foreignpolicy--2020-03-11--Why Are We So Scared of the Coronavirus?

Why Are We So Scared of the Coronavirus ?
Feelings are , by definition , hard to put into words .
So to accurately describe the anxiety now gripping the world is extremely challenging .
Still , to say that people are merely scared of the novel coronavirus storming around the globe doesn ’ t do it justice .
“ Scared ” isn ’ t strong or nuanced enough to capture the kind of fear so many people seem to be feeling .
The signs of alarm are everywhere , both big and small .
You can see them in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ coughs or in the eyes of an Uber driver peering above her face mask in the rearview mirror .
And you can see them in the massive , disproportionate , and self-destructive responses some societies have taken—more on those below .
Let me make something clear from the start : I don ’ t mean to suggest that there aren ’ t plenty of good , rational reasons to be concerned .
As of this writing , 116,145 people have contracted COVID-19 , the disease caused by the virus , and 4,090 of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the West , infections are still accelerating , which means it has yet to experience the pandemic ’ s full force .
The governments of China , the United States , Iran , and Italy , meanwhile , have all badly fumbled their responses , some of them lying about the outbreak and punishing the whistleblowers .
At times like these , people naturally want and expect a reasonable , fact-based , and fully staffed government to protect them .
But Americans lack one of those right now .
Not only is the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you even name the heads of the departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services or the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency ?
—but in 2018 , the president fired the country ’ s entire pandemic response team .
So things are genuinely scary , and I don ’ t want to imply that Tesla ’ s Elon Musk was right when he tweeted that the “ coronavirus panic is dumb ” ( although panicking is certainly unhelpful ) or that there was anything to Donald Trump ’ s claim @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Talk about dumb .
What I am suggesting , however , is that the extent of the global reaction to the coronavirus reveals that something strange is going on .
Start with the fact that we as a species have survived far worse without freaking out .
I ’ m not talking about ancient calamities like the Black Plague , which wiped out some 200 million people in the Middle Ages .
I ’ m talking about HIV/AIDS ( which , for many years , had a 100 percent fatality rate , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) , SARS , and H1N1 .
I ’ m talking about the seasonal flu , which killed 80,000 people in 2017-2018 in the United States alone—75,910 more than have died so far from COVID-19 worldwide .
Or consider traffic accidents , which kill about 1.25 million people every year yet seem to have little impact on people ’ s behavior , either good and bad .
Yet , despite the likelihood that the majority of people will never get the virus and that the vast majority who do ( assuming it doesn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people and governments are reacting in some extreme ways .
Some of these reactions are silly and relatively benign , like wearing damp and porous surgical masks ( though that ’ s contributing to a global mask shortage ) or panic-buying peanut butter , toilet paper , and other end-of-days accessories—a behavior for which the Germans , of course , already have a name ( Hamsterkauf ) .
Meanwhile , demagogues and conspiracy theorists have been so busy making hay of the virus that Wikipedia has created a page to keep track of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : that China created the bug to quell the Hong Kong protests or subjugate the Uighurs ; that the coronavirus is part of a population control scheme backed by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates ; and that the virus was designed in a Canadian bioweapons lab ( which must be the first time Canada has been blamed for anything nefarious since the great maple syrup heist of 2012 ) .Some of the irrational responses to the virus have begun impacting our lives and the economy in noxious ways .
Silly as such examples are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the virus have begun impacting our lives and the economy in noxious ways , despite the fact that they may do nothing to fight the pandemic .
As the Washington Post columnist Fareed Zakaria pointed out last week , populists are exploiting the disease to intensify their attacks on immigration .
More than 10 percent of the world ’ s population is now on mandatory lockdown .
Italy has canceled church services , Ireland has canceled St. Patrick ’ s Day parades , and Tokyo has canceled an annual cherry blossom festival .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ s most border-conscious countries , just went full World War Z , imposing a 14-day quarantine on anyone entering the country—from anywhere .
Such measures will smother all sorts of critical economic activities in the short term and may wreak havoc with global supply chains in the long run .
What , then , explains and connects all these excesses , so many of which defy medical science and common sense ?
There are , I think , three basic answers .
The first is that the coronavirus is new , invisible , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ only are we far from a vaccine , but we still don ’ t really know what we ’ re up against : how lethal the disease actually is or how many people are actually infected .
( This last problem is due , in part , to a baffling shortage of testing kits in the United States and around the world . )
As Michael Barkun , a professor emeritus of political science at Syracuse University , put it to me in an email , the unseen , mysterious nature of this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for all kinds of imagined explanations and antidotes .
Second , the coronavirus has proved particularly frightening because of the way it both embodies and exploits issues that were already provoking intense anxiety around the world : namely globalization , mass migration , and interdependence .
These are precisely the issues that Trump and other populists have been harping on for years and that so many voters , who feel buffeted by forces they don ’ t understand and can ’ t control , have responded to .
By coming out of China—Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ globalized pathways as goods , services , and people , the coronavirus represents everything the populists already dread and detest .
That fact has made the virus “ both a metaphor and a validation of all the fears of the outside world and the ‘ other ’ ” that Trump and his followers obsess over , Barkun explained.The coronavirus has proved particularly frightening because of the way it both embodies and exploits issues that were already provoking intense anxiety around the world .
The third reason the coronavirus has struck such a powerful @ @ @ @ @ @ @ guilt that many of us feel over the way humanity ’ s relentless abuse of the natural world—from centuries of burning carbon to years of overusing powerful antibiotics—has begun to damage the biosphere .
For decades , it was possible to think about that damage as an abstract problem .
But in the past few years , as wildfires have scorched the planet and the weather has become hotter , wetter , and wilder , the problem has become impossible to ignore .
Many of us now sense that we ’ ve knocked @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and that we ’ ll soon pay a terrible price .
The coronavirus feeds into this expectation by presenting it like an inevitable comeuppance .
As Barkun put it , “ We live in a time of apocalyptic motifs.
” Or as a friend said to me , “ Even if it ’ s not this one that ultimately gets us , it hardly matters .
The next will or the one after that.
” Now , while all this fear can cause people to act in increasingly erratic ways , it ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ few years ago , I wrote a book arguing that governments only ever tackle big , life-threatening challenges when their backs are against the wall .
Existential crises are good at clarifying the mind .
They often convince politicians to make deep , painful , but necessary reforms because they force them to accept that there ’ s no other choice ; should they fail , not only will it doom their careers , but it will doom their countries as well .
The coronavirus may be that kind of crisis ; if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one or the one after that will be .
But so far , there ’ s no sign that our leaders are drawing the right conclusions by acknowledging the true scale of the problem and working together in an open , effective , and coordinated way .
And that ’ s the scariest part of all .
Update , March 11 , 2020 : This article was updated to more accurately reflect the probability of virus contagion .

