter , Keanu , on March 25th , at Mount Sinai West , while her husband , Randy , stayed at home with their older child .
The next morning , the COVID-19 test DeGannes had taken when she was admitted came back positive , and she and her daughter were moved to a quarantine room with another sick mother , where visits from nurses were infrequent .
She received contradictory instructions about how to care for Keanu , who tested negative .
A doctor @ @ @ @ @ @ @ breast milk for two weeks and give her daughter formula in the meantime .
A doula friend said she should go ahead and breastfeed , but with a mask on .
N.Y.P.
’ s decision to ban partners was informed by two cases involving women who arrived at an N.Y.P .
hospital with no coronavirus symptoms ; after giving birth , both showed severe signs of COVID-19 and needed days in intensive-care units .
What alarmed the hospital was not only the speed at which the women ’ s health deteriorated but also @ @ @ @ @ @ @ symptoms .
Before their diagnoses , they came into contact with an estimated total of at least thirty health-care workers , all of whom lacked P.P.E .
“ Having partner support is essential for labor , ” Jesse Pournaras , a doula who launched a Change.org petition protesting the ban on partners , said .
( The petition received more than 613,000 signatures before she closed it on Saturday . )
She pointed to studies showing that women who deliver without a companion are at greater risk of complications during and after birth @ @ @ @ @ @ @ delighted by the reversal of the policy .
“ We have too many health-care workers sick in hospitals , and quite a few on ventilators , ” Sascha James-Conterelli , the president of the New York State Association of Licensed Midwives , said .
Many providers are “ scared to death , ” she said , especially if they live with older or immunocompromised people ; eight nurses and four obstetricians in the Mount Sinai system are infected , and one postpartum nurse recently died from COVID-19 .
James-Conterelli told me that she @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fathers lying about their symptoms so they can witness their child ’ s birth , and not every hospital has the staff to keep checking the temperatures of non-patients .
One L. & D. nurse at Maimonides , a private hospital in Borough Park , recently posted on Facebook that some partners are still being sent away if couples arrive during the night shift , when hospitals tend to be particularly short-staffed .
A compromise that some city hospitals are striking , James-Conterelli said , is to bar partners from labor—which is often @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the birth itself .

Early on Sunday, March 22nd, Lauren Pelz got a text from a friend who’d heard that the NewYork-Presbyterian (N.Y.P.) hospital network had decided to bar partners from accompanying women in labor, due to concerns about the spread of COVID-19. It was the day before Pelz was scheduled to be induced to deliver her second child at N.Y.P. Lower Manhattan Hospital. She searched the hospital’s Web site and Twitter feed for news about the change in policy, but found nothing. She tried calling her obstetrician but couldn’t reach her. Hours later, her husband, Matthew, got through to someone on the hospital hotline, who confirmed that he would not be allowed to attend the birth of his daughter.
Pelz, a corporate event planner, spent the rest of the day crying. She considered cancelling the induction, which her doctor had recommended because she is thirty-nine and had some complications with her pregnancy, but she was also mindful that local hospitals were about to be inundated with coronavirus patients. “We just wanted to have the baby as quickly as possible and get back home safely,” she said. So, at 8 p.m. on Monday night, her husband brought her as far as the hospital lobby, hugged her tight, and told her not to worry. “You’ve got this. You’ve done this before,” he said. He watched as a security guard led his sobbing wife to the maternity ward, where she immediately received a mask. Once Pelz was settled in her room, a nurse swabbed her nose to test for COVID-19.
Through the night, Pelz was aware that the ward was short-staffed—several nurses were out sick. She tried to limit how often she asked for water or made other requests; for several hours, the hospital halted her drip of Pitocin, the medication used to induce her labor, because no staff were available to track her progress. All the while, Matthew was visible via FaceTime on an iPad at her bedside. Pelz found it difficult to breathe through her contractions under her mask; by late morning, after her COVID-19 test came back negative, she was permitted to remove it. Her obstetrician and a physician assistant coached her through ninety minutes of pushing, and Pelz delivered her daughter just before 1 p.m. on Tuesday. When the doctor put the baby on her chest, Pelz began crying again, overwhelmed by the bittersweet experience of greeting her daughter, Skylar Lucille, alone.
Pelz was one of the first women in the city to labor without a partner after both the N.Y.P. hospital network and the Mount Sinai Health System—which together see more than twenty-five hundred deliveries a year—announced the banning of all visitors for obstetric patients last Monday. Now it looks as if she may have been among the last. In the chaotic days following the N.Y.P. and Mount Sinai announcements, many expectant mothers began leaving town, seeking home births, or showing up in active labor at city hospitals, where partners were still allowed. But, on Saturday, Governor Andrew Cuomo caught many hospital officials off guard by issuing an executive order mandating that all maternity units allow women to have one asymptomatic partner during labor and delivery. All labor-and-delivery (L. & D.) units will have to screen visitors for COVID-19 symptoms and conduct temperature checks every twelve hours. Hospitals are asked to provide partners with masks from their dwindling supply.
“I’m elated,” Georges Sylvestre, an obstetrician who specializes in high-risk pregnancies at N.Y.P.-Weill Cornell Medicine in Manhattan, told me after Cuomo’s decree. Forcing women to labor alone seemed “harsh,” Sylvestre said, and many medical staff were uncomfortable with the rule. But he also understood his hospital’s position. The virus is both unpredictable and extremely contagious, he said, and the presence of even one extra person on the unit increases the risk of transmission, particularly as there is so little personal protective equipment (P.P.E.) to go around. “You don’t want to have the partner who gives a healthy newborn COVID, never mind the staff,” Sylvestre said.
In New York, the national epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Cuomo has asked for all elective surgery to be cancelled. Oncologists are deferring and revising cancer treatments, and fertility specialists have halted in-vitro-fertilization cycles. As the state’s coronavirus cases double every four days, health officials are working to limit the spread of infection and reduce other demands on hospital beds. But childbirth is not easily postponed, and the delivery of maternal health care amid this crisis differs considerably from hospital to hospital, and sometimes from hour to hour. “I’m at ease for now,” Sylvestre said, “but no one really knows what will happen next week.”
The impact of COVID-19 on pregnant women and infants is not yet well known, which helps explain the conflict and confusion. The initial news had been reassuring: research from China showed that pregnant women who tested positive for the virus did not transmit it to their babies, and all had good outcomes. But the study included a mere nine women, all of whom had only mild symptoms. A more recent study, of forty-one pregnant women with COVID-19, found that they had a higher risk of miscarriage, preterm birth, and preëclampsia (along with a higher rate of C-section), particularly if they had been hospitalized for pneumonia. “I’ve never been so dependent on such shaky data to make what are fundamentally life-or-death decisions,” Neel Shah, an assistant obstetrics professor at Harvard, told me.
The messages new mothers are receiving are therefore jumbled. Hyein DeGannes, a thirty-six-year-old Mandarin teacher at a Brooklyn charter school, is another woman whose delivery date fell in the week between the private hospital ban on birth partners and Governor Cuomo’s reversal. She gave birth to her daughter, Keanu, on March 25th, at Mount Sinai West, while her husband, Randy, stayed at home with their older child. The next morning, the COVID-19 test DeGannes had taken when she was admitted came back positive, and she and her daughter were moved to a quarantine room with another sick mother, where visits from nurses were infrequent. She received contradictory instructions about how to care for Keanu, who tested negative. A doctor told her to pump and dump her breast milk for two weeks and give her daughter formula in the meantime. A doula friend said she should go ahead and breastfeed, but with a mask on.
