theatlantic--2020-05-06--Trump’s Unending Ability to Astonish

Trump’s Unending Ability to Astonish

“ I think you can have it both ways , ” Trump said .
At these moments his insouciance glows about him as brightly as his corona .
Then , as a way to explain how that could actually happen , he answered by simply rephrasing the original question at much greater length and ending in midair , dropping to Earth with an authoritative “ So I understand that very well.
” Another , less pressing question that went unanswered in Sunday night ’ s town hall was why , precisely , the hell these people were sitting in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of his reputation as one of Fox ’ s bona fide journalists , wanted it understood that holding “ this virtual town hall ” in “ this hallowed place ” was the president ’ s idea .
For his part , the president made clear that his aesthetic appreciation of the memorial runs deep .
“ Aside from the fact that this was a great man [ meaning Lincoln ] , this is a great work of art , ” the president said .
“ That ’ s one of the greatest sculptures @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to me , anywhere in the world .
And you can go to Italy , you can go anywhere .
[ Just not right now . ]
That ’ s , to me , one of the greats.
” In a word : fabulous .
But as the town hall progressed , it became clear why President Trump wanted to sit with President Lincoln : They are brothers in arms against an unforgiving press corps .
One sympathetic questioner , appearing by video , combined a plea with a question : Why does @ @ @ @ @ @ @ asked by the press but instead speak of past successes and generally ramble ” ?
“ Look , ” Trump said , “ I am greeted with a hostile press the likes of which no president has ever seen .
The closest would be that gentleman right up there .
They always said Lincoln—nobody got treated worse than Lincoln .
I believe I am treated worse.
” Then he mentioned a parade of boats that went up the Intracoastal Waterway in Florida that afternoon shouting his name , which led him to mention @ @ @ @ @ @ @ led him to his reform of the Department of Veterans Affairs , which led to a mysterious reference to “ civil service in the unions , ” followed by the Space Force , Qassem Soleimani , and the vanquishing of the ISIS caliphate , all by way of answering his questioner ’ s request that he stop rambling .
I believe his answer was “ no.
” The hostile press is never far from the president ’ s mind .
The mutual contempt between Trump and most of the reporters who cover him @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his decision to discontinue his haunting and compelling coronavirus briefings .
This misimpression was corrected by the president in an interview Monday with the New York Post .
He told his interviewers that the briefings would resume , but with less frequency and in an altered form .
This was before he announced that he might disband the coronavirus task force itself , as a natural adjustment to the evolving nature of the crisis .
The task force had provided him with a rotating cast of supporting characters , a half-dozen Ethels to @ @ @ @ @

The most disorienting thing about the president isn’t that he lies so often but that he so often tells the truth.
“We never had a more beautiful set than this, did we?” said Donald Trump Sunday night, looking very pleased. He was sitting, implausibly, at the feet of Abraham Lincoln—or rather, at the feet of Lincoln’s statue in the Lincoln Memorial—to take questions for a Fox News virtual town hall. The vast marble chamber was spookily lit to highlight Lincoln’s angled, impassive visage and our current president’s sumptuous corona, if you’ll pardon the expression, of tangerine hair.
The first question came from one of the two Fox anchors, Bret Baier, who wondered what the president would say to the opposing sides of the country’s many cultural fault lines: those who think it’s too early and unsafe to go back to work, and those who think the business shutdowns have gone on too long.
Trump’s capacity to astonish even his most jaded viewers is bottomless. Politicians love to accuse their rivals of “trying to have it both ways,” as if it were a capital offense against logic and leadership. A politician who really does want to have it both ways (and they all do) will scold his rivals for creating a “false choice.” (Barack Obama used the phrase so often, he could make it the name of his fishing boat.) But no politician in his right mind, under any circumstances, would ever dare to—
“I think you can have it both ways,” Trump said. At these moments his insouciance glows about him as brightly as his corona. Then, as a way to explain how that could actually happen, he answered by simply rephrasing the original question at much greater length and ending in midair, dropping to Earth with an authoritative “So I understand that very well.”
Peter Wehner: The president is unraveling
Another, less pressing question that went unanswered in Sunday night’s town hall was why, precisely, the hell these people were sitting in the Lincoln Memorial. Baier, understandably protective of his reputation as one of Fox’s bona fide journalists, wanted it understood that holding “this virtual town hall” in “this hallowed place” was the president’s idea. For his part, the president made clear that his aesthetic appreciation of the memorial runs deep.
“Aside from the fact that this was a great man [meaning Lincoln], this is a great work of art,” the president said. “That’s one of the greatest sculptures, one of the greatest statues, to me, anywhere in the world. And you can go to Italy, you can go anywhere. [Just not right now.] That’s, to me, one of the greats.” In a word: fabulous.
But as the town hall progressed, it became clear why President Trump wanted to sit with President Lincoln: They are brothers in arms against an unforgiving press corps. One sympathetic questioner, appearing by video, combined a plea with a question: Why does he “not directly answer the questions asked by the press but instead speak of past successes and generally ramble”?
“Look,” Trump said, “I am greeted with a hostile press the likes of which no president has ever seen. The closest would be that gentleman right up there. They always said Lincoln—nobody got treated worse than Lincoln. I believe I am treated worse.”
Then he mentioned a parade of boats that went up the Intracoastal Waterway in Florida that afternoon shouting his name, which led him to mention his rebuilding of the military, which led him to his reform of the Department of Veterans Affairs, which led to a mysterious reference to “civil service in the unions,” followed by the Space Force, Qassem Soleimani, and the vanquishing of the ISIS caliphate, all by way of answering his questioner’s request that he stop rambling. I believe his answer was “no.”
The hostile press is never far from the president’s mind. The mutual contempt between Trump and most of the reporters who cover him has been offered as an explanation for his decision to discontinue his haunting and compelling coronavirus briefings. This misimpression was corrected by the president in an interview Monday with the New York Post. He told his interviewers that the briefings would resume, but with less frequency and in an altered form. This was before he announced that he might disband the coronavirus task force itself, as a natural adjustment to the evolving nature of the crisis. The task force had provided him with a rotating cast of supporting characters, a half-dozen Ethels to his own redheaded Lucy.
Anne Applebaum: The rest of the world is laughing at Trump
Why continue a spectacle for the press that many journalists themselves said wasn’t worthy of television? Simple. “We set every record with those press conferences,” he told the Post. “Six million people all the time. You know, we had tremendous numbers.” He said the “combative attitude” between himself and the press contributed to the ratings success: “I would say from the standpoint of watching it and wanting to watch, that would be more interesting than having boring questions asked.”
The most disorienting thing about the Trump presidency isn’t that he lies so often but that he so often tells the truth. The Post interview, with its bald admission of whoring after viewers, offered fresh evidence, and there’s been much more in the past 36 hours.
The great story of this month is the reopening of American businesses, now or later, here and there, and Trump, unlike many of his critics, has faced the fact that the reopening, whenever it happens, will exact dreadful costs.
In Phoenix yesterday, he gave an interview to David Muir of ABC. Muir asked him, “Do you believe that’s the reality we’re facing—that lives will be lost to reopen the country?”
Trump nodded. “It’s possible there will be some,” he said. He’d said as much to Bret Baier at the Lincoln Memorial. “There’s no win here,” he said. “Just so we all understand, there is no win. This is not a situation where there’s a win.”
In other words: We cannot, in fact, have it both ways.


Yuval Levin

Yuval Levin is director of Social , Cultural , and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute and the editor @ @ @ @ @ How Congress Can Help the States The key is to establish three separate categories of @ @ @ @ @ three distinct forms of aid .
• Treat It and Beat It The federal government @ @ @ @ @ play in enabling rapid progress toward drugs to improve COVID-19 recovery and survival rates .
@ @ @ @ @ Pause , Followed by a Soft Start Policy makers need to start planning for a @ @ @ @ @ normalcy .
• Every institution needs an inner life—a sanctum where its work is really @ @

Yuval Levin is director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute and the editor of National Affairs.
Drew Angerer / Getty How Congress Can Help the States The key is to establish three separate categories of problems to be addressed by three distinct forms of aid.
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds / AFP / Getty Treat It and Beat It The federal government has a unique role to play in enabling rapid progress toward drugs to improve COVID-19 recovery and survival rates.
Russell Boyce / Reuters We Need a Hard Pause, Followed by a Soft Start Policy makers need to start planning for a careful and gradual return to normalcy.


theatlantic--2020-05-06--How America Handles Catastrophe

How America Handles Catastrophe

As a reporter who covers disasters , I thought I ’ d become keenly attuned to them , prepared for them .
When I first learned about a virus emerging in Wuhan , China , I remembered hearing the hum of generators and tasting the smoke of burned gasoline in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria .
Still , the threat of COVID-19 felt abstract .
Having arranged my work life for a long time around the monolith of Katrina , I could not see other shadows in its shade .
Or so I tried to tell myself .
Now I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not accepted the conclusions of my own Katrina reporting : that power corrupts and American political leadership often fails ; that the country ’ s deep-woven racial and social inequities will eternally resurface to punish the poor and the black ; that magical thinking about American ingenuity will not save us from natural disaster and human folly .
Despite everything I knew , my faith in this country ran deeper than I realized .
Until that night , I still thought America—whether through some miracle drug or cosmic , city-on-a-hill blessing—would escape or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ How American racism is highlighted by the pandemic And someday , surely , it will .
But in the meantime , I don ’ t know when I will be able to see my immunocompromised mother again .
I don ’ t know which friend or family member might end up stricken , or dead .
Yesterday , I was reduced to witnessing the birth of my second child on FaceTime , because under quarantine rules I was not allowed in the delivery ward .
I watch in despair as all across the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and people of color bear the brunt of the economic and mortal costs of a disaster , a result of both historical political injustice and contemporary political ineptitude .
I ’ d like to think that COVID-19 has finally stripped me of my last illusions , as Katrina stripped New Orleanians of theirs .
But whatever comes next , I will draw strength from the stories and memories of the thousands of Americans who confronted catastrophe before me—Katrina and Maria and 9/11 and the Great Depression and the 1918 flu and the Civil @ @ @ @ @ @ @ This article appears in the June 2020 print edition with the headline “ The Disaster Beat.
” Listen to the first episode of Floodlines here :