Feelings are, by definition, hard to put into words. So to accurately describe the anxiety now gripping the world is extremely challenging.
Still, to say that people are merely scared of the novel coronavirus storming around the globe doesn’t do it justice. “Scared” isn’t strong or nuanced enough to capture the kind of fear so many people seem to be feeling.
The signs of alarm are everywhere, both big and small. You can see them in the faces of subway riders when someone coughs or in the eyes of an Uber driver peering above her face mask in the rearview mirror. And you can see them in the massive, disproportionate, and self-destructive responses some societies have taken—more on those below.
Let me make something clear from the start: I don’t mean to suggest that there aren’t plenty of good, rational reasons to be concerned. As of this writing, 116,145 people have contracted COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, and 4,090 of them have died. Worse, in the West, infections are still accelerating, which means it has yet to experience the pandemic’s full force.
[Mapping the Coronavirus Outbreak: Get daily updates on the pandemic and learn how it’s affecting countries around the world.]
The governments of China, the United States, Iran, and Italy, meanwhile, have all badly fumbled their responses, some of them lying about the outbreak and punishing the whistleblowers. At times like these, people naturally want and expect a reasonable, fact-based, and fully staffed government to protect them. But Americans lack one of those right now. Not only is the Trump administration operating on a skeleton crew—can you even name the heads of the departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services or the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency?—but in 2018, the president fired the country’s entire pandemic response team.
So things are genuinely scary, and I don’t want to imply that Tesla’s Elon Musk was right when he tweeted that the “coronavirus panic is dumb” (although panicking is certainly unhelpful) or that there was anything to Donald Trump’s claim that the virus is a Democratic hoax. Talk about dumb.
There are, indeed, very good reasons to be afraid. Even if the odds of each of us, especially the under 60s, dying from the coronavirus are very low, everyone has friends and family in more vulnerable groups. Worrying about protecting others is one of our best and most natural instincts, and using that fear to take precautions recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and others, such as social distancing, is very important.
Nevertheless, the global reaction to the coronavirus suggests there are other reasons for our fear.
Start with the fact that we as a species have survived far worse. I’m not talking about ancient calamities like the Black Plague, which wiped out some 200 million people in the Middle Ages. I’m talking about HIV/AIDS (which, for many years, had a 100 percent fatality rate, 95-99 percentage points higher than the coronavirus), SARS, and H1N1. I’m talking about the seasonal flu, which killed 80,000 people in 2017-2018 in the United States alone—75,910 more than have died so far from COVID-19 worldwide. Or consider traffic accidents, which kill about 1.25 million people every year yet seem to have little impact on people’s behavior, either good and bad.
Yet, despite the likelihood that the majority of people will never get the virus and that the vast majority who do (assuming it doesn’t mutate) will survive, people and governments are reacting in some extreme ways.
Some of these reactions are relatively benign, like wearing damp and porous surgical masks (though that’s contributing to a global mask shortage) or panic-buying peanut butter, toilet paper, and other end-of-days accessories—a behavior for which the Germans, of course, already have a name (Hamsterkauf).
Meanwhile, demagogues and conspiracy theorists have been so busy making hay of the virus that Wikipedia has created a page to keep track of their febrile fantasies. Among the highlights: that China created the bug to quell the Hong Kong protests or subjugate the Uighurs; that the coronavirus is part of a population control scheme backed by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates; and that the virus was designed in a Canadian bioweapons lab (which must be the first time Canada has been blamed for anything nefarious since the great maple syrup heist of 2012).Some of the irrational responses to the virus have begun impacting our lives and the economy in noxious ways.
Silly as such examples are, some of the irrational responses to the virus have begun impacting our lives and the economy in noxious ways, despite the fact that they may do nothing to fight the pandemic. As the Washington Post columnist Fareed Zakaria pointed out last week, populists are exploiting the disease to intensify their attacks on immigration. More than 10 percent of the world’s population is now on mandatory lockdown. Italy has canceled church services, Ireland has canceled St. Patrick’s Day parades, and Tokyo has canceled an annual cherry blossom festival. Israel, one of the world’s most border-conscious countries, just went full World War Z, imposing a 14-day quarantine on anyone entering the country—from anywhere. Such measures will smother all sorts of critical economic activities in the short term and may wreak havoc with global supply chains in the long run.
What, then, explains and connects all these excesses, so many of which defy medical science and common sense? There are, I think, three basic answers.
The first is that the coronavirus is new, invisible, sometimes deadly—and still largely unknown. Not only are we far from a vaccine, but we still don’t really know what we’re up against: how lethal the disease actually is or how many people are actually infected. (This last problem is due, in part, to a baffling shortage of testing kits in the United States and around the world.) As Michael Barkun, a professor emeritus of political science at Syracuse University, put it to me in an email, the unseen, mysterious nature of this enemy makes it especially scary—and especially ripe for all kinds of imagined explanations and antidotes.
Second, the coronavirus has proved particularly frightening because of the way it both embodies and exploits issues that were already provoking intense anxiety around the world: namely globalization, mass migration, and interdependence. These are precisely the issues that Trump and other populists have been harping on for years and that so many voters, who feel buffeted by forces they don’t understand and can’t control, have responded to. By coming out of China—Trump’s favorite target—and traveling the same globalized pathways as goods, services, and people, the coronavirus represents everything the populists already dread and detest. That fact has made the virus “both a metaphor and a validation of all the fears of the outside world and the ‘other’” that Trump and his followers obsess over, Barkun explained.The coronavirus has proved particularly frightening because of the way it both embodies and exploits issues that were already provoking intense anxiety around the world.
The third reason the coronavirus has struck such a powerful chord stems from a deep sense of guilt that many of us feel over the way humanity’s relentless abuse of the natural world—from centuries of burning carbon to years of overusing powerful antibiotics—has begun to damage the biosphere. For decades, it was possible to think about that damage as an abstract problem. But in the past few years, as wildfires have scorched the planet and the weather has become hotter, wetter, and wilder, the problem has become impossible to ignore. Many of us now sense that we’ve knocked once predictable natural systems out of whack and that we’ll soon pay a terrible price. The coronavirus feeds into this expectation by presenting it like an inevitable comeuppance. As Barkun put it, “We live in a time of apocalyptic motifs.” Or as a friend said to me, “Even if it’s not this one that ultimately gets us, it hardly matters. The next will or the one after that.”
Now, while all this fear can cause people to act in increasingly erratic ways, it’s not all bad news. A few years ago, I wrote a book arguing that governments only ever tackle big, life-threatening challenges when their backs are against the wall. Existential crises are good at clarifying the mind. They often convince politicians to make deep, painful, but necessary reforms because they force them to accept that there’s no other choice; should they fail, not only will it doom their careers, but it will doom their countries as well.
The coronavirus may be that kind of crisis; if it’s not, the next one or the one after that will be. But so far, there’s no sign that our leaders are drawing the right conclusions by acknowledging the true scale of the problem and working together in an open, effective, and coordinated way. And that’s the scariest part of all.
Update, March 13, 2020: This article was updated to more accurately reflect the probability of virus contagion.


foreignpolicy--2020-03-11--With Biden Dominant and Coronavirus Rampant, Democratic 2020 Hopes Soar

Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden walloped his last primary challenger , Sen. Bernie Sanders , in key states during a second major round of primary voting on Tuesday , indicating he is taking command of a once-fractious Democratic Party even as the rampant coronavirus threatens to undercut President Donald Trump ’ s No .
1 argument for reelection : a strong U.S. economy .
For Democrats , their chances of taking back the White House now appear dramatically improved from only a few weeks ago , when the U.S. economy looked close to unstoppable and the party seemed more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the Democratic establishment feared , would alienate mainstream voters and hand the election to Trump .
“ It ’ s wild , ” said Elaine Kamarck , the author of Primary Politics : Everything You Need to Know about How America Nominates Its Presidential Candidates and a former Clinton administration official .
The danger to Trump ’ s electoral prospects is now “ quite straightforward , ” Kamarck told Foreign Policy in an interview .
“ As long as things were going well , we didn ’ t have any major foreign-policy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of body bags coming home , many people kind of liked Donald Trump .
He was amusing .
He spoke to their frustrations , their hostilities .
But when things don ’ t go well you then look to your president for reassurance and competence , neither of which he can do.
” Though no politician would dare openly welcome a deadly epidemic that , as Trump lamented on Monday , has “ blindsided the world , ” Democratic strategists see an opportunity to expose Trump as uncaring and self-involved as well as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
And to cast Biden , who presents himself as a healer , as someone who can heal a global crisis in a way that Trump , whose tenure has been marked by vocal repudiation of global cooperation , may not be able to do .
The Trump Republicans “ face a governance crisis that [ until now ] they have been able to avoid—unlike every president before , ” Stanley Greenberg , a prominent Democratic pollster , said by email .
“ This exposes their hollowing out of government ( including the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their inability to mobilize the government and country and unite ; to mobilize international support—and they just look feckless and weak .
Biden will look good by comparison—on top of the dynamics of a country that I believe is determined to repudiate ” Trump .
Even so , things could change again just as abruptly as they have in recent weeks .
The spread of coronavirus could begin to slow—though experts say it will probably get much worse before it gets better—and Biden , who has enjoyed a rare several weeks without committing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ could begin misspeaking again , his habit in the past .
On Tuesday , continuing a habit of testy exchanges with supposed supporters , Biden was videotaped telling a worker in Detroit he was “ full of shit ” after the man accused Biden of wanting to “ take away our guns.
” But Trump ’ s biggest challenge at the moment is that he has seesawed in his response to the coronavirus , appearing to play down its effects only a few days ago , calling it “ fake news , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the virus might have benefits , as Americans ’ inability to travel comports with his neo-isolationist worldview .
Trump also tweeted Monday that the plunge in oil prices , which many analysts say could lead to an economic slowdown , is “ Good for the consumer , gasoline prices coming down !
” The president , however , was quickly propelled into action by a broad-based market collapse that suggested a recession could happen much more quickly than economists had anticipated , perhaps before the Nov. 3 election .
On Tuesday , after @ @ @ @ @ @ @ during a brief appearance at a news conference the day before , Trump did not accompany his coronavirus task force to the White House briefing room .
Vice President Mike Pence , the head of the task force , told reporters that Trump had gone earlier to Capitol Hill to push for a payroll tax cut and aid to small and medium-sized businesses so they can provide paid leave to workers affected by the virus .
Even some Republicans are skeptical about pushing tax cuts , however , and Trump remained vague about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Hill .
“ I was just with the Republican senators and they were just about all there , mostly all there , and there ’ s a great feeling about doing a lot of the things , ” he said .
Markets recovered somewhat on Tuesday on hopes that a fiscal stimulus might be forthcoming , and Democrats on Capitol Hill risk incurring voter enmity if they are seen as obstructing the president ’ s response to the coronavirus for political reasons .
But analysts have suggested that , led by an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ House may be unwilling to give major legislative relief to a president who has done little but level angry insults at members who only a few months ago voted to impeach him .
And if the coronavirus outbreak grows dramatically worse in coming weeks , Trump will face renewed criticism that he has mismanaged it .
The New York Times reported Tuesday that the government fumbled testing in the early days of the virus , and the president was criticized by his own former homeland security advisor , Tom Bossert , who told @ @ @ @ @ @ @ days from the hospitals getting creamed.
” Trump may also be discovering that the gulf of mistrust he has fomented between the United States and other nations including China in the past three years has cost him in international cooperation , which may be critical to stopping the spread of the virus .
Apart from hinting at a ban on international travel to some infected countries such as China , South Korea , and Italy , Trump administration officials have said very little about coordinating responses with other nations , even major U.S. @ @ @ @ @ @ @ now has reached every continent except Antarctica .
What is critical for the president now is that he at least look leaderly , analysts say .
“ The disease can ’ t be blamed on Trump , so perceptions of his management of the pandemic will be crucial , ” said Gary Jacobson , a scholar at the University of California , San Diego , who has tracked electoral data going back to the 1940s .
“ As long as there is any ambiguity , partisans ’ reactions will be highly divergent and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ attitudes toward Trump unchanged .
But what will happen over the next nine months is very hard to predict ; the biggest surprise would be no surprise.
” What is no longer surprising is that Biden is the odds-on favorite to win the Democratic nomination .
On Tuesday Biden decisively won the key battleground state of Michigan , the biggest delegate prize of the day , as well as Missouri , Mississippi , and Idaho , while Sanders took North Dakota .
In a brief victory speech in Philadelphia late Tuesday night , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump ’ s handling of the coronavirus crisis into a major issue in the campaign , saying it “ is a question of presidential leadership.
” He said that Trump ’ s “ America First ” policy has meant in practice “ America Alone.
” Analysts say Sanders botched his front-runner moment by not swiftly trying to assuage doubtful moderates after his big victories in New Hampshire and Nevada .
He could have done so by disavowing the “ socialist ” label , tacking slightly away from his insistence on Medicare for All @ @ @ @ @ @ @ distance between himself and the rabid followers sometimes dubbed “ Bernie Bros ” who have viciously attacked other Democrats .
Some leading Democrats , including Sanders ’ s progressive ally Sen. Elizabeth Warren , who dropped out of the race after Biden ’ s big Super Tuesday victory last week , have criticized the Vermont senator for failing to rein in the Bernie Bros. “ Women in the Democratic Party are sick of this , ” said Kamarck , who as a longtime member of the Democratic National Committee ’ s rules committee @ @ @ @ @ @ @ And women , Kamarck pointed out , make up around 55 percent of the electorate .

Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden walloped his last primary challenger, Sen. Bernie Sanders, in key states during a second major round of primary voting on Tuesday, indicating he is taking command of a once-fractious Democratic Party even as the rampant coronavirus threatens to undercut President Donald Trump’s No. 1 argument for reelection: a strong U.S. economy.
Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden walloped his last primary challenger, Sen. Bernie Sanders, in key states during a second major round of primary voting on Tuesday, indicating he is taking command of a once-fractious Democratic Party even as the rampant coronavirus threatens to undercut President Donald Trump’s No. 1 argument for reelection: a strong U.S. economy.
For Democrats, their chances of taking back the White House now appear dramatically improved from only a few weeks ago, when the U.S. economy looked close to unstoppable and the party seemed more inclined to nominate Sanders—a fiery socialist who, the Democratic establishment feared, would alienate mainstream voters and hand the election to Trump.
“It’s wild,” said Elaine Kamarck, the author of Primary Politics: Everything You Need to Know about How America Nominates Its Presidential Candidates and a former Clinton administration official. The danger to Trump’s electoral prospects is now “quite straightforward,” Kamarck told Foreign Policy in an interview. “As long as things were going well, we didn’t have any major foreign-policy crisis, didn’t have loads of body bags coming home, many people kind of liked Donald Trump. He was amusing. He spoke to their frustrations, their hostilities. But when things don’t go well you then look to your president for reassurance and competence, neither of which he can do.”
Though no politician would dare openly welcome a deadly epidemic that, as Trump lamented on Monday, has “blindsided the world,” Democratic strategists see an opportunity to expose Trump as uncaring and self-involved as well as unequal to the task of world leadership. And to cast Biden, who presents himself as a healer, as someone who can heal a global crisis in a way that Trump, whose tenure has been marked by vocal repudiation of global cooperation, may not be able to do.
The Trump Republicans “face a governance crisis that [until now] they have been able to avoid—unlike every president before,” Stanley Greenberg, a prominent Democratic pollster, said by email. “This exposes their hollowing out of government (including the White House office on pandemics), their inability to mobilize the government and country and unite; to mobilize international support—and they just look feckless and weak. Biden will look good by comparison—on top of the dynamics of a country that I believe is determined to repudiate” Trump.
Even so, things could change again just as abruptly as they have in recent weeks. The spread of coronavirus could begin to slow—though experts say it will probably get much worse before it gets better—and Biden, who has enjoyed a rare several weeks without committing a major gaffe on the stump, could begin misspeaking again, his habit in the past. On Tuesday, continuing a habit of testy exchanges with supposed supporters, Biden was videotaped telling a worker in Detroit he was “full of shit” after the man accused Biden of wanting to “take away our guns.”
But Trump’s biggest challenge at the moment is that he has seesawed in his response to the coronavirus, appearing to play down its effects only a few days ago, calling it “fake news,” and even suggesting that the spread of the virus might have benefits, as Americans’ inability to travel comports with his neo-isolationist worldview. Trump also tweeted Monday that the plunge in oil prices, which many analysts say could lead to an economic slowdown, is “Good for the consumer, gasoline prices coming down!”
The president, however, was quickly propelled into action by a broad-based market collapse that suggested a recession could happen much more quickly than economists had anticipated, perhaps before the Nov. 3 election.
On Tuesday, after promising “very major” economic relief during a brief appearance at a news conference the day before, Trump did not accompany his coronavirus task force to the White House briefing room. Vice President Mike Pence, the head of the task force, told reporters that Trump had gone earlier to Capitol Hill to push for a payroll tax cut and aid to small and medium-sized businesses so they can provide paid leave to workers affected by the virus.
Even some Republicans are skeptical about pushing tax cuts, however, and Trump remained vague about his plans following a midday meeting on the Hill. “I was just with the Republican senators and they were just about all there, mostly all there, and there’s a great feeling about doing a lot of the things,” he said.
Markets recovered somewhat on Tuesday on hopes that a fiscal stimulus might be forthcoming, and Democrats on Capitol Hill risk incurring voter enmity if they are seen as obstructing the president’s response to the coronavirus for political reasons. But analysts have suggested that, led by an unwavering Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the Democrat-dominated House may be unwilling to give major legislative relief to a president who has done little but level angry insults at members who only a few months ago voted to impeach him.
And if the coronavirus outbreak grows dramatically worse in coming weeks, Trump will face renewed criticism that he has mismanaged it. The New York Times reported Tuesday that the government fumbled testing in the early days of the virus, and the president was criticized by his own former homeland security advisor, Tom Bossert, who told NBC News: “We are 10 days from the hospitals getting creamed.”
Trump may also be discovering that the gulf of mistrust he has fomented between the United States and other nations including China in the past three years has cost him in international cooperation, which may be critical to stopping the spread of the virus. Apart from hinting at a ban on international travel to some infected countries such as China, South Korea, and Italy, Trump administration officials have said very little about coordinating responses with other nations, even major U.S. allies, over a fast-spreading virus that now has reached every continent except Antarctica.
What is critical for the president now is that he at least look leaderly, analysts say. “The disease can’t be blamed on Trump, so perceptions of his management of the pandemic will be crucial,” said Gary Jacobson, a scholar at the University of California, San Diego, who has tracked electoral data going back to the 1940s. “As long as there is any ambiguity, partisans’ reactions will be highly divergent and are likely to leave people’s attitudes toward Trump unchanged. But what will happen over the next nine months is very hard to predict; the biggest surprise would be no surprise.”
What is no longer surprising is that Biden is the odds-on favorite to win the Democratic nomination. On Tuesday Biden decisively won the key battleground state of Michigan, the biggest delegate prize of the day, as well as Missouri, Mississippi, and Idaho, while Sanders took North Dakota. In a brief victory speech in Philadelphia late Tuesday night, Biden indicated he was planning to turn Trump’s handling of the coronavirus crisis into a major issue in the campaign, saying it “is a question of presidential leadership.” He said that Trump’s “America First” policy has meant in practice “America Alone.”
Analysts say Sanders botched his front-runner moment by not swiftly trying to assuage doubtful moderates after his big victories in New Hampshire and Nevada. He could have done so by disavowing the “socialist” label, tacking slightly away from his insistence on Medicare for All and no private insurance, and putting distance between himself and the rabid followers sometimes dubbed “Bernie Bros” who have viciously attacked other Democrats. Some leading Democrats, including Sanders’s progressive ally Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who dropped out of the race after Biden’s big Super Tuesday victory last week, have criticized the Vermont senator for failing to rein in the Bernie Bros.
“Women in the Democratic Party are sick of this,” said Kamarck, who as a longtime member of the Democratic National Committee’s rules committee has found herself targeted as well. And women, Kamarck pointed out, make up around 55 percent of the electorate.