N.Y.P.’s decision to ban partners was informed by two cases involving women who arrived at an N.Y.P. hospital with no coronavirus symptoms; after giving birth, both showed severe signs of COVID-19 and needed days in intensive-care units. What alarmed the hospital was not only the speed at which the women’s health deteriorated but also that they went untested until they developed symptoms. Before their diagnoses, they came into contact with an estimated total of at least thirty health-care workers, all of whom lacked P.P.E.
“Having partner support is essential for labor,” Jesse Pournaras, a doula who launched a Change.org petition protesting the ban on partners, said. (The petition received more than 613,000 signatures before she closed it on Saturday.) She pointed to studies showing that women who deliver without a companion are at greater risk of complications during and after birth. But not all obstetrics staff are delighted by the reversal of the policy. “We have too many health-care workers sick in hospitals, and quite a few on ventilators,” Sascha James-Conterelli, the president of the New York State Association of Licensed Midwives, said. Many providers are “scared to death,” she said, especially if they live with older or immunocompromised people; eight nurses and four obstetricians in the Mount Sinai system are infected, and one postpartum nurse recently died from COVID-19. James-Conterelli told me that she has been hearing too many stories of fathers lying about their symptoms so they can witness their child’s birth, and not every hospital has the staff to keep checking the temperatures of non-patients. One L. & D. nurse at Maimonides, a private hospital in Borough Park, recently posted on Facebook that some partners are still being sent away if couples arrive during the night shift, when hospitals tend to be particularly short-staffed. A compromise that some city hospitals are striking, James-Conterelli said, is to bar partners from labor—which is often long and unpredictable—but call them in for the birth itself.
“Everyone’s risking their lives on a daily basis,” one private-practice obstetrician for Mount Sinai told me (on condition of anonymity, because the system’s providers are not authorized to speak to the press). Childbirth may be uniquely dangerous to providers because it is an intimate and hands-on process over a long stretch of time, involving bodily fluids and fecal matter. The grunting and heavy breathing of labor can also aerosolize the virus if the mother is a carrier. “There are a lot of Facebook groups where we look at the data and protocols of other countries,” the obstetrician added, “and they’re taking a hundred times more steps than we’ve been taking.” She noted that China protected some of its health-care workers by putting them in full hazmat suits with N95 masks; in the U.S., workers are rationing lesser surgical masks and struggle to get tested even with serious symptoms. She recently asked her brother if he would take care of her children if she died.
Pregnant women become accustomed to frequent doctor’s appointments, especially in the third trimester, but the coronavirus outbreak has abruptly forced them and their health-care providers into new routines. In mid-March, most private hospitals introduced telemedicine visits for routine prenatal checkups: some expectant mothers receive cuffs for monitoring their blood pressure, and women with diabetes get glucometers or dipsticks to test the blood-sugar levels in their urine. Pregnant women still come in for a handful of “milestone” visits for blood work and anatomy scans, but other visits are considered on a case-by-case basis.
The city’s public hospitals have been slower than better-funded private consortiums to adapt to the shifting demands of the pandemic. One junior midwife at a city hospital in the Bronx told me (on condition of anonymity, because she was not authorized to speak to the media) that she and her colleagues have been trying to conduct prenatal and postpartum appointments over the phone or WhatsApp calls and texts. “The population we take care of, half the time, when I’m calling them with a prescription, their phones are disconnected,” she told me. The conditions are especially daunting for women with complicated pregnancies. “Everyone is on high alert already, so people’s threshold for anything that is not normal is so low,” she said. “I can see this spiralling into more C-sections.”


newyorker--2020-04-01--Deborah Treisman Reads David Foster Wallace

Deborah Treisman reads and discusses “ Good People , ” by David Foster Wallace , which appeared in a 2007 @ @ @ @ @ David Foster Wallace , who died in 2008 , was the author of three short-story @ @ @ @ @ including “ Infinite Jest , ” and “ The Pale King , ” which was @ @ @ @ @ , and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize .

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Photograph by Basso Cannarsa / Agence Opale / Alamy
Deborah Treisman reads and discusses “Good People,” by David Foster Wallace, which appeared in a 2007 issue of the magazine. David Foster Wallace, who died in 2008, was the author of three short-story collections and three novels, including “Infinite Jest,” and “The Pale King,” which was published posthumously, in 2011, and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.


Our Father’s Body

It was December , 2017 .
Our father ’ s body lay just a few rooms away , down the carpeted stairs of the funeral home , beyond a sequence of quiet hallways and a series of unlocked doors .
We ’ d gathered , his five children and his wife of forty-nine years , at Harvey Funeral Home , in Seattle , to complete official paperwork : the State of Washington ’ s death worksheet .
It seemed like a simple thing .
While the embalming technicians labored in the basement , replacing our father ’ s blood with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had twenty-three boxes to mark on a form .
We filled out our father ’ s name , his age , his county of death , his Social Security number .
And then we reached Question 11 : decedent ’ s race .
“ White , ” one of my sisters said .
She said it quickly , as if it were a formality , a diversion from our steady progress toward Question 12 : Was the decedent ever in the U.S. armed forces ?
Wait , I thought .
What part of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , in Cairo , Egypt—was white ?
His skin , for most of his adult life , was a dusty brown .
When he spoke English , his Egyptian accent , with its rounded vowels and guttural rhotics , classified him as foreign-born .
Every night of my childhood , he sang me lullabies in Arabic ( Mama zamanha gaya ) and French ( Malbrough s ’ en va-t-en guerre ) , lullabies that he remembered from his own childhood , in North Africa .
“ I ’ m pretty sure that nobody @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I said .
We looked at the form again .
My mother pointed to its text .
“ Check one or more boxes to indicate what the decedent considered himself to be , ” she said .
She smoothed the fabric of her jeans .
The gold tassels of her rings struck each other as she worked her hands back and forth .
“ It ’ s what he thought he was , ” she said .
“ Isn ’ t it ?
” I found it difficult to look at my mom @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to be listed as Arab-American , ” I said .
Even as I said it , I knew I was lying .
Although Egypt had declared its independence from the United Kingdom ten years before my father was born , the vestiges of British and French colonial life had marked his adolescence .
In Cairo , he ’ d attended Le Collège de la Sainte Famille , a French-language school run by Jesuits , and this had given him a sense of apartness from the society in which he lived .
He was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had converted to Catholicism in the nineteenth century , and he grew up within a narrative of cultural difference .
He was exceptional in Egyptian society , the priests of Sainte Famille told him .
Specially chosen .
Dad ’ s experience was not unusual .
When Jean-Paul Sartre said that colonialism “ selected adolescents , branded the principles of Western culture on their foreheads with a red-hot iron , and gagged their mouths with sounds , pompous and awkward , ” he was largely pointing to the upper-middle class of North Africa @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bring the colonized person to admit the inferiority of his culture , ” Frantz Fanon warned , at the Congress of Black African Writers , in 1959 .
He might as well have been talking about my family .
The truth was this : I was angry at my father .
I was unable to forgive him , even in death , for the way he ’ d turned against his heritage , fallen under the thrall of right-wing demagogues on radio and television .
I couldn ’ t forgive the horrible things @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Middle East , the hatred he ’ d directed at Muslims , in particular—posting on his anonymous Twitter account , tweeting and retweeting the sentiments of xenophobes and bigots .
Sitting in the funeral home , we turned the question over and over .
Everyone was sad , and everyone was grieving in complex ways .
But I held my ground .
And so , eventually , we checked the box marked “ other.