On the night of Wednesday, March 11, I stepped out of one catastrophe and into another.
My colleagues and I were working late, putting the finishing touches on Floodlines, an eight-part podcast about the long aftermath of Hurricane Katrina that would be launching the next day. I’d spent the better part of a year traveling back and forth between Washington, D.C., and New Orleans, immersing myself in the stories of Katrina’s victims and heroes, trying to get my head around the immense human suffering and colossal failures of governance that followed the breaking of the levees 15 years ago.
We had endeavored to distill something meaningful and useful from that modern American disaster, in hopes that what we learned might—someday, somehow—help someone. But until we wrapped up our work, as I wiped my desk with bleach at 3 a.m., it had not occurred to me that I might be that someone, and that someday might be now.
Hours earlier, the Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert and the actor Tom Hanks had revealed that they’d tested positive for COVID-19, and the NBA had announced that it was suspending its season. Earlier that day, the World Health Organization had declared the novel coronavirus a pandemic. Our phones kept buzzing with a pileup of push notifications as we scrambled to finish our work.
Read: Homeless during the coronavirus
As a reporter who covers disasters, I thought I’d become keenly attuned to them, prepared for them. When I first learned about a virus emerging in Wuhan, China, I remembered hearing the hum of generators and tasting the smoke of burned gasoline in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. Still, the threat of COVID-19 felt abstract. Having arranged my work life for a long time around the monolith of Katrina, I could not see other shadows in its shade.
Or so I tried to tell myself. Now I think some part of me simply had not accepted the conclusions of my own Katrina reporting: that power corrupts and American political leadership often fails; that the country’s deep-woven racial and social inequities will eternally resurface to punish the poor and the black; that magical thinking about American ingenuity will not save us from natural disaster and human folly. Despite everything I knew, my faith in this country ran deeper than I realized. Until that night, I still thought America—whether through some miracle drug or cosmic, city-on-a-hill blessing—would escape or vanquish the virus.
Calvin Baker: How American racism is highlighted by the pandemic
And someday, surely, it will. But in the meantime, I don’t know when I will be able to see my immunocompromised mother again. I don’t know which friend or family member might end up stricken, or dead. Yesterday, I was reduced to witnessing the birth of my second child on FaceTime, because under quarantine rules I was not allowed in the delivery ward. I watch in despair as all across the country, yet again, poor folks and people of color bear the brunt of the economic and mortal costs of a disaster, a result of both historical political injustice and contemporary political ineptitude.
I’d like to think that COVID-19 has finally stripped me of my last illusions, as Katrina stripped New Orleanians of theirs. But whatever comes next, I will draw strength from the stories and memories of the thousands of Americans who confronted catastrophe before me—Katrina and Maria and 9/11 and the Great Depression and the 1918 flu and the Civil War and all the others—and persevered.
This article appears in the June 2020 print edition with the headline “The Disaster Beat.”
Related Podcast
Listen to the first episode of Floodlines here:


Olga Khazan

Olga Khazan is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Weird : The Power of Being an Outsider in an Insider World .
In Baltimore and other segregated cities , the life-expectancy gap between African Americans and whites is as much as 20 years .
One young woman ’ s struggle shows why .
• The School Reopeners Think America Is Forgetting About Kids Some public-health experts say the costs of keeping schools closed outweigh the hazards of reopening them .
• The pandemic has sparked an interest in dubious cures such as colloidal silver—and some are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Suicides and overdoses among young adults were already skyrocketing before the pandemic started .
Now experts fear that the situation is going to get even worse .
• On who looters are , what they want , and why some protests are more likely to include them • We ’ ll Be Wearing Things on Our Faces for a Long Time You can choose between a mask and a face shield , but you can ’ t choose nothing .
• Pools Will Test the Limits of Social Distancing Yes , you ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ even when you ’ re in the water .
• Why Your Shrink Wasn ’ t Offering Virtual Therapy Until Now Did it need to take a pandemic to let us Zoom with our therapist in our PJs ?
• All over the United States , adults and children have been quarantined for weeks with people who hurt them .
• Work From Home Is Here to Stay The future of jobs after the pandemic is a blurry mix of work , life , pajamas , and Zoom .
• If the flu @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this fall , America might have a longer , more severe lockdown .
• How the Coronavirus Could Create a New Working Class Experts predict the outbreak will lead to a rise in populism .
But will workers turn their rage toward corporate CEOs , or middle-class “ elites ” ?
• Don ’ t Get Your Pet Groomed , Groomers Say Workers who clip dogs ’ nails and trim their fur say they still have to show up to their jobs , and they ’ re terrified for their health .
• @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Quarantine Big retailers have rolled out sick leave during the pandemic , but some workers describe a confusing process for getting paid .

She is the author of Weird: The Power of Being an Outsider in an Insider World . She has also written for The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and other publications. She is a two-time recipient of the International Reporting Project’s journalism fellowship and the winner of the 2017 National Headliner Award for Magazine Online Writing.
Erin Schaff / The New York Times / … Why People Won’t Stop Moving to the Sun Belt Despite the heat, the region’s cities are growing fast. They have three factors to thank.
The Atlantic. Source: Getty. People Just Want to Lose Weight Americans go on yo-yo diets, but we also have a yo-yo relationship to dieting.
Dario Mitidieri / Getty Stop Firing Your Friends Just make more of them.
Adoc / Corbis / Getty; The Atlantic How to Forgive Ourselves for What We Can’t Change The things we can’t change often come back to haunt us. But our capacity to change the future may come from what we can’t change about the past.
Kirn Vintage Stock / Getty The Misgivings of Friend-Making The term social distance has come to characterize our times, with fewer chances to socialize and make friends. But for many, opportunities for friend-making and socialization have always been limited—veiled by the subjective rules of social inclusion.
Photograph by Bill McCullough for The Atlantic The Insurrectionist in the Flower Shop Jenny Cudd might regret storming the Capitol. But she’s still pushing election conspiracies.
Paulus Leeser / Ullstein / Getty / The … When Can a Marriage Be Saved? Knowing when to end a long-term relationship starts with knowing why things aren’t working.
Rudolf Dietrich / Ullstein / Getty / The … When Partnership Is Not the Destination In a society designed for romantic couples, singlehood can be seen as an unwelcome circumstance. For some, being single is not a matter of rebellion, but an irrefutable nature—worthy of its own social standing.
Getty / The Atlantic ‘Parents Are Not All Good and All Bad’ As family norms evolve from generation to generation, so do parent-child dynamics. Changing our relationship with the people who raised us requires not only action but a consideration of whether it’s even possible.
Jonathan Nguyen / Alamy; Susan Walsh / AP; … The Revolt Against Homelessness Michael Shellenberger is betting on the frustration of California voters—even though most experts disagree with the solutions he’s selling.
FPG / Hulton Archive / Getty Starting Over When You Think It’s Too Late Starting over can feel impossible when it involves a sunk cost—an investment with no returns. But when it comes to your career, is it ever too late to start over?
Bráulio Amado Introducing How to Start Over Your one-stop shop for navigating the challenges of changing your life
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Oskar Poss / ullstein bild / Getty Republicans Have Sex Ed All Wrong Some pundits say that talking with little kids about sex and gender primes them to be taken advantage of. Sex-ed researchers say that the opposite is true.
Fototeca Gilardi / Getty; Paul Spella / The … A Yacht Owner’s Worst Nightmare Nabbing a billionaire’s large boat is more complicated than you might think.
Getty; The Atlantic Why People Are Acting So Weird Crime, “unruly passenger” incidents, and other types of strange behavior have all soared recently. Why?
Millennium Images / Gallery Stock What It’s Like to Get Worse at Something I had been skiing since childhood. Why was I suddenly bad at it?


Kristina Rizga

Kristina Rizga is a writer based in San Francisco .
She is the author of Mission High : One School , How Experts Tried to Fail It , and the Students and Teachers Who Made It Triumph • What Teachers Need to Make Remote Schooling Work The coronavirus pandemic is increasing academic gaps , and educators are scrambling to reduce them .
• The Alaska Native Teacher Upending the Legacy of Colonial Education Josephine Tatauq Bourdon , a 30-year veteran teacher , worked to bring Inupiaq culture to every part of her elementary school ’ s curriculum .
• What @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for Kids With Autism Tracy Murray ’ s kindergarten classroom in New York City has a unique approach to supporting students on the spectrum .
• How to Keep Teachers From Leaving the Profession After 38 years in education , Judith Harper thinks what teachers are missing is more time to learn from one another .
• What If Teachers Didn ’ t Focus So Much on Individual Achievement ?
Renee Moore has been working at nearly all-black high schools in the Mississippi Delta for the past two decades for a reason : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ • What It ’ s Like to Teach at One of America ’ s Least Racially Integrated Schools Angela Crawford has taught English at a Philadelphia high school for 23 years .
Not many veteran black teachers like her are left nationwide .
• How to Teach the Civil War in the Deep South One veteran Mississippi teacher is forgoing textbooks for the local archives .
• To get her students interested in STEM , Deborah Cornelison shows them how science projects can improve their community .
• How to Make Students Care @ @ @ @ @ @ @ English teacher , spent 30 years investigating what helps young people to view themselves as writers .
• Rebecca Palacios began teaching soon after a landmark court case mandated integration of Latino schools—and watched the case 's effects weaken over decades .

