vox--2020-03-20--How to make sure everyone can vote during the coronavirus pandemic

Get used to seeing the four walls of your own home : Extraordinary measures to control the coronavirus pandemic , potentially including social distancing , may be necessary for months .
It ’ s far from clear that society will be back to normal by the November general election .
And even if the disease is under control , many voters may be cautious about stepping out to a polling place where many people will gather .
When I reached out to a wide array of voting rights advocates , election law scholars , and former election officials , I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ over again : “ vote by mail.
” Mail-in ballots are a major reason turnout did not crater in the Florida and Arizona primary elections held earlier this month .
And they are the most straightforward way to ensure that voters can still cast a ballot even if they are stuck at home .
In the ideal regime , which already exists in Colorado , Oregon , Washington , Utah , and Hawaii , voters would automatically receive a ballot in the mail in the weeks before the election .
These voters should @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in person , in case they do not receive the ballot or lose it , but no one should have to request a mail-in ballot in order to receive one .
Such a system can be implemented state by state .
It also could be implemented in all 50 states by Congress , which has the power to determine the “ times , places and manner of holding elections ” for members of the House .
But voting by mail also isn ’ t a panacea .
There are some voters , such @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the postal service and people experiencing homelessness , who may struggle to vote if a mail-in ballot is their only option .
This is why it is important to offer in-person voting as a backup option .
Federal law also requires states to provide ballots in the native languages of many voters with limited English skills .
To comply with this law , states will need to keep records of which voters need such ballots , and what language each ballot should use .
Many states have not built the infrastructure necessary to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ballots arriving in a short time .
Building that infrastructure quickly might be challenging , and it will require funding — although states that build efficient infrastructure could save a great deal of money in the long run .
And a system dominated by mailed ballots also may require Americans — and , most notably , members of the press — to be patient with a vote-counting process that could take days or even weeks .
It is unlikely we will know the winner of the 2020 presidential race on election night if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ These problems can be surmounted , but they will require lawmakers to be thoughtful about how they support state officials preparing for Election Day .
They will also require lawmakers and those state officials to identify voters who may face obstacles between themselves and the franchise , and to take care to accommodate those voters ’ needs .
How most Americans will cast a ballot in a vote-by-mail regime Let ’ s start with Americans who will find it fairly easy to cast a ballot from home : fluent English speakers who do @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to seek assistance filling out a ballot or mailing it , and who have easy access to a mailbox or to a location where they can drop off their ballot .
Even these voters will face some logistical challenges , however , in order to vote by mail .
For starters , it ’ s hard to vote if you do not have a ballot .
For this reason , “ all voters should have ballots mailed to them and be provided with a list of options as to how to cast their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ letter to policymakers signed by a long list of civil rights organizations led by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights .
Such an automated process requires the state to keep accurate and up-to-date voter registration records .
It is inevitable that some voters ’ registration information will need to be updated from time to time , because states do not monitor voters to automatically determine when someone changes addresses .
For this reason , it needs to be easy for voters to update their records if they move .
As Justin @ @ @ @ @ @ @ School who oversaw much of the Justice Department ’ s voting rights work during the Obama administration , told me , election officials “ got ta know where the people are , and it ’ s got to be accurate.
” Both the Leadership Conference letter and a similar list of reforms offered by the Brennan Center for Justice ’ s Wendy Weiser and Max Feldman , highlight the need for a robust online voter registration system to make it easy for new voters to register and for already-registered voters to update their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have ” online voter registration , Weiser and Feldman write , “ should work to set up such a system immediately.
” To make that possible , Congress may need to provide subsidies to states to help them set up online registration processes as quickly as feasible .
Online registration may also help mitigate the fact that traditional voter registration drives — where activists go door to door or approach voters at public places — may not be possible in an age of social distancing .
Registration drives “ are going to be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ if folks can ’ t go door to door , ” according to Rick Hasen , an election law professor at the University of California Irvine .
And online voter registration “ is going to be a huge help.
” States should also eliminate policies — and , if necessary , Congress should enact federal legislation preempting state laws — that prevent voters from registering due to trivial errors or inconsistencies on voter registration applications .
In the lead-up to the 2018 election , for example , then-Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for governor , placed about 53,000 voter registration applications on hold because of an “ exact match ” law that required the information on those applications to precisely match information on file with the state ’ s Department of Driver Services and the Social Security Administration .
( Kemp won his governor ’ s race by a very narrow margin . )
As Levitt explained to me , inconsistencies are inevitable and can occur for arbitrary reasons .