” And on the line beside “ other , ” Tom Harvey , the funeral director , wrote @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Arab-American.
” My eyes filled with tears , which I held back .
That wasn ’ t really who my dad had been .
I was the one who ’ d taken Arabic classes as an adult .
I was the one who ’ d pushed Dad to travel with me and my sister to Egypt , so that he could show us the place he ’ d come from , the place where he ’ d spent the first fourteen years of his life .
I was the one who ’ d @ @ @ @ @ @ @ during a year living in Morocco .
I was the one who ’ d recited the shehadah before an adul , and formally converted to Islam .
Ashhadu alla ilaha illa Allah , I ’ d repeated three times , wa ashhadu anna Muhammad rasul Allah .
My family tree was full of Muslim names ; during the Franco-Ottoman alliance , which lasted centuries , the family had been both Christian and Muslim .
As I spoke the shehadah , a distinct feeling opened up inside of me—a feeling of return .
It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , that my father would have accepted , or understood .
Just weeks before my father died , I ’ d had a nasty argument with him , on the phone , about racial categories in America .
I had called him when I ’ d heard that the 2020 census would likely include a Middle Eastern/North African designation .
It was something that Arab-American activists had been advocating for more than two decades .
I don ’ t know what I was thinking , calling Dad to tell him this .
It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sensed as soon as I broached the subject .
“ You know what this is , ” he told me .
“ It ’ s the beginning of Sharia law .
It ’ s so they can take over this country .
It ’ s the first step.
” I was driving and talking on a headset .
I could imagine where he was—the only place he went these days—sitting in one corner of his reclining leather couch , wearing an ice pack on his swollen feet , watching Fox News .
Diagnosed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , he was struggling even to stand up and walk to the kitchen .
As he talked , I could hear the mossy purr of his oxygen machine .
“ You want them to track you , I guess , ” he said .
“ Maybe that ’ s O.K .
for you , then .
You and your friends in the Democrat Party .
But I don ’ t want to be tracked.
” We continued arguing .
I said that all the signature legislative achievements of the nineteen-sixties—the Civil Rights Act @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Fair Housing Act—were enforced using numbers from the census .
The Equal Credit Opportunity Act , the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act , hundreds of millions of dollars of Community Development Block Grants—they all depended on these numbers .
Didn ’ t he want to be counted ?
Sharia law , he said again .
“ Just you wait and see.
” I could hear how hoarse his voice was ; he couldn ’ t seem to clear his airway to breathe .
We were on the phone for a few more minutes .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ ve got to go , ” I said .
“ O.K.
, ” he said .
“ Love you , darling.
” And then he hung up .
It was the last conversation we ever had .
Christmas , 1989 .
I was thirteen years old , and someone—I wish I could remember who—gave me something that no newly teen-age boy has on his Christmas wish list : three pairs of silk boxer shorts .
I remember feeling vaguely ashamed as I opened the box and unrolled the plush , paisley garments @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about them .
They were intimate , and velvety .

“You forgot all about them,” he said, beaming. “But I didn’t.”
My father was extreme in all things. He would eat the most, laugh the loudest, smoke the largest number of cigarettes, play pinochle until no one else could stay awake. He was also the king of binge-dieting. The process was tied to the academic calendar: from September through June, he taught E.S.L. at Ingraham High School, in North Seattle, and he would eat voraciously, downing cheeseburgers and ice cream and tacos. Then the school year would end, and he’d go on a crash diet. He’d eat almost nothing but fruit—particularly his beloved mangoes—and walk ten, fifteen, twenty miles a day. Seattle is a hilly city, and in just three months he would sweat away much of the weight he’d gained while teaching. After Labor Day, the cycle would begin again.
Dad carried few accessories on these walks. Sometimes he had a water bottle. Sometimes he would squeeze a latex exercise ball, to “get the blood flowing.” But the one thing he always had, clipped to his waistband or to the sleeve of his shirt, was a small AM radio, with a headphone cord snaking up to his ears. And, that summer of 1990, on his endless walks, my father discovered Rush Limbaugh.
Limbaugh had made his national début—on dozens of federally licensed, syndicated radio stations—just two years before. At first, he was an oddity: an idiosyncratic, self-aggrandizing voice on the dying medium of AM radio. No daytime political talk show had gone national before. But, several months before Limbaugh moved to WABC, in New York, and launched on more than fifty stations, the F.C.C. had dropped the Fairness Doctrine, which had been in place since 1949. That doctrine asserted that TV and radio stations were required to devote airtime to matters of public interest, and to present opposing viewpoints. Prior to 1988, in other words, a station couldn’t broadcast three hours of Limbaugh’s conservative diatribes without also airing rebuttals. Now they were free to do so.
Like a pioneer species rushing into a newly vacated ecosystem, Limbaugh took over quickly, facing no competition. As he steadily accrued millions of listeners, he began to transform conservative politics. One day in 1990, as Lewis Grossberger noted in a profile that year in the Times Magazine, Limbaugh told his listeners not to worry about the recent downfall of Margaret Thatcher, in the United Kingdom. “Don’t try to judge the future of conservatism by what happened to Margaret Thatcher,” he said. “Judge it by what happens to this show. And this show is going through the roof, which means conservatism will follow.” Four years later, Republicans won the House of Representatives for the first time in four decades, led by candidates who were sounding increasingly like Limbaugh.
What is it that makes a certain kind of anger so attractive? Cocksure, hate-filled, funny, acerbic, and never willing to admit he was wrong, Limbaugh made sport out of the outrage and angst of those who objected to him. He derided those who disagreed with him as whiners and crybabies and feminazis, insulting his detractors with ardor. And Dad was alone with his voice, three hours a day, from 9 A.M. to noon, walking across the city, sweating and trying to remake his body into a form that he’d never be able to maintain. It changed him.
My father had always possessed some conservative views, primarily around abortion. But his politics had been predominantly liberal. His own father had lived by pragmatic rather than ideological principles. After Le Collège de la Sainte Famille, and then four unsuccessful years in public high school in California, my dad had enrolled at Seattle University, where he’d been educated by members of the Jesuit discipline who valued the order’s commitment to service and respect for history and community. He’d supported the impeachment of Richard Nixon and opposed Ronald Reagan’s busting of the air-traffic controllers’ union; he’d voted for Mondale-Ferraro and Dukakis-Bentsen. And, once he’d become an E.S.L. teacher, he dealt with an ever-changing community of immigrant learners. The salient image of my childhood is him sitting at the dining-room table, red pen in hand, patiently grading stacks and stacks of papers. In the struggles of his students from Vietnam, Mexico, Bosnia, and elsewhere, he saw his own struggles to learn the English language, and to understand American culture.
But now he had a voice shouting extreme conservative views at him in cackling monologues. He felt the draw of the Dittoheads, the roster of callers who would wait for an hour on hold just for the pleasure of having three seconds of Limbaugh’s air time, during which they’d announce their name and location and simply say “Ditto.”
That same summer of 1990, my dad’s mother, who had been in poor health for several years, stopped eating. She was hospitalized, and put on a feeding tube and a ventilator. My dad now had a daily destination: he would cross the city to reach his mother’s bedside in intensive care. As he walked, he’d listen to Limbaugh spout hateful things, and, when he arrived in the air-conditioned hospital, sweaty and shivering beneath his two layers of underwear, he’d sit at my grandmother’s bedside and hold her hand. My father’s most elemental tie to his past was dying, and he was stepping into a new kind of world.