foreignpolicy--2020-03-13--Amid Darkness, There Is Still Hope in the Middle East

Amid Darkness , There Is Still Hope in the Middle East When it comes to writings on the Middle East , books tend to fall into two broad categories .
There are those that depict the peoples of the region as mere pawns on a geopolitical chessboard—and deprive them of agency in order to further the author ’ s ideological agenda , career prospects , or both .
And there are books written with nuance and understanding by authors who seek to give voice to the people living through tumultuous events .
Kim Ghattas ’ s book Black Wave : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture , Religion , and Collective Memory in the Middle East is an example of the latter .
For two decades , Ghattas has covered and analyzed the region for such institutions as the BBC , the Financial Times , and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace .
Ghattas makes some bold claims , linking much of the turmoil of recent history to three key events in 1979 that would come to define the trajectory of much of the region .
The first is the 1979 Iranian revolution , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Iran , Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi , setting in motion events that would later put the Shiite cleric Ruhollah Khomeini in power .
The second was an attack on the Holy Ka ’ aba in Mecca , which led to a series of reactionary decisions by the Saudi Arabian monarchy that would indelibly affect many people far beyond the kingdom ’ s borders .
And the final event was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the widely popular jihad waged by Afghani freedom fighters and their allies , including the United States .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , but they had an impact on one another and the world in unpredictable ways .
They unleashed what would later become al Qaeda , stoked sectarianism , and contributed to how the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011 would unfold .
Ghattas successfully draws our attention to the links among these events and the people affected by them .
Through those stories , she demonstrates how novel interpretations of religion have been instrumentalized for partisan political ends and have been used—and abused—domestically , as well as regionally , with the most vulnerable paying @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dictatorial rule by both religious and irreligious autocrats has caused destruction and damage .
Beyond Ghattas ’ s many arguments that could give rise to pessimism , there is another , more important—and more valuable—element to her book , which gives readers a sense of hope .
After all , history doesn ’ t lend itself to easy answers when it comes to big questions .
There are many variables and factors that need to be taken into account .
And in historical terms , 40 years isn ’ t even a blip @ @ @ @ @ @ @ before anyone can conclusively decide that the events of 1979 led to this or that .
The question is not if the claims hold up—but if the claims are made well .
And the making of those claims has to do entirely with how seriously the actors on the ground are taken , how seriously their stories are taken , how seriously their potential is taken , and how much authors place “ them ” on the same level as “ us , ” in the pecking order of human worth .
And @ @ @ @ @ @ @ many other commentators , excels .
It might seem like an obvious thing to expect—that writers on a region actually care deeply about the region and its peoples .
But over the course of my own career , I ’ ve learned not to take that for granted at all .
On the contrary , all too often , people in the wider Arab world are treated as pawns while governments and experts in the West prioritize narrow parochial interests .
It ’ s why there is so often deep-rooted support for autocrats @ @ @ @ @ @ @ because Americans or Brits want them to oppress their own people , but because they don ’ t really care—as long as business continues as usual .
It ’ s a frame that Ghattas completely rejects .
She ’ s been deeply embedded in Western institutions throughout her career—and thus she is aware of and engaged with this discourse .
There ’ s no doubt , however , that Ghattas , as she ’ s writing , is involved in this personally .
She ’ s half Dutch—and thus a Westerner , too—but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Arab .
Her analysis is informed and grounded , and therefore her arguments ought to be taken seriously .
Ghattas has skin in the game unlike so many others commenting on the region .
If there is a weakness in this impressive book , it is when it touches on a few matters of faith .
Ghattas , as someone who does not specialize in religious studies , sometimes makes comments that scholars of religion might want to adjust slightly—such as her discussion of how the Sunni-Shiite split began historically , which isn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a divide between consensus-chosen caliphs and spiritually-ordained imams .
But Ghattas is by no means a willful misinterpreter of the complexities of religion in the region , nor is the work meant to be a book on Islam .
As she notes , “ Although this is neither a work of historical scholarship nor an academic study , it is more than a reported narrative : I dug deep into archives , pored over thousands of newspapers , interviewed dozens of people , and built a virtual library of the history of those @ @ @ @ @ @ @ declarations about religion are contained in the Sudanese poem she cites in her conclusion : “ They imprisoned us in the name of religion They burned us in the name of religion They humiliated us in the name of religion They blocked us in the name of religion Religion is innocent , Oh Mother.
” By citing this poem , Ghattas makes clear that she holds no water for those who criticize Islam for being Islam or Muslims for being Muslim .
In Black Wave , there is none of the subtle Islamophobia @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to treat this period in history—and none of the blithe questions about , “ Where are the Muslims and Arabs speaking out against extremism and terrorism ?
” Ghattas pushes back against that kind of discourse , declaring , “ It is deeply troubling to expect that all Muslims should apologize or take responsibility for a minuscule fraction of those who share their faith.
” Ghattas correctly notes that many Muslims were fighting intolerance and its violent manifestations within their own countries long before anyone in the West even thought to pose the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that many Muslims were fighting intolerance and its violent manifestations within their own countries long before anyone in the West even thought to pose the question .
Too many progressive minds in the Middle East and South Asia have been left to fend for themselves for decades , as they and their countries were bludgeoned by forces of darkness , such as Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq in Pakistan , who instrumentalized Islam in ways that were hitherto foreign to his population .
As Ghattas points out , “ The largest number of victims of jihadist @ @ @ @ @ @ @ countries.
” Ghattas ’ nuance goes further ; she identifies the role of different geopolitical trends at work in the region , without apologizing for any major power .
She details how the Muslim Brotherhood was initially sympathetic to the Iranian revolution and how that ideological affinity broke down , quite quickly , due to Khomeini ’ s support for Hafez al-Assad ’ s government in Syria by failing to condemn the latter ’ s massacre in Hama and wider crackdown in the 1980s .
Nor does she try to paint a rosy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Iran , or vice versa .
She applies the same incisive analysis equally to all .
That persistent commitment to critique all parties , irrespective of partisan affiliation , is clear throughout the book .
Ghattas writes about Saudi attempts to propagate purist Salafism in the world , but she also talks about Iranian attempts to propagate Khomeini ’ s brand of Shiite extremism , which brings with it Iranian influence .
It ’ s a balance rarely seen in treatments of the region .
( Here , it might have been useful @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of religiously-inspired geopolitics eventually evolved into the Egyptian-Emirati-Saudi axis and the Turkey-Qatar-Muslim Brotherhood nexus—but that could fill another book entirely ) .
Ghattas also doesn ’ t place the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the center of events , as many analysts tend to do .
Nor does she insist that the United States in particular or the West in general is the primary mover or shaker in the region ; rather , she argues that in the postcolonial era , the region ’ s situation is primarily the result of choices made by those @ @ @ @ @ @ @ letting the U.S. government off the hook ; it ’ s ensuring that readers recognize that the peoples of the region , the good and the bad among them , are the ones who will determine its future .
It ’ s about ensuring agency , rather than depicting locals as mindless marionettes , manipulated by puppeteers elsewhere .
Ghattas writes about Saudi attempts to propagate purist Salafism , but she also talks about Iranian attempts to propagate Khomeini ’ s brand of Shiite extremism .
It ’ s a balance rarely seen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Wave leaves the reader with a sense that the peoples of the greater Middle East can do things differently , if they are given the freedom to do so .
The roots of hope for Ghattas are clear : in the stories of the people she discusses and the protagonists she chooses .
Rather than obsessively discussing al Qaeda and the Islamic State , as Western media outlets tend to do , Ghattas ’ s book seeks to “ bring the untold story of those—and they are many—who fought and continue to fight @ @ @ @ @ @ @ slowly engulfed their countries in the decades following the fateful year of 1979 , ” she writes .
“ They are the silenced majority , who have suffered immensely at the hands of those who are relentlessly intolerant of others , whether wielding political power or a gun.
” And it is this silenced majority that wields the power to determine whether there will be a better future for their children and the generations to come .
Ghattas has good reason to think positively in that regard—but you ’ ll have to read @ @ @ @ @ @