A government database might omit the hyphen from someone with a hyphenated last name , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ may encounter someone with an unusually spelled name ( such as “ Simth ” ) and alter that name ( to “ Smith ” ) out of a mistaken belief that they are correcting an error .
A Korean American voter who places his surname before his given name ( “ Kim Jae ” ) may have his name transposed ( to “ Jae Kim ” ) in a government database to correspond with the Western norm .
None of these are valid reasons to deny someone the right to vote .
Finally @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mail must be allowed to do so at no cost .
This is a constitutional necessity , as the Constitution forbids poll taxes of any kind .
As the Supreme Court held in Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections , the government violates the Constitution “ whenever it makes the affluence of the voter or payment of any fee an electoral standard.
“ That means that voters who cast their ballot by mail must receive free postage and may not face any other cost .
Vote by mail for all who want it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , North Dakota Republicans enacted a law that required voters to present their current residential address in order to vote .
The law was widely viewed as a voter suppression measure targeting Native Americans , who were expected to support then-Sen. Heidi Heitkamp , a Democrat , in the coming election .
Many voters who live on Native American reservations do not have a residential address of the kind that the US Postal Service uses to identify homes , and rely on PO boxes to receive their mail .
These voters are one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ experts that I spoke with recommended that voting by mail should be the only option on Election Day .
Amber McReynolds , the CEO of Vote at Home , is , as the name of her organization suggests , a vocal advocate of making it as easy as possible for voters to cast a ballot by mail .
Yet she emphasized to me that she “ never said we want 100 percent vote by mail.
” Instead , McReynolds pointed me to the system she played a major role in implementing when she @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Colorado .
Colorado established “ vote centers ” to supplement mailed ballots .
A voter may cast a ballot at any vote center within a given jurisdiction — the center provides them with the appropriate ballot depending on where they live .
If one vote center is too crowded , voters have the option of casting their ballot elsewhere .
Such a system eliminates the single-point-of-failure problem where a voter is locked into a specific precinct even if that precinct is unable to process voters quickly .
It also allows states to use @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who do not receive a ballot in the mail for whatever reason to still exercise their right to vote .
These centers also may allow voters to cast their ballot early , thus reducing the size of crowds on Election Day .
The alternative of keeping a traditional polling precinct structure in place — where in-person voters must go to a single designated polling place near their home — will be “ very hard ” in a pandemic , McReynolds told me .
Poll workers may not show up because they are sick @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will break down over the course of a day .
And when a precinct is short on workers or machines , that can lead to the “ five-hour lines ” that voters endured in the past .
There are other considerations , too .
Under the Voting Rights Act , people with disabilities may be assisted by a person of their choice ( other than their employer or an agent of their union ) when filling out a ballot .
In areas where a significant number of voters primarily speak a language other @ @ @ @ @ @ @ also requires states and localities to provide ballots and other voting information in that language .
Voting officials will need to comply with these requirements when they set up both in-person and vote-by-mail systems .
Among other things , this means that state voting officials will need to keep records of which voters need to be mailed a ballot in a language other than English — and which language should be used on that ballot .
State officials should also be vigilant about preventing polling places from becoming vectors for coronavirus infection .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Control and Prevention ’ s guidance regarding polling places .
It also means special attention needs to be paid to populations that are especially vulnerable to the pandemic .
As Weiser and Feldman write , “ polling places are routinely sited in buildings that primarily serve communities identified as high risk for serious Covid-19 illness , like senior care facilities.
” On the one hand , leaving a polling place in such a location could endanger the health of nearby residents .
On the other hand , those residents have as much of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , so plans would need to be implemented to ensure they can still cast a ballot .
“ I ’ d want to be sure there is some option for dropping off ballots that allows groups — e.g.
, churches and civic organizations — to collect people ’ s ballots and return them , ” said Pam Karlan , a professor at Stanford Law School who also oversaw much of the Justice Department ’ s voting rights work during the Obama administration .
That could allow members of the community to ensure that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cast a ballot .
So what will this all cost ?
Sens .
Amy Klobuchar ( D-MN ) and Ron Wyden ( D-OR ) introduced legislation , the Natural Disaster and Emergency Ballot Act , which would require states to expand access to early and mail-in voting if a quarter of the states declare a state of emergency .
Though their bill does not go quite as far as many of the experts that I spoke with suggested it should — it does not require states to automatically mail ballots to all eligible @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for voters to request and to use absentee ballots .