Neither my father nor I would have been welcomed in America before the twentieth century. In 1876, the Supreme Court declared that immigration was under the authority of the federal government, and, from that point forward, for decades, the House and Senate passed laws limiting admission to the country according to race. President Chester A. Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act into law in 1882; the Senate floor debate for that bill astonishes me every time I read it. “They are parasites, like those insects which fasten themselves upon vegetables or upon animals and feed and feed until satiety causes them to release their hold,” Senator George Graham Vest, of Missouri, said. In a letter published in the New-York Tribune, Senator James G. Blaine, a Republican of Maine, wrote, “If as a nation we have the right to keep out infectious diseases, if we have the right to exclude the criminal classes from coming to us, we surely have the right to exclude that immigration which reeks with impurity and which cannot come to us without plenteously sowing the seeds of moral and physical disease, destitution, and death.” Five years later, Blaine fell a little more than a thousand votes short of winning the Presidency. (He lost New York, the decisive state, to Grover Cleveland, by one-tenth of one per cent.)
Barred from entry to America, would-be immigrants appealed again and again to the country’s judicial branch. Residents of Burma, Japan, Mexico, Syria, Armenia, India, Afghanistan, the Philippines, Korea, and the Arabian Peninsula pleaded their cases at the state and national levels. Known as racial-prerequisite cases, the fifty-two rulings that resulted add up to a gradual, inexorable, legal construction of whiteness. Applicants who were ruled white were allowed to immigrate. Basing decisions on standards of “common knowledge” and “scientific evidence,” circuit-court judges created a series of pseudoscientific opinions. Some nodded to “older writers on ethnology,” some cited the “Caucasian-Mongolian classification,” some stressed the importance of “Semitic stock.” One Syrian applicant was denied citizenship because he was deemed to be “somewhat darker than the usual mulatto of one-half mixed blood between the white and negro races.”
The story of the Syrian national Costa Najour is particularly poignant. In 1909, Najour’s suit for naturalization was rejected on the basis of his skin color. He appealed. Later that year, on a viciously cold December day in Atlanta, Najour appeared before the circuit-court judge William T. Newman. In the course of four hours, Najour’s attorney presented an extensive argument as to why his client was a “free white person.” The government attorney sat at his table. He waited. When it was his turn to speak, he had a simple request. Would Najour please remove his clothes, and show the court the color of his body? Najour—in what emotional state the historical record does not reveal—rose out of his seat and began to comply.
Limbaugh’s presence in my father’s life quickly expanded beyond the summers. Always an avid TV watcher, my dad was delighted when Limbaugh got a syndicated half-hour show. It ran from 1992 to 1996, and then its producer, Roger Ailes, moved on to something new: Fox News, a station with a slogan, “Fair and Balanced,” that now reads like a mocking invocation of the Fairness Doctrine. My dad became a dedicated viewer.
For my dad, the natural state of the television was on, not off—he would leave the set running even when he left the room. My parents’ house was less than two thousand square feet, but it had three televisions, and often all three were tuned to Fox News. By this point, I was in graduate school. I would visit my parents in the summers and have arguments with my dad about this situation. When he was occupied elsewhere, usually the kitchen, I’d sneak in and mute one set after another until there was quiet in the house. “What are you thinking?” my dad would say, rushing to whichever set was closest. “I was in the middle of my show.”
The show never ended. At least Limbaugh could only manage three hours of bombast at a time; Fox had a roster of Limbaugh-like personalities, groomed and coached by Ailes. My father would watch six to eight hours of these anchors every day, absorbing their accounts of the world. Toward the end, even his liberal views about immigration, rooted in his own family’s refugee story, had changed. “Save America for Americans,” he once told me.
In 1921, Congress passed the Emergency Quota Act, which was mostly intended to slow the arrival of Jews to America. It established something called the National Origins Formula, which pegged the allowable number of immigrants from various European countries to the number of them in the U.S. as of the 1910 census. Most Asians were barred from immigrating to the U.S. at all, and there were severe restrictions on immigration from Africa. In 1924, the Johnson-Reed Act restricted immigration further. During the floor debate, the bill’s co-sponsor, Senator David Reed, of Pennsylvania, said, “We have the greatest opportunity in our whole history to take in a reasonable addition to our population and have it of the very best immigrant quality.” What the very best immigrant quality was, he didn’t specify. Clearly, for Reed, and for many of his listeners, the answer was self-evident. At one point in the debate, Reed was asked about the time line of the first federal laws concerning immigration. “My memory is hazy,” he said, adding, “At that time, we wanted immigrants.”
Racial-prerequisite cases continued well into the twentieth century. One of the last, Ex Parte Mohriez, from April, 1944, involved a petitioner from the Arabian Peninsula. In the Massachusetts District Court, a young, F.D.R.-nominated judge named Charles Wyzanski granted citizenship to Mohamed Mohriez, declaring, with a kind of flourish, that “the Arab passes muster as a white person.” In his decision, Wyzanski cited the contributions of “Avicenna and Averroes, the sciences of algebra and medicine, the population and the architecture of Spain and of Sicily,” and “the very words of the English language,” holding that Arab culture was, in fact, both European and American—terms understood as analogues for whiteness. These Arab contributions “remind us as they would have reminded the Founding Fathers of the action and interaction of Arabic and non-Arabic elements of our culture,” Wyzanski wrote. Reading his decision, I get stuck on that possessive adjective, “our.” Under the 1940 Nationality Act, “the right to become a naturalized citizen” extended only to “white persons, persons of African nativity or descent, and descendants of races indigenous to the Western Hemisphere.” Wyzanski imagined himself to be inclusive, but, in the context of his time, rather than including or celebrating Arab culture he seems intent on devouring it.
My family came to America two years after that ruling—eight out of a hundred lucky Syrians granted admission as Quota Visa recipients in 1946. Legally speaking, my father was white; his presence in the country depended on it. He also was deemed “stateless,” though he wasn’t, and he was marked down as speaking English, though he didn’t. He was fourteen years old. In his first few months in America, at East Bakersfield High School, he would be teased and ridiculed—the bespectacled boy with the impenetrable accent who wore a North African private-school uniform to class, his shorts held up by suspenders, his socks pulled tight against the calves, rising all the way up to his knees.
It’s not surprising, then, that he loved to tell the story of his transformation into an American, of his eventual oath of citizenship, which, according to a well-worn family story, he took from Marilyn Monroe, of all people, at the Hollywood Bowl, in 1949. A year later, he volunteered, eagerly, for the Korean War, only to be deemed 4-F, owing to a missing bone in his leg. He took outsized pride in wearing Levi’s, which he would leave unwashed for months at a time, as was the style in the early fifties—wearing them until they could “stand up on their own.”
Perhaps it’s also not surprising that my father married two women of European descent: his first wife, an Irish-American, and then my mom, a Latvian refugee. In his children, he created what he yearned to be. Thrown into a crowd of white Americans, each of us could pass for Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution. With the right costuming, and the right opportunities, there was nowhere that we couldn’t go. I didn’t get any formal education in Arabic, just what I heard in conversation between the older generations of the family. Yalla: let’s go. Nuss-nuss: half-half. Khalas: it’s done. Habibi: dear one. Stringing the words together now, I can’t escape the meaning of the pieces that they left me. Let’s go, dear one. Half-half. It’s done.