Kristina Rizga is a writer based in San Francisco, co-creator of The Atlantic’s On Teaching project, and author of Mission High
Olivia Locher How to Teach American History in a Divided Country Chuck Yarborough on helping kids make connections between the past and the present
Camilo Hunica Working for Racial Justice as a White Teacher Robert Roth on an anti-racist approach to high-school history
Olivia Locher What Is Good Teaching? Over the past two years, I talked with veteran educators across the country as I tried to answer this question.
Olivia Locher Children Are Born Scientists. What If School Encouraged That? A unique elementary-school science lab in Michigan lets kids’ curiosity fuel their learning.
Camilo Hunica Learning From Black Educators Renee Moore on sharing and collecting wisdom in a community of teachers
Brian Adams Education for Cultural Survival Josephine Tatauq Bourdon on integrating Indigenous knowledge and language into Western curriculum
Camilo Hunica Celebrating Neurodiversity in the Classroom Tracy Murray on helping kids develop emotional and social skills
Olivia Locher What Makes a Good Preschool Education Rebecca Palacios on the importance of including parents in their children’s earliest schooling
Camilo Hunica Teaching Kids to Love Science Deborah Cornelison on motivating students who don’t want a career in STEM
Olivia Locher The Craft of Teaching Confidence Judith Harper on getting students to take risks—in literature class and in life
Olivia Locher The Art of Teaching Writing Pirette McKamey on helping students believe that what they write really matters
Shutterstock / Paul Spella / The Atlantic What Teachers Need to Make Remote Schooling Work The coronavirus pandemic is increasing academic gaps, and educators are scrambling to reduce them.
Jacob_09 / Bohbeh / Shutterstock / The Atlantic It’s Hard to Teach Writing Online A veteran educator’s tips for reaching students remotely
Brian Adams The Alaska Native Teacher Upending the Legacy of Colonial Education Josephine Tatauq Bourdon, a 30-year veteran teacher, worked to bring Inupiaq culture to every part of her elementary school’s curriculum.
Tracy Murray / The Atlantic What School Could Be If It Were Designed for Kids With Autism Tracy Murray’s kindergarten classroom in New York City has a unique approach to supporting students on the spectrum.
Judith Harper / The Atlantic How to Keep Teachers From Leaving the Profession After 38 years in education, Judith Harper thinks what teachers are missing is more time to learn from one another.
Renee Moore / The Atlantic What If Teachers Didn’t Focus So Much on Individual Achievement? Renee Moore has been working at nearly all-black high schools in the Mississippi Delta for the past two decades for a reason: to raise up the whole community.
Angela Crawford / AP / Hulton Archive / … What It’s Like to Teach at One of America’s Least Racially Integrated Schools Angela Crawford has taught English at a Philadelphia high school for 23 years. Not many veteran black teachers like her are left nationwide.
Chuck Yarborough / Everett Historical / vkilikov / … How to Teach the Civil War in the Deep South One veteran Mississippi teacher is forgoing textbooks for the local archives.


theatlantic--2020-04-27--Why Trump Just Can’t Quit His Daily Press Conferences

The briefings had already earned an unflattering comparison to Vietnam War–era “ 5 O ’ Clock Follies , ” and that was before Trump ’ s disastrous live thought exercise in disinfection methods during Thursday ’ s briefing , followed by a nearly as disastrous cleanup effort the next day ; as it turned out , no amount of Clorox could bleach the stain .
Yet even with the recognition of the daily debacle ’ s political toll , Trump can ’ t bring himself to quit .
This is a testament to both the president ’ s own predilections @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to governing .
As surly and piqued as Trump can appear during a press conference , it ’ s also clear that he loves the format .
In fact , it ’ s one of the few presidential duties he actually seems to enjoy .
He delighted in press conferences during the 2016 campaign , though he ended them after—this may sound familiar—he made a disastrous gaffe during one .
He brought them back for a time early in his presidency , too .
Trump savors jousting with reporters , which both spotlights @ @ @ @ @ @ @ project of undermining the press .
He loves the pomp , in which he gets to perform being president before the nation and , perhaps more important , the little red lights of the cameras .
And because Trump is a lifelong salesman , press conferences are a chance for him to act in the familiar role of pitchman .
It ’ s little surprise , then , that the administration ’ s entire approach to the pandemic has revolved around communications .
Trump has largely sidelined public-health professionals , save the ubiquitous @ @ @ @ @ @ @ CNN reports that Trump may scale back meetings of his pandemic task force , too , suggesting that the body was mostly there as a gesture . )
Where the federal government has offered public-health advice , Trump has tended to get in its way or muddle it .
Trump ’ s anxiety about the economy—which connects to his personal business and political prospects , both imperiled—has driven him to agitate for the reopening of the economy .
But he has been almost entirely irrelevant to economic-stimulus efforts , with Fed Chair Jay @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and leaders in Congress driving the train .
Even the few occasions on which Trump has intervened in policy—lambasting companies for ( allegedly ) not working with the government closely enough , or backing the bus over Governor Brian Kemp of Georgia for moving to reopen his state—have tended to come during briefings .
Notwithstanding the occasional lashing-out at other authorities , whether in asserting absolute authority over states or threatening to adjourn Congress , Trump has demonstrated that he ’ s more than happy for states and Congress to make the tough @ @ @ @ @ @ @ there to try to spin the situation .

The president loves his briefings, even though they appear to be doing his country and his standing more harm than good.
President Trump’s daily coronavirus briefings, the administration’s single most consistent and long-running response to the pandemic, have been a failure of moral and public-health leadership from the start. But after a particularly rough series of briefings last week, it seemed that the White House had finally come to understand that the briefings were also failing to help Trump politically.
In this administration, that’s a far graver sin. “What is the purpose of having White House News Conferences when the Lamestream Media asks nothing but hostile questions, & then refuses to report the truth or facts accurately,” Trump fumed on Twitter. “They get record ratings, & the American people get nothing but Fake News. Not worth the time & effort!”
The White House canceled today’s briefing. Various news reports suggested that there wouldn’t be a regular press conference in the future, either, and that Trump would instead appear in other venues. And then early this afternoon, White House spokesperson Kayleigh McEnany announced that there would be a briefing today after all.
The press conference’s resurrection from the dead—more Romero than Lazarus—vividly illustrates the administration’s narrow approach to the pandemic. Since the virus finally grabbed his attention roughly two months ago, Trump has approached the pandemic not as a public-health crisis, nor even, in practical terms, as an economic crisis. Instead, he has treated it as a communications problem that requires a good sales pitch, which he has mostly delivered via the White House briefing room.
The briefings had already earned an unflattering comparison to Vietnam War–era “5 O’Clock Follies,” and that was before Trump’s disastrous live thought exercise in disinfection methods during Thursday’s briefing, followed by a nearly as disastrous cleanup effort the next day; as it turned out, no amount of Clorox could bleach the stain. Yet even with the recognition of the daily debacle’s political toll, Trump can’t bring himself to quit.
Andrew Ferguson: Trump’s 5 o’clock follies
This is a testament to both the president’s own predilections and the administration’s overarching approach to governing. As surly and piqued as Trump can appear during a press conference, it’s also clear that he loves the format. In fact, it’s one of the few presidential duties he actually seems to enjoy. He delighted in press conferences during the 2016 campaign, though he ended them after—this may sound familiar—he made a disastrous gaffe during one. He brought them back for a time early in his presidency, too. Trump savors jousting with reporters, which both spotlights his gift for insult and serves his project of undermining the press. He loves the pomp, in which he gets to perform being president before the nation and, perhaps more important, the little red lights of the cameras. And because Trump is a lifelong salesman, press conferences are a chance for him to act in the familiar role of pitchman.
It’s little surprise, then, that the administration’s entire approach to the pandemic has revolved around communications. Trump has largely sidelined public-health professionals, save the ubiquitous Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx. (CNN reports that Trump may scale back meetings of his pandemic task force, too, suggesting that the body was mostly there as a gesture.) Where the federal government has offered public-health advice, Trump has tended to get in its way or muddle it. Trump’s anxiety about the economy—which connects to his personal business and political prospects, both imperiled—has driven him to agitate for the reopening of the economy. But he has been almost entirely irrelevant to economic-stimulus efforts, with Fed Chair Jay Powell, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, and leaders in Congress driving the train.
Even the few occasions on which Trump has intervened in policy—lambasting companies for (allegedly) not working with the government closely enough, or backing the bus over Governor Brian Kemp of Georgia for moving to reopen his state—have tended to come during briefings. Notwithstanding the occasional lashing-out at other authorities, whether in asserting absolute authority over states or threatening to adjourn Congress, Trump has demonstrated that he’s more than happy for states and Congress to make the tough policy choices. He’s just there to try to spin the situation.
Nonetheless, the administration is sensitive to the perception that it’s media-obsessed. On Thursday The New York Times reported, “The president’s primary focus, advisers said, is assessing how his performance on the virus is measured in the news media, and the extent to which history will blame him.” The story has occasioned a days-long tirade from Trump, including a bizarre spree of tweets calling for journalists to have their “Noble” prizes revoked—if you know that it’s “Nobel” and journalists don’t win them, you’re ahead of the president—and a New York Post story, written with deep administration cooperation, that claimed Trump was so busy working on pandemic response, he sometimes had to skip lunch. Except, you know, he had all that time to write those tweets. As efforts to debunk claims of media obsession go, the effort was amusingly self-defeating.
The irony here is that the administration’s concern for communication isn’t entirely misplaced. Although there is no excuse for the federal government’s failures of policy and coordination, Charles Duhigg notes that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Field Epidemiology Manual devotes substantial attention to the importance of communicating effectively with the public during an outbreak.
Read: How Trump’s foes get through his daily press briefings
So the problem is not that Trump has been focused on communication. The problem is that the communication has in practice been a catastrophe: both in the national leadership it has offered during a pandemic, and also in its more cynical role of boosting Trump’s political prospects. Politico reports that the White House is seeking new outlets for the energy currently devoted to the press conferences: “The daily briefings are no longer seen inside the White House as the most effective format for Trump, so [aide Hope Hicks] and others must develop other venues and weigh when he can again start to travel to events that so energize him.”
This is obviously destined to fail. Anyone still expecting a new, statesmanlike Trump to emerge is deluded, so televising Trump in different settings—Cabinet meetings, roundtables with business leaders, and so on—has two potential outcomes: Either he finds them unsatisfying and sulks through them, or he manages to hijack them with the same manic energy he brought to the briefings, and with the same results.
The scale of the challenge facing the administration during this pandemic would be daunting for any president, but a better-structured White House, having acknowledged the failure of the briefing gambit, would be searching for new ideas and approaches. Trump has only ever had one idea, though, and right now that sales pitch isn’t finding buyers.