Their bill also would provide states a total of $ 500 million to help cover the costs of shifting to a system where voting is primarily done by mail .
Most states have the kind of infrastructure that makes sense if you are expecting most voters to show up to a polling place and vote in person .
They ’ ve invested in voting machines and polling booths , and their election officials are trained for this kind of election .
The coronavirus @ @ @ @ @ @ @ different investments — in printing costs for the absentee ballots , postage and envelopes for voters , and potentially in sorting machines and other technology that helps the state count absentee ballots .
McReynolds emphasized to me , moreover , that many of these costs are likely to be inevitable .
The overwhelming majority of states already offer “ no excuse ” absentee voting — meaning that a voter can request an absentee ballot without having to justify that request .
So these states are already going to see “ a huge increase @ @ @ @ @ @ @ requests if voters are still socially distancing on Election Day .
( The Klobuchar-Wyden bill would require all states to offer no excuse absentee voting . )
States could also wind up saving money in the long run if they centralize their process for sorting and counting absentee ballots .
Many states currently delegate this task to local officials , which prevents them from taking advantage of economies of scale .
“ If you only have 2,000 voters in your county , ” McReynolds told me , “ there ’ s no reason @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” But a centralized operation can afford to invest in technology that makes the voting counting process vastly more efficient .
She told me that she watched poll workers in Detroit individually sort just a few mail-in ballots by hand every hour , when a high-quality machine could have sorted as many as 50,000 ballots per hour .
Local voting offices in Michigan probably couldn ’ t afford such a machine — and even if they could , it would be a waste of money to buy one machine for every county in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ whole could make that investment if the counting process were centralized .
Will Republicans get on board ?
Of course , all of this talk about election legislation is academic if lawmakers won ’ t pass any bills .
Without Republican buy-in , election reforms just aren ’ t happening in many crucial states .
Republicans control the Senate and the White House , and state legislatures in the pivotal states of Arizona , Wisconsin , Michigan , and Pennsylvania .
As a general rule , Americans who are financially stable and who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are especially likely to vote .
Americans closer to the margins of society are less likely to cast a ballot .
This explains why older voters are much more likely to turn out than younger voters , white voters tend to turn out at higher rates than voters of color ( although African American turnout is sometimes the exception to this trend ) , and wealthier voters are more likely to turn out than lower-income voters .
The cohort most likely to turn out — older , white , high-income voters — is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ groups that are least likely to turn out will prefer Democrats if they do cast a ballot .
So Republicans historically haven ’ t had much incentive to make voting easier .
Indeed , Republican lawmakers have spent much of the past decade passing legislation that makes it harder to vote .
Under ordinary circumstances , in other words , Republicans are unlikely to support a reform like vote by mail , as there is evidence that it improves turnout among low-propensity voters .
But Coronavirus could scramble the GOP ’ s ordinary @ @ @ @ @ @ @ won voters over the age of 65 by 7 points , according to a CNN exit poll , even though Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton won the overall popular vote .
Similarly , in 2018 , Democratic House candidates trounced their Republican opponents , winning the nationwide popular vote by the largest midterm margin since Watergate , but exit polls still showed Republicans winning voters over 65 by a 2-point margin .
These older voters are especially at risk from coronavirus , and thus may be especially cautious about leaving their home on Election @ @ @ @ @ @ @ do not vote , Republican politicians throughout the country are likely to find themselves unemployed .
Will that be enough incentive for Republicans to enact legislation ensuring that all eligible voters can cast a ballot during a pandemic ?
That remains to be seen .
But the GOP now has a profound incentive to take voter protection seriously in 2020 .

Get used to seeing the four walls of your own home: Extraordinary measures to control the coronavirus pandemic, potentially including social distancing, may be necessary for months. It’s far from clear that society will be back to normal by the November general election.
And even if the disease is under control, many voters may be cautious about stepping out to a polling place where many people will gather.
When I reached out to a wide array of voting rights advocates, election law scholars, and former election officials, I heard the same three-word solution over and over again: “vote by mail.” Mail-in ballots are a major reason turnout did not crater in the Florida and Arizona primary elections held earlier this month. And they are the most straightforward way to ensure that voters can still cast a ballot even if they are stuck at home.
In the ideal regime, which already exists in Colorado, Oregon, Washington, Utah, and Hawaii, voters would automatically receive a ballot in the mail in the weeks before the election. These voters should also be given the option to vote in person, in case they do not receive the ballot or lose it, but no one should have to request a mail-in ballot in order to receive one.