Perhaps the single most powerful categorization tool at work in the United States is the Office of Management and Budget’s Directive No. 15. It determines the work of every federal program that is engaged with statistical activities. In May, it will be, like me, forty-three years old, having been created by the Ad Hoc Committee on Racial and Ethnic Definitions, in the late seventies. It divides the nation into five basic racial groups: black, white, American Indian/Alaskan native, Asian, and native Hawaiian/other Pacific islander. That’s it. Hispanic is rejected as its own distinct racial category, and is treated instead as an ethnicity, a subdivision within the other races. The directive was revised, slightly, in 1997; a note was added stating that “race and ethnicity may be thought of in terms of social and cultural characteristics as well as ancestry.” But the categories remained monolithic. Why do we still use such antiquated racial categories?
The Arab American Institute estimates that nearly four million Arab-Americans live in the U.S. The official government statistic is less than half that. I spoke to a Lebanese-American statistician who worked in the ancestry-and-ethnicity-statistics branch of the population division of the Census Bureau from 2010 to 2012. Following the 2010 census, she was involved in a project called the Alternative Questionnaire Experiment, which attempted to evaluate the most effective way of approaching prospective respondents. “We had sixty-seven focus groups that tested people’s reactions to the questionnaire,” she told me. People would say, “ ‘You guys made a mistake, because we’re Lebanese or Syrian or Egyptian—we’re not white.’ ” Being Arab-American, the statistician noted, involves a strange paradox. “We are a community that is both hyper-visible and invisible. When it comes to T.S.A. and travelling, and moving through society, we are hyper-visible. But when it comes to recognition and rights we disappear.”
“We’re not just talking about civil rights, although this is of course an issue,” she added. “But we’re talking about a host of other important things. Health data, for example. How many Middle Easterners die of diabetes? Or heart disease or lung cancer from smoking? And how does that number compare, percentage-wise, to the numbers in the general population?” She went on: “Housing discrimination. Hate crimes. All of these things are tracked more easily if there are corresponding categories.”
Following the Alternative Questionnaire Experiment, the statistician helped to create the Middle Eastern/North African, or MENA, category, as a way of helping the federal government better count the number of Arab-Americans in the country. She recalls arguments with a supervisor in which, she says, the supervisor insisted, “We are here just to enumerate people. Directive 15 is very clear. It says there are five races. We can’t add a race; we can’t subtract a race. That’s just not our job.”


newyorker--2020-03-31--Rereading Sanmao, the Taiwanese Wayfarer Who Sold Fifteen Million Books

In April , 1974 , a Taiwanese woman named Chen Ping landed in El Aaiún , the capital of Spanish Sahara .
On the way to the house that her fiancé , José María Quero y Ruíz , was renting , she saw herds of goats and camels ; stove smoke rose from canvas tents and iron bungalows .
She felt like she was “ walking into a fantasy , a whole new world , ” as she later wrote .
The rental , in the city ’ s Cemetery District , was at the end of a row of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a landfill .
Inside , she surveyed their one-bedroom in just a few steps : the floor was uneven , there was a gaping hole in the gray-cement wall , and a bare bulb hung from the ceiling .
She told her fiancé that it was great .
Quero , a Spanish nautical engineer , had landed a job in a nearby mine , and the couple settled in .
Chen thought of the land as “ a hometown from another life.
” While Quero picked up extra shifts at the mine , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the paperwork for their marriage , buying and carting home tanks of water , and spending the cooler afternoons with neighboring Sahrawi women .
She decorated their new home on a budget : she made furniture out of wooden shipping crates used for coffins , and fashioned a tire into a cushioned seat .
They didn ’ t have a TV or a radio .
Sometimes , she hitched a ride on a merchant truck to drive deep into the desert ; there , she set up tents near nomads , and listened @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of antelopes run into the sunset .
Soon , she started writing about her life in the desert for United Daily News , a newspaper in Taiwan , under the pen name Sanmao , and , within a year , her essays became a collection titled “ Stories of the Sahara.
” The book was reprinted three times in its first six weeks , and more than thirty reprints followed .
It was read throughout the Chinese diaspora , and translated into Korean , Japanese , and Spanish .
To date , it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this year , the book appeared in an English translation in the U.S. for the first time .
Before her death at the age of forty-seven , in 1991 , Chen wrote fourteen more books of semi-autobiographical essays , and translated works from English and Spanish into Chinese .
She wrote lyrics for popular songs , and also the script for “ Red Dust , ” a hit movie in Taiwan , Hong Kong , and the Chinese mainland .
Her success crested just as her native Taiwan was taking off economically , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to open itself up , under Deng Xiaoping .
In both places , people were starting to fantasize about the outside world , and about ways of life that varied from the monotone of their own societies .
For her followers , Sanmao , a young Chinese woman who abandoned the traditional pathways laid out for her , was a kind of revolutionary .
In the quarter century following her death , she inspired at least thirteen biographies ; fans retrace her footsteps through the Sahara and the Canary Islands .
On Douban @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a hundred and sixty million users , each edition of her books has attracted thousands of lengthy reviews .
Last March , on what would have been her seventy-sixth birthday , her likeness was featured as a Google Doodle : her long black hair waved against a golden desert , her blue robe flowing .
Photos of her make perfect Instagram posts today : Chen in a white top and white jeans , her hair in a long bob , reclining in a couch by the window , or in belted , high-waisted @ @ @ @ @ @ @ walking on an empty train track against a blue sky .
Chen Ping was born in 1943 , to a well-off young couple who had just decamped from Shanghai to the central city of Chongqing , joining a wave of politicians , servicemen , businessmen , intellectuals , and others fleeing the ongoing war against the Japanese .
After the war , the family moved to Nanjing , the capital of Chiang Kai-shek ’ s Republic of China .
Her father started a law firm with his brother , and moved the family @ @ @ @ @ @ @ later remembered the second-floor study , with parasol trees outside the window , where she came across a picture book about an orphan boy named Sanmao .
When it became clear that the Communists were going to take over , and that the Nationalist government would relocate to Taiwan , the family pawned jewelry and other valuables and joined the two million mainlanders who migrated to the island , where the Nationalists declared martial law under one-party rule , vowing , one day , to take back the mainland .
Chen often skipped @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to rent books from a local store : Russian novels , Chinese classics , and Western fiction , including “ Little Women.
” Though she was a voracious reader , she was sometimes a poor student .
In the second year of junior high , a math teacher drew zeros on her face , in ink , to mock her bad grades .
She started skipping school , and brought books to read at a cemetery , where she could hide away from the living— “ the dead are all gentle souls , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ few months , she dropped out of school altogether , and started reading at home full-time .
It was seven years before she tried to go to a school again .
By the early nineteen-sixties , an art scene was burgeoning in Taipei : writers , poets , and painters gathered at coffee shops , and some of them started magazines .
When Chen was seventeen , a painter , Gu Fusheng , began tutoring her , exposing her to Charles Baudelaire and Rainer Maria Rilke , and encouraged her to write .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” was published , under her own name , in Modern Literature , one of the city ’ s new magazines .
It ’ s a haunting , dreamlike story , loosely inspired by the film “ Portrait of Jennie , ” from 1948 , about a disturbed teen-age girl .
Chen would write extensively about her solitary teen-age years , in “ Gone with the Rainy Season ” and other books .
In a song called “ Off Track , ” she wrote , “ A timid kid was scared of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a little soldier , deserting her post / locking herself into walls of books .
.
.
.
In the days off track / there ’ s no years , no months , no Children ’ s Day / little hands / hard as they try , couldn ’ t open / the deadlock of being marked a bad child.
” She headed to Madrid , to study , in 1967 .
She was fleeing a breakup , and chose Spain after seeing an image , on the sleeve of a classical-guitar record @ @ @ @ @ @ @ endless vineyard .