Jacqueline Landry

Jacqueline Landry is an assistant producer for AtlanticLIVE .
• First Came the Virus .
Next Come the Storms .
@ @ @ @ @ most dangerous time of year for natural disasters .
But the pandemic has turned disaster @ @ @ @ @ • An Irish immigrant shares her perspective on America ’ s response to COVID-19 .
@ @ @ @ @ ’ s Like to Have COVID-19 What comes after the diagnosis ?
• What do @ @ @ @ @ ?
• Lori Gottlieb of “ Dear Therapist ” gives advice on how to care @ @ @ @ @ .

Jacqueline Landry is an assistant producer for AtlanticLIVE.
Joe Raedle / Getty First Came the Virus. Next Come the Storms. We will soon enter the most dangerous time of year for natural disasters. But the pandemic has turned disaster planning on its head.
Listen: Watching the Pandemic Hit From Abroad An Irish immigrant shares her perspective on America’s response to COVID-19.
Listen: What It’s Like to Have COVID-19 What comes after the diagnosis?
Joshua Roberts / Reuters Listen: Trump’s Miracle Cure What do we actually know about hydroxychloroquine?


theatlantic--2020-03-24--Trump Is Inciting a Coronavirus Culture War to Save Himself

This criticism contains an element of truth .
As The Wall Street Journal reported in early March , the Chinese government lied about the threat posed by COVID-19 and the coronavirus ’ s transmissibility to humans , and dragged its feet in informing the public , even silencing a whistleblower , Li Wenliang , who tried to warn the country about the threat of the disease before succumbing to it himself .
“ By not moving aggressively to warn the public and medical professionals , public-health experts say , the Chinese government lost one of its best chances to keep @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” The New York Times reported in early February .
Since that report , Chinese officials have engaged in a propaganda offensive , expelling American journalists , minimizing their early missteps , and putting forth a conspiracy theory that the virus was engineered by the U.S. military .
Compared with all this , the president ’ s defenders argue , Trump referring to the coronavirus as the “ Chinese virus ” seems trivial .
Lost in that comparison , however , is the fact that the most effective target of CCP disinformation has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s public praise of the Chinese government ’ s response was not simply a public stance .
According to The Washington Post , at the same time that Trump was stating that Beijing had the disease under control , U.S. intelligence agencies were already warning him that “ Chinese officials appeared to be minimizing the severity of the outbreak.
” Administration officials directly warned Trump of the danger posed by the virus , but “ Trump ’ s insistence on the contrary seemed to rest in his relationship with China ’ s President @ @ @ @ @ @ @ providing him with reliable information about how the virus was spreading in China , ” The Washington Post reported , “ despite reports from intelligence agencies that Chinese officials were not being candid about the true scale of the crisis.
” The right ’ s rhetorical shift then , is not just another racism rope-a-dope , an attempt to bait the left into a culture-war argument and divert attention from the president ’ s disastrous handling of the coronavirus pandemic .
It is also an attempt to cover up the fact that the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ effective in that it helped persuade the president of the United States not to take adequate precautionary measures to stem a tide of pestilence that U.S. government officials saw coming .
Now faced with the profound consequences of that decision , the right has settled on a strategy that does little to hold Beijing accountable for its mishandling of the coronavirus , but instead plays into Beijing ’ s attempt to cast any criticism of the Chinese government ’ s response as racism .
Not only is the Chinese virus gambit morally objectionable @ @ @ @ @ @ @ strategic interests the Trump administration was supposedly pursuing .
The term makes no distinction between China ’ s authoritarian government and people who happen to be of Chinese origin , and undermines the unified front the Trump administration would want if it were actually concerned with countering Chinese-government propaganda .

Donald Trump had a message for the Chinese government at the beginning of the year: Great job!
“China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency,” Trump tweeted on January 24. “It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!”
Over the next month, the president repeatedly praised the Chinese government for its handling of the coronavirus, which appears to have first emerged from a wildlife market in the transportation hub of Wuhan, China, late last year. Trump lauded Chinese President Xi Jinping as “strong, sharp and powerfully focused on leading the counterattack on the Coronavirus,” and emphasized that the U.S. government was “working closely” with China to contain the disease.
For months, Trump himself referred to the illness as “the coronavirus.” In early March, though, several conservative media figures began using Wuhan virus or Chinese virus instead. On March 16, Trump himself began to refer to it as the “Chinese Virus,” prompting commentators to charge that he was racializing the epidemic. In contrast, some early media reports had referred to the illness as “the Wuhan virus,” but most outlets switched to referring to “the coronavirus” not long after it emerged, following the advice of public-health experts concerned about the very possibility of stigma from associating deadly diseases with a particular ethnic group or location. Some conservative outlets subsequently began attacking critics of the president’s change in language as propagandists for the Chinese Communist Party.
Even before Trump’s adoption of Chinese virus, Asian Americans had been facing a wave of discrimination, harassment, and violence in response to the epidemic. The president’s rhetoric did not start this backlash, but the decision to embrace the term Chinese virus reinforced the association between a worldwide pandemic and people of a particular national origin. Legitimizing that link with all the authority of the office of the president of the United States is not just morally abhorrent, but dangerous.
The president’s now-constant use of Chinese virus is the latest example of a conservative phenomenon you might call the racism rope-a-dope (with apologies to the late boxer Muhammad Ali, who coined the latter half of the term to describe his strategy of luring an opponent into wearing himself out). Trump and his acolytes are never more comfortable than when they are defending expressions of bigotry as plain common sense, and accusing their liberal critics of being oversensitive snowflakes who care more about protecting “those people” than they do about you. They seek to reduce any political dispute to this simple equation whenever possible. “I want them to talk about racism every day,” the former Trump adviser Steve Bannon told The American Prospect in 2017. “If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats.”
In this instance, though, the gambit served two additional purposes: distracting the public from Trump’s catastrophic mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic, and disguising the fact that Trump’s failures stemmed from his selfishness and fondness for authoritarian leaders, which in turn made him an easy mark for the Chinese government’s disinformation.
Conservatives are fond of telling liberals who accuse the Republican Party of prejudice, “This is how you got Trump,” a retort that is less a rebuttal than an affirmation. Trump understands that overt expressions of prejudice draw condemnation from liberals, which in turn rallies his own base around him. Calling the coronavirus the “Chinese virus” not only informs Trump’s base that foreigners are the culprits, it also offers his supporters the emotional satisfaction of venting fury at liberals for unfairly accusing conservatives of racism. The point is to turn a pandemic that threatens both mass death and the collapse of the American economy into a culture-war argument in which the electorate can be polarized along partisan lines.
Conservatives insist that the Chinese government bears a great deal of responsibility for the outbreak, and that the president is merely holding the CCP accountable. Liberals, they argue, by criticizing the president’s rhetoric as racist, are falling into a trap set by Chinese propagandists, who are hoping to characterize any criticism of Beijing’s role in the outbreak as racism.
This criticism contains an element of truth. As The Wall Street Journal reported in early March, the Chinese government lied about the threat posed by COVID-19 and the coronavirus’s transmissibility to humans, and dragged its feet in informing the public, even silencing a whistleblower, Li Wenliang, who tried to warn the country about the threat of the disease before succumbing to it himself. “By not moving aggressively to warn the public and medical professionals, public-health experts say, the Chinese government lost one of its best chances to keep the disease from becoming an epidemic,” The New York Times reported in early February.
Since that report, Chinese officials have engaged in a propaganda offensive, expelling American journalists, minimizing their early missteps, and putting forth a conspiracy theory that the virus was engineered by the U.S. military. Compared with all this, the president’s defenders argue, Trump referring to the coronavirus as the “Chinese virus” seems trivial.
Lost in that comparison, however, is the fact that the most effective target of CCP disinformation has been Trump himself. The president’s public praise of the Chinese government’s response was not simply a public stance. According to The Washington Post, at the same time that Trump was stating that Beijing had the disease under control, U.S. intelligence agencies were already warning him that “Chinese officials appeared to be minimizing the severity of the outbreak.”
Administration officials directly warned Trump of the danger posed by the virus, but “Trump’s insistence on the contrary seemed to rest in his relationship with China’s President Xi Jingping, whom Trump believed was providing him with reliable information about how the virus was spreading in China,” The Washington Post reported, “despite reports from intelligence agencies that Chinese officials were not being candid about the true scale of the crisis.”
The right’s rhetorical shift then, is not just another racism rope-a-dope, an attempt to bait the left into a culture-war argument and divert attention from the president’s disastrous handling of the coronavirus pandemic. It is also an attempt to cover up the fact that the Chinese government’s propaganda campaign was effective in that it helped persuade the president of the United States not to take adequate precautionary measures to stem a tide of pestilence that U.S. government officials saw coming.
Now faced with the profound consequences of that decision, the right has settled on a strategy that does little to hold Beijing accountable for its mishandling of the coronavirus, but instead plays into Beijing’s attempt to cast any criticism of the Chinese government’s response as racism. Not only is the Chinese virus gambit morally objectionable but it is also inimical to the strategic interests the Trump administration was supposedly pursuing. The term makes no distinction between China’s authoritarian government and people who happen to be of Chinese origin, and undermines the unified front the Trump administration would want if it were actually concerned with countering Chinese-government propaganda.
Instead, the Trump administration has chosen a political tactic that strengthens the president’s political prospects by polarizing the electorate, and covers up his own role as Xi’s patsy, while making its own pushback against CCP propaganda less effective. The Trump administration might have chosen any number of methods to hold the Chinese government accountable for its mishandling of the outbreak that would not legitimize anti-Asian racism; it settled on a verbal taunt ineffective at countering disinformation but well suited to pursuing the president’s political interests.
This approach reflects the most glaring flaws of Trumpist governance, which have become only more acute during the coronavirus crisis: It exacerbates rather than solves the underlying problem, placing the president’s political objectives above all other concerns, even the ones both the president and his supporters claim to value.
A week after first deploying the term Chinese virus, even the president seemed to have regrets about the tactic. “It seems like there could be a little bit of nasty language toward Asian Americans in our country, and I don’t like that at all,” Trump told reporters at a press conference yesterday afternoon. "These are incredible people, they love our country, and I’m not gonna let it happen.”
The president did not say who might be using the “nasty language” or what that “nasty language” was, nor did he offer any theories as to why anyone might be using it.