Such a system can be implemented state by state. It also could be implemented in all 50 states by Congress, which has the power to determine the “times, places and manner of holding elections” for members of the House.
But voting by mail also isn’t a panacea. There are some voters, such as Native Americans without easy access to the postal service and people experiencing homelessness, who may struggle to vote if a mail-in ballot is their only option. This is why it is important to offer in-person voting as a backup option.
Federal law also requires states to provide ballots in the native languages of many voters with limited English skills. To comply with this law, states will need to keep records of which voters need such ballots, and what language each ballot should use.
Many states have not built the infrastructure necessary to handle the crush of millions of paper ballots arriving in a short time. Building that infrastructure quickly might be challenging, and it will require funding — although states that build efficient infrastructure could save a great deal of money in the long run.
And a system dominated by mailed ballots also may require Americans — and, most notably, members of the press — to be patient with a vote-counting process that could take days or even weeks. It is unlikely we will know the winner of the 2020 presidential race on election night if voting by mail becomes the norm.
These problems can be surmounted, but they will require lawmakers to be thoughtful about how they support state officials preparing for Election Day. They will also require lawmakers and those state officials to identify voters who may face obstacles between themselves and the franchise, and to take care to accommodate those voters’ needs.
How most Americans will cast a ballot in a vote-by-mail regime
Let’s start with Americans who will find it fairly easy to cast a ballot from home: fluent English speakers who do not have a disability that requires them to seek assistance filling out a ballot or mailing it, and who have easy access to a mailbox or to a location where they can drop off their ballot.
Even these voters will face some logistical challenges, however, in order to vote by mail. For starters, it’s hard to vote if you do not have a ballot. For this reason, “all voters should have ballots mailed to them and be provided with a list of options as to how to cast their completed ballots,” according to a letter to policymakers signed by a long list of civil rights organizations led by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
Such an automated process requires the state to keep accurate and up-to-date voter registration records. It is inevitable that some voters’ registration information will need to be updated from time to time, because states do not monitor voters to automatically determine when someone changes addresses. For this reason, it needs to be easy for voters to update their records if they move.
As Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School who oversaw much of the Justice Department’s voting rights work during the Obama administration, told me, election officials “gotta know where the people are, and it’s got to be accurate.”
Both the Leadership Conference letter and a similar list of reforms offered by the Brennan Center for Justice’s Wendy Weiser and Max Feldman, highlight the need for a robust online voter registration system to make it easy for new voters to register and for already-registered voters to update their information. “States that do not have” online voter registration, Weiser and Feldman write, “should work to set up such a system immediately.”
To make that possible, Congress may need to provide subsidies to states to help them set up online registration processes as quickly as feasible.
Online registration may also help mitigate the fact that traditional voter registration drives — where activists go door to door or approach voters at public places — may not be possible in an age of social distancing. Registration drives “are going to be on social media and through direct messaging if folks can’t go door to door,” according to Rick Hasen, an election law professor at the University of California Irvine. And online voter registration “is going to be a huge help.”
States should also eliminate policies — and, if necessary, Congress should enact federal legislation preempting state laws — that prevent voters from registering due to trivial errors or inconsistencies on voter registration applications.
In the lead-up to the 2018 election, for example, then-Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who was simultaneously the Republican candidate for governor, placed about 53,000 voter registration applications on hold because of an “exact match” law that required the information on those applications to precisely match information on file with the state’s Department of Driver Services and the Social Security Administration. (Kemp won his governor’s race by a very narrow margin.)
As Levitt explained to me, inconsistencies are inevitable and can occur for arbitrary reasons. A government database might omit the hyphen from someone with a hyphenated last name, for example. A data entry clerk may encounter someone with an unusually spelled name (such as “Simth”) and alter that name (to “Smith”) out of a mistaken belief that they are correcting an error. A Korean American voter who places his surname before his given name (“Kim Jae”) may have his name transposed (to “Jae Kim”) in a government database to correspond with the Western norm. None of these are valid reasons to deny someone the right to vote.
Finally, voters who want to vote by mail must be allowed to do so at no cost. This is a constitutional necessity, as the Constitution forbids poll taxes of any kind. As the Supreme Court held in Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections, the government violates the Constitution “whenever it makes the affluence of the voter or payment of any fee an electoral standard.“ That means that voters who cast their ballot by mail must receive free postage and may not face any other cost.
Vote by mail for all who want it
In the lead-up to the 2018 election, North Dakota Republicans enacted a law that required voters to present their current residential address in order to vote. The law was widely viewed as a voter suppression measure targeting Native Americans, who were expected to support then-Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, a Democrat, in the coming election.
