newyorker--2020-04-18--Honk Twice for Hallelujah: What Church Looks Like in the Parking Lot

Promises like that are invisible , but the hope for them is evident in every face and frame .
Such is the fundamental nature of faith : the devout always embodied , the holy often elusive .
One image in particular seems to me to reveal the eternality of religious searching as manifested in this specific moment in time : in it , a woman wearing her medical mask like a vestment and a thin linen top patterned like monastic lace raises her hands in a classic gesture of blessing .
Her long fingers reach for the sky , paused @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or summoning the Holy Ghost or calling on heaven ’ s angels to descend .
For all that ’ s modern about this affliction and the trappings of the Rock Church drive-in service , the woman could almost be Mary at the foot of the crucifixion crying out in pain for her dead son , or Mary Magdalene outside the empty tomb , surprised by joy and raising her hands in bewilderment .
It is so difficult to know sometimes , not just in these pictures but in general , whether we are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or gladness , to something perfunctory or wholly sincere .
Christians are so well trained to speak of the mysteries of the Lord , but what Peterson ’ s photographs reveal is how mysterious we can be even to one another .

Promises like that are invisible, but the hope for them is evident in every face and frame. Such is the fundamental nature of faith: the devout always embodied, the holy often elusive. One image in particular seems to me to reveal the eternality of religious searching as manifested in this specific moment in time: in it, a woman wearing her medical mask like a vestment and a thin linen top patterned like monastic lace raises her hands in a classic gesture of blessing. Her long fingers reach for the sky, paused somewhere in the sign of the cross or summoning the Holy Ghost or calling on heaven’s angels to descend. For all that’s modern about this affliction and the trappings of the Rock Church drive-in service, the woman could almost be Mary at the foot of the crucifixion crying out in pain for her dead son, or Mary Magdalene outside the empty tomb, surprised by joy and raising her hands in bewilderment. It is so difficult to know sometimes, not just in these pictures but in general, whether we are bearing witness to someone’s grief or gladness, to something perfunctory or wholly sincere. Christians are so well trained to speak of the mysteries of the Lord, but what Peterson’s photographs reveal is how mysterious we can be even to one another.


newyorker--2020-04-18--What It Means to Miss Marathon Day in Boston

Jerry Noonan ran his first Boston Marathon in 1985 , and his second in 2003 .
In 2016 , he joined the runners as the race wound through Wellesley , slipping in alongside his daughter to pace her through the last thirteen miles .
He grew up outside of Boston , went to college in Boston , and still lives in Boston .
The marathon has grown with him : there were more than five thousand runners in 1985 , twenty thousand in 2003 , and more than thirty thousand official entrants today .
But the course follows the same @ @ @ @ @ @ @ up Heartbreak Hill , and into downtown—as it has since 1924 .
( Before then , it fell a couple miles short . )
A competitive qualification time is still required for the vast majority of runners .
The race always falls on the third Monday in April , Patriots ’ Day—or Marathon Day , as some call it .
Schools are closed , even in a normal year , and the bars are filled .
The Red Sox play an early game at Fenway .
In 2013 , Noonan was walking with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had just watched the Red Sox beat the Tampa Bay Rays , 3–2 , when they decided to head to the finish line and watch the runners come in .
They were a few blocks away , at Newbury Street and Fairfield , when they heard the sound of two explosions .
The crowd turned and surged toward them , running in fear from the finish line .
A pair of bombs had gone off .
Three people were killed , two hundred and eighty-one injured .
Another man , an M.I.T .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ was killed during the manhunt , which lasted for four days .
Eventually , the perpetrators—two young brothers , Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev—were tracked down .
There was a chase , a gun battle .
The boys threw pipe bombs and an I.E.D .
made out of a pressure cooker at the police .
Tamerlan was fatally injured ; his younger brother escaped .
A shelter-in-place order was issued for the area .
Finally , Dzhokhar was discovered , hiding inside a boat in someone ’ s yard .
The following year , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ marathon again .
They stood at the finish line .
There was “ a lot of trepidation , ” he said .
But people still went .
“ It was a time to take back the city , ” he told me .
Noonan thought of the bombing and its aftermath last month , when social-distancing restrictions were issued in Boston—as they have been around the country—owing to the coronavirus crisis .
The manhunt was his “ only comparable experience , ” he said , for the way that life has been so @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is very different .
There is no corollary for the new sense of siege , and for what it requires—not togetherness but distance .
The weekend after he learned that the Boston Marathon had been rescheduled for September 14th , Noonan went running along the Charles River .
It ’ s the first time the date has been changed in the hundred-and-twenty-three-year history of the race .
Noonan came back from his run and said to his wife , “ I can ’ t imagine spring in Boston without Marathon Day.
” In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ too much and yell at strangers , sports provide a kind of social circadian rhythm .
They are an ordering mechanism , a way to set the clock .
Every baseball fan can tell you the psychic significance of Opening Day .
Every swimmer and gymnast knows the real meaning of the phrase “ every four years.
” In Boston , the marathon is an annual reset .
High-level competitive running is a niche pastime , to say the least ; most people don ’ t think about it the rest of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Boston , it seems like the only thing that matters .
The race has an élite field—it is one of six marathons around the globe that attract the world ’ s top runners .
But for amateurs , too , there is a high competitive standard ; simply qualifying is an achievement .
Ruth Perkins , a running coach in Puyallup , Washington , described it to me as “ the Olympics for the average runner.
” Tom Daniels , who has run nineteen marathons , including all six majors ( Boston @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , London , and Berlin ) , called it “ a marathoner ’ s Mecca , ” adding , “ It ’ s the hardest .
Not necessarily the largest , but the oldest , traditional , most brutally physical of the six.
” What makes the biggest difference , he said , is the crowd .
“ The whole city is a marathoner that day , ” he told me .
In 2018 , when Sarna Becker ran it , the conditions were monsoon-like .
Becker had run track for Stanford and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ That day , though , was a slog .
Around mile five , she started planning her strategy for dropping out of the race .
Then , moments later , she caught up with a runner she ’ d been trailing , and they started talking .
They decided to run it together .
At mile eight , a spectator gave her a dry pair of Red Sox gloves , and she pulled them over her raw , cold hands .
She told me that , when she reached the finish line , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ her life , she thought , I ’ m at peace with putting my racing career to rest .
She called it one of the most memorable experiences of her life .
When the postponement of this year ’ s race was announced , it was a blow for racers , of course—all of whom had been training for months , and some for much longer .
“ A lot of my athletes feel like this work is kind of wasted , ” Perkins said .
“ I keep reminding them that fitness @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who was set to run his first Boston Marathon this year , told me , “ Instead of running twenty miles this weekend , my four buddies ran thirteen at a slow pace , talking about Boston the whole time.
” Initially , it was a relief to many runners that the race had been rescheduled rather than cancelled , but the logistics looked complicated : the Boston , Berlin , London , Chicago , and New York City marathons are now scheduled to be run in a six-week span this fall .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Boston and also another of these courses were now going to have to choose between them .
And even mid-September has begun to seem optimistic for an event that brings thirty thousand runners from around the world together , with somewhere between half a million and a million spectators .
Part of what makes a marathon special , after all , is the spontaneous intimacy that it generates .
The enduring image of the sport may be a lonely runner on an empty road , but marathons are communal .
Runners aren ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are on a track .
They move in masses , and within those packs they dodge and draft .
Spectators aren ’ t always neatly cordoned off—they don ’ t sit in assigned seats , and they don ’ t have tickets .
They jostle with one another .
They reach into the race , to offer high fives or cups of water .
Of all sporting events , a major marathon , open to all runners and spectators , may be one of the hardest and slowest to bring back .
And @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that , for me , has continued to seem , despite everything , just around the corner .
Part of it is that I live four miles from the finish line .
Another part of it is that running is one of the few things from my former life , which ended in early March , that we are still allowed to do .
Every morning , I head out .
I wear a neck gaiter to pull up over my nose and mouth , and take less travelled routes , and worry @ @ @ @ @ @ @ distance , and whether it is really safe to run .
But once my feet find their rhythm I lose myself in it , and for a little while I feel a sense of progress .