Shirley Li

Shirley Li is a staff writer at The Atlantic , where she covers culture .
• Intimacy coordinators became popular guides on TV and film sets during the # MeToo movement .
But in this new socially distanced world , they run the risk of being sidelined .
• I Went to a Drive-In Theater to Feel Normal .
The Opposite Happened .
If catching a movie at these establishments once offered a sojourn into the past , going to one amid the pandemic provides a glimpse of the future .
• What The Great Reveals About Trump ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ may be set in 18th-century Russia , but it understands the theatrical and nearsighted politics of the current moment .
• Hollywood Fails to Sell Its Own Fairy Tale Ryan Murphy ’ s Netflix show presents a fantasy in which marginalized people get to make the film they want .
But the fun thought exercise curdles into earnest nonsense .
• The comedian had used TikTok only a handful of times before her impersonation of the president garnered 15 million views .
Now it ’ s making her rethink her routine .
• @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Book Could Not Hulu ’ s take on the novel Little Fires Everywhere doesn ’ t just translate the story to the screen .
It goes where the author felt she couldn ’ t go on her own .
• The Pandemic Is Hitting One Part of Hollywood Especially Hard “ It ’ s like , we ’ re never going back .
Things are never going to be the same.
” • The four-part documentary does more than simply retell the story of the former presidential candidate ’ s life and career @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Modern Romance Unlike other rom-com reboots that prioritize feel-good nostalgia , Hulu ’ s High Fidelity takes the time to examine the messiness of dating today .
• The singer ’ s opener showed that for women and people of color , tongue-in-cheek references and talk of progress mean nothing without trophies .
• The bombastic new film Birds of Prey helps the popular character build her own legacy apart from the Joker .

Shirley Li is a staff writer at The Atlantic.
She covers Hollywood and the shifting culture of the American entertainment industry. She was an editorial fellow at The Atlantic from 2014 to 2015. Before returning to the publication in 2019, Shirley worked as a staff writer at Entertainment Weekly, reporting on film and TV.
Thomas Wilson / HBO You May Not Know Where This Show Is Headed—But You’ll Enjoy the Journey How to With John Wilson has chronicled some of New York City’s strangest residents. Now its creator is stepping into the spotlight.
Jody Rogac / Trunk Archive Greta Gerwig’s Lessons From Barbie Land “You’re interested in what you’re interested in, and I’m interested in women.”
Warner Bros. Pictures The Surprising Key to Understanding the Barbie Film It’s not Barbie herself.
Searchlight Pictures Sympathy for the Theater Kids Theater Camp is an endearing ode to creativity, and a reminder of the importance of artistic community.
Photo-illustration by The Atlantic. Sources: Ed Araquel / … More Comedies With Wild Sex Scenes, Please Joy Ride and Bottoms are reviving R-rated raunch at the theaters, and upending tropes about women in filthy romps.
Fernando Leon / TAS23 / Getty Justice for the Teenage Taylor Swift In smoothing over a messy lyric on the rerecorded Speak Now, Taylor Swift loses the pained, angry, and sanctimonious sound of her teenage self.
Illustration by Joanne Imperio / The Atlantic. Sources: … 11 Undersung TV Shows to Watch This Summer A guide to the best under-the-radar series from this year, available on a streaming service near you
Macall Polay / Columbia Pictures Thank Goodness for Jennifer Lawrence’s R-Rated Rom-Com No Hard Feelings is more sweet than sexy—and that’s okay.
FX The Radical Reinvention of The Bear The second season of Hulu’s hit show explores its ensemble’s ability to embrace change, to profound effect.
Nick Wall / Netflix When a Show About the Future Is Stuck in Place The newest season of Black Mirror is a stale collection of shallow, unfulfilling stories.
Netflix Never Have I Ever Cleverly Solves TV’s College Problem The final season of Netflix’s sparkly teen comedy acknowledges that transitioning to higher education isn’t always an easy or automatic process.
A24 A Love That Can Be at Once Platonic and Romantic In Past Lives, distance and quiet are key to understanding a soaring intimacy.
Jeong Park / A24 The Filmmaker Who Knows What’s Wrong With Your Relationships To Nicole Holofcener, the writer-director of You Hurt My Feelings, every partnership is about figuring out “when to speak up and when to shut up.”
Peter Kramer / HBO Succession Ends as It Began The show’s epic finale gave us drama, cruelty, and the cold thud of reality.
Kailey Schwerman / Showtime Yellowjackets, How Could You? On the terrible mistake of the show’s Season 2 finale
Carlos Lopez-Calleja / Disney A Chinese American Show That Doesn’t Bother to Explain Itself Disney+’s American Born Chinese, based on the best-selling graphic novel, offers a confident take on the second-generation experience.
Amazon Freevee Jury Duty Is Terrific TV. It Shouldn’t Get Another Season. The magic of the show is that it doesn’t yet have a formula.
Claudette Barius / HBO The Sad, Sad Life of Tom Wambsgans After living to serve, the most pathetic character on Succession finally finds himself on the outs.
Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times / Getty Why You Should Pay Attention to the Hollywood Writers’ Strike “For a week or two, it’s kind of annoying ... But after several months, it can be disastrous.”


theatlantic--2020-04-20--Daily: America Was Already Broken

Daily: America Was Already Broken

Every weekday evening , our editors guide you through the biggest stories of the day , help you discover new ideas , and surprise you with moments of delight .
Subscribe to get this delivered to your inbox .
The pandemic didn ’ t break America .
It was already broken , George Packer argues , and the virus simply exploited its weaknesses .
“ Every morning in the endless month of March , Americans woke up to find themselves citizens of a failed state , ” he writes in this special preview from our June 2020 issue .
Americans @ @ @ @ @ @ @ including “ Are we still capable of self-government ?
” Read his argument in full .
Additional reading : George previously warned that American institutions were in a state of decay , thanks to the Trump administration , in this magazine cover story .
One question , answered : Why are America ’ s COVID-19 numbers flat ?
One possible answer : “ There is clearly some group of Americans who have the coronavirus but who don ’ t show up in official figures , ” Alexis C. Madrigal and Robinson Meyer , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ progress , write .
One statistic highlights the extent of the cases that the U.S. could be missing .
Alexis and Rob evaluated a metric called the test-positivity rate , which estimates how many people who are tested for the virus are found to have it .
In the U.S. , that rate is 20 percent .
That ’ s very high—and implies that doctors are testing only those patients with a very high likelihood of having the virus .