Many voters who live on Native American reservations do not have a residential address of the kind that the US Postal Service uses to identify homes, and rely on PO boxes to receive their mail.
These voters are one of several reasons none of the voting experts that I spoke with recommended that voting by mail should be the only option on Election Day.
Amber McReynolds, the CEO of Vote at Home, is, as the name of her organization suggests, a vocal advocate of making it as easy as possible for voters to cast a ballot by mail. Yet she emphasized to me that she “never said we want 100 percent vote by mail.” Instead, McReynolds pointed me to the system she played a major role in implementing when she was director of elections for Denver, Colorado.
Colorado established “vote centers” to supplement mailed ballots. A voter may cast a ballot at any vote center within a given jurisdiction — the center provides them with the appropriate ballot depending on where they live. If one vote center is too crowded, voters have the option of casting their ballot elsewhere.
Such a system eliminates the single-point-of-failure problem where a voter is locked into a specific precinct even if that precinct is unable to process voters quickly. It also allows states to use same-day registration, which will enable voters who do not receive a ballot in the mail for whatever reason to still exercise their right to vote. These centers also may allow voters to cast their ballot early, thus reducing the size of crowds on Election Day.
The alternative of keeping a traditional polling precinct structure in place — where in-person voters must go to a single designated polling place near their home — will be “very hard” in a pandemic, McReynolds told me. Poll workers may not show up because they are sick, and at least some voting machines will break down over the course of a day. And when a precinct is short on workers or machines, that can lead to the “five-hour lines” that voters endured in the past.
There are other considerations, too. Under the Voting Rights Act, people with disabilities may be assisted by a person of their choice (other than their employer or an agent of their union) when filling out a ballot. In areas where a significant number of voters primarily speak a language other than English, the Voting Rights Act also requires states and localities to provide ballots and other voting information in that language. Voting officials will need to comply with these requirements when they set up both in-person and vote-by-mail systems.
Among other things, this means that state voting officials will need to keep records of which voters need to be mailed a ballot in a language other than English — and which language should be used on that ballot.
State officials should also be vigilant about preventing polling places from becoming vectors for coronavirus infection. That means following the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidance regarding polling places. It also means special attention needs to be paid to populations that are especially vulnerable to the pandemic. As Weiser and Feldman write, “polling places are routinely sited in buildings that primarily serve communities identified as high risk for serious Covid-19 illness, like senior care facilities.” On the one hand, leaving a polling place in such a location could endanger the health of nearby residents. On the other hand, those residents have as much of a right to vote as anyone else, so plans would need to be implemented to ensure they can still cast a ballot.
“I’d want to be sure there is some option for dropping off ballots that allows groups — e.g., churches and civic organizations — to collect people’s ballots and return them,” said Pam Karlan, a professor at Stanford Law School who also oversaw much of the Justice Department’s voting rights work during the Obama administration. That could allow members of the community to ensure that many especially vulnerable voters are able to cast a ballot.
So what will this all cost?
Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) introduced legislation, the Natural Disaster and Emergency Ballot Act, which would require states to expand access to early and mail-in voting if a quarter of the states declare a state of emergency. Though their bill does not go quite as far as many of the experts that I spoke with suggested it should — it does not require states to automatically mail ballots to all eligible voters — it does make it easier for voters to request and to use absentee ballots.
Their bill also would provide states a total of $500 million to help cover the costs of shifting to a system where voting is primarily done by mail.
Most states have the kind of infrastructure that makes sense if you are expecting most voters to show up to a polling place and vote in person. They’ve invested in voting machines and polling booths, and their election officials are trained for this kind of election. The coronavirus pandemic will likely require them to make different investments — in printing costs for the absentee ballots, postage and envelopes for voters, and potentially in sorting machines and other technology that helps the state count absentee ballots.
McReynolds emphasized to me, moreover, that many of these costs are likely to be inevitable. The overwhelming majority of states already offer “no excuse” absentee voting — meaning that a voter can request an absentee ballot without having to justify that request. So these states are already going to see “a huge increase” in the number of absentee ballot requests if voters are still socially distancing on Election Day. (The Klobuchar-Wyden bill would require all states to offer no excuse absentee voting.)
States could also wind up saving money in the long run if they centralize their process for sorting and counting absentee ballots. Many states currently delegate this task to local officials, which prevents them from taking advantage of economies of scale. “If you only have 2,000 voters in your county,” McReynolds told me, “there’s no reason to spend $20,000 on a scanner.” But a centralized operation can afford to invest in technology that makes the voting counting process vastly more efficient.