When it comes to writings on the Middle East, books tend to fall into two broad categories. There are those that depict the peoples of the region as mere pawns on a geopolitical chessboard—and deprive them of agency in order to further the author’s ideological agenda, career prospects, or both. And there are books written with nuance and understanding by authors who seek to give voice to the people living through tumultuous events.
When it comes to writings on the Middle East, books tend to fall into two broad categories. There are those that depict the peoples of the region as mere pawns on a geopolitical chessboard—and deprive them of agency in order to further the author’s ideological agenda, career prospects, or both. And there are books written with nuance and understanding by authors who seek to give voice to the people living through tumultuous events.
Kim Ghattas’s book Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East is an example of the latter. For two decades, Ghattas has covered and analyzed the region for such institutions as the BBC, the Financial Times, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Ghattas makes some bold claims, linking much of the turmoil of recent history to three key events in 1979 that would come to define the trajectory of much of the region.
The first is the 1979 Iranian revolution, which overthrew the pro-Western autocratic ruler of Iran, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, setting in motion events that would later put the Shiite cleric Ruhollah Khomeini in power. The second was an attack on the Holy Ka’aba in Mecca, which led to a series of reactionary decisions by the Saudi Arabian monarchy that would indelibly affect many people far beyond the kingdom’s borders. And the final event was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the widely popular jihad waged by Afghani freedom fighters and their allies, including the United States.
Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East, Kim Ghattas, 377 pp., Henry Holt & Company,
The three events were not directly connected, but they had an impact on one another and the world in unpredictable ways. They unleashed what would later become al Qaeda, stoked sectarianism, and contributed to how the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011 would unfold. Ghattas successfully draws our attention to the links among these events and the people affected by them.
Through those stories, she demonstrates how novel interpretations of religion have been instrumentalized for partisan political ends and have been used—and abused—domestically, as well as regionally, with the most vulnerable paying the price. Her narratives show how dictatorial rule by both religious and irreligious autocrats has caused destruction and damage.
Beyond Ghattas’s many arguments that could give rise to pessimism, there is another, more important—and more valuable—element to her book, which gives readers a sense of hope. After all, history doesn’t lend itself to easy answers when it comes to big questions. There are many variables and factors that need to be taken into account. And in historical terms, 40 years isn’t even a blip; it will probably be another century before anyone can conclusively decide that the events of 1979 led to this or that.
The question is not if the claims hold up—but if the claims are made well. And the making of those claims has to do entirely with how seriously the actors on the ground are taken, how seriously their stories are taken, how seriously their potential is taken, and how much authors place “them” on the same level as “us,” in the pecking order of human worth. And it is here that Ghattas, unlike many other commentators, excels.
It might seem like an obvious thing to expect—that writers on a region actually care deeply about the region and its peoples. But over the course of my own career, I’ve learned not to take that for granted at all.
On the contrary, all too often, people in the wider Arab world are treated as pawns while governments and experts in the West prioritize narrow parochial interests. It’s why there is so often deep-rooted support for autocrats and dictators in Western capitals: not because Americans or Brits want them to oppress their own people, but because they don’t really care—as long as business continues as usual.
It’s a frame that Ghattas completely rejects. She’s been deeply embedded in Western institutions throughout her career—and thus she is aware of and engaged with this discourse. There’s no doubt, however, that Ghattas, as she’s writing, is involved in this personally. She’s half Dutch—and thus a Westerner, too—but she’s also very much an Arab. Her analysis is informed and grounded, and therefore her arguments ought to be taken seriously. Ghattas has skin in the game unlike so many others commenting on the region.
If there is a weakness in this impressive book, it is when it touches on a few matters of faith. Ghattas, as someone who does not specialize in religious studies, sometimes makes comments that scholars of religion might want to adjust slightly—such as her discussion of how the Sunni-Shiite split began historically, which isn’t described by most scholars as a divide between consensus-chosen caliphs and spiritually-ordained imams.
But Ghattas is by no means a willful misinterpreter of the complexities of religion in the region, nor is the work meant to be a book on Islam. As she notes, “Although this is neither a work of historical scholarship nor an academic study, it is more than a reported narrative: I dug deep into archives, pored over thousands of newspapers, interviewed dozens of people, and built a virtual library of the history of those four decades.” Perhaps her most poignant declarations about religion are contained in the Sudanese poem she cites in her conclusion:
“They imprisoned us in the name of religion
They burned us in the name of religion
They humiliated us in the name of religion
They blocked us in the name of religion
Religion is innocent, Oh Mother.”
By citing this poem, Ghattas makes clear that she holds no water for those who criticize Islam for being Islam or Muslims for being Muslim. In Black Wave, there is none of the subtle Islamophobia one can find in other books trying to treat this period in history—and none of the blithe questions about, “Where are the Muslims and Arabs speaking out against extremism and terrorism?” Ghattas pushes back against that kind of discourse, declaring, “It is deeply troubling to expect that all Muslims should apologize or take responsibility for a minuscule fraction of those who share their faith.”
Ghattas correctly notes that many Muslims were fighting intolerance and its violent manifestations within their own countries long before anyone in the West even thought to pose the question.
Indeed, she correctly notes that many Muslims were fighting intolerance and its violent manifestations within their own countries long before anyone in the West even thought to pose the question. Too many progressive minds in the Middle East and South Asia have been left to fend for themselves for decades, as they and their countries were bludgeoned by forces of darkness, such as Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq in Pakistan, who instrumentalized Islam in ways that were hitherto foreign to his population. As Ghattas points out, “The largest number of victims of jihadist violence are Muslims themselves within their own countries.”
Ghattas’ nuance goes further; she identifies the role of different geopolitical trends at work in the region, without apologizing for any major power. She details how the Muslim Brotherhood was initially sympathetic to the Iranian revolution and how that ideological affinity broke down, quite quickly, due to Khomeini’s support for Hafez al-Assad’s government in Syria by failing to condemn the latter’s massacre in Hama and wider crackdown in the 1980s. Nor does she try to paint a rosy picture of Saudi Arabia as she criticizes Iran, or vice versa. She applies the same incisive analysis equally to all.
That persistent commitment to critique all parties, irrespective of partisan affiliation, is clear throughout the book. Ghattas writes about Saudi attempts to propagate purist Salafism in the world, but she also talks about Iranian attempts to propagate Khomeini’s brand of Shiite extremism, which brings with it Iranian influence. It’s a balance rarely seen in treatments of the region. (Here, it might have been useful to elaborate on how a new wave of religiously-inspired geopolitics eventually evolved into the Egyptian-Emirati-Saudi axis and the Turkey-Qatar-Muslim Brotherhood nexus—but that could fill another book entirely).
Ghattas also doesn’t place the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the center of events, as many analysts tend to do. Nor does she insist that the United States in particular or the West in general is the primary mover or shaker in the region; rather, she argues that in the postcolonial era, the region’s situation is primarily the result of choices made by those within it. That’s not letting the U.S. government off the hook; it’s ensuring that readers recognize that the peoples of the region, the good and the bad among them, are the ones who will determine its future. It’s about ensuring agency, rather than depicting locals as mindless marionettes, manipulated by puppeteers elsewhere.
Ghattas writes about Saudi attempts to propagate purist Salafism, but she also talks about Iranian attempts to propagate Khomeini’s brand of Shiite extremism. It’s a balance rarely seen in treatments of the region.
Black Wave leaves the reader with a sense that the peoples of the greater Middle East can do things differently, if they are given the freedom to do so. The roots of hope for Ghattas are clear: in the stories of the people she discusses and the protagonists she chooses.
Rather than obsessively discussing al Qaeda and the Islamic State, as Western media outlets tend to do, Ghattas’s book seeks to “bring the untold story of those—and they are many—who fought and continue to fight against the intellectual and cultural darkness that slowly engulfed their countries in the decades following the fateful year of 1979,” she writes.
“They are the silenced majority, who have suffered immensely at the hands of those who are relentlessly intolerant of others, whether wielding political power or a gun.” And it is this silenced majority that wields the power to determine whether there will be a better future for their children and the generations to come. Ghattas has good reason to think positively in that regard—but you’ll have to read the book to see why.


foreignpolicy--2020-03-13--Markets Dive as Fed Offers Trillions to Stem Crisis

Here is today ’ s Foreign Policy brief : Markets tumble again amid coronavirus turmoil , the EU responds to Trump ’ s travel ban , and the U.S. strikes militants in Iraq .
We welcome your feedback at morningbrief @ foreignpolicy.com .
Uncertainty over the coronavirus and dismay at the U.S. response continues to wreak havoc in financial markets .
The Dow Jones Industrial Average and S & P 500 suffered their worst drops—of close to 10 percent—since the stock market crash of 1987 , known as Black Monday .
An announcement of an injection trillions of dollars in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ temporary disruptions ” in the market quelled trading fears for a short period , before markets plunged again .
In a day of drops , even so-called haven assets were not immune .
Bitcoin has now lost 50 percent of its value since February , and the price of gold declined .
U.S. delays on aid package .
The U.S. government ’ s response to the coronavirus outbreak is currently caught between the White House and Capitol Hill , as lawmakers and administration officials stalled on how best to administer an aid @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to reach a deal by the end of today .
State of play .
The coronavirus has now infected more than 128,000 people worldwide and led to the deaths of over 4,700 .
The U.S. still lags behind other developed nations in the rate of testing : According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention , just over 11,000 tests have been conducted in the United States to date , by comparison South Korea has already tested 230,000 cases .
As Foreign Policy ’ s James Palmer writes , the threat to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ within its borders .
EU responds to travel ban .
The European Union said it “ disapproves of the fact that the U.S. decision to impose a travel ban was taken unilaterally and without consultation , ” following the Wednesday announcement by U.S. President Donald Trump banning travel from the 26 countries of the Schengen area .
The decision led to chaos and confusion in European airports , as travelers rushed to return to the United States before the ban takes effect at midnight on Friday .
Merkel sounds the alarm .
German @ @ @ @ @ @ @ public health crisis looms even larger than the panic of 2008 , as her government prepares a response .
“ It is our task first of all to save people ’ s lives , as best we can , and secondly to keep economic activity going , ” she said .
Germany currently has around 1,600 confirmed cases of coronavirus .
U.S. strikes Iran-backed groups .
The United States carried out airstrikes in Iraq in an escalation of its conflict with Iran .
U.S. officials said the five targets hit were weapons storage @ @ @ @ @ @ @ militia .
The strikes were in retaliation for a rocket attack on a military base in Taji , Iraq , that killed three service members—two from the United and States and one from the United Kingdom .
Fourteen others were injured in the Taji attack .
Politicians continue to test positive .
The COVID-19 outbreak knows no boundaries , and celebrities and world leaders are becoming infected .
Fabio Wajngarten , Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro ’ s press secretary , has tested positive for the coronavirus .
Wajngarten was part of Bolsonaro ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the United States and was pictured standing beside President Trump .
Bolsonaro himself is now awaiting the results of a coronavirus test .
Elsewhere , Australia ’ s home affairs minister , Peter Dutton , has now tested positive .
He recently met with top U.S. officials including Attorney General William Barr and was pictured standing next to Ivanka Trump last week .
Sophie Grégoire Trudeau , the wife of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has now also tested positive for the virus .
Both Trudeaus were already in self-quarantine .
Justin Ling @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that President Trump should consider doing the same .
Diplomatic shutdown .
As mass cancellations take hold in every facet of life , diplomacy is not immune .
In New York , the United Nations announced its first known case of a diplomat contracting the coronavirus—a member of the Philippines ’ mission .
In Foreign Policy , Colum Lynch and Robbie Gramer report on the wider effect the coronavirus is having on the business of diplomacy , as global institutions shut their doors to contain the pandemic .
Brexit talks postponed .
Trade @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Union have been placed on hold due to the coronavirus outbreak .
Talks were due to take place next week in London , and alternative plans have not yet been laid out .
Any delay makes the prospect of a Brexit deal within the year increasingly unlikely .
In dark times , even moonshine can brighten things up .
That ’ s certainly the case in Greece , where authorities have found a use for the 155 metric tons of seized bootleg alcohol sitting unused in customs houses around the country : Turn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are now hunting for a manufacturer to follow through on the plan .
For more from FP , visit foreignpolicy.com , subscribe here , or sign up for our other newsletters .
Send your tips , comments , questions , or corrections to morningbrief @ foreignpolicy.com .