Jerry Noonan ran his first Boston Marathon in 1985, and his second in 2003. In 2016, he joined the runners as the race wound through Wellesley, slipping in alongside his daughter to pace her through the last thirteen miles. He grew up outside of Boston, went to college in Boston, and still lives in Boston. The marathon has grown with him: there were more than five thousand runners in 1985, twenty thousand in 2003, and more than thirty thousand official entrants today. But the course follows the same physically punishing 26.2 miles—through the suburbs, up Heartbreak Hill, and into downtown—as it has since 1924. (Before then, it fell a couple miles short.) A competitive qualification time is still required for the vast majority of runners. The race always falls on the third Monday in April, Patriots’ Day—or Marathon Day, as some call it. Schools are closed, even in a normal year, and the bars are filled. The Red Sox play an early game at Fenway.
In 2013, Noonan was walking with his wife from Fenway, where they had just watched the Red Sox beat the Tampa Bay Rays, 3–2, when they decided to head to the finish line and watch the runners come in. They were a few blocks away, at Newbury Street and Fairfield, when they heard the sound of two explosions. The crowd turned and surged toward them, running in fear from the finish line. A pair of bombs had gone off. Three people were killed, two hundred and eighty-one injured. Another man, an M.I.T. police officer named Sean A. Collier, was killed during the manhunt, which lasted for four days. Eventually, the perpetrators—two young brothers, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev—were tracked down. There was a chase, a gun battle. The boys threw pipe bombs and an I.E.D. made out of a pressure cooker at the police. Tamerlan was fatally injured; his younger brother escaped. A shelter-in-place order was issued for the area. Finally, Dzhokhar was discovered, hiding inside a boat in someone’s yard. The following year, Noonan and his wife went to the marathon again. They stood at the finish line. There was “a lot of trepidation,” he said. But people still went. “It was a time to take back the city,” he told me.
Noonan thought of the bombing and its aftermath last month, when social-distancing restrictions were issued in Boston—as they have been around the country—owing to the coronavirus crisis. The manhunt was his “only comparable experience,” he said, for the way that life has been so disrupted. Of course, this threat is very different. There is no corollary for the new sense of siege, and for what it requires—not togetherness but distance. The weekend after he learned that the Boston Marathon had been rescheduled for September 14th, Noonan went running along the Charles River. It’s the first time the date has been changed in the hundred-and-twenty-three-year history of the race. Noonan came back from his run and said to his wife, “I can’t imagine spring in Boston without Marathon Day.”
In addition to offering an excuse to drink too much and yell at strangers, sports provide a kind of social circadian rhythm. They are an ordering mechanism, a way to set the clock. Every baseball fan can tell you the psychic significance of Opening Day. Every swimmer and gymnast knows the real meaning of the phrase “every four years.” In Boston, the marathon is an annual reset. High-level competitive running is a niche pastime, to say the least; most people don’t think about it the rest of the year. But for one day, in Boston, it seems like the only thing that matters.
The race has an élite field—it is one of six marathons around the globe that attract the world’s top runners. But for amateurs, too, there is a high competitive standard; simply qualifying is an achievement. Ruth Perkins, a running coach in Puyallup, Washington, described it to me as “the Olympics for the average runner.” Tom Daniels, who has run nineteen marathons, including all six majors (Boston, New York, Chicago, Tokyo, London, and Berlin), called it “a marathoner’s Mecca,” adding, “It’s the hardest. Not necessarily the largest, but the oldest, traditional, most brutally physical of the six.” What makes the biggest difference, he said, is the crowd. “The whole city is a marathoner that day,” he told me.
In 2018, when Sarna Becker ran it, the conditions were monsoon-like. Becker had run track for Stanford and was still an ambitious competitive runner. That day, though, was a slog. Around mile five, she started planning her strategy for dropping out of the race. Then, moments later, she caught up with a runner she’d been trailing, and they started talking. They decided to run it together. At mile eight, a spectator gave her a dry pair of Red Sox gloves, and she pulled them over her raw, cold hands. She told me that, when she reached the finish line, after one of the slowest races of her life, she thought, I’m at peace with putting my racing career to rest. She called it one of the most memorable experiences of her life.
When the postponement of this year’s race was announced, it was a blow for racers, of course—all of whom had been training for months, and some for much longer. “A lot of my athletes feel like this work is kind of wasted,” Perkins said. “I keep reminding them that fitness is always valuable.” Roger Smith, who was set to run his first Boston Marathon this year, told me, “Instead of running twenty miles this weekend, my four buddies ran thirteen at a slow pace, talking about Boston the whole time.” Initially, it was a relief to many runners that the race had been rescheduled rather than cancelled, but the logistics looked complicated: the Boston, Berlin, London, Chicago, and New York City marathons are now scheduled to be run in a six-week span this fall. Some élite racers hoping to run in Boston and also another of these courses were now going to have to choose between them. And even mid-September has begun to seem optimistic for an event that brings thirty thousand runners from around the world together, with somewhere between half a million and a million spectators.
Part of what makes a marathon special, after all, is the spontaneous intimacy that it generates. The enduring image of the sport may be a lonely runner on an empty road, but marathons are communal. Runners aren’t separated by lanes, as they are on a track. They move in masses, and within those packs they dodge and draft. Spectators aren’t always neatly cordoned off—they don’t sit in assigned seats, and they don’t have tickets. They jostle with one another. They reach into the race, to offer high fives or cups of water. Of all sporting events, a major marathon, open to all runners and spectators, may be one of the hardest and slowest to bring back.
And yet the Boston Marathon is the one that, for me, has continued to seem, despite everything, just around the corner. Part of it is that I live four miles from the finish line. Another part of it is that running is one of the few things from my former life, which ended in early March, that we are still allowed to do. Every morning, I head out. I wear a neck gaiter to pull up over my nose and mouth, and take less travelled routes, and worry about drafts and wind currents and keeping distance, and whether it is really safe to run. But once my feet find their rhythm I lose myself in it, and for a little while I feel a sense of progress.
It has helped me to think of the tragic period we are in now as a marathon, and not as a rupture in time. It’s an odd sort of marathon. We are still near the start, most likely, but no one knows how far it is to the end. The days blend into one another, and the weeks, and now the months. Monday is Patriots’ Day, but there will be no game at Fenway; Opening Day hasn’t happened yet. The schools were already closed, and the bars are empty. There aren’t any strangers around to yell at. Time passes, whether or not runners come down Boylston Street; spring has arrived, even though snow flurries were falling when I ran last Thursday. The story goes that the first marathoner, in ancient Greece, collapsed and died; the point of the race is to win, but it is also, still, to survive. My mind keeps turning back to the race in 2014, the year after the bombing, and to the crowd at the finish line, who believed that it was important to show up. Now the important thing is for people to stay away. But it’s part of the same collective project.
A Guide to the Coronavirus


newyorker--2020-04-18--There Is No Panacea for the Coronavirus Economy

The stock market posted another strong performance on Friday , with the Dow Jones Industrial Average rising more than seven hundred points .
It has now regained about half of the losses it suffered between late February and late March , as the death toll from the coronavirus mounted and great swaths of the economy were closed down .
Indeed , the market is only about eighteen per cent below its all-time peak , which came on February 12th .
Investors were reacting to some encouraging news about a possible treatment for people hospitalized with COVID-19 and to the prospect @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
On Friday , Texas announced the lifting of some restrictions , and Michigan ’ s governor , Gretchen Whitmer , expressed the hope that some of her state ’ s economy could “ re-engage ” as early as May 1st .
These developments came a day after the White House released a set of guidelines for reopening the economy , which envisage a three-stage process , with states moving from one stage to the next as they meet various “ gating criteria ” related to the incidence of the virus , testing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the past week , the virus claimed roughly two thousand lives a day in the United States .
Within one twenty-four-hour period , more than forty-five hundred people had died from COVID-19 and the President ’ s medical advisers have acknowledged that any reversal of the shutdowns , even a limited one , will be risky .
Some Asian territories that seemed to have the virus under control , including Japan , Hong Kong , and Singapore , recently experienced a second wave of infections .
The possibility of something similar happening here @ @ @ @ @ @ @ conference call with governors on Thursday , said , “ You are going to be calling your own shots.
” “ Trump ’ s the-buck-stops-with-the-states posture is largely designed to shield himself from blame should there be new outbreaks after states reopen or for other problems , ” the Washington Post reported , citing current and former Administration officials who have been involved in the crisis response .
Despite a month of shutdowns and distancing measures , the virus hasn ’ t stopped spreading , but the rate of new infections has gone @ @ @ @ @ @ @ based on figures from the Covid Tracking Project , the number of cases is rising by about 4.7 per cent , which is down from about 7.5 per cent a week ago .
Ian Shepherdson , the founder of Pantheon Macroeconomics , has been looking at what ’ s happening in other countries , too .
In the past week or so , Germany , Spain , and Italy have announced limited steps to reopen stores and other businesses .
These countries waited until the daily new infection rate had fallen to a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Shepherdson said .
By this time next week , the U.S. rate may well have closed that gap .
In absolute terms , however , the number of new infections is still much higher in the United States , because the over-all number of cases is so large .
So far , most governors , Republican and Democrat , have resisted the idea of lifting stay-at-home orders .
But the economic cost of the shutdown is rising—in the past four weeks , more than twenty-two million Americans have lost their jobs or been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
And in some Democrat-run states , conservative protesters have staged demonstrations against the restrictions , with Trump openly egging them on .
The big question is what will happen if some businesses do start to reopen .
Shepherdson said that the outlook in the United States is complicated by a pattern of infection that varies greatly across regions and states .
“ If you are in a state that has done well , the danger is that if you open up you could get flooded by people from next door , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Rhode Island , which is situated between two hot spots—New York and Boston—and where the number of cases is still rising by about nine per cent a day .
Practically everybody agrees that comprehensive testing will be vital going forward .
For example , in “ National Coronavirus Response : A Road Map to Reopening , ” released at the end of March , the American Enterprise Institute , a conservative think tank that carries influence at the White House , said that we need “ better data to identify areas of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ immunity in the population.
” During Thursday ’ s briefing about the Administration ’ s new guidelines , Dr. Deborah Birx , the coördinator of the White House ’ s virus-response task force , claimed that the necessary data would be available from three different sources : test results from people exhibiting COVID-19-like symptoms ; reports of influenza-like symptoms across the country ; and expanded “ sentinel surveillance ” —i.e.
, testing of people in high-risk areas , such as indigenous communities , nursing homes , and “ inner-city federal clinics.
” Right @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thousand tests are being carried out each day .
By the end of April , the U.S. will have administered more than five million tests in total , Vice-President Mike Pence said at Thursday ’ s briefing .
But many governors , medical experts , business leaders , and economists are highly skeptical about the extent of testing , which is still largely confined to people who have already developed symptoms .
The key to keeping down the infection rate is locating and isolating asymptomatic carriers and then doing contact tracing .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ testing health-care workers , ” Paul Romer , a Nobel-winning economist who is a professor at New York University , told me on Friday .
“ We need to be testing all of them regularly , and many others , too .
Trump ’ s medical advisers are stuck with blinkers on .
They are not stepping back and looking at the big picture.
’ ’ In Romer ’ s view , this involves creating a public-health strategy that can be sustained for a year or eighteen months , until a vaccine is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he said , are continued shutdowns or a massive expansion of testing to find and isolate asymptomatic carriers before they spread the disease .
Romer , who served as the chief economist at the World Bank from 2016 to 2018 , is calling for at least ten million tests per day , and ideally as many as twenty million or thirty million .
Absent large-scale testing , the outlook is grim , he said .
“ As soon as we stop the shutdowns , we ’ ll go right back to exponential growth @ @ @ @ @ @ @ us much if we get down to very low rates of infection first , because exponential growth is so fast you get right back there very quickly.
” Given the limits to testing capacity and the Trump Administration ’ s refusal to take the lead in this area , Romer suggested that the most likely outcome is a series of reopenings and renewed shutdowns , as the infection rate rebounds .
“ From an economic perspective , that is almost as bad as a permanent shutdown , ” he said .
“ Nobody @ @ @ @ @ @ @ going to reopen a restaurant.
” Not everybody agrees with that analysis , of course .
But there is general agreement among economists that even under optimistic scenarios , where the rate of infection doesn ’ t shoot back up immediately , restoring the economy to health is going to be an extended and difficult task .
“ Absent a vaccine or treatment breakthrough , reopening will be gradual , ” the economists at Goldman Sachs wrote this week .
“ Several other countries have taken steps toward reopening .
We see three @ @ @ @ @ @ @ initial reopening timelines often prove too optimistic .
Second , even countries at the forefront of reopening have gradual and conservative plans .
Third , recovery is easier and quicker in manufacturing and construction than in consumer services .
”