She told me that she watched poll workers in Detroit individually sort just a few mail-in ballots by hand every hour, when a high-quality machine could have sorted as many as 50,000 ballots per hour. Local voting offices in Michigan probably couldn’t afford such a machine — and even if they could, it would be a waste of money to buy one machine for every county in Michigan. But the state as a whole could make that investment if the counting process were centralized.
Will Republicans get on board?
Of course, all of this talk about election legislation is academic if lawmakers won’t pass any bills. Without Republican buy-in, election reforms just aren’t happening in many crucial states. Republicans control the Senate and the White House, and state legislatures in the pivotal states of Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.
As a general rule, Americans who are financially stable and who have lived consistently in the same home are especially likely to vote. Americans closer to the margins of society are less likely to cast a ballot. This explains why older voters are much more likely to turn out than younger voters, white voters tend to turn out at higher rates than voters of color (although African American turnout is sometimes the exception to this trend), and wealthier voters are more likely to turn out than lower-income voters.
The cohort most likely to turn out — older, white, high-income voters — is largely Republican, while many of the groups that are least likely to turn out will prefer Democrats if they do cast a ballot. So Republicans historically haven’t had much incentive to make voting easier. Indeed, Republican lawmakers have spent much of the past decade passing legislation that makes it harder to vote.
Under ordinary circumstances, in other words, Republicans are unlikely to support a reform like vote by mail, as there is evidence that it improves turnout among low-propensity voters.
But Coronavirus could scramble the GOP’s ordinary incentives. In 2016, President Trump won voters over the age of 65 by 7 points, according to a CNN exit poll, even though Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton won the overall popular vote. Similarly, in 2018, Democratic House candidates trounced their Republican opponents, winning the nationwide popular vote by the largest midterm margin since Watergate, but exit polls still showed Republicans winning voters over 65 by a 2-point margin.
These older voters are especially at risk from coronavirus, and thus may be especially cautious about leaving their home on Election Day. And if these older Americans do not vote, Republican politicians throughout the country are likely to find themselves unemployed.
Will that be enough incentive for Republicans to enact legislation ensuring that all eligible voters can cast a ballot during a pandemic? That remains to be seen. But the GOP now has a profound incentive to take voter protection seriously in 2020.


vox--2020-03-20--What we can learn from quarantine videos around the world

Daniel Ou Yang landed in Wuhan on January 14th to celebrate Lunar New Year with his dad and grandparents , just like he always does .
Life there felt normal : The atmosphere was festive , and restaurants were packed .
On the evening of January 22nd , people stayed out late in celebration .
Then , overnight , the city shut down .
The next morning , Daniel and his family heeded the quarantine orders of the government due to the coronavirus outbreak , disseminated on Chinese news TV channels and through social media apps like WeChat and Weibo @ @ @ @ @ @ @ serious and scary , but at home we just kept things as relaxed and fun as possible and just tried to stay positive , ” he tells Vox now .
While holed up at home with his family , he spent most of his time relaxing , eating , drinking , and playing mahjong , and about a week in , bored and with hours of newly free time , he turned to TikTok .
The video he made , of himself driving around the city showing empty streets , sidewalks , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ song on the app quickly racked up more than a million views .
Later that week , he made two more about life under the Wuhan quarantine , offering viewers a look at the then-unprecedented measures the city was taking due to the novel coronavirus .
At the time , Daniel ’ s videos were a firsthand account of a citywide crisis — supportive comments poured in from around the world , offering prayers for what was hoped to be a contained outbreak .
Nearly two months later , however , they read @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s to come for the rest of us .
TikTokers in China have been documenting quarantine for months , and their content is more relevant than ever now that coronavirus has spread globally and many cities have enacted shelter in place laws and lockdowns — all while the US government continues to fumble its response .
Consider Megan Monroe , an American who went to Wuhan a few weeks before the coronavirus outbreak to work as an English teacher .
They began making TikToks on day three of the quarantine of trips to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a delivery volunteer , and saying hello to street cats .
Megan ’ s videos have been steadfastly upbeat ; they told BuzzFeed that “ I mostly just want people to know it ’ s not scary , and that I ’ m a real person and I ’ m living here and I ’ m just continuing on with my life.