Here is today’s Foreign Policy brief: Markets tumble again amid coronavirus turmoil, the EU responds to Trump's travel ban, and the U.S. strikes militants in Iraq.
Here is today’s Foreign Policy brief: Markets tumble again amid coronavirus turmoil, the EU responds to Trump’s travel ban, and the U.S. strikes militants in Iraq.
If you would like to receive Morning Brief in your inbox every weekday, please sign up here.
Coronavirus Continues to Drive Market Turmoil
Uncertainty over the coronavirus and dismay at the U.S. response continues to wreak havoc in financial markets. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 suffered their worst drops—of close to 10 percent—since the stock market crash of 1987, known as Black Monday. An announcement of an injection trillions of dollars in liquidity by the Federal Reserve to halt “temporary disruptions” in the market quelled trading fears for a short period, before markets plunged again.
In a day of drops, even so-called haven assets were not immune. Bitcoin has now lost 50 percent of its value since February, and the price of gold declined.
U.S. delays on aid package. The U.S. government’s response to the coronavirus outbreak is currently caught between the White House and Capitol Hill, as lawmakers and administration officials stalled on how best to administer an aid package to citizens. Both sides hope to reach a deal by the end of today.
State of play. The coronavirus has now infected more than 128,000 people worldwide and led to the deaths of over 4,700. The U.S. still lags behind other developed nations in the rate of testing: According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, just over 11,000 tests have been conducted in the United States to date, by comparison South Korea has already tested 230,000 cases. As Foreign Policy’s James Palmer writes, the threat to the United States is now very much within its borders.
What We’re Following Today
EU responds to travel ban. The European Union said it “disapproves of the fact that the U.S. decision to impose a travel ban was taken unilaterally and without consultation,” following the Wednesday announcement by U.S. President Donald Trump banning travel from the 26 countries of the Schengen area. The decision led to chaos and confusion in European airports, as travelers rushed to return to the United States before the ban takes effect at midnight on Friday.
Merkel sounds the alarm. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that the growing public health crisis looms even larger than the panic of 2008, as her government prepares a response. “It is our task first of all to save people’s lives, as best we can, and secondly to keep economic activity going,” she said. Germany currently has around 1,600 confirmed cases of coronavirus.
U.S. strikes Iran-backed groups. The United States carried out airstrikes in Iraq in an escalation of its conflict with Iran. U.S. officials said the five targets hit were weapons storage facilities of Kataib Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militia. The strikes were in retaliation for a rocket attack on a military base in Taji, Iraq, that killed three service members—two from the United and States and one from the United Kingdom. Fourteen others were injured in the Taji attack.
Politicians continue to test positive. The COVID-19 outbreak knows no boundaries, and celebrities and world leaders are becoming infected. Fabio Wajngarten, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s press secretary, has tested positive for the coronavirus. Wajngarten was part of Bolsonaro’s entourage on a recent trip to the United States and was pictured standing beside President Trump. Bolsonaro himself is now awaiting the results of a coronavirus test.
Elsewhere, Australia’s home affairs minister, Peter Dutton, has now tested positive. He recently met with top U.S. officials including Attorney General William Barr and was pictured standing next to Ivanka Trump last week.
Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, the wife of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has now also tested positive for the virus. Both Trudeaus were already in self-quarantine. Justin Ling, writing in Foreign Policy, argues that President Trump should consider doing the same.
Keep an Eye On
Diplomatic shutdown. As mass cancellations take hold in every facet of life, diplomacy is not immune. In New York, the United Nations announced its first known case of a diplomat contracting the coronavirus—a member of the Philippines’ mission. In Foreign Policy, Colum Lynch and Robbie Gramer report on the wider effect the coronavirus is having on the business of diplomacy, as global institutions shut their doors to contain the pandemic.
Brexit talks postponed. Trade negotiations between the United Kingdom and European Union have been placed on hold due to the coronavirus outbreak. Talks were due to take place next week in London, and alternative plans have not yet been laid out. Any delay makes the prospect of a Brexit deal within the year increasingly unlikely.
Odds and Ends
In dark times, even moonshine can brighten things up. That’s certainly the case in Greece, where authorities have found a use for the 155 metric tons of seized bootleg alcohol sitting unused in customs houses around the country: Turn it into sanitizing liquid. Greek authorities are now hunting for a manufacturer to follow through on the plan.
That’s it for today.
For more from FP, visit foreignpolicy.com, subscribe here, or sign up for our other newsletters. Send your tips, comments, questions, or corrections to morningbrief@foreignpolicy.com.


foreignpolicy--2020-03-12--Keep Calm—and Carry On Spreading the Coronavirus

Keep Calm—and Carry On Spreading the Coronavirus LONDON—U.S .
President Donald Trump ’ s decision to exclude the United Kingdom and Ireland from a European travel ban in response to the COVID-19 virus is being criticized in the face of concerns that London is not doing enough to stop the pandemic .
In some respects , critics say , the U.K. is doing less than some governments in the European Union .
Sources in England ’ s top soccer league told Foreign Policy that there were no plans to take actions such as banning spectators or suspending matches that other @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The U.K. ’ s exclusion from Trump ’ s coronavirus travel ban , which he announced Wednesday night , comes amid criticism of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson ’ s reaction to the pandemic .
U.K. leaders “ claim they are following the science .
But that is not true .
The evidence is clear .
We need urgent implementation of social distancing and closure policies , ” Richard Horton , the editor of the Lancet medical journal , said on Twitter .
“ The government is playing roulette with the public.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Our response to # coronavirus follows an evidence-based assessment of what is happening in this country , ” the British Department of Health and Social Care responded .
Without apparent evidence , Trump declared that the U.K. and his ally Prime Minister Johnson are “ doing a good job.
” And to the outrage of EU leaders , who on Thursday condemned Trump ’ s decision , the U.S. president said that European travelers had “ seeded ” infection clusters in the United States .
The monthlong travel ban will affect 26 European @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has been friendly with ( and also owns properties in ) : the United Kingdom and Ireland .
Trump ’ s decision is “ clearly not based on science , ” Jeremy Konyndyk , a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development who helped direct the U.S. response to the Ebola crisis , told Foreign Policy .
The U.K. reported March 12 that it has 590 confirmed cases of the new coronavirus , which was the largest single day-rise on record .
Ireland reported 43 cases .
The number of infections in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ other European nations such as Italy , Spain , Germany , and France , which all have more than 2,000 cases .
But experts say that just because there have only been a relatively small number of cases in the U.K. and Ireland so far doesn ’ t make it safer .
That fact makes those countries ’ omission from the travel restrictions a puzzling gap in Trump ’ s surprise ban that sparked anger among EU officials .
“ The European Union disapproves of the fact that the U.S. decision to impose @ @ @ @ @ @ @ without consultation , ” said European Council President Charles Michel and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in a joint statement .
The coronavirus can cause respiratory infections , and common symptoms include coughing , fever , and shortness of breath .
There are nearly 130,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus worldwide and nearly 5,000 reported deaths .
The World Health Organization advises regular hand-washing , social distancing , and self-quarantining for those who display symptoms .
Some European nations have taken sharp measures to limit the spread of the coronavirus .
Most @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cases and has shut down shops nationwide .
The Czech Republic on Thursday barred entry of nationals of 15 countries , including the U.K. Also on Thursday , Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said that all schools , colleges , and public facilities would shut down for at least two weeks in response to the pandemic .
He said indoor mass gatherings of more than 100 people and outdoor gatherings of more than 500 should be canceled .
As some European countries were announcing travel bans and nationwide school closings , British officials @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said that more people were likely to die in the U.K. and said it was “ the worst public health crisis in a generation.
” He said the U.K. ’ s response would be guided by the science and said that sporting events and schools will remain open for now because closing them could do “ more harm than good.
” As sports leagues around Europe announced that games that would be played without spectators or outright suspended , a spokeswoman for the Premier League , England ’ s top soccer league , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ organization had no plans to hold matches behind closed doors or cancel fixtures .
An official from a top Premier League club told Foreign Policy they would follow the government ’ s advice .
The dramatic differences in Europe ’ s response to the coronavirus were on display Wednesday night in the continent ’ s top athletic competition .
At bars , screens showed the French soccer club Paris Saint-Germain host the German club Borussia Dortmund to an empty stadium .
At the same time , the English club Liverpool hosted the Spanish @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Fans from Madrid marched around Liverpool despite the Spanish capital being a hot spot for the virus .
Hours later , the Spanish La Liga that Atlético Madrid plays in was suspended for two weeks .
One of the few examples of altered social practices came when Liverpool coach Jurgen Klopp appeared to scold fans trying to high-five players .
“ Put your hands away , you fucking idiots , ” he appeared to say .