The stock market posted another strong performance on Friday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average rising more than seven hundred points. It has now regained about half of the losses it suffered between late February and late March, as the death toll from the coronavirus mounted and great swaths of the economy were closed down. Indeed, the market is only about eighteen per cent below its all-time peak, which came on February 12th.
Investors were reacting to some encouraging news about a possible treatment for people hospitalized with COVID-19 and to the prospect of parts of the economy reopening soon. On Friday, Texas announced the lifting of some restrictions, and Michigan’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer, expressed the hope that some of her state’s economy could “re-engage” as early as May 1st. These developments came a day after the White House released a set of guidelines for reopening the economy, which envisage a three-stage process, with states moving from one stage to the next as they meet various “gating criteria” related to the incidence of the virus, testing capacity, and hospital capacity.
Within the past week, the virus claimed roughly two thousand lives a day in the United States. Within one twenty-four-hour period, more than forty-five hundred people had died from COVID-19 and the President’s medical advisers have acknowledged that any reversal of the shutdowns, even a limited one, will be risky. Some Asian territories that seemed to have the virus under control, including Japan, Hong Kong, and Singapore, recently experienced a second wave of infections. The possibility of something similar happening here surely explains why Trump, in a conference call with governors on Thursday, said, “You are going to be calling your own shots.” “Trump’s the-buck-stops-with-the-states posture is largely designed to shield himself from blame should there be new outbreaks after states reopen or for other problems,” the Washington Post reported, citing current and former Administration officials who have been involved in the crisis response.
Despite a month of shutdowns and distancing measures, the virus hasn’t stopped spreading, but the rate of new infections has gone down. At a national level, based on figures from the Covid Tracking Project, the number of cases is rising by about 4.7 per cent, which is down from about 7.5 per cent a week ago. Ian Shepherdson, the founder of Pantheon Macroeconomics, has been looking at what’s happening in other countries, too. In the past week or so, Germany, Spain, and Italy have announced limited steps to reopen stores and other businesses. These countries waited until the daily new infection rate had fallen to a bit below the current U.S. level, Shepherdson said. By this time next week, the U.S. rate may well have closed that gap.
In absolute terms, however, the number of new infections is still much higher in the United States, because the over-all number of cases is so large. So far, most governors, Republican and Democrat, have resisted the idea of lifting stay-at-home orders. But the economic cost of the shutdown is rising—in the past four weeks, more than twenty-two million Americans have lost their jobs or been furloughed, figures released on Thursday showed. And in some Democrat-run states, conservative protesters have staged demonstrations against the restrictions, with Trump openly egging them on.
The big question is what will happen if some businesses do start to reopen. Shepherdson said that the outlook in the United States is complicated by a pattern of infection that varies greatly across regions and states. “If you are in a state that has done well, the danger is that if you open up you could get flooded by people from next door,” he said. He cited the experience of Rhode Island, which is situated between two hot spots—New York and Boston—and where the number of cases is still rising by about nine per cent a day.
Practically everybody agrees that comprehensive testing will be vital going forward. For example, in “National Coronavirus Response: A Road Map to Reopening,” released at the end of March, the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank that carries influence at the White House, said that we need “better data to identify areas of spread and the rate of exposure and immunity in the population.” During Thursday’s briefing about the Administration’s new guidelines, Dr. Deborah Birx, the coördinator of the White House’s virus-response task force, claimed that the necessary data would be available from three different sources: test results from people exhibiting COVID-19-like symptoms; reports of influenza-like symptoms across the country; and expanded “sentinel surveillance”—i.e., testing of people in high-risk areas, such as indigenous communities, nursing homes, and “inner-city federal clinics.” Right now, about a hundred and twenty-five thousand tests are being carried out each day. By the end of April, the U.S. will have administered more than five million tests in total, Vice-President Mike Pence said at Thursday’s briefing.
But many governors, medical experts, business leaders, and economists are highly skeptical about the extent of testing, which is still largely confined to people who have already developed symptoms. The key to keeping down the infection rate is locating and isolating asymptomatic carriers and then doing contact tracing.
“The reality is we are not even testing health-care workers,” Paul Romer, a Nobel-winning economist who is a professor at New York University, told me on Friday. “We need to be testing all of them regularly, and many others, too. Trump’s medical advisers are stuck with blinkers on. They are not stepping back and looking at the big picture.’’ In Romer’s view, this involves creating a public-health strategy that can be sustained for a year or eighteen months, until a vaccine is developed. The only available options, he said, are continued shutdowns or a massive expansion of testing to find and isolate asymptomatic carriers before they spread the disease. Romer, who served as the chief economist at the World Bank from 2016 to 2018, is calling for at least ten million tests per day, and ideally as many as twenty million or thirty million.
Absent large-scale testing, the outlook is grim, he said. “As soon as we stop the shutdowns, we’ll go right back to exponential growth. It won’t even help us much if we get down to very low rates of infection first, because exponential growth is so fast you get right back there very quickly.” Given the limits to testing capacity and the Trump Administration’s refusal to take the lead in this area, Romer suggested that the most likely outcome is a series of reopenings and renewed shutdowns, as the infection rate rebounds. “From an economic perspective, that is almost as bad as a permanent shutdown,” he said. “Nobody is going to invest. Nobody is going to reopen a restaurant.”


newyorker--2020-04-18--The Homemade Insight of “Fetch the Bolt Cutters”