” Both Daniel and Megan ’ s content remained measured and calm , even as Wuhan approaches two months under quarantine and could be facing a second wave of imported cases @ @ @ @ @ @ @ American teens are now documenting the drudgery of their new normal : history classes via Zoom , learning complicated dance moves out of sheer boredom , and squabbling with siblings .
As an Australian citizen , Daniel was able to board an evacuation flight out of Wuhan , where he was taken to the Australian territory of Christmas Island to stay in mandated quarantine at a detention center for two weeks ( “ It was alright , we had food delivered to us every day .
I was with complete strangers but we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wore masks , he says ) .
Now , he ’ s back in Sydney , where the coronavirus outbreak is only just starting to look like a national emergency , and is bracing for yet another crisis .
“ People are going to gatherings and getting close with each other , thinking that it can ’ t happen to me because there are only 100 cases here , ” he says .
“ No one takes it seriously unless it happens to them.
” More countries are serving as warnings to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Italy and Spain show quarantined people leading workout classes from their apartment complexes , playing window tennis , singing from their balconies , and otherwise adjusting to life under the new normal .
Experts have warned that the US ’ s trajectory is roughly in line with that of Italy , where cases have outpaced the government and healthcare system ’ s ability to test and treat them .
This is why the most sobering viral video from the coronavirus epidemic thus far may be the one that shows Italians filming a message @ @ @ @ @ @ @ creative collective A Thing By published the Youtube video on March 15th , and filmmaker Olmo Parenti says that he created it because “ my friend group and I ( along with the majority of the country ) really underestimated the issue ; we were almost mocking the few people who believed the issue was serious from the get-go , ” In the film , Italians offer warnings to their former selves ( “ I know China is far away , but this virus is faster than you think , ” ) as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ You ’ ll live moments of unity you would ’ ve never imagined , like yesterday when we all got out on our balconies and the whole neighborhood started singing .
Everyone was singing their own song , but somehow we were all one thing.
” ) It ’ s an affecting video , of course , not least because places like the US are still drastically ill-prepared for Covid-19 testing and until recently the UK ’ s chief science advisor proposed the dangerous suggestion of allowing the coronavirus to spread in order @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people are still flocking to bars for spring break or St. Patrick ’ s Day , while many older people remain difficult to convince that they are indeed more vulnerable .
Washington Post columnist Max Boot wrote about how American exceptionalism has failed in the wake of coronavirus , that the demonization of government by the Republican party over the last few decades has made it far more difficult for it to address the public ’ s needs .
The idea that the US should be leading the fight against coronavirus , Boot @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Daniel is far less worried about his family back in China .
“ Everyone ’ s good in Wuhan .
They ’ re not out of quarantine yet , but society has found a way to work with it — they have people delivering food and groceries , people volunteering to help the community , ” he says .
“ It ’ s very safe , the cases are slowing down , so I think China will make a recovery a lot quicker than people expected.
” Infections in China have declined in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ travel and business industries are steadily recovering , though analysts predict that progress will likely be halted by the stalling global economy .
Australia is a different story .
“ I worry about other countries , especially in the west , where we don ’ t have the kind of government authority or the power to just respond as quickly as China did .
A lot of people over here are saying I ’ d be better off staying in China because it ’ s safer there than it is over here.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ time — months , and possibly even years — before things begin to seem normal .
The videos we ’ ve seen of how coronavirus has affected society all over the world now feel like an artifact from when the crisis could seem far off to people living in countries where the virus hadn ’ t yet spread .
It would be easier to say things like , “ If only we ’ d known what it would be like , ” if there weren ’ t so many first-hand accounts on video @ @ @ @ @ @

Daniel Ou Yang landed in Wuhan on January 14th to celebrate Lunar New Year with his dad and grandparents, just like he always does. Life there felt normal: The atmosphere was festive, and restaurants were packed. On the evening of January 22nd, people stayed out late in celebration. Then, overnight, the city shut down.
The next morning, Daniel and his family heeded the quarantine orders of the government due to the coronavirus outbreak, disseminated on Chinese news TV channels and through social media apps like WeChat and Weibo. “Obviously the whole thing is serious and scary, but at home we just kept things as relaxed and fun as possible and just tried to stay positive,” he tells Vox now. While holed up at home with his family, he spent most of his time relaxing, eating, drinking, and playing mahjong, and about a week in, bored and with hours of newly free time, he turned to TikTok.
The video he made, of himself driving around the city showing empty streets, sidewalks, and grocery store shelves set to a popular song on the app quickly racked up more than a million views. Later that week, he made two more about life under the Wuhan quarantine, offering viewers a look at the then-unprecedented measures the city was taking due to the novel coronavirus.