“ Running away is not a protest , but a means to find a way out of a dead end , ” she later said .
In Madrid , she met Quero , then sixteen years old , who saved up to take her to the movies and swore to marry her when he grew up .
Chen didn ’ t take it seriously .
In the next six years , she moved to West Germany , then Illinois .
She worked as a tour guide in Majorca and as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a department store in Berlin .
Bread and water were her regular diet .
She turned down a couple of marriage proposals .
She returned to Taiwan to teach .
She fell in love with a German , and got engaged .
He suffered a fatal heart attack the day they picked out their wedding-invitation cards .
She left again for Madrid , where she later reunited with Quero , who had served in the marines and grown a beard .
She had another idea : move to the Sahara .
Chen and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ became known to her readers—had no money for celebrations .
They watched “ Zorba the Greek ” at the only cinema in El Aaiún .
For their civil-wedding ceremony , she wore a light-blue hemp dress and put cilantro in her straw hat .
The pair—a resourceful , witty Taiwanese wife and a doting , head-strong Spanish husband , making do in the Sahara—captivated Taiwanese readers .
By the fall of 1975 , as Spain moved to relinquish its control over the territory , they were among the last Spaniards to evacuate , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Islands , where Quero had a hard time finding a job and Chen ’ s writing became their main source of income .
By the time she visited Taiwan , the following year , “ Stories of the Sahara ” had been published , and she was treated like a movie star .
In September , 1979 , while Chen ’ s parents were visiting her in the Canary Islands , Quero died in a diving accident .
He was twenty-seven .

In April, 1974, a Taiwanese woman named Chen Ping landed in El Aaiún, the capital of Spanish Sahara. On the way to the house that her fiancé, José María Quero y Ruíz, was renting, she saw herds of goats and camels; stove smoke rose from canvas tents and iron bungalows. She felt like she was “walking into a fantasy, a whole new world,” as she later wrote. The rental, in the city’s Cemetery District, was at the end of a row of concrete houses, across the street from a landfill. Inside, she surveyed their one-bedroom in just a few steps: the floor was uneven, there was a gaping hole in the gray-cement wall, and a bare bulb hung from the ceiling. She told her fiancé that it was great.
Quero, a Spanish nautical engineer, had landed a job in a nearby mine, and the couple settled in. Chen thought of the land as “a hometown from another life.” While Quero picked up extra shifts at the mine, Chen wandered around town, figuring out the paperwork for their marriage, buying and carting home tanks of water, and spending the cooler afternoons with neighboring Sahrawi women. She decorated their new home on a budget: she made furniture out of wooden shipping crates used for coffins, and fashioned a tire into a cushioned seat. They didn’t have a TV or a radio. Sometimes, she hitched a ride on a merchant truck to drive deep into the desert; there, she set up tents near nomads, and listened to the wailing wind while watching flocks of antelopes run into the sunset.
Soon, she started writing about her life in the desert for United Daily News, a newspaper in Taiwan, under the pen name Sanmao, and, within a year, her essays became a collection titled “Stories of the Sahara.” The book was reprinted three times in its first six weeks, and more than thirty reprints followed. It was read throughout the Chinese diaspora, and translated into Korean, Japanese, and Spanish. To date, it has sold fifteen million copies. Earlier this year, the book appeared in an English translation in the U.S. for the first time.
Before her death at the age of forty-seven, in 1991, Chen wrote fourteen more books of semi-autobiographical essays, and translated works from English and Spanish into Chinese. She wrote lyrics for popular songs, and also the script for “Red Dust,” a hit movie in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the Chinese mainland. Her success crested just as her native Taiwan was taking off economically, and continued as mainland China was beginning to open itself up, under Deng Xiaoping. In both places, people were starting to fantasize about the outside world, and about ways of life that varied from the monotone of their own societies.
For her followers, Sanmao, a young Chinese woman who abandoned the traditional pathways laid out for her, was a kind of revolutionary. In the quarter century following her death, she inspired at least thirteen biographies; fans retrace her footsteps through the Sahara and the Canary Islands. On Douban, a Chinese film-and-literature Internet community with a hundred and sixty million users, each edition of her books has attracted thousands of lengthy reviews. Last March, on what would have been her seventy-sixth birthday, her likeness was featured as a Google Doodle: her long black hair waved against a golden desert, her blue robe flowing. Photos of her make perfect Instagram posts today: Chen in a white top and white jeans, her hair in a long bob, reclining in a couch by the window, or in belted, high-waisted pants, holding a net-string bag, walking on an empty train track against a blue sky.
Chen Ping was born in 1943, to a well-off young couple who had just decamped from Shanghai to the central city of Chongqing, joining a wave of politicians, servicemen, businessmen, intellectuals, and others fleeing the ongoing war against the Japanese. After the war, the family moved to Nanjing, the capital of Chiang Kai-shek’s Republic of China. Her father started a law firm with his brother, and moved the family into a Western-style house downtown. Chen later remembered the second-floor study, with parasol trees outside the window, where she came across a picture book about an orphan boy named Sanmao.
When it became clear that the Communists were going to take over, and that the Nationalist government would relocate to Taiwan, the family pawned jewelry and other valuables and joined the two million mainlanders who migrated to the island, where the Nationalists declared martial law under one-party rule, vowing, one day, to take back the mainland. Chen often skipped lunch in order to have extra money to rent books from a local store: Russian novels, Chinese classics, and Western fiction, including “Little Women.”
Though she was a voracious reader, she was sometimes a poor student. In the second year of junior high, a math teacher drew zeros on her face, in ink, to mock her bad grades. She started skipping school, and brought books to read at a cemetery, where she could hide away from the living—“the dead are all gentle souls,” she later explained. Within a few months, she dropped out of school altogether, and started reading at home full-time. It was seven years before she tried to go to a school again.
By the early nineteen-sixties, an art scene was burgeoning in Taipei: writers, poets, and painters gathered at coffee shops, and some of them started magazines. When Chen was seventeen, a painter, Gu Fusheng, began tutoring her, exposing her to Charles Baudelaire and Rainer Maria Rilke, and encouraged her to write. Her first short story, “Confusion,” was published, under her own name, in Modern Literature, one of the city’s new magazines. It’s a haunting, dreamlike story, loosely inspired by the film “Portrait of Jennie,” from 1948, about a disturbed teen-age girl.
Chen would write extensively about her solitary teen-age years, in “Gone with the Rainy Season” and other books. In a song called “Off Track,” she wrote, “A timid kid was scared of her teacher / So scared she became a little soldier, deserting her post / locking herself into walls of books. . . . In the days off track / there’s no years, no months, no Children’s Day / little hands / hard as they try, couldn’t open / the deadlock of being marked a bad child.”
She headed to Madrid, to study, in 1967. She was fleeing a breakup, and chose Spain after seeing an image, on the sleeve of a classical-guitar record, of pretty white houses and an endless vineyard. “Running away is not a protest, but a means to find a way out of a dead end,” she later said. In Madrid, she met Quero, then sixteen years old, who saved up to take her to the movies and swore to marry her when he grew up. Chen didn’t take it seriously. In the next six years, she moved to West Germany, then Illinois. She worked as a tour guide in Majorca and as an “oriental” perfume model at a department store in Berlin. Bread and water were her regular diet. She turned down a couple of marriage proposals. She returned to Taiwan to teach. She fell in love with a German, and got engaged. He suffered a fatal heart attack the day they picked out their wedding-invitation cards. She left again for Madrid, where she later reunited with Quero, who had served in the marines and grown a beard. She had another idea: move to the Sahara.