Fiona Apple is a longtime practitioner of social distancing .
For nearly two decades , she has seldom left her home in Venice Beach , except to walk her dog , Mercy .
She has no social media .
She tends to avoid the press , and she rarely listens to new music , owing to some combination of disinterest and an aversion to being influenced .
These qualities lend her work a kind of feral authenticity , with no trend lines to be traced between its emotional eruptions and the music of her peers .
Even when her songs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can seem slippery , out of sight .
When Apple releases an album , as she has once or twice per decade since the late nineties , she doesn ’ t so much reëmerge as peek through the blinds of her life .
On the title track of her new record , “ Fetch the Bolt Cutters , ” Apple offers an eerie mantra for a time in which her listeners have begun to feel like caged animals : “ Fetch the bolt cutters , ” she sings .
“ I ’ ve @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the song ’ s final moments , Apple ’ s voice deteriorates into whispers and gasps , and the music is overtaken by the sound of dogs barking anxiously , as if something deeply upsetting has come to their attention .
On a song called “ Heavy Balloon ” —which has unexpected key changes and the shaggy , reverberational energy of a one-take live recording—she uses nonperishable food items as metaphorical grist : “ I climb like peas and beans , ” she sings .
“ I ’ ve been sucking it in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at the seams.
” Apple has never downloaded Instagram , but she ’ s managed to supply a fresh songbook of caption inspiration .
Over time , confinement has made Apple exceptionally resourceful .
“ Fetch the Bolt Cutters ” is the culmination of a long and steady rejection of formal recording processes , wherein conventional instrumentation and studio arrangements have been replaced by an at-home tool kit of gadgets , gizmos , and B-roll audio recordings made on an iPhone or with GarageBand .
Besides the dogs barking , the album contains @ @ @ @ @ @ @ strange drumming surfaces : a metal butterfly , a loose stovetop Apple found on the side of the road , wooden blocks , an assortment of bells and shakers , oil cans .
Apple is a classically trained pianist who , in her early days , took songwriting cues from Ella Fitzgerald .
She wrote ballads and smoldering pop songs that could be performed behind a piano , on a big stage , or played over café speakers .
But as she has grown in age—she ’ s now forty-two—she has moved toward @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more DNA with hymns and spirituals than with pop or jazz .
“ Fetch the Bolt Cutters ” is less of an album than a collection of vocal and rhythmic spasms that have fermented into deeply challenging but satisfying songs , each imbued with an intense , almost overwhelming physicality .
And yet , because of Apple ’ s ear , acumen , and precise vocal enunciation , “ Fetch the Bolt Cutters ” also has a perverse musicality .
The chants and interjections at the heart of these songs have the effect @ @ @ @ @ @ @ re not designed as such .
They get lodged in the gut or the chest .
There are shades of improvisational jazz , of Delta blues , of rap-battle taunts and nursery rhymes , but the album ’ s genre is hard to place .
This is the aspiration of most artists—to cultivate a sound that defies categorization .
But those same artists , feasting on a buffet of influences online , tend to achieve this effect through maximalism , folding in the styles they ’ ve absorbed until their music takes on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , instead , builds her sound from the ground up , drawing strictly from her own experience and from the physical tools in her midst .
“ Fetch the Bolt Cutters ” is a ferociously individual work , but it ’ s also one that suggests Apple is more connected to the Zeitgeist than she has been in the past .
Apple has a poet ’ s affection for words , and for combining them in sticky and evocative ways .
No one is better at blurring the line between figurative and literal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ she harnesses the themes and intensity of today ’ s political climate .
On “ Relay , ” she lists the things she ’ s been holding against some unknown opponent : These words fit neatly into the Apple catalogue , which is filled with hyper-articulate , introspective screeds about ex-boyfriends .
But the song also contains a more generalized commentary on the very nature of hatred and the need to curtail the cycle of opposition .
“ Evil is a relay sport when the one who ’ s burnt turns to pass @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the upbeat , singsong tone of someone reading a fable to children .
Apple , who ’ s always spoken openly about enduring sexual violence in her teens , has said in interviews that the song was inspired partly by Brett Kavanaugh ’ s Supreme Court hearing , in 2018 .
“ Fetch the Bolt Cutters ” is often about the shared experiences of women , rather than about the specific anguish of a failed relationship .
One song , “ Newspaper , ” is about the desire to forge a friendship with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ another is about a childhood classmate named Shameika , who said that Apple “ had potential.
” Many of the vocal arrangements—some bits are sung in rounds , with Apple ’ s voice layered over itself to mimic the sound of a chorus—even have the communal spirit of an all-female pep rally .
But lest one think Apple has succumbed to the clichéd language of empowerment and sisterhood , she is there to fill in the icky backstories and the agonizing fallout of female relationships , too .
“ Ladies , ladies , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at the beginning of one song , by the same name , as if at a lectern .
Here , she ’ s speaking again to the women involved with her past loves .
It could be a cheerful song about solidarity , but there ’ s an undercurrent of resignation .
“ Yet another woman to whom I won ’ t get through , ” Apple sings in a half-sigh .
It ’ s been nearly eight years since Apple released “ The Idler Wheel .
.
.
, ” a record @ @ @ @ @ @ @ icon into a messianic figurehead .
In those years , the success of popular music has come to rely almost entirely on the strategy of brand development .
In a flooded marketplace , artists must carefully frame themselves and carefully consider what will make the biggest splash , and when .
Apple can seem revolutionary for resisting these forces , though I ’ m not quite sure that she ’ s plugged in enough to be aware of them .
More than a defiant recluse , she is someone who understands that exceptional @ @ @ @ @ @ @ new relationships to be forged , to simmer and evolve , to be destroyed on their own terms , and then to be processed .
“ Fetch the Bolt Cutters ” is an invigorating document of energy , innovation , spontaneity , catharsis .
These are things we ’ ve come to expect from Apple .
But there is one thing that she deserves more credit for , as she toiled in her home , for years , accumulating the material to make these songs : her patience .

Fiona Apple is a longtime practitioner of social distancing. For nearly two decades, she has seldom left her home in Venice Beach, except to walk her dog, Mercy. She has no social media. She tends to avoid the press, and she rarely listens to new music, owing to some combination of disinterest and an aversion to being influenced. These qualities lend her work a kind of feral authenticity, with no trend lines to be traced between its emotional eruptions and the music of her peers. Even when her songs are deeply personal, the artist herself can seem slippery, out of sight. When Apple releases an album, as she has once or twice per decade since the late nineties, she doesn’t so much reëmerge as peek through the blinds of her life.
On the title track of her new record, “Fetch the Bolt Cutters,” Apple offers an eerie mantra for a time in which her listeners have begun to feel like caged animals: “Fetch the bolt cutters,” she sings. “I’ve been in here too long.” In the song’s final moments, Apple’s voice deteriorates into whispers and gasps, and the music is overtaken by the sound of dogs barking anxiously, as if something deeply upsetting has come to their attention. On a song called “Heavy Balloon”—which has unexpected key changes and the shaggy, reverberational energy of a one-take live recording—she uses nonperishable food items as metaphorical grist: “I climb like peas and beans,” she sings. “I’ve been sucking it in so long that I’m busting at the seams.” Apple has never downloaded Instagram, but she’s managed to supply a fresh songbook of caption inspiration.
Over time, confinement has made Apple exceptionally resourceful. “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” is the culmination of a long and steady rejection of formal recording processes, wherein conventional instrumentation and studio arrangements have been replaced by an at-home tool kit of gadgets, gizmos, and B-roll audio recordings made on an iPhone or with GarageBand. Besides the dogs barking, the album contains a scrap yard’s worth of strange drumming surfaces: a metal butterfly, a loose stovetop Apple found on the side of the road, wooden blocks, an assortment of bells and shakers, oil cans. Apple is a classically trained pianist who, in her early days, took songwriting cues from Ella Fitzgerald. She wrote ballads and smoldering pop songs that could be performed behind a piano, on a big stage, or played over café speakers. But as she has grown in age—she’s now forty-two—she has moved toward a rawer, makeshift sound that shares more DNA with hymns and spirituals than with pop or jazz. “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” is less of an album than a collection of vocal and rhythmic spasms that have fermented into deeply challenging but satisfying songs, each imbued with an intense, almost overwhelming physicality.
And yet, because of Apple’s ear, acumen, and precise vocal enunciation, “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” also has a perverse musicality. The chants and interjections at the heart of these songs have the effect of choruses, even when they’re not designed as such. They get lodged in the gut or the chest. There are shades of improvisational jazz, of Delta blues, of rap-battle taunts and nursery rhymes, but the album’s genre is hard to place. This is the aspiration of most artists—to cultivate a sound that defies categorization. But those same artists, feasting on a buffet of influences online, tend to achieve this effect through maximalism, folding in the styles they’ve absorbed until their music takes on a mushy, anonymous quality. Apple, instead, builds her sound from the ground up, drawing strictly from her own experience and from the physical tools in her midst.
“Fetch the Bolt Cutters” is a ferociously individual work, but it’s also one that suggests Apple is more connected to the Zeitgeist than she has been in the past. Apple has a poet’s affection for words, and for combining them in sticky and evocative ways. No one is better at blurring the line between figurative and literal expression, and in the new songs she harnesses the themes and intensity of today’s political climate. On “Relay,” she lists the things she’s been holding against some unknown opponent:
I resent you for being raised right
I resent you for being tall
I resent you for never getting any opposition at all
I resent you for having each other
I resent you for being so sure
I resent you for presenting your life like a fucking propaganda brochure
These words fit neatly into the Apple catalogue, which is filled with hyper-articulate, introspective screeds about ex-boyfriends. But the song also contains a more generalized commentary on the very nature of hatred and the need to curtail the cycle of opposition. “Evil is a relay sport when the one who’s burnt turns to pass the torch,” she sings in the upbeat, singsong tone of someone reading a fable to children. Apple, who’s always spoken openly about enduring sexual violence in her teens, has said in interviews that the song was inspired partly by Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court hearing, in 2018. “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” is often about the shared experiences of women, rather than about the specific anguish of a failed relationship. One song, “Newspaper,” is about the desire to forge a friendship with an ex’s new girlfriend; another is about a childhood classmate named Shameika, who said that Apple “had potential.” Many of the vocal arrangements—some bits are sung in rounds, with Apple’s voice layered over itself to mimic the sound of a chorus—even have the communal spirit of an all-female pep rally.
But lest one think Apple has succumbed to the clichéd language of empowerment and sisterhood, she is there to fill in the icky backstories and the agonizing fallout of female relationships, too. “Ladies, ladies, ladies, ladies,” she utters at the beginning of one song, by the same name, as if at a lectern. Here, she’s speaking again to the women involved with her past loves. It could be a cheerful song about solidarity, but there’s an undercurrent of resignation. “Yet another woman to whom I won’t get through,” Apple sings in a half-sigh.
It’s been nearly eight years since Apple released “The Idler Wheel . . . ,” a record that transformed her from a nineties alt-pop icon into a messianic figurehead. In those years, the success of popular music has come to rely almost entirely on the strategy of brand development. In a flooded marketplace, artists must carefully frame themselves and carefully consider what will make the biggest splash, and when. Apple can seem revolutionary for resisting these forces, though I’m not quite sure that she’s plugged in enough to be aware of them. More than a defiant recluse, she is someone who understands that exceptional art requires exceptional experience. It requires new relationships to be forged, to simmer and evolve, to be destroyed on their own terms, and then to be processed. “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” is an invigorating document of energy, innovation, spontaneity, catharsis. These are things we’ve come to expect from Apple. But there is one thing that she deserves more credit for, as she toiled in her home, for years, accumulating the material to make these songs: her patience.