LONDON—U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to exclude the United Kingdom and Ireland from a European travel ban in response to the COVID-19 virus is being criticized in the face of concerns that London is not doing enough to stop the pandemic.
LONDON—U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to exclude the United Kingdom and Ireland from a European travel ban in response to the COVID-19 virus is being criticized in the face of concerns that London is not doing enough to stop the pandemic.
In some respects, critics say, the U.K. is doing less than some governments in the European Union. Sources in England’s top soccer league told Foreign Policy that there were no plans to take actions such as banning spectators or suspending matches that other sports leagues across the world have taken.
The U.K.’s exclusion from Trump’s coronavirus travel ban, which he announced Wednesday night, comes amid criticism of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s reaction to the pandemic. U.K. leaders “claim they are following the science. But that is not true. The evidence is clear. We need urgent implementation of social distancing and closure policies,” Richard Horton, the editor of the Lancet medical journal, said on Twitter. “The government is playing roulette with the public.”
British authorities denied this. “Our response to #coronavirus follows an evidence-based assessment of what is happening in this country,” the British Department of Health and Social Care responded.
[Mapping the Coronavirus Outbreak: Get daily updates on the pandemic and learn how it’s affecting countries around the world.]
Without apparent evidence, Trump declared that the U.K. and his ally Prime Minister Johnson are “doing a good job.” And to the outrage of EU leaders, who on Thursday condemned Trump’s decision, the U.S. president said that European travelers had “seeded” infection clusters in the United States.
The monthlong travel ban will affect 26 European nations but not two countries that Trump has been friendly with (and also owns properties in): the United Kingdom and Ireland. Trump’s decision is “clearly not based on science,” Jeremy Konyndyk, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development who helped direct the U.S. response to the Ebola crisis, told Foreign Policy.
The U.K. reported March 12 that it has 590 confirmed cases of the new coronavirus, which was the largest single day-rise on record. Ireland reported 43 cases. The number of infections in both countries is significantly lower than in other European nations such as Italy, Spain, Germany, and France, which all have more than 2,000 cases. But experts say that just because there have only been a relatively small number of cases in the U.K. and Ireland so far doesn’t make it safer. That fact makes those countries’ omission from the travel restrictions a puzzling gap in Trump’s surprise ban that sparked anger among EU officials.
“The European Union disapproves of the fact that the U.S. decision to impose a travel ban was taken unilaterally and without consultation,” said European Council President Charles Michel and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in a joint statement.
The coronavirus can cause respiratory infections, and common symptoms include coughing, fever, and shortness of breath. There are nearly 130,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus worldwide and nearly 5,000 reported deaths. The World Health Organization advises regular hand-washing, social distancing, and self-quarantining for those who display symptoms.
Some European nations have taken sharp measures to limit the spread of the coronavirus. Most drastic is Italy, which has 12,000 cases and has shut down shops nationwide. The Czech Republic on Thursday barred entry of nationals of 15 countries, including the U.K. Also on Thursday, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said that all schools, colleges, and public facilities would shut down for at least two weeks in response to the pandemic. He said indoor mass gatherings of more than 100 people and outdoor gatherings of more than 500 should be canceled.
As some European countries were announcing travel bans and nationwide school closings, British officials were taking a different course. Johnson said that more people were likely to die in the U.K. and said it was “the worst public health crisis in a generation.” He said the U.K.’s response would be guided by the science and said that sporting events and schools will remain open for now because closing them could do “more harm than good.”
As sports leagues around Europe announced that games that would be played without spectators or outright suspended, a spokeswoman for the Premier League, England’s top soccer league, told Foreign Policy on Thursday morning the organization had no plans to hold matches behind closed doors or cancel fixtures. An official from a top Premier League club told Foreign Policy they would follow the government’s advice.
The dramatic differences in Europe’s response to the coronavirus were on display Wednesday night in the continent’s top athletic competition. At bars, screens showed the French soccer club Paris Saint-Germain host the German club Borussia Dortmund to an empty stadium. At the same time, the English club Liverpool hosted the Spanish team Atlético Madrid to a full stadium. Fans from Madrid marched around Liverpool despite the Spanish capital being a hot spot for the virus. Hours later, the Spanish La Liga that Atlético Madrid plays in was suspended for two weeks.
One of the few examples of altered social practices came when Liverpool coach Jurgen Klopp appeared to scold fans trying to high-five players. “Put your hands away, you fucking idiots,” he appeared to say.


foreignpolicy--2020-03-13--Canada Shows How Easy Virus Testing Can Be

Canada Shows How Easy Virus Testing Can Be In 2018 , representatives from the U.S .
Cabinet and both parties in Congress , as well as the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ( CDC ) and a host of others , convened to discuss a response to a new influenza that had sprung up abroad .
As the virus landed in America , infecting thousands , those at the table struggled to keep up .
Luckily , it was all an exercise , conjured up by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health .
Those @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and elsewhere—were simply gaming out pandemic reactions .
“ Public health at the local , state , and federal levels has been diminished by years of budgets that are too small for the mission , ” reads the report on the study .
“ To respond effectively to a pandemic , there needs to be a well-trained , agile , and strong public health workforce.
” The virus was made up but the lessons learned around the table were prescient as the COVID-19 virus currently spreads around the world .
Since a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ late February , America has been critically slow to track new transmissions , laboratories have been hampered in their efforts to test patients , and the president has worked to downplay the reach of the virus .
President Donald Trump called a press conference in the Rose Garden on Friday afternoon to tout his government ’ s response to the crisis , and to underline his effort to expand access to testing .
As of Thursday , the CDC reported that the United States has tested a little more than 13,000 specimens — @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and patients can be tested multiple times .
( There have been more than 1,800 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in America . )
It dwarfs the number of tests administered in other countries , such as South Korea , where local health authorities have made testing widely available ; as of Friday , Seoul reported that it had conducted more than 200,000 tests .
Nearly 8,000 people have tested positive in that country .
America ’ s modest testing statistics look particularly weak compared to its neighbor to the north .
Canada @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and monitoring infrastructure—efforts that look a lot like the model laid out at the Johns Hopkins table .
By catching cases early , and investigating their origins , Canada has blunted the impact of the virus thus far .
In Canada , provincial and federal health authorities have managed to test roughly 15,000 patients across the country .
Nationally , Canada has seen just 157 confirmed cases—the majority of which were imported from other countries .
There have been very few known instances of human-to-human transmission inside Canada so far , in part @ @ @ @ @ @ @ either been placed in quarantine or self-isolated quickly .
Canada has spent the past two decades preparing for this moment .
In 2003 , after Canada was hammered by the SARS virus—a cousin of COVID-19—a report on Canada ’ s response found that “ the SARS experience illustrated that Canada is not adequately prepared to deal with a true pandemic.
” Ontario , specifically , “ could not have withstood two simultaneous large-scale outbreaks or crises such as SARS.
” Other provinces , it found , were no better off—and the federal government @ @ @ @ @ @ @ low .
So Canada set out to improve its own testing capacity ; the Public Health Agency of Canada even held its own tabletop exercise to prepare for an influenza pandemic .
Provincial laboratories put the infrastructure in place that would allow them to run their own testing and validation without help from the federal government .
At the same time , the federally run National Microbiology Laboratory ( NML ) in Winnipeg expanded its own capacity to support those efforts .
When COVID-19 hit this winter , the NML began accepting tests @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a built-in lag time , as samples need to be sent by mail or courier .
By mid-February , though , British Columbia and Ontario , which saw the entirety of the early cases , scaled up their own labs to both test patients locally and validate their own results .
More recently , Quebec and Alberta have joined them .
“ In Ontario , confirmation of positives by NML was dropped a few weeks ago , ” said Krista Urchenko , a medical laboratory technologist in Ontario .
The Winnipeg lab continued @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an airplane landed from Japan , carrying passengers who had recently been on the Diamond Princess cruise ship , the NML set up a mobile lab onsite to monitor anyone experiencing symptoms .
Contrast that with the United States : Up until the final days of February , as dozens of cases cropped up across the country , all tests ran directly through the CDC in Atlanta , Georgia .
“ To my understanding , original FDA policy was not allowing local high-complexity labs to do testing until very recently , ” said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Everything was being sent to CDC if testing was done.
” Even as local hospitals and clinics began testing patients in America , capacity remained low .
The American Enterprise Institute compiles daily updates on how many patients various facilities can handle .
On March 9 , it estimated that the various testing sites across the country could handle no more than 8,000 patients per day—this , days after Vice President Mike Pence promised that 1 million testing kits would be distributed across the country .
By Friday , the daily capacity @ @ @ @ @ @ @ per day .
Underfunding remains a core component of the failure .
The Association of Public Health Laboratories , whose members are on the front line of local testing , wrote earlier this year that , despite a modest CDC budget increase , it is experiencing “ a worrying , long-term trend of public health underfunding.
” It identified a $ 4.5 billion gap between its budget and what is needed to provide adequate public health services .
“ When that money goes away , if the samples are still coming to us @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to figure something out , ” said Grace Kubin , who heads the Texas Department of State Health Services , in a report published by the association .
“ Or else we ’ ll just test fewer samples.
” Guidelines , too , hampered testing .
From the outset , Canada and America set out criteria for who could be tested—namely , those who had traveled to a country with a large number of COVID-19 cases or came into contact with someone who had .
But the Canadian guidelines read that those who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but are considered at risk of COVID-19 by the assessing clinician will also be accepted for testing.
” U.S. guidelines did not .
Hundreds of Americans took to Twitter to lament that they could not get tested , despite showing the symptoms of COVID-19 .
Jacob Mirsky , a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital , tweeted how the restrictions are still limiting the ability to be tested as of Friday .
“ I spoke to a patient of mine this morning .
She was seen in the clinic 10 days ago .
She @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pulmonary disease ] , uses oxygen 24/7 .
Her flu swab was negative but she was diagnosed with pneumonia .
I am in disbelief that I can not test her , even today , because she doesn ’ t meet criteria.
” National Nurses United , a union representing registered nurses across the United States , reported that its members were being denied testing , even after coming into contact with COVID-19 .
“ I have to wait in line to find out the results , ” one nurse reported in a letter @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not the ticket dispenser at the deli counter ; it ’ s a public health emergency !
I am a registered nurse , and I need to know if I am positive before going back to caring for patients.
” Even as the government relaxed requirements for those criteria , letting doctors decide who qualifies for the test , Trump reiterated that : “ We don ’ t want everyone taking this test , it ’ s totally unnecessary.
” There has been scrambling to address the testing shortfalls .
On Friday , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) fast-tracked a new testing device from Swiss health care giant Roche Holding AG .
“ We are increasing the speed definitely by a factor of 10 , ” a representative of the company told Bloomberg News .
But that test , which runs on Roche ’ s cobas 6800/8800 systems , might not fix the capacity issues on the local level .
“ It ’ s an automated analyzer , so it would definitely increase testing frequency , ” Urchenko said .
The drawback , however , is that cobas is a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ put it , “ you ’ re at the mercy of whatever Roche decides to put in their reagents.
” While it would increase capacity at CDC headquarters , local labs that have the devices would need to rely on the company for the specific chemicals needed to make the analyzer work .
The current standard , the one being used by Canada and elsewhere , allows labs to source those chemicals from anywhere .
The acute problem of testing even prompted billionaire Jack Ma , the founder of online retail giant Alibaba @ @ @ @ @ @ @ testing kits to the U.S. government .
Some areas of the country are stepping up faster .
In New Rochelle , New York , which has seen an explosion in cases , Gov .
Andrew Cuomo opened a drive-through testing center , which is expected to test 500 residents per day in the coming week .
At a congressional hearing Thursday on COVID-19 , Anthony Fauci , director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases , summarized the situation : “ The idea of anybody getting [ tested ] easily the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ doing it—we ’ re not set up for that .
Do I think we should be ?
Yes .
But we ’ re not .
”