Though she became famous for her lifelong travels, Sanmao was most agile in her writing when she looked inward. Photograph Courtesy Huang Chen Tien Hsin, Chen Sheng and Chen Chieh / Crown Publishing
Chen and Quero—or Sanmao and José, as they became known to her readers—had no money for celebrations. They watched “Zorba the Greek” at the only cinema in El Aaiún. For their civil-wedding ceremony, she wore a light-blue hemp dress and put cilantro in her straw hat. The pair—a resourceful, witty Taiwanese wife and a doting, head-strong Spanish husband, making do in the Sahara—captivated Taiwanese readers. By the fall of 1975, as Spain moved to relinquish its control over the territory, they were among the last Spaniards to evacuate, after which they relocated to the Canary Islands, where Quero had a hard time finding a job and Chen’s writing became their main source of income. By the time she visited Taiwan, the following year, “Stories of the Sahara” had been published, and she was treated like a movie star. In September, 1979, while Chen’s parents were visiting her in the Canary Islands, Quero died in a diving accident. He was twenty-seven.
Many consider Quero’s death to be a fault line after which Chen’s writing changed: her earlier work was full of joy and humor, this line of thinking goes, whereas later pieces are all veiled in melancholy. To me, her writing throughout her career is warm and spirited, and also matter-of-fact, even offhand, in its sadness. On a trip that Chen took to Peru following Quero’s death, for example, a man asked her how she, a Chinese woman, spoke Spanish so well; she answered, “My husband is Spanish.” The present tense slips out naturally, and it’s like a dagger to the heart.
I recently read “Stories of the Sahara” for the first time since I was a teen-ager. The characters and plot twists were all vaguely familiar, but I struggled to enjoy it. The self-portrait was self-aggrandizing and unself-aware. Sanmao is the rule-breaker, the well-mannered woman of culture. She teaches poor local girls who can’t read or count, offers them consolation; she treats an African slave like he was a human being. In her writing, Arab women are either beautiful and mysterious or rowdy and unshowered. Musing on child brides and the enslaved men, she would ask, When would these people ever become civilized?


newyorker--2020-04-01--In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, Trump’s Close Ally, Dangerously Downplays the Coronavirus Risk

Three years into the Presidency of Donald Trump , even those Americans who , in a state of bruised dismay , have become accustomed to his vanity , his mendacity , and his distemper have been astonished by his public performances during the coronavirus pandemic .
But , while Trump ’ s behavior is egregious , that of his chief imitator , the Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro , a far-right former military officer who has been in office for fifteen months , trespasses most identifiable moral boundaries .
Bolsonaro ’ s efforts to emulate Trump have included the appropriation of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Make Brazil Great Again , ” and making routine accusations of “ fake news ” against the news media .
He regards environmentalism as an invention of communists , and has introduced a bill to allow miners and loggers into protected indigenous reserves in the Amazonian wilderness .
He frequently delivers remarks that express his misogyny , racism , and homophobia .
Another trait is his habit for losing his temper , especially with reporters , and he has lately made a habit of giving them the Italian arm-and-elbow gesture that translates to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Duterte , the President of the Philippines , it is difficult to think of another head of state as vulgar as Bolsonaro .
In the face of the coronavirus pandemic , Bolsonaro has wandered even further from acceptable norms , dismissing the illness as mere “ sniffles , ” and , much as Trump did until recently , denouncing it as a “ pretext ” ginned up by his political enemies to “ get ” him .
Bolsonaro himself was tested for the coronavirus after several of his closest aides fell ill with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump held , in early March , at Mar-a-Lago .
In all , twenty-four members of Bolsonaro ’ s entourage have tested positive for COVID-19 since returning to Brazil .
Bolsonaro says that he tested negative , twice , but he has refused to reveal the test results , leading to widespread speculation that he also contracted the virus .
( As a consequence of the Brazilian hullabaloo , Trump was also tested , but found to be negative .
Less fortunate was Francis Suarez , the mayor of Miami , who met @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tested positive , but has now recovered and is out of quarantine . )
In the past week , against the advice of his own health minister , Bolsonaro has not only refused to take national action to prevent widespread contagion but launched an official campaign , # BrazilCannotStop , encouraging Brazilians to carry on with their normal lives .
Making himself the poster boy for his campaign , Bolsonaro has repeatedly and defiantly gone out on public walkabouts , shaking the hands of supporters and posing for selfies .
Twitter removed some @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people , and promoting untested treatments , explaining that they violated a company policy to block false or misleading information about the virus .
Bolsonaro doesn ’ t seem likely to reform his delinquent behavior .
“ I ’ m sorry , some people will die .
They will die—that ’ s life , ” he said , in an interview on Friday .
In the same interview , echoing Trump ’ s questioning of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo ’ s request for thirty thousand ventilators a few days earlier , Bolsonaro @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Paulo , which is the epicenter of Brazil ’ s epidemic , saying that the numbers seemed “ too large , ” and suggesting that a “ numbers game to favor political interests ” was under way .
( There are more than a thousand reported cases and more than a hundred deaths in the state . )
The irony is that it is Bolsonaro ’ s own words and deeds that have galvanized his opponents .
Pot-banging protests , staged from apartment balconies and windows , have become a nightly occurrence in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and , on Monday , an array of Bolsonaro ’ s leftist rivals launched a public campaign to demand his resignation .
Leftist-opposition legislators have also begun to look into impeachment proceedings , but Marcelo Freixo , a charismatic Rio de Janeiro state representative for the Socialism and Liberty Party , said that he thinks that option lies some distance down the road .
It is more important right now for Brazil ’ s Congress to vote on urgent measures to alleviate the suffering of ordinary citizens , he said , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ approval ratings during the pandemic remain high , at thirty-five per cent—a significant number in a nation of political coalitions .
For an impeachment to get under way , it would be necessary to seek out allies across the political spectrum , and that process , Freixo said , is only just beginning .
Meanwhile , several of Bolsonaro ’ s former allies , including a number of governors , have broken with him , repudiating his calls to ignore the pandemic , and instituting their own quarantine regimes .
One of them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of São Paulo state , confronted Bolsonaro in a widely viewed videoconference last week , and is seen as a leading rival for the Presidency .
On Monday , another former Bolsonaro ally , Wilson Witzel , the governor of the state of Rio de Janeiro , extended a fifteen-day stay-at-home order that he had previously issued , declaring that he doesn ’ t want “ the blood of thousands of people on his hands.
” Health professionals fear that the coronavirus will claim many victims among the millions of people who live @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as favelas .
Last week , Comando Vermelho , or Red Command , the criminal gang that controls Rio ’ s City of God favela , said that it would enforce a strict curfew , vowing punishment for violators .
( Numerous indigenous communities , out of fears due to their historic susceptibility to diseases brought by outsiders , have isolated themselves in the past week . )
On Sunday , a Brazilian friend , the historian Gunter Axt , e-mailed me to say that he has moved to his mother ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ town of Gramado , in southern Brazil .
“ The mayor is reasonable and has established quarantine , ” he wrote .
“ Everyone is at home and stores are closed .
But , although the city is small and rich , the local hospital is poorly equipped.
” He added , “ Instigated by President Bolsonaro , Canela , the city ‘ next door , ’ has decided to suspend the quarantine .
This is bad , because the cities are close , so if the contagion advances next door , it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ many wealthy and influential people living in Canela , so maybe they can reverse that decision .
Do not know .
But this gives you an idea of the climate of division that we are experiencing.