newyorker--2020-04-18--Mastering the Art of Making a French Omelette

A few years ago , when I was a student at l ’ Institut Paul Bocuse , one of the premier cooking colleges in France , I watched an omelette-making class through a glass partition .
I was in a hallway , in the school ’ s zone culinaire , which is reserved for lessons in making food ; theory courses are held on another floor , in small rooms with desks .
This particular class was on French kitchen basics .
I ’ d been exempted , on the grounds that I ’ d worked in restaurants .
( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ skills would , alas , turn out to be spectacularly misplaced . )
A student presented his omelette .
The instructor poked it and shook his head .
He didn ’ t bother to taste it ; he just tipped it into the trash .
An omelette must be soft in the middle , pillowy to the touch .
It should have bounce .
This one was hard .
The next student ’ s omelette was too voluminous .
The instructor admonished him .
It was like watching a movie without sound .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ you use a whisk ?
” Un fouet .
“ I told you a fork.
” Une fourchette .
A whisk aerates the protein .
It is what you use to make a soufflé or a meringue .
An omelette gets its tenderness by being mixed , not whipped .
You want the egg whites quiet and small .
The omelette went into the trash .
Hervé Raphanel , a member of the faculty , joined me by the partition .
“ How old do you think those students are ?
” he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” I said .
I ’ d been in another class with them .
“ Most are nineteen .
Two might be twenty.
” It was an unusually young class .
Most students at l ’ Institut came from abroad , and were older , career changers .
“ Exactly , ” Raphanel said .
He reflected .
“ And they ’ ll be twenty-two when they graduate ?
When I was that age I was already working in a two-star Michelin kitchen.
” His tone wasn ’ t boastful .
It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ omelette .
This one was too runny ; it was seeping out at the ends .
The instructor reënacted pressing the back of a fork on the eggs in the pan .
When the tines leave an impression , your omelette is ready to be rolled .
Not before .
The instructor wiggled his finger side to side—non , non , non .
“ Look at how those students are standing , ” Raphanel said .
“ They are so removed from the food , pushing it around at arm ’ s length @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” L ’ amour—où est-il ?
He sighed .
It wasn ’ t their ignorance that provoked him .
“ They should be breathing in their ingredients.
” He simulated dipping into a plate and inhaling the aromatics .
“ A chef needs to be transported by his food.
” What little I knew about omelettes was from their American expression , which , in one respect , is not so different from American pizza .
Like a pizza with everything on it , an omelette in America can be ordered with just @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is quite simple by comparison .
An omelette au lard is made with pig belly ( poitrine in French , pancetta in Italian ) .
An omelette parmentier with small potatoes sautéed beforehand in butter .
An omelette chasseur with chicken livers and mushrooms .
The omelettes that my children discovered in France , at their school canteen , were nature—i.e.
, just egg .
When my son , Frederick , first saw me cooking omelettes—they served as both breakfast and practice , because I was still trying to nail my basics—he was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Lyon six months , and he associated the dish so completely with our new French home that he never imagined his American father would know how to make it .
Eggs can have a rich , subtle flavor—especially when they ’ re from active , small-farm chickens .
In French omelettes , they also serve as flavor messengers , especially in the most classic version , the one done aux fines herbes .
Fines , here , doesn ’ t have the same meaning as its English equivalent .
The herbs are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ traditionally , of a mix of parsley , chervil , chives , and ( sometimes ) tarragon—i.e.
, not sage ( which , in my time in Lyon , no one used , even though it grew wild on the banks of the Rhone ) , rosemary ( which made some of my French chef friends gag ) , or thyme ( though some cooks , living on the edge , have been known to toss in a few leaves ) .
To make an omelette aux fines herbes , you need— A @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ceramic nonstick , ten or more inches across .
If you get the temperature right , you can use a normal aluminum sauté pan instead .
It needs to be hot enough that the eggs cook on contact , forming a skin and pulling off the surface , but not so hot that they brown .
A French omelette is a creamy yellow , without the slightest suggestion of the eggs having toasted .
A utensil or two , conventionally only a fork : to mix the eggs ; to tug the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( whereupon the runny top-surface rushes in to fill the space ) ; to confirm a slightly wet , mushy doneness ( that trick with the tines ) ; and then to commence the roll .
For my part , yes , I mix the eggs with a fork and never a whisk .
But for everything else I use a narrow , red , floppy , duel-ended two-in-one rubber spatula-like creation called a Switchit , by now so chipped away at that it looks serrated .
It was bought for me at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , by my mother , and whenever it is in my hands it puts her in my mind .
Two or three good eggs .
According to the rules of French cooking , a three-egg omelette constitutes a main course ( Jacques Pépin makes his with four ) , and a two-egg version is merely a starter ( the French don ’ t usually eat omelettes for breakfast ) .
But I like the thinness that results from using two , pushed this way and that to cover the pan , and the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( Harold McGee traces the origins of the word “ omelette ” to the Latin lamella , “ thin plate.
” ) Also , you shouldn ’ t crack an egg on a rim , only on a flat surface , once , sharply , so that its contents aren ’ t contaminated by the shell .
Herbs , plucked off their stems and gently sliced .
The more traditional instruction is concasser—whacking your herbs into a near-pulp—but I prefer the texture that comes from ciseler , the method of rolling , say @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of a tube , then slicing across to form mini green chisels .
Gaston Lenôtre , the legendary late pastry chef and co-author , with his wife , Sylvie , of “ Le Livre de l ’ Oeuf ” ( “ The Book of the Egg ” ) , says that the important thing isn ’ t which herbs you use but their freshness .
They should taste of a spring garden—omelette aux fines herbes is a seasonal preparation—and be greenly vibrant , like the first young leaves of a garlic plant ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ market ) or even wild dandelions ( coming soon ) .
Lenôtre particularly loves spring parsley .
Later in the season he loves it less , and by the end of the summer he recommends avoiding it—the parsley has become wooden—unless it ’ s dipped briefly in boiling water .

Watch Bill Buford demonstrate his technique for making an omelette in the French style, with some help from the family cinematographers.
A few years ago, when I was a student at l’Institut Paul Bocuse, one of the premier cooking colleges in France, I watched an omelette-making class through a glass partition. I was in a hallway, in the school’s zone culinaire, which is reserved for lessons in making food; theory courses are held on another floor, in small rooms with desks. This particular class was on French kitchen basics. I’d been exempted, on the grounds that I’d worked in restaurants. (The confidence the exemption implied in my skills would, alas, turn out to be spectacularly misplaced.)
A student presented his omelette. The instructor poked it and shook his head. He didn’t bother to taste it; he just tipped it into the trash. An omelette must be soft in the middle, pillowy to the touch. It should have bounce. This one was hard.
The next student’s omelette was too voluminous. The instructor admonished him. It was like watching a movie without sound. His gestures said, “Why did you use a whisk?” Un fouet. “I told you a fork.” Une fourchette. A whisk aerates the protein. It is what you use to make a soufflé or a meringue. An omelette gets its tenderness by being mixed, not whipped. You want the egg whites quiet and small. The omelette went into the trash.
Hervé Raphanel, a member of the faculty, joined me by the partition. “How old do you think those students are?” he asked.
“Actually, I know,” I said. I’d been in another class with them. “Most are nineteen. Two might be twenty.” It was an unusually young class. Most students at l’Institut came from abroad, and were older, career changers.
“Exactly,” Raphanel said. He reflected. “And they’ll be twenty-two when they graduate? When I was that age I was already working in a two-star Michelin kitchen.” His tone wasn’t boastful. It was exasperated.
Another student presented her omelette. This one was too runny; it was seeping out at the ends. The instructor reënacted pressing the back of a fork on the eggs in the pan. When the tines leave an impression, your omelette is ready to be rolled. Not before. The instructor wiggled his finger side to side—non, non, non.
“Look at how those students are standing,” Raphanel said. “They are so removed from the food, pushing it around at arm’s length. Where’s the love?” L’amour—où est-il? He sighed. It wasn’t their ignorance that provoked him. “They should be breathing in their ingredients.” He simulated dipping into a plate and inhaling the aromatics. “A chef needs to be transported by his food.”
What little I knew about omelettes was from their American expression, which, in one respect, is not so different from American pizza. Like a pizza with everything on it, an omelette in America can be ordered with just about everything inside. The French omelette is quite simple by comparison. An omelette au lard is made with pig belly (poitrine in French, pancetta in Italian). An omelette parmentier with small potatoes sautéed beforehand in butter. An omelette chasseur with chicken livers and mushrooms. The omelettes that my children discovered in France, at their school canteen, were nature—i.e., just egg. When my son, Frederick, first saw me cooking omelettes—they served as both breakfast and practice, because I was still trying to nail my basics—he was surprised. By then we had been in Lyon six months, and he associated the dish so completely with our new French home that he never imagined his American father would know how to make it.
Eggs can have a rich, subtle flavor—especially when they’re from active, small-farm chickens. In French omelettes, they also serve as flavor messengers, especially in the most classic version, the one done aux fines herbes. Fines, here, doesn’t have the same meaning as its English equivalent. The herbs are not fine but delicate, consisting, traditionally, of a mix of parsley, chervil, chives, and (sometimes) tarragon—i.e., not sage (which, in my time in Lyon, no one used, even though it grew wild on the banks of the Rhone), rosemary (which made some of my French chef friends gag), or thyme (though some cooks, living on the edge, have been known to toss in a few leaves).
To make an omelette aux fines herbes, you need—
A pan. My favorite is a white, ceramic nonstick, ten or more inches across. If you get the temperature right, you can use a normal aluminum sauté pan instead. It needs to be hot enough that the eggs cook on contact, forming a skin and pulling off the surface, but not so hot that they brown. A French omelette is a creamy yellow, without the slightest suggestion of the eggs having toasted.
A utensil or two, conventionally only a fork: to mix the eggs; to tug the perimeters of the omelette inward while cooking (whereupon the runny top-surface rushes in to fill the space); to confirm a slightly wet, mushy doneness (that trick with the tines); and then to commence the roll. For my part, yes, I mix the eggs with a fork and never a whisk. But for everything else I use a narrow, red, floppy, dual-ended two-in-one rubber spatula-like creation called a Switchit, by now so chipped away at that it looks serrated. It was bought for me at a Florida Walmart, twenty-five years ago, by my mother, and whenever it is in my hands it puts her in my mind.
Two or three good eggs. According to the rules of French cooking, a three-egg omelette constitutes a main course (Jacques Pépin makes his with four), and a two-egg version is merely a starter (the French don’t usually eat omelettes for breakfast). But I like the thinness that results from using two, pushed this way and that to cover the pan, and the resulting delicacy of the eggy membrane. (Harold McGee traces the origins of the word “omelette” to the Latin lamella, “thin plate.”) Also, you shouldn’t crack an egg on a rim, only on a flat surface, once, sharply, so that its contents aren’t contaminated by the shell.