In 2018, representatives from the U.S. Cabinet and both parties in Congress, as well as the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and a host of others, convened to discuss a response to a new influenza that had sprung up abroad. As the virus landed in America, infecting thousands, those at the table struggled to keep up.
In 2018, representatives from the U.S. Cabinet and both parties in Congress, as well as the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and a host of others, convened to discuss a response to a new influenza that had sprung up abroad. As the virus landed in America, infecting thousands, those at the table struggled to keep up.
Luckily, it was all an exercise, conjured up by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Those around the table—representatives from academia, government, and elsewhere—were simply gaming out pandemic reactions. “Public health at the local, state, and federal levels has been diminished by years of budgets that are too small for the mission,” reads the report on the study. “To respond effectively to a pandemic, there needs to be a well-trained, agile, and strong public health workforce.”
The virus was made up but the lessons learned around the table were prescient as the COVID-19 virus currently spreads around the world.
Since a significant number of cases began appearing in late February, America has been critically slow to track new transmissions, laboratories have been hampered in their efforts to test patients, and the president has worked to downplay the reach of the virus. President Donald Trump called a press conference in the Rose Garden on Friday afternoon to tout his government’s response to the crisis, and to underline his effort to expand access to testing.
[Mapping the Coronavirus Outbreak: Get daily updates on the pandemic and learn how it’s affecting countries around the world.]
As of Thursday, the CDC reported that the United States has tested a little more than 13,000 specimens — there can be multiple specimens per patient, and patients can be tested multiple times. (There have been more than 1,800 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in America.)
It dwarfs the number of tests administered in other countries, such as South Korea, where local health authorities have made testing widely available; as of Friday, Seoul reported that it had conducted more than 200,000 tests. Nearly 8,000 people have tested positive in that country.
America’s modest testing statistics look particularly weak compared to its neighbor to the north.
Canada spent January and February putting together testing and monitoring infrastructure—efforts that look a lot like the model laid out at the Johns Hopkins table. By catching cases early, and investigating their origins, Canada has blunted the impact of the virus thus far.
In Canada, provincial and federal health authorities have managed to test roughly 15,000 patients across the country. Nationally, Canada has seen just 157 confirmed cases—the majority of which were imported from other countries. There have been very few known instances of human-to-human transmission inside Canada so far, in part because those who caught the virus have either been placed in quarantine or self-isolated quickly.
Canada has spent the past two decades preparing for this moment.
In 2003, after Canada was hammered by the SARS virus—a cousin of COVID-19—a report on Canada’s response found that “the SARS experience illustrated that Canada is not adequately prepared to deal with a true pandemic.” Ontario, specifically, “could not have withstood two simultaneous large-scale outbreaks or crises such as SARS.” Other provinces, it found, were no better off—and the federal government’s capacity to help out was low.
So Canada set out to improve its own testing capacity; the Public Health Agency of Canada even held its own tabletop exercise to prepare for an influenza pandemic. Provincial laboratories put the infrastructure in place that would allow them to run their own testing and validation without help from the federal government. At the same time, the federally run National Microbiology Laboratory (NML) in Winnipeg expanded its own capacity to support those efforts.
When COVID-19 hit this winter, the NML began accepting tests from labs across the country—which comes with a built-in lag time, as samples need to be sent by mail or courier. By mid-February, though, British Columbia and Ontario, which saw the entirety of the early cases, scaled up their own labs to both test patients locally and validate their own results. More recently, Quebec and Alberta have joined them.
“In Ontario, confirmation of positives by NML was dropped a few weeks ago,” said Krista Urchenko, a medical laboratory technologist in Ontario.
The Winnipeg lab continued to support other testing efforts. When an airplane landed from Japan, carrying passengers who had recently been on the Diamond Princess cruise ship, the NML set up a mobile lab onsite to monitor anyone experiencing symptoms.
Contrast that with the United States: Up until the final days of February, as dozens of cases cropped up across the country, all tests ran directly through the CDC in Atlanta, Georgia.
“To my understanding, original FDA policy was not allowing local high-complexity labs to do testing until very recently,” said Andrea Prinzi, a clinical microbiologist. “Everything was being sent to CDC if testing was done.”
Even as local hospitals and clinics began testing patients in America, capacity remained low. The American Enterprise Institute compiles daily updates on how many patients various facilities can handle. On March 9, it estimated that the various testing sites across the country could handle no more than 8,000 patients per day—this, days after Vice President Mike Pence promised that 1 million testing kits would be distributed across the country. By Friday, the daily capacity grew to just over 25,000 patients tested per day.
Underfunding remains a core component of the failure. The Association of Public Health Laboratories, whose members are on the front line of local testing, wrote earlier this year that, despite a modest CDC budget increase, it is experiencing “a worrying, long-term trend of public health underfunding.” It identified a $4.5 billion gap between its budget and what is needed to provide adequate public health services.
“When that money goes away, if the samples are still coming to us, we’re going to have to figure something out,” said Grace Kubin, who heads the Texas Department of State Health Services, in a report published by the association. “Or else we’ll just test fewer samples.”
Guidelines, too, hampered testing. From the outset, Canada and America set out criteria for who could be tested—namely, those who had traveled to a country with a large number of COVID-19 cases or came into contact with someone who had. But the Canadian guidelines read that those who “do not fit case definition, but are considered at risk of COVID-19 by the assessing clinician will also be accepted for testing.” U.S. guidelines did not. Hundreds of Americans took to Twitter to lament that they could not get tested, despite showing the symptoms of COVID-19.
Jacob Mirsky, a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital, tweeted how the restrictions are still limiting the ability to be tested as of Friday.
“I spoke to a patient of mine this morning. She was seen in the clinic 10 days ago. She is elderly, has [chronic obstructive pulmonary disease], uses oxygen 24/7. Her flu swab was negative but she was diagnosed with pneumonia. I am in disbelief that I cannot test her, even today, because she doesn’t meet criteria.”
National Nurses United, a union representing registered nurses across the United States, reported that its members were being denied testing, even after coming into contact with COVID-19.
“I have to wait in line to find out the results,” one nurse reported in a letter to the union. “This is not the ticket dispenser at the deli counter; it’s a public health emergency! I am a registered nurse, and I need to know if I am positive before going back to caring for patients.”
Even as the government relaxed requirements for those criteria, letting doctors decide who qualifies for the test, Trump reiterated that: “We don’t want everyone taking this test, it’s totally unnecessary.”
There has been scrambling to address the testing shortfalls. On Friday, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) fast-tracked a new testing device from Swiss health care giant Roche Holding AG. “We are increasing the speed definitely by a factor of 10,” a representative of the company told Bloomberg News.
But that test, which runs on Roche’s cobas 6800/8800 systems, might not fix the capacity issues on the local level.
“It’s an automated analyzer, so it would definitely increase testing frequency,” Urchenko said. The drawback, however, is that cobas is a closed system, meaning, as Urchenko put it, “you’re at the mercy of whatever Roche decides to put in their reagents.” While it would increase capacity at CDC headquarters, local labs that have the devices would need to rely on the company for the specific chemicals needed to make the analyzer work. The current standard, the one being used by Canada and elsewhere, allows labs to source those chemicals from anywhere.
The acute problem of testing even prompted billionaire Jack Ma, the founder of online retail giant Alibaba, to offer the donation of 500,000 testing kits to the U.S. government.
Some areas of the country are stepping up faster. In New Rochelle, New York, which has seen an explosion in cases, Gov. Andrew Cuomo opened a drive-through testing center, which is expected to test 500 residents per day in the coming week.
At a congressional hearing Thursday on COVID-19, Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, summarized the situation: “The idea of anybody getting [tested] easily the way that people in other countries are doing it—we’re not set up for that. Do I think we should be? Yes. But we’re not.”