Every weekday evening, our editors guide you through the biggest stories of the day, help you discover new ideas, and surprise you with moments of delight. Subscribe to get this delivered to your inbox.
OLIVER MUNDAY
Argument of the Day
The pandemic didn’t break America. It was already broken, George Packer argues, and the virus simply exploited its weaknesses.
“Every morning in the endless month of March, Americans woke up to find themselves citizens of a failed state,” he writes in this special preview from our June 2020 issue.
Americans must now ask themselves hard questions, including “Are we still capable of self-government?” Read his argument in full.
Additional reading: George previously warned that American institutions were in a state of decay, thanks to the Trump administration, in this magazine cover story.
ADAM MAIDA
Today’s outbreak reading guide
One question, answered: Why are America’s COVID-19 numbers flat?
One possible answer: “There is clearly some group of Americans who have the coronavirus but who don’t show up in official figures,” Alexis C. Madrigal and Robinson Meyer, who launched a project tracking state-by-state testing progress, write.
One statistic highlights the extent of the cases that the U.S. could be missing. Alexis and Rob evaluated a metric called the test-positivity rate, which estimates how many people who are tested for the virus are found to have it. In the U.S., that rate is 20 percent. That’s very high—and implies that doctors are testing only those patients with a very high likelihood of having the virus.
The positivity rate doesn’t tell us the proportion of coronavirus cases in the U.S., but it can give us a general sense of how drastic a particular outbreak is. In America’s case, it shows that the outbreak is far from under control.
What to read if … you just want practical advice:
Tonight’s Atlantic-approved quarantine activity:
Help us decide the subject of next week’s #AtlanticMovieClub. These four ’90s actors are beloved, but not always taken seriously. Our film critic David Sims will revisit the work of one of these idiosyncratic performers, and explore their place in American cinema. Whom should he choose?
Jennifer Lopez
Keanu Reeves
Winona Ryder
Will Smith
Vote on Twitter or by replying to this email with your choice.
View all of our stories related to the coronavirus outbreak here.
We’re looking to talk with individuals who are applying for unemployment insurance due to the pandemic. To share your experience, please write to us with your name, location, and relevant job details.
BIANCA BAGNARELLI
Dear Therapist
Every Monday, Lori Gottlieb answers questions from readers about their problems, big and small. This week she advises a reader whose sister is “not handling the coronavirus outbreak well”:
She has bad anxiety, and because of grad school, she developed a panic disorder that involves frequent panic attacks. She expects me to console and calm her, and I have tried, but it’s exhausting. … Can I tell her to limit how much she puts on me? Or should I accept that in order to help her through her mental-illness journey, this is what is required of me?
This email was written by Caroline Mimbs Nyce, with help from Isabel Fattal, and edited by Shan Wang. Sign yourself up for The Daily here


Ken Harbaugh

When I joined the Navy , I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution .
But not once @ @ @ @ @ training , did I receive meaningful instruction on the document to which I had pledged @ @ @

Lucas Jackson / Reuters
The U.S. Military Is Not Ready for a Constitutional Crisis
When I joined the Navy, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. But not once, in all of my training, did I receive meaningful instruction on the document to which I had pledged my life.


theatlantic--2020-03-19--The Modern Supply Chain Is Snapping

The Modern Supply Chain Is Snapping

In general , hospital supply chains work like this : A hospital ( or nursing home or health agency ) enters a group purchasing organization , or GPO , with several other providers .
They pool together to order what they need , in bulk .
When the system works , everyone saves money .
But GPOs aren ’ t nimble ; when there are problems , they ’ re felt across the system .
And individual hospitals can ’ t immediately get what they need .
That means someone like Watkins ends up appealing to state and federal authorities @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is asking manufacturers to ramp up production of personal protective equipment for health-care workers .
There is a strategic reserve of health-care supplies , which the White House has discussed tapping .
And now it ’ s invoking the Defense Production Act .
But across other industries , the supply chain doesn ’ t have a similar cushion .
And the strain is obvious .
The Institute for Supply Management , which conducts monthly economic surveys , found that nearly 75 percent of the companies it contacted in late February and early March @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the coronavirus .
And 44 percent of the companies didn ’ t have a plan to deal with this kind of disruption .
“ That is a little surprising in this day and age , ” ISM ’ s CEO , Tom Derry , said in an interview .
“ However , ” he added , “ you have to realize that there ’ s almost no industry sector—and when I say that , I mean manufacturing and nonmanufacturing—that isn ’ t reliant on China in the United States.
” Chinese materials @ @ @ @ @ @ @ average customer has no idea how many of their everyday products contain Chinese components , or how reliant on Chinese components most companies have become .
“ If you don ’ t have a first-tier supplier who ’ s sourcing from China , ” Derry said , “ then your supplier ’ s supplier is.
” To understand why the modern supply chain is uniquely vulnerable to a threat like the coronavirus , you have to realize how quickly it has changed .
China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001 , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in 2010 .
During the SARS epidemic of 2002 and 2003 , China represented 4.31 percent of worldwide GDP , wrote the MIT professor David Simchi-Levi , who studies supply chains .
Now that ’ s 16 percent .
Western companies find it cheaper to manufacture goods in China , and elsewhere in Asia , than to do so closer to home .
Car parts , technology , fashion , medical gear , and drug components are particularly vulnerable to disruptions in Asian markets .
Derry noted that in 2012 , after the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t buy a red Toyota for months , because the one factory that made red pigment for Toyota was offline.
” Apple , Fiat Chrysler , and Hyundai have already warned investors of potential supply constraints due to the coronavirus pandemic .

When President Donald Trump invoked the Defense Production Act yesterday, it was telling in two respects. First, it showed that the full force of the federal government will be brought to bear in the manufacturing of vital medical supplies. Second, it underlined what has already become clear: The way our modern supply chain is built is incredibly fragile.
For Doug Watkins, that was obvious several weeks ago, when he realized that his hospital didn’t have enough surgical gowns. Watkins, who oversees the supply chain at the Medical University of South Carolina health system, learned in February that one of the Chinese gown manufacturers that supplies his hospital had a contamination issue with its products.
Read: You’re likely to get the coronavirus
The problem was unrelated to the novel coronavirus, and in any other time, it would have been a small hiccup on the way to finding replacement gowns. But then, as the virus surged, so did demand for gowns, both in and out of China, leaving Watkins and his colleagues scrambling. “This is probably as bad as I’ve seen it,” he said in a phone interview.
We’ve built a global supply chain that runs on outsourcing and thin margins, and the coronavirus has exposed just how delicate it is. “I guess we’ve done a good enough job within the health-care supply chain of getting pricing down to the point that the vendors don’t have a lot of extra margin or slack to play with,” Watkins said. So when demand spikes, everyone feels it.
In general, hospital supply chains work like this: A hospital (or nursing home or health agency) enters a group purchasing organization, or GPO, with several other providers. They pool together to order what they need, in bulk. When the system works, everyone saves money. But GPOs aren’t nimble; when there are problems, they’re felt across the system. And individual hospitals can’t immediately get what they need.
That means someone like Watkins ends up appealing to state and federal authorities for help. The World Health Organization is asking manufacturers to ramp up production of personal protective equipment for health-care workers. There is a strategic reserve of health-care supplies, which the White House has discussed tapping. And now it’s invoking the Defense Production Act.
But across other industries, the supply chain doesn’t have a similar cushion. And the strain is obvious. The Institute for Supply Management, which conducts monthly economic surveys, found that nearly 75 percent of the companies it contacted in late February and early March reported some kind of supply-chain disruption due to the coronavirus. And 44 percent of the companies didn’t have a plan to deal with this kind of disruption. “That is a little surprising in this day and age,” ISM’s CEO, Tom Derry, said in an interview.
“However,” he added, “you have to realize that there’s almost no industry sector—and when I say that, I mean manufacturing and nonmanufacturing—that isn’t reliant on China in the United States.”
Anne Applebaum: The coronavirus called America’s bluff
Chinese materials and manufacturing are so pervasive that the average customer has no idea how many of their everyday products contain Chinese components, or how reliant on Chinese components most companies have become. “If you don’t have a first-tier supplier who’s sourcing from China,” Derry said, “then your supplier’s supplier is.”
To understand why the modern supply chain is uniquely vulnerable to a threat like the coronavirus, you have to realize how quickly it has changed. China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, and surpassed the U.S. as an industrial powerhouse in 2010. During the SARS epidemic of 2002 and 2003, China represented 4.31 percent of worldwide GDP, wrote the MIT professor David Simchi-Levi, who studies supply chains. Now that’s 16 percent.
Western companies find it cheaper to manufacture goods in China, and elsewhere in Asia, than to do so closer to home. Car parts, technology, fashion, medical gear, and drug components are particularly vulnerable to disruptions in Asian markets. Derry noted that in 2012, after the Japanese tsunami, “you couldn’t buy a red Toyota for months, because the one factory that made red pigment for Toyota was offline.” Apple, Fiat Chrysler, and Hyundai have already warned investors of potential supply constraints due to the coronavirus pandemic.
In addition to offshoring, Simchi-Levi told me, companies have emphasized “just in time” delivery, keeping only 15 to 30 days of products on hand. That has made global companies more profitable but has also “significantly increase[d] supply-chain risk.”
He predicted that the worst of the supply-chain disruptions would begin now, in mid-March. Fewer Chinese ships are on the water, and major ports around the world, such as Rotterdam and Le Havre, are already feeling the effects. Those 15 to 30 days of inventory (even if a company stocked up prior to the Chinese Lunar New Year holiday) are likely running low now. “We are going to see a slowdown, disruption, less variety, less options to the customers,” Simchi-Levi said.
As the COVID-19 pandemic ripples throughout the world economy, it’s possible that it may begin to change the way global supply chains work. Simchi-Levi said companies will come under pressure to diversify where they make their products, which will prove easier for some than for others. While the blood thinner heparin may still be made in China, it’s not as difficult to move the infrastructure for, say, the kind of fashion sold at H&M and Zara to other Asian countries. “You can still emphasize low labor costs by moving into Vietnam, Malaysia, and Cambodia,” he said. More electronic and car-part production could shift to factories in Mexico and Brazil.
One thing not to worry about is the grocery supply chain. While some consumer products, such as toothpaste or shampoo, could be limited because of components sourced from China, that’s not the case for food.
Derry noted that the grocery supply chain is remarkably robust. Stores that run out of ingredients one day will be full a day or two later. As for nonperishable goods, such as toilet paper and cleaning supplies, now is a time to be prudent.
If you’re buying up all your local store’s inventory, he said, “I would argue that you’re doing your fellow citizens a disservice. Do we really need to have a gallon of Lysol at home? Probably not.”
For everyone to do their part, he said, it requires thinking like you work in the supply-chain industry: “It only exacerbates the problem if we all—as we call it—bring forward demand.”