newyorker--2020-04-19--What Viral Evolution Can Teach Us About the Coronavirus Pandemic

A scientist I know has a tattoo on his arm of a sketch from Darwin ’ s notebooks .
Spidery lines radiate outward from the center , branching and splitting again and again , ending with labels : A , B , C , and D. The diagram is simple , but the idea is profound : a tree of life , with lines of descent that connect you and me to everything that lives and has ever lived on Earth .
If I had to pick a single image to show how evolutionary biologists like myself think about what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the same .
Evolutionary trees are narratives of history written in genetic code , records of family lineages that stretch into the distant past .
For anyone who knows how to look , the past , present , and possible futures of the new coronavirus can be found in its evolutionary tree .
We are uncovering the tree now , bit by bit , and , with the help of new technologies that make it cheaper and faster to sequence viral genomes , we are reading the virus ’ s tree faster than @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The question now is : Can we read it fast enough to make a difference as we race to limit the virus ’ s spread ?
In the earliest days of the epidemic , the virus ’ s evolutionary tree hinted at the seriousness of the problem we would face .
On January 10th , ten days after the world first heard about a cluster of mysterious pneumonias in Wuhan , the first genome sequence from the outbreak told us something important : the virus responsible was new to humankind .
Its symptoms @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and the common cold , and the virus is in the coronavirus family , as the name COVID-19 suggests .
But the virus has not infected humans before , which means that we have limited immune defenses to stop its spread .
A second important finding came soon after the first .
Early reports from the World Health Organization had suggested that the virus had jumped multiple times from its animal host into humans , with limited person-to-person spread .
But as more viral genomes were sequenced , in mid-January , their evolutionary @ @ @ @ @ @ @ researchers compared genomes from the COVID-19 outbreak to coronaviruses found in bats , pangolins , and other animals , they found that the viruses from the outbreak clustered tightly in a single branch of the tree , recent descendants from a single spillover event in November or December .
We still don ’ t know the origin of this spillover event .
But , as we now know too well , the story the tree told was correct : the new virus spreads easily from person to person .
In late January , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ State and got sick , becoming the first known case of COVID-19 in the United States .
For weeks afterward , we learned of similar cases , instances in which the virus was acquired abroad that seemed , at the time , to be isolated offshoots .
That changed at the end of February , when researchers in Seattle identified a patient who got COVID-19 without travelling abroad or knowing someone who did .
( Several of those researchers are my collaborators and mentors , and this article draws heavily from their work @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Bedford . )
The genomes of the Washington cases told a startling story : the viruses from the Wuhan traveller and the community-transmission case clustered together on their own branch of the coronavirus tree , the second virus a direct descendant of the first .
Three mutations had arisen along the transmission chain to distinguish the two viruses , ticks on a genetic clock marking the time that elapsed .
The viral genomes showed that after the coronavirus reached Washington State , in late January , it grew into its own branch of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ city for weeks .
Based on the cryptic transmission evident from the evolutionary tree , researchers estimated that the virus might have infected five hundred to six hundred people in Washington State by early March , far more than the eighteen cases reported at the time .
In the month since we learned that the virus was spreading in Seattle , the coronavirus tree has grown explosively , its tips splitting and branching as the virus continues to spread .
In Washington State , nearly five thousand new cases were diagnosed in March @ @ @ @ @ @ @ first Washington case .
This branch has grown thick enough to seed its own outbreaks .
We have found its descendants in New York , California , Connecticut , Minnesota , and Wisconsin , some of the few states to publish viral genome sequences so far .
The Washington branch has also sparked clusters of cases as far away as Iceland and Australia , a testament to our interconnected world .
( As each of these branches has spread , they have developed different mutations , a normal consequence of mistakes in viral @ @ @ @ @ @ @ no evidence that these mutations change how the virus infects people . )
Across the rest of the coronavirus tree , branches spread across the globe with ease .
In the United States , the tree shows that the coronavirus crossed our borders and spread multiple times .
Seattle ’ s outbreak is fuelled by several distinct branches , evidence that the virus has taken multiple paths from Wuhan to Washington State .
Most cases sequenced from the massive New York City outbreak belong to a single branch whose closest relatives are in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the virus crossed the Atlantic rather than the Pacific Ocean to arrive on the East Coast .
Across the United States , the virus has continued to replicate nationwide , in defiance of the patchwork restrictions put forth to stop it .
In the Ebola and Zika outbreaks of the past several years , evolutionary trees revealed the virus ’ s patterns of spread around the world , but sometimes not until months or years after the outbreaks began .
The new coronavirus has spread far faster—but the pace of science has sped @ @ @ @ @ @ @ early April , more than twenty-five hundred COVID-19 genomes were published , making it possible to track how the virus has spread and evolved in almost real time .
These advances raise the tantalizing possibility that knowledge of viral evolution can alter the course of this pandemic .
It may already have made a difference in Seattle , where genome sequencing of the first two known Washington cases alerted researchers to weeks of silent viral spread , an insight impossible from positive tests alone .
It was , in part , these clues @ @ @ @ @ @ @ prompted swift social-distancing measures , long before test results began to catch up .
For now , during this period of extreme social distancing , a major priority is to implement widespread diagnostic testing to learn where and how quickly the virus is spreading .
Eventually , expanded testing and contact tracing may tell us who should stay home and who might safely go back to work , letting the economy restart .
But the case of Seattle points toward a more distant future in which routine genome sequencing can also guide our @ @ @ @ @ @ @ may help us figure out who transmits the virus to whom .
It might teach us how often the virus spreads through close contact , as opposed to passing encounters .
And once social distancing lets up , expanded diagnostic testing paired with genome sequencing can alert us to the virus ’ s likely resurgences .

A scientist I know has a tattoo on his arm of a sketch from Darwin’s notebooks. Spidery lines radiate outward from the center, branching and splitting again and again, ending with labels: A, B, C, and D. The diagram is simple, but the idea is profound: a tree of life, with lines of descent that connect you and me to everything that lives and has ever lived on Earth.
If I had to pick a single image to show how evolutionary biologists like myself think about what we do, my choice would be the same. Evolutionary trees are narratives of history written in genetic code, records of family lineages that stretch into the distant past. For anyone who knows how to look, the past, present, and possible futures of the new coronavirus can be found in its evolutionary tree. We are uncovering the tree now, bit by bit, and, with the help of new technologies that make it cheaper and faster to sequence viral genomes, we are reading the virus’s tree faster than we have in any epidemic before. The question now is: Can we read it fast enough to make a difference as we race to limit the virus’s spread?
In the earliest days of the epidemic, the virus’s evolutionary tree hinted at the seriousness of the problem we would face. On January 10th, ten days after the world first heard about a cluster of mysterious pneumonias in Wuhan, the first genome sequence from the outbreak told us something important: the virus responsible was new to humankind. Its symptoms resemble those of influenza, pneumonia, and the common cold, and the virus is in the coronavirus family, as the name COVID-19 suggests. But the virus has not infected humans before, which means that we have limited immune defenses to stop its spread.
A second important finding came soon after the first. Early reports from the World Health Organization had suggested that the virus had jumped multiple times from its animal host into humans, with limited person-to-person spread. But as more viral genomes were sequenced, in mid-January, their evolutionary tree told a different story. When researchers compared genomes from the COVID-19 outbreak to coronaviruses found in bats, pangolins, and other animals, they found that the viruses from the outbreak clustered tightly in a single branch of the tree, recent descendants from a single spillover event in November or December. We still don’t know the origin of this spillover event. But, as we now know too well, the story the tree told was correct: the new virus spreads easily from person to person.
In late January, a man flew from Wuhan to Washington State and got sick, becoming the first known case of COVID-19 in the United States. For weeks afterward, we learned of similar cases, instances in which the virus was acquired abroad that seemed, at the time, to be isolated offshoots. That changed at the end of February, when researchers in Seattle identified a patient who got COVID-19 without travelling abroad or knowing someone who did. (Several of those researchers are my collaborators and mentors, and this article draws heavily from their work, particularly that of the virologist Trevor Bedford.)
The genomes of the Washington cases told a startling story: the viruses from the Wuhan traveller and the community-transmission case clustered together on their own branch of the coronavirus tree, the second virus a direct descendant of the first. Three mutations had arisen along the transmission chain to distinguish the two viruses, ticks on a genetic clock marking the time that elapsed. The viral genomes showed that after the coronavirus reached Washington State, in late January, it grew into its own branch of the tree, spreading silently through the city for weeks. Based on the cryptic transmission evident from the evolutionary tree, researchers estimated that the virus might have infected five hundred to six hundred people in Washington State by early March, far more than the eighteen cases reported at the time.
In the month since we learned that the virus was spreading in Seattle, the coronavirus tree has grown explosively, its tips splitting and branching as the virus continues to spread. In Washington State, nearly five thousand new cases were diagnosed in March, most of them descendants of the first Washington case. This branch has grown thick enough to seed its own outbreaks. We have found its descendants in New York, California, Connecticut, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, some of the few states to publish viral genome sequences so far. The Washington branch has also sparked clusters of cases as far away as Iceland and Australia, a testament to our interconnected world. (As each of these branches has spread, they have developed different mutations, a normal consequence of mistakes in viral replication. So far, there is no evidence that these mutations change how the virus infects people.)
Across the rest of the coronavirus tree, branches spread across the globe with ease. In the United States, the tree shows that the coronavirus crossed our borders and spread multiple times. Seattle’s outbreak is fuelled by several distinct branches, evidence that the virus has taken multiple paths from Wuhan to Washington State. Most cases sequenced from the massive New York City outbreak belong to a single branch whose closest relatives are in Europe, not China, suggesting that the virus crossed the Atlantic rather than the Pacific Ocean to arrive on the East Coast. Across the United States, the virus has continued to replicate nationwide, in defiance of the patchwork restrictions put forth to stop it.
In the Ebola and Zika outbreaks of the past several years, evolutionary trees revealed the virus’s patterns of spread around the world, but sometimes not until months or years after the outbreaks began. The new coronavirus has spread far faster—but the pace of science has sped up as well. Between January and early April, more than twenty-five hundred COVID-19 genomes were published, making it possible to track how the virus has spread and evolved in almost real time.
These advances raise the tantalizing possibility that knowledge of viral evolution can alter the course of this pandemic. It may already have made a difference in Seattle, where genome sequencing of the first two known Washington cases alerted researchers to weeks of silent viral spread, an insight impossible from positive tests alone. It was, in part, these clues about a larger, hidden outbreak that prompted swift social-distancing measures, long before test results began to catch up.
For now, during this period of extreme social distancing, a major priority is to implement widespread diagnostic testing to learn where and how quickly the virus is spreading. Eventually, expanded testing and contact tracing may tell us who should stay home and who might safely go back to work, letting the economy restart. But the case of Seattle points toward a more distant future in which routine genome sequencing can also guide our public-health response. Someday, genome sequencing may help us figure out who transmits the virus to whom. It might teach us how often the virus spreads through close contact, as opposed to passing encounters. And once social distancing lets up, expanded diagnostic testing paired with genome sequencing can alert us to the virus’s likely resurgences.
Realizing these possibilities would require heroic efforts from overwhelmed public-health agencies to radically expand viral surveillance, and to combine sophisticated bioinformatic analyses with traditional, shoe-leather epidemiology. But there are also glimmers of hope. Before my colleagues found a coronavirus outbreak in their back yards, they built the Seattle Flu Study to sequence thousands of influenza samples, allowing them to track local transmission chains as the flu virus circulated around Puget Sound. Now, in partnership with local public-health agencies and the University of Washington, they are using this infrastructure to launch a massive coronavirus-surveillance project. They are testing samples from both sick and healthy people around the greater Seattle area and sequencing all the coronaviruses they find.
Perhaps, through work like this, we will find clues about how to stop the virus’s spread, so that our knowledge of evolution can help us shape the virus’s evolutionary tree. These are bold ideas, but stranger things have happened in these past few months.
A Guide to the Coronavirus