” Another friend , Petra Costa , the director of the Oscar-nominated documentary “ The Edge of Democracy ” —which Bolsonaro famously called “ garbage , ” without having seen it—e-mailed me on Tuesday .
“ The governors are doing a great job , taking steps to protect the health and lives of the population , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ also approved very important economic measures , despite resistance from the federal government.
” She added that the Minister of the Economy , Paulo Guedes , has recommended “ insufficient economic measures to face the social crisis that threatens millions of Brazilians .
It reveals the ideology of the government that has selfishness as its core , that is against any type of social investment.
” It seems likely that Bolsonaro ’ s gambit is less one of willful ignorance than of political calculation , one in which , again like Trump , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The next Presidential elections are in 2022 and , if he can keep the economy running , and Brazil ’ s mortality rates remain low , his chances at winning a second term are decent .
But , of course , his prospects will drop significantly if the economy , which is heading toward a recession , doesn ’ t recover , or if the epidemic proves catastrophic .
Either way , he is wagering Brazilian lives as his collateral .
On Sunday , in a new walkabout around Brasília , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , telling people he met , “ We are all going to die someday.
” • How to practice social distancing , from responding to a sick housemate to the pros and cons of ordering food .
• How people cope and create new customs amid a pandemic .
• What it means to contain and mitigate the coronavirus outbreak .
• How much of the world is likely to be quarantined ?
• Donald Trump in the time of coronavirus .
• The coronavirus is likely to spread for more than a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ available .
• We are all irrational panic shoppers .
• The strange terror of watching the coronavirus take Rome .

Three years into the Presidency of Donald Trump, even those Americans who, in a state of bruised dismay, have become accustomed to his vanity, his mendacity, and his distemper have been astonished by his public performances during the coronavirus pandemic. But, while Trump’s behavior is egregious, that of his chief imitator, the Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right former military officer who has been in office for fifteen months, trespasses most identifiable moral boundaries.
Bolsonaro’s efforts to emulate Trump have included the appropriation of his campaign slogan, reconstituted as “Make Brazil Great Again,” and making routine accusations of “fake news” against the news media. He regards environmentalism as an invention of communists, and has introduced a bill to allow miners and loggers into protected indigenous reserves in the Amazonian wilderness. He frequently delivers remarks that express his misogyny, racism, and homophobia. Another trait is his habit for losing his temper, especially with reporters, and he has lately made a habit of giving them the Italian arm-and-elbow gesture that translates to “fuck you.” Except for Rodrigo Duterte, the President of the Philippines, it is difficult to think of another head of state as vulgar as Bolsonaro.
In the face of the coronavirus pandemic, Bolsonaro has wandered even further from acceptable norms, dismissing the illness as mere “sniffles,” and, much as Trump did until recently, denouncing it as a “pretext” ginned up by his political enemies to “get” him. Bolsonaro himself was tested for the coronavirus after several of his closest aides fell ill with COVID-19 following a dinner and reception that Trump held, in early March, at Mar-a-Lago. In all, twenty-four members of Bolsonaro’s entourage have tested positive for COVID-19 since returning to Brazil. Bolsonaro says that he tested negative, twice, but he has refused to reveal the test results, leading to widespread speculation that he also contracted the virus. (As a consequence of the Brazilian hullabaloo, Trump was also tested, but found to be negative. Less fortunate was Francis Suarez, the mayor of Miami, who met with Bolsonaro’s delegation, and tested positive, but has now recovered and is out of quarantine.)
In the past week, against the advice of his own health minister, Bolsonaro has not only refused to take national action to prevent widespread contagion but launched an official campaign, #BrazilCannotStop, encouraging Brazilians to carry on with their normal lives. Making himself the poster boy for his campaign, Bolsonaro has repeatedly and defiantly gone out on public walkabouts, shaking the hands of supporters and posing for selfies. Twitter removed some videos that showed him meeting and greeting people, and promoting untested treatments, explaining that they violated a company policy to block false or misleading information about the virus.
Bolsonaro doesn’t seem likely to reform his delinquent behavior. “I’m sorry, some people will die. They will die—that’s life,” he said, in an interview on Friday. In the same interview, echoing Trump’s questioning of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s request for thirty thousand ventilators a few days earlier, Bolsonaro challenged the statistics coming out of São Paulo, which is the epicenter of Brazil’s epidemic, saying that the numbers seemed “too large,” and suggesting that a “numbers game to favor political interests” was under way. (There are more than a thousand reported cases and more than a hundred deaths in the state.)
The irony is that it is Bolsonaro’s own words and deeds that have galvanized his opponents. Pot-banging protests, staged from apartment balconies and windows, have become a nightly occurrence in São Paulo and in Rio de Janeiro, and, on Monday, an array of Bolsonaro’s leftist rivals launched a public campaign to demand his resignation. Leftist-opposition legislators have also begun to look into impeachment proceedings, but Marcelo Freixo, a charismatic Rio de Janeiro state representative for the Socialism and Liberty Party, said that he thinks that option lies some distance down the road. It is more important right now for Brazil’s Congress to vote on urgent measures to alleviate the suffering of ordinary citizens, he said, and he pointed out that Bolsonaro’s approval ratings during the pandemic remain high, at thirty-five per cent—a significant number in a nation of political coalitions. For an impeachment to get under way, it would be necessary to seek out allies across the political spectrum, and that process, Freixo said, is only just beginning.
Meanwhile, several of Bolsonaro’s former allies, including a number of governors, have broken with him, repudiating his calls to ignore the pandemic, and instituting their own quarantine regimes. One of them, João Doria, the influential governor of São Paulo state, confronted Bolsonaro in a widely viewed videoconference last week, and is seen as a leading rival for the Presidency. On Monday, another former Bolsonaro ally, Wilson Witzel, the governor of the state of Rio de Janeiro, extended a fifteen-day stay-at-home order that he had previously issued, declaring that he doesn’t want “the blood of thousands of people on his hands.”
Health professionals fear that the coronavirus will claim many victims among the millions of people who live in the crowded, unsanitary slums known as favelas. Last week, Comando Vermelho, or Red Command, the criminal gang that controls Rio’s City of God favela, said that it would enforce a strict curfew, vowing punishment for violators. (Numerous indigenous communities, out of fears due to their historic susceptibility to diseases brought by outsiders, have isolated themselves in the past week.)
On Sunday, a Brazilian friend, the historian Gunter Axt, e-mailed me to say that he has moved to his mother’s home, in the small mountain resort town of Gramado, in southern Brazil. “The mayor is reasonable and has established quarantine,” he wrote. “Everyone is at home and stores are closed. But, although the city is small and rich, the local hospital is poorly equipped.” He added, “Instigated by President Bolsonaro, Canela, the city ‘next door,’ has decided to suspend the quarantine. This is bad, because the cities are close, so if the contagion advances next door, it will also affect us. There are many wealthy and influential people living in Canela, so maybe they can reverse that decision. Do not know. But this gives you an idea of the climate of division that we are experiencing.”
Another friend, Petra Costa, the director of the Oscar-nominated documentary “The Edge of Democracy”—which Bolsonaro famously called “garbage,” without having seen it—e-mailed me on Tuesday. “The governors are doing a great job, taking steps to protect the health and lives of the population,” she wrote. “The National Congress also approved very important economic measures, despite resistance from the federal government.” She added that the Minister of the Economy, Paulo Guedes, has recommended “insufficient economic measures to face the social crisis that threatens millions of Brazilians. It reveals the ideology of the government that has selfishness as its core, that is against any type of social investment.”