Lizzie O'Leary

Lizzie O ’ Leary is a writer based in Brooklyn .
She was the creator and host of public radio ’ s Marketplace Weekend , and has covered economics and politics for CNN and Bloomberg TV .
• The coronavirus exposes the fragility of an economy built on outsourcing and just-in-time inventory .
• Kevin Hassett Says Trump ’ s Trade War Is Worth the Cost The former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers is a free-trade devotee , but he thinks Trump ’ s skirmishes with China were long overdue .
• What Immigration Attorneys Are Telling Their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Advocates fear that new Trump-administration rules will leave the public in a “ world of darkness.
” • ‘ For So Long , Women Have Been Marginalized by Medicine ’ Dr. Jen Gunter is debunking junk science about the female body with her aptly titled new book , The Vagina Bible .
• ‘ I Know People Want a Richer , More Thoughtful Explanation ’ The New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet discusses a controversial headline decision and why the paper ’ s editorial process needs to change .
• ‘ Children @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and They Were Hungry ’ An immigration attorney describes what she witnessed at the border .
• “ I was struck by how much shame there was in [ Eat , Pray , Love ] , and how apologetic I was as a narrator.
” • The island ’ s 40-year-old governor is all in on statehood , calling it a “ civil-rights issue of our time.
” • ‘ Let ’ s Keep This a Casual Enough Conversation That We Can Find the Humor in Things ’ Wyatt Cenac talks about making @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and why “ cancel culture ” doesn ’ t work anymore .

Lizzie O’Leary is a writer based in Brooklyn. She was the creator and host of public radio’s Marketplace Weekend, and has covered economics and politics for CNN and Bloomberg TV.
Umit Bektas / Reuters The Modern Supply Chain Is Snapping The coronavirus exposes the fragility of an economy built on outsourcing and just-in-time inventory.
Kevin Lamarque / Reuters Kevin Hassett Says Trump’s Trade War Is Worth the Cost The former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers is a free-trade devotee, but he thinks Trump’s skirmishes with China were long overdue.
Eric Gay / AP Images What Immigration Attorneys Are Telling Their Clients Now: ‘Brace Yourselves’ Advocates fear that new Trump-administration rules will leave the public in a “world of darkness.”
Jason LeCras / Katie Martin / The Atlantic ‘For So Long, Women Have Been Marginalized by Medicine’ Dr. Jen Gunter is debunking junk science about the female body with her aptly titled new book, The Vagina Bible.
Mike Coppola ‘I Know People Want a Richer, More Thoughtful Explanation’ The New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet discusses a controversial headline decision and why the paper’s editorial process needs to change.
Cedar Attanasio / AP ‘Children Were Dirty, They Were Scared, and They Were Hungry’ An immigration attorney describes what she witnessed at the border.
Stefanie Keenan / Getty Elizabeth Gilbert Is Owning Her Past Mistakes “I was struck by how much shame there was in [Eat, Pray, Love], and how apologetic I was as a narrator.”
Carlos Giusti / AP Ricardo Rosselló Wants 2020 Candidates Talking About Puerto Rico The island’s 40-year-old governor is all in on statehood, calling it a “civil-rights issue of our time.”


theatlantic--2020-03-18--Politics Daily: A Mid-Apocalyptic Democratic Primary Night

It ’ s Wednesday , March 18 .
In today ’ s newsletter : What do Biden ’ s past presidential runs tell us about this one ?
Plus : The coronavirus warning signs that the country missed .
Joe Biden in the Dirksen Senate Office Building after announcing his candidacy for president in Wilmington , Delaware , on June 9 , 1987 .
( MARK REINSTEIN / MEDIAPUNCH / IPX ) A Primary Night in the Middle of the Apocalypse Another Tuesday , another big win for Joe Biden .
The former vice president wiped out Senator Bernie Sanders @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Arizona yesterday , all but ensuring that he ’ ll capture the Democratic nomination .
But , as my colleague Russell Berman writes , with the coronavirus pandemic bringing the country to a collective halt , the primary itself has turned into a second-tier story .
Nothing brought home the gravity of the coronavirus pandemic quite so clearly—or fuzzily—as the pixelated visage that appeared on American television screens to claim a series of Democratic primary victories tonight .
Former Vice President Joe Biden was speaking from his home in Wilmington , Delaware @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been in a bunker .
Biden ’ s campaign had set up a podium and a pair of American flags , but the man poised to face President Donald Trump as the Democratic nominee had seemingly been reduced to what felt like a blurry video on a dial-up modem .
Biden ’ s winning big these days , but his two previous runs for the presidency were spectacular failures .
Both times around , he didn ’ t even win a single state : Biden has long been such an old shoe in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to remember he was once just a middle-aged , middle-of-the-road third-term senator from the small state of Delaware , struggling to become a household politician .
As he started his 1988 campaign , he wrote , polls showed that just one in five voters nationally recognized his name , and in Cleveland in 1986 , a local television reporter mistook him for Peter Ueberroth , the high-foreheaded Los Angeles businessman who led the 1984 Olympic Games .
Read my colleague Todd Purdum on how , for Joe Biden , third time ’ s @ @ @

Joe Biden keeps on winning. Plus: Is it time for Bernie Sanders to drop out?
It’s Wednesday, March 18. In today’s newsletter: What do Biden’s past presidential runs tell us about this one? Plus: The coronavirus warning signs that the country missed.
*
« TODAY IN POLITICS »
Joe Biden in the Dirksen Senate Office Building after announcing his candidacy for president in Wilmington, Delaware, on June 9, 1987. (MARK REINSTEIN / MEDIAPUNCH / IPX)
A Primary Night in the Middle of the Apocalypse
Another Tuesday, another big win for Joe Biden. The former vice president wiped out Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont in Florida, Illinois, and Arizona yesterday, all but ensuring that he’ll capture the Democratic nomination. But, as my colleague Russell Berman writes, with the coronavirus pandemic bringing the country to a collective halt, the primary itself has turned into a second-tier story.
Nothing brought home the gravity of the coronavirus pandemic quite so clearly—or fuzzily—as the pixelated visage that appeared on American television screens to claim a series of Democratic primary victories tonight. Former Vice President Joe Biden was speaking from his home in Wilmington, Delaware, but he might as well have been in a bunker. Biden’s campaign had set up a podium and a pair of American flags, but the man poised to face President Donald Trump as the Democratic nominee had seemingly been reduced to what felt like a blurry video on a dial-up modem.
Biden’s winning big these days, but his two previous runs for the presidency were spectacular failures. Both times around, he didn’t even win a single state:
Biden has long been such an old shoe in American life that it’s hard to remember he was once just a middle-aged, middle-of-the-road third-term senator from the small state of Delaware, struggling to become a household politician. As he started his 1988 campaign, he wrote, polls showed that just one in five voters nationally recognized his name, and in Cleveland in 1986, a local television reporter mistook him for Peter Ueberroth, the high-foreheaded Los Angeles businessman who led the 1984 Olympic Games.
Read my colleague Todd Purdum on how, for Joe Biden, third time’s a charm.
—Saahil Desai
*
« SNAPSHOT »
(Getty Images / Reuters / AP)
Millions of people are now living under varying degrees of lockdown in Italy, France, and the United States.
Our photo editor Alan Taylor compiled images of usually bustling public spaces that now stand empty.
See the new collection here.
*
« ARGUMENT OF THE DAY »
(DREW ANGERER / GETTY)
As far as the Bernie Sanders campaign is concerned, he’s still running for president.
But now, Joe Biden has amassed a seemingly insurmountable delegate lead—winning three states outright last night. The remaining primaries look hostile to Sanders (they’ll take place in states where Biden’s support runs deep, and the COVID-19 outbreak may further suppress turnout).
Now would be the time for Sanders to drop out yet keep his influence on the race, our Ideas staff writer Conor Friedersdorf argues.
“As Congress weighs emergency relief measures, Sanders could exert more influence focusing on policy in Washington, in his capacity as a sitting senator, than in debates with Biden, repeating calls for a democratic socialist future as the public is focused on the next year … or week.”
Read the rest.
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« THE CORONAVIRUS READER »
(THE ATLANTIC)
As the U.S. federal government struggles with a proper response to the COVID-19 pandemic, our writers are analyzing the virus’s effect on society.
When the history of this virus is written, we’ll have to include the many, many warning signs the country missed. We were warned every year since at least 2014, our national security and global affairs staff writer Uri Friedman reports:
When the National Commission on the COVID-19 response materializes, it will differ from the 9/11 Commission in that it will conclude that “the system was blinking red” not just in the inner sanctum of the U.S. intelligence community but out in the open, as well. For years.
You can keep up with all of The Atlantic’s most essential coronavirus coverage here.
*