newyorker--2020-04-19--Sunday Reading: A Cultural Review of the Eighties

How does one explain the seemingly inexplicable ?
True-crime stories frequently evoke strong emotions as they strive to do just that .
Tales of transgressions can have significant moral power , and often inspire a writer ’ s best work .
This week , we ’ re bringing you a selection of stories about criminals , villains , and foul play .
In “ Strange Love , ” Elsa Walsh explores a peculiar love affair between John Hinckley , Jr. , Ronald Reagan ’ s would-be assassin , and Leslie deVeau , whom he met when they were patients at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In Cold Blood , ” Truman Capote travels to Kansas to speak with Richard Hickock and Perry Smith , to chronicle their actions on the night that they murdered the Clutter family , in 1959 .
In “ Oswald in the U.S.S.R. , ” Norman Mailer examines the troubled marriage of John F. Kennedy ’ s killer and the years that he spent in the Soviet Union .
Edmund Pearson describes the mythology surrounding Lizzie Borden , and Alva Johnston writes about Al Capone and other gangsters in New York and Chicago during @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Women , ” Alma Guillermoprieto investigates the circumstances behind a decade-long string of murders in Ciudad Juárez , Mexico .
Lucinda Franks reports on the life of the antiwar fugitive Katherine Ann Power , and Alec Wilkinson interviews one of America ’ s most notorious killers , John Wayne Gacy .
Finally , in “ The Bank Drama , ” Daniel Lang reports on a 1973 bank robbery in Sweden that inspired the name for the disorder known as Stockholm syndrome .
We hope that you find these tales as intriguing as we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ espionage , the K.G.B .
produced an intimate portrait of the man who assassinated John F. Kennedy .
What her small town in Massachusetts believes about Lizzie Borden , who was tried and acquitted for murdering her family with a hatchet blade , in 1892 , is nearly as fascinating as the facts .
The woman who wanted to start a new life with Ronald Reagan ’ s would-be assassin .
America ’ s notorious gangsters and the rise of Al Capone .
Four hostages were taken during a bank robbery in Stockholm @ @ @ @ @ @ @ did they come to sympathize with their captors ?
The surrender of the antiwar radical Katherine Ann Power was expected to close a painful chapter in American history , but it had a very different effect .
John Wayne Gacy murdered thirty-three boys and became America ’ s most notorious killer .
In the weeks before his scheduled execution , he was far from reconciled to his fate .
The murders of Herbert , Bonnie , Nancy , and Kenyon Clutter were a psychological accident and an almost perfect crime .
Who killed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of murders gone unsolved ?

Photograph from Getty
How does one explain the seemingly inexplicable? True-crime stories frequently evoke strong emotions as they strive to do just that. Tales of transgressions can have significant moral power, and often inspire a writer’s best work. This week, we’re bringing you a selection of stories about criminals, villains, and foul play. In “Strange Love,” Elsa Walsh explores a peculiar love affair between John Hinckley, Jr., Ronald Reagan’s would-be assassin, and Leslie deVeau, whom he met when they were patients at the same mental hospital. In “In Cold Blood,” Truman Capote travels to Kansas to speak with Richard Hickock and Perry Smith, to chronicle their actions on the night that they murdered the Clutter family, in 1959. In “Oswald in the U.S.S.R.,” Norman Mailer examines the troubled marriage of John F. Kennedy’s killer and the years that he spent in the Soviet Union. Edmund Pearson describes the mythology surrounding Lizzie Borden, and Alva Johnston writes about Al Capone and other gangsters in New York and Chicago during the nineteen-twenties. In “A Hundred Women,” Alma Guillermoprieto investigates the circumstances behind a decade-long string of murders in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. Lucinda Franks reports on the life of the antiwar fugitive Katherine Ann Power, and Alec Wilkinson interviews one of America’s most notorious killers, John Wayne Gacy. Finally, in “The Bank Drama,” Daniel Lang reports on a 1973 bank robbery in Sweden that inspired the name for the disorder known as Stockholm syndrome. We hope that you find these tales as intriguing as we do.
Photograph from National Archives / Getty
In searching for evidence of espionage, the K.G.B. produced an intimate portrait of the man who assassinated John F. Kennedy.
What her small town in Massachusetts believes about Lizzie Borden, who was tried and acquitted for murdering her family with a hatchet blade, in 1892, is nearly as fascinating as the facts.
The woman who wanted to start a new life with Ronald Reagan’s would-be assassin.
Photograph from Chicago Sun-Times / Chicago History Museum /Getty
America’s notorious gangsters and the rise of Al Capone.
Photograph from AFP / Getty
Four hostages were taken during a bank robbery in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1973. How did they come to sympathize with their captors?
The surrender of the antiwar radical Katherine Ann Power was expected to close a painful chapter in American history, but it had a very different effect.
John Wayne Gacy murdered thirty-three boys and became America’s most notorious killer. In the weeks before his scheduled execution, he was far from reconciled to his fate.
Photograph by Charlie Riedel / AP / Shutterstock
The murders of Herbert, Bonnie, Nancy, and Kenyon Clutter were a psychological accident and an almost perfect crime. Who killed them?
Why has a decade-long string of murders gone unsolved?


newyorker--2020-04-19--The Global Struggle to Control the Coronavirus

Last week , a flurry of widely shared articles noted that a number of countries deemed to be doing well in the fight against the novel coronavirus have something in common : they are led by women .
Whether this observation is meaningful is hard to say ; the countries in question are disproportionately small , wealthy , Scandinavian , and , not incidentally , providers of universal health care .
But the idea had social-media appeal : could female leaders be , as the Guardian put it , the world ’ s “ secret weapon ” ?
And , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from the sociological ( women have to be more competent in order to gain power ) to the dubiously gendered ( they are good at “ love ” ) .
And there was some wistfulness : what if , at this juncture , there were a woman in the White House , and Donald Trump were ordering takeout while socially distancing in Trump Tower ?
Such notions may be more emotionally satisfying than epidemiologically useful .
But they speak to a longing for leadership and for secret weapons—any weapons—against COVID-19 .
As a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in history .
That is why Trump ’ s decision , last week , to cut off support for the World Health Organization , despite its missteps , is so dismaying .
Coupled with his calls , on Friday , to “ liberate ” certain states under stay-at-home orders , it marks an abandonment of responsibility .
( China has not filled the vacuum internationally , in part because of questions about its transparency in managing the pandemic . )
So it makes sense that we are frantically scanning the globe , trying @ @ @ @ @ @ @ right .
Some rough answers have emerged from Europe and Asia .
Testing is crucial , as South Korea has shown ; so is public trust .
Social distancing flattens the curve , and , the more testing a nation does , the more options it has for how to maintain that distance , from the blunt tool of lockdowns , which Italy belatedly employed , to the nuanced tracking that South Korea has pioneered .
Masks help .
At the same time , the pandemic seems to exacerbate national pathologies , from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Egypt ’ s silencing of critics .
Women everywhere are contending with a surge in domestic violence ; France and Spain have introduced code words that they can use to seek help .
President Jair Bolsonaro , of Brazil , has decried distancing measures and pushed coronavirus conspiracy theories .
( There are plenty of those around the world . )
In response , the minister of health , Luiz Mandetta , has played the role of an unbound Anthony Fauci , backing governors who ordered closures in their states .
Bolsonaro fired @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is increasingly unpopular ; when other political leaders speak out , the bubble of delusion can be burst .
Pandemics can have electoral consequences , too : South Korea ’ s government won a resounding victory last week—and it insured that the turnout was large and safe , with special poll hours for people in quarantine .
The virus is only now beginning to take hold in many developing countries—where masks , ventilators , and even clean water can be desperately scarce—but they are already feeling its economic effects .
One is a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ abroad .
These account for about a fifth of El Salvador ’ s G.D.P .
and a quarter of Somalia ’ s .
When a waitress or a shopkeeper in Paris or Queens loses income , money stops going to Senegal or Nepal .
Many families in Afghanistan ’ s Herat Province rely on income from Iran ; when Iran ’ s economy seized up , a hundred and fifty thousand workers crossed back into Herat , some bringing the infection with them .
The fate of refugees and migrants is one of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , illustrated in images of evicted African workers sleeping on the streets of Guangzhou , and in accounts of Kenyan workers returning from the Gulf States to face a curfew that has become an engine of police brutality .
India , with a population of more than 1.3 billion , shows how the pandemic can be a source of both unity and dangerous discord .
Prime Minister Narendra Modi called for the entire nation to join together in cheering health workers on March 22nd , at 5 P.M.—all India is in one time @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s early coverage of the outbreak focussed on clusters in the Muslim community , against whom the B.J.P.
, Modi ’ s party , has incited violence .
And , when Modi effectively shut down the country , migrant workers had little warning .
A stream of people , by many estimates hundreds of thousands of them , began walking , often hundreds of miles , to their home villages .
Others remained in cities .
Last week , Mumbai had at least two thousand confirmed cases ; it is both a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ epidemiologists view with apprehension , compounded there , as elsewhere , by a lack of reliable data .
There are similar fears for Lagos , Nigeria , a city of more than twenty million people , which had two hundred and fifty cases by the end of last week .
( And , for that matter , for Moscow , where , last week , there were eighteen thousand cases . )
Resources matter , but scientists can , as yet , only hazard a guess as to precisely how those countries , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ COVID-19 .
Will the relative youth of their populations provide a buffer ?
Will high rates of tuberculosis and H.I.V.—a particular factor in South Africa , where cases are rising steadily—make the toll worse ?
Alyssa Ayres , of the Council on Foreign Relations , noted that one of the Indian states that has had the most success in fighting COVID-19 is Kerala , which is home to about thirty-five million people .
Kerala is not governed by the B.J.P .
but by a coalition of leftist parties , and has long been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The state ’ s health minister , K. K. Shailaja , a woman being called the Coronavirus Slayer , mounted an early and aggressive response .
Kerala was also helped by having had , in effect , a rehearsal—in 2018 , it managed an outbreak of the Nipah virus , which can attack the brain .
There is a parallel story in Bangladesh , which has been able to draw on public-health capacities it has built up , over several decades , to fight cholera .
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf , the former President @ @ @ @ @ @ @ concerted action to counter COVID-19 , invoked the lessons that African countries had learned from the Ebola epidemic .
As Ayres put it , “ There is deep expertise in places that most Americans aren ’ t thinking about.
” That may be one of the most important messages from the wider world .
The struggle to control the pandemic has to be a joint project , as if the whole planet were seeking to reach the moon together .
Every nation can contribute , including those whose voices are less often heard @ @ @ @ @ @ @ behind .
♦

Illustration by João Fazenda
Last week, a flurry of widely shared articles noted that a number of countries deemed to be doing well in the fight against the novel coronavirus have something in common: they are led by women. Whether this observation is meaningful is hard to say; the countries in question are disproportionately small, wealthy, Scandinavian, and, not incidentally, providers of universal health care. But the idea had social-media appeal: could female leaders be, as the Guardian put it, the world’s “secret weapon”? And, if so, why? Speculation ranged from the sociological (women have to be more competent in order to gain power) to the dubiously gendered (they are good at “love”). And there was some wistfulness: what if, at this juncture, there were a woman in the White House, and Donald Trump were ordering takeout while socially distancing in Trump Tower?
Such notions may be more emotionally satisfying than epidemiologically useful. But they speak to a longing for leadership and for secret weapons—any weapons—against COVID-19. As a shared experience, this crisis is unmatched in history. That is why Trump’s decision, last week, to cut off support for the World Health Organization, despite its missteps, is so dismaying. Coupled with his calls, on Friday, to “liberate” certain states under stay-at-home orders, it marks an abandonment of responsibility. (China has not filled the vacuum internationally, in part because of questions about its transparency in managing the pandemic.) So it makes sense that we are frantically scanning the globe, trying to see who might be getting it right.
Some rough answers have emerged from Europe and Asia. Testing is crucial, as South Korea has shown; so is public trust. Social distancing flattens the curve, and, the more testing a nation does, the more options it has for how to maintain that distance, from the blunt tool of lockdowns, which Italy belatedly employed, to the nuanced tracking that South Korea has pioneered. Masks help. At the same time, the pandemic seems to exacerbate national pathologies, from Hungary’s turn from democracy to Egypt’s silencing of critics. Women everywhere are contending with a surge in domestic violence; France and Spain have introduced code words that they can use to seek help.
President Jair Bolsonaro, of Brazil, has decried distancing measures and pushed coronavirus conspiracy theories. (There are plenty of those around the world.) In response, the minister of health, Luiz Mandetta, has played the role of an unbound Anthony Fauci, backing governors who ordered closures in their states. Bolsonaro fired Mandetta last Thursday, but the President is increasingly unpopular; when other political leaders speak out, the bubble of delusion can be burst. Pandemics can have electoral consequences, too: South Korea’s government won a resounding victory last week—and it insured that the turnout was large and safe, with special poll hours for people in quarantine.
The virus is only now beginning to take hold in many developing countries—where masks, ventilators, and even clean water can be desperately scarce—but they are already feeling its economic effects. One is a sudden lack of remittances from nationals working abroad. These account for about a fifth of El Salvador’s G.D.P. and a quarter of Somalia’s. When a waitress or a shopkeeper in Paris or Queens loses income, money stops going to Senegal or Nepal. Many families in Afghanistan’s Herat Province rely on income from Iran; when Iran’s economy seized up, a hundred and fifty thousand workers crossed back into Herat, some bringing the infection with them. The fate of refugees and migrants is one of the most wrenching questions of the crisis, illustrated in images of evicted African workers sleeping on the streets of Guangzhou, and in accounts of Kenyan workers returning from the Gulf States to face a curfew that has become an engine of police brutality.
India, with a population of more than 1.3 billion, shows how the pandemic can be a source of both unity and dangerous discord. Prime Minister Narendra Modi called for the entire nation to join together in cheering health workers on March 22nd, at 5 P.M.—all India is in one time zone—and it did. Yet the country’s early coverage of the outbreak focussed on clusters in the Muslim community, against whom the B.J.P., Modi’s party, has incited violence. And, when Modi effectively shut down the country, migrant workers had little warning. A stream of people, by many estimates hundreds of thousands of them, began walking, often hundreds of miles, to their home villages. Others remained in cities. Last week, Mumbai had at least two thousand confirmed cases; it is both a financial capital and a metropolis whose slums epidemiologists view with apprehension, compounded there, as elsewhere, by a lack of reliable data. There are similar fears for Lagos, Nigeria, a city of more than twenty million people, which had two hundred and fifty cases by the end of last week. (And, for that matter, for Moscow, where, last week, there were eighteen thousand cases.) Resources matter, but scientists can, as yet, only hazard a guess as to precisely how those countries, and far poorer ones, will experience COVID-19. Will the relative youth of their populations provide a buffer? Will high rates of tuberculosis and H.I.V.—a particular factor in South Africa, where cases are rising steadily—make the toll worse?
Alyssa Ayres, of the Council on Foreign Relations, noted that one of the Indian states that has had the most success in fighting COVID-19 is Kerala, which is home to about thirty-five million people. Kerala is not governed by the B.J.P. but by a coalition of leftist parties, and has long been distinguished by its well-functioning health system. The state’s health minister, K. K. Shailaja, a woman being called the Coronavirus Slayer, mounted an early and aggressive response. Kerala was also helped by having had, in effect, a rehearsal—in 2018, it managed an outbreak of the Nipah virus, which can attack the brain. There is a parallel story in Bangladesh, which has been able to draw on public-health capacities it has built up, over several decades, to fight cholera. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the former President of Liberia, in a call for concerted action to counter COVID-19, invoked the lessons that African countries had learned from the Ebola epidemic. As Ayres put it, “There is deep expertise in places that most Americans aren’t thinking about.”
That may be one of the most important messages from the wider world. The struggle to control the pandemic has to be a joint project, as if the whole planet were seeking to reach the moon together. Every nation can contribute, including those whose voices are less often heard. And no one can be left behind. ♦
A Guide to the Coronavirus