theatlantic--2020-04-22--The Real Reason to Wear a Mask

The Real Reason to Wear a Mask

But the opposite concern also exists : egress , or transmission of particles from the wearer to the outside world .
Historically , much less research has been conducted on egress , but controlling it—also known as “ source control ” —is crucial to stopping the person-to-person spread of a disease .
Obviously , society-wide source control becomes very important during a pandemic .
Unfortunately , many articles in the lay press—and even some in the scientific press—don ’ t properly distinguish between ingress and egress , thereby adding to the confusion .
Read : Everyone thinks they ’ re @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that preventing transmission to others through egress is relatively easy .
It ’ s like stopping gushing water from a hose right at the source , by turning off the faucet , compared with the difficulty of trying to catch all the drops of water after we ’ ve pointed the hose up and they ’ ve flown everywhere .
Research shows that even a cotton mask dramatically reduces the number of virus particles emitted from our mouths—by as much as 99 percent .
This reduction provides two huge benefits .
Fewer virus @ @ @ @ @ @ @ chance of avoiding infection , and if they are infected , the lower viral-exposure load may give them a better chance of contracting only a mild illness .
COVID-19 has been hard to control partly because people can infect others before they themselves display any symptoms—and even if they never develop any illness .
Three recent studies show that nearly half of patients are infected by people who aren ’ t coughing or sneezing yet .
Many people have no awareness of the risk they pose to others , because they don ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ may never become overtly ill. Read : Why we ’ re running out of masks Think of the coronavirus pandemic as a fire ravaging our cities and towns that is spread by infected people breathing out invisible embers every time they speak , cough , or sneeze .
Sneezing is the most dangerous—it spreads embers farthest—coughing second , and speaking least , though it still can spread the embers .
These invisible sparks cause others to catch fire and in turn breathe out embers until we truly catch fire—and get sick .
That @ @ @ @ @ @ @ firefighters—our medical workers .
The people who run into these raging blazes to put them out need special heat-resistant suits and gloves , helmets , and oxygen tanks so they can keep breathing in the fire—all that PPE , with proper fit too .
If we could just keep our embers from being sent out every time we spoke or coughed , many fewer people would catch fire .
Masks help us do that .
And because we don ’ t know for sure who ’ s sick , the only solution is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ eventually benefits the wearer because fewer fires mean we ’ re all less likely to be burned .
My mask protects you ; your masks protect me .
Plus , our firefighters would no longer be overwhelmed , and we could more easily go back to work and the rest of our public lives .

If you feel confused about whether people should wear masks and why and what kind, you’re not alone. COVID-19 is a novel disease and we’re learning new things about it every day. However, much of the confusion around masks stems from the conflation of two very different functions of masks.
Masks can be worn to protect the wearer from getting infected or masks can be worn to protect others from being infected by the wearer. Protecting the wearer is difficult: It requires medical-grade respirator masks, a proper fit, and careful putting on and taking off. But masks can also be worn to prevent transmission to others, and this is their most important use for society. If we lower the likelihood of one person’s infecting another, the impact is exponential, so even a small reduction in those odds results in a huge decrease in deaths. Luckily, blocking transmission outward at the source is much easier. It can be accomplished with something as simple as a cloth mask.
Read: Our pandemic summer
A key transmission route of COVID-19 is via droplets that fly out of our mouths—that includes when we speak, not just when we cough or sneeze. A portion of these droplets quickly evaporate, becoming tiny particles whose inhalation by those nearby is hard to prevent. This is especially relevant for doctors and nurses who work with sick people all day. Medical workers are also at risk from procedures such as intubation, which generate very tiny particles that can float around possibly for hours. That’s why their gear is called “personal protective equipment,” or PPE, and has stringent requirements for fit in order to stop ingress—the term for the transmission of these outside particles to the wearer. Until now, most scientific research and discussion about masks has been directed at protecting medical workers from ingress.
But the opposite concern also exists: egress, or transmission of particles from the wearer to the outside world. Historically, much less research has been conducted on egress, but controlling it—also known as “source control”—is crucial to stopping the person-to-person spread of a disease. Obviously, society-wide source control becomes very important during a pandemic. Unfortunately, many articles in the lay press—and even some in the scientific press—don’t properly distinguish between ingress and egress, thereby adding to the confusion.
Read: Everyone thinks they’re right about masks
The good news is that preventing transmission to others through egress is relatively easy. It’s like stopping gushing water from a hose right at the source, by turning off the faucet, compared with the difficulty of trying to catch all the drops of water after we’ve pointed the hose up and they’ve flown everywhere. Research shows that even a cotton mask dramatically reduces the number of virus particles emitted from our mouths—by as much as 99 percent. This reduction provides two huge benefits. Fewer virus particles mean that people have a better chance of avoiding infection, and if they are infected, the lower viral-exposure load may give them a better chance of contracting only a mild illness.
COVID-19 has been hard to control partly because people can infect others before they themselves display any symptoms—and even if they never develop any illness. Three recent studies show that nearly half of patients are infected by people who aren’t coughing or sneezing yet. Many people have no awareness of the risk they pose to others, because they don’t feel sick themselves, and many may never become overtly ill.
Read: Why we’re running out of masks
Think of the coronavirus pandemic as a fire ravaging our cities and towns that is spread by infected people breathing out invisible embers every time they speak, cough, or sneeze. Sneezing is the most dangerous—it spreads embers farthest—coughing second, and speaking least, though it still can spread the embers. These invisible sparks cause others to catch fire and in turn breathe out embers until we truly catch fire—and get sick. That’s when we call in the firefighters—our medical workers. The people who run into these raging blazes to put them out need special heat-resistant suits and gloves, helmets, and oxygen tanks so they can keep breathing in the fire—all that PPE, with proper fit too.
If we could just keep our embers from being sent out every time we spoke or coughed, many fewer people would catch fire. Masks help us do that. And because we don’t know for sure who’s sick, the only solution is for everyone to wear masks. This eventually benefits the wearer because fewer fires mean we’re all less likely to be burned. My mask protects you; your masks protect me. Plus, our firefighters would no longer be overwhelmed, and we could more easily go back to work and the rest of our public lives.
Read: What you need to know about the coronavirus
To better understand what level of mask-wearing we need in the population to get this pandemic under control, we assembled a transdisciplinary team of 19 experts and looked at a range of mathematical models and other research to learn what would happen if most people wore a mask in public. We wrote and submitted an academic paper as well as a layperson’s summary. Every infectious disease has a reproduction rate, called R. When it’s 1.0, that means the average infected person infects one other person. The 1918 pandemic flu had an R of 1.8—so one infected person infected, on average, almost two others. COVID-19’s rate, in the absence of measures such as social distancing and masks, is at least 2.4. A disease dies out if its R falls under 1.0. The lower the number, the faster it dies out.
The effectiveness of mask-wearing depends on three things: the basic reproduction number, R 0 , of the virus in a community; masks’ efficacy at blocking transmission; and the percentage of people wearing masks. The blue area of the graph below indicates an R 0 below 1.0, the magic number needed to make the disease die out.
Read: A new statistic reveals why America’s COVID-19 numbers are flat
Models show that if 80 percent of people wear masks that are 60 percent effective, easily achievable with cloth, we can get to an effective R 0 of less than one. That’s enough to halt the spread of the disease. Many countries already have more than 80 percent of their population wearing masks in public, including Hong Kong, where most stores deny entry to unmasked customers, and the more than 30 countries that legally require masks in public spaces, such as Israel, Singapore, and the Czech Republic. Mask use in combination with physical distancing is even more powerful.
While cloth masks are sufficient for protecting others, people who are immunocompromised or those who have a few left over from fire season or hobbies may be considering wearing N95s, to better protect themselves. One note of caution: Many nonmedical N95s have exhalation valves (to make them less stuffy to wear) that let out unfiltered air, and thus won’t stop the wearer from infecting others—so they shouldn’t be worn around other people unless the valve is covered over with tape or cloth.
The community use of masks for source control is a “public good”: something we all contribute to that eventually benefits everyone—but only if almost everyone contributes, which can be a challenge to persuade people to do. It’s like emission filters in our car exhausts and chimneys: They need to be installed in all cars, factories, and houses to guarantee clean air for everyone. Usually, laws, regulations, mandates, or strong cultural norms ensure maximal participation. And once that happens, the result can be amazing.
Read: Face masks are in
For example, in Hong Kong, only four confirmed deaths due to COVID-19 have been recorded since the beginning of the pandemic, despite high density, mass transportation, and proximity to Wuhan. Hong Kong’s health authorities credit their citizens’ near-universal mask-wearing as a key factor (surveys show almost 100 percent voluntary compliance). Similarly, Taiwan ramped up mask production early on and distributed masks to the population, mandating their use in public transit and recommending their use in other public places—a recommendation that has been widely complied with. The country continues to function fully, and their schools have been open since the end of February, while their death total remains very low, at only six. In the Czech Republic, masks were not used during the initial outbreak, but after a grassroots campaign led to a government mandate on March 18, masks in public became ubiquitous. The results took a while to be reflected in the official statistics: The first five days of April still saw an average of 257 new cases and nine deaths per day, but the most recent five days of data show an average of 120 new cases and five deaths per day. Of course, we can’t know for sure to what degree these success stories are because of masks, but we do know that in every region that has adopted widespread mask-wearing, case and death rates have been reduced within a few weeks.
We know a vaccine may take years, and in the meantime, we will need to find ways to make our societies function as safely as possible. Our governments can and should do much—make tests widely available, fund research, ensure medical workers have everything they need. But ordinary people are not helpless; in fact, we have more power than we realize. Along with keeping our distance whenever possible and maintaining good hygiene, all of us wearing just a cloth mask could help stop this pandemic in its tracks.