At the time, Daniel’s videos were a firsthand account of a citywide crisis — supportive comments poured in from around the world, offering prayers for what was hoped to be a contained outbreak. Nearly two months later, however, they read more like a warning of what’s to come for the rest of us. TikTokers in China have been documenting quarantine for months, and their content is more relevant than ever now that coronavirus has spread globally and many cities have enacted shelter in place laws and lockdowns — all while the US government continues to fumble its response.
Consider Megan Monroe, an American who went to Wuhan a few weeks before the coronavirus outbreak to work as an English teacher. They began making TikToks on day three of the quarantine of trips to the grocery store, their role as a delivery volunteer, and saying hello to street cats. Megan’s videos have been steadfastly upbeat; they told BuzzFeed that “I mostly just want people to know it’s not scary, and that I’m a real person and I’m living here and I’m just continuing on with my life.”
Both Daniel and Megan’s content remained measured and calm, even as Wuhan approaches two months under quarantine and could be facing a second wave of imported cases. They’re similar to how American teens are now documenting the drudgery of their new normal: history classes via Zoom, learning complicated dance moves out of sheer boredom, and squabbling with siblings.
As an Australian citizen, Daniel was able to board an evacuation flight out of Wuhan, where he was taken to the Australian territory of Christmas Island to stay in mandated quarantine at a detention center for two weeks (“It was alright, we had food delivered to us every day. I was with complete strangers but we made friends and could socialize if we wore masks, he says). Now, he’s back in Sydney, where the coronavirus outbreak is only just starting to look like a national emergency, and is bracing for yet another crisis.
“People are going to gatherings and getting close with each other, thinking that it can’t happen to me because there are only 100 cases here,” he says. “No one takes it seriously unless it happens to them.”
More countries are serving as warnings to the rest of the world. Videos from Italy and Spain show quarantined people leading workout classes from their apartment complexes, playing window tennis, singing from their balconies, and otherwise adjusting to life under the new normal. Experts have warned that the US’s trajectory is roughly in line with that of Italy, where cases have outpaced the government and healthcare system’s ability to test and treat them.
This is why the most sobering viral video from the coronavirus epidemic thus far may be the one that shows Italians filming a message to themselves 10 days earlier. Milan-based creative collective A Thing By published the Youtube video on March 15th, and filmmaker Olmo Parenti says that he created it because “my friend group and I (along with the majority of the country) really underestimated the issue; we were almost mocking the few people who believed the issue was serious from the get-go,”
In the film, Italians offer warnings to their former selves (“I know China is far away, but this virus is faster than you think,”) as well as words of comfort (“You’ll live moments of unity you would’ve never imagined, like yesterday when we all got out on our balconies and the whole neighborhood started singing. Everyone was singing their own song, but somehow we were all one thing.”)
It’s an affecting video, of course, not least because places like the US are still drastically ill-prepared for Covid-19 testing and until recently the UK’s chief science advisor proposed the dangerous suggestion of allowing the coronavirus to spread in order to build “herd immunity.” Young people are still flocking to bars for spring break or St. Patrick’s Day, while many older people remain difficult to convince that they are indeed more vulnerable. Washington Post columnist Max Boot wrote about how American exceptionalism has failed in the wake of coronavirus, that the demonization of government by the Republican party over the last few decades has made it far more difficult for it to address the public’s needs. The idea that the US should be leading the fight against coronavirus, Boot argues, is outdated.
Meanwhile, Daniel is far less worried about his family back in China. “Everyone’s good in Wuhan. They’re not out of quarantine yet, but society has found a way to work with it — they have people delivering food and groceries, people volunteering to help the community,” he says. “It’s very safe, the cases are slowing down, so I think China will make a recovery a lot quicker than people expected.” Infections in China have declined in recent weeks and the country’s travel and business industries are steadily recovering, though analysts predict that progress will likely be halted by the stalling global economy.
Australia is a different story. “I worry about other countries, especially in the west, where we don’t have the kind of government authority or the power to just respond as quickly as China did. A lot of people over here are saying I’d be better off staying in China because it’s safer there than it is over here.”
It’ll likely be a long time — months, and possibly even years — before things begin to seem normal. The videos we’ve seen of how coronavirus has affected society all over the world now feel like an artifact from when the crisis could seem far off to people living in countries where the virus hadn’t yet spread. It would be easier to say things like, “If only we’d known what it would be like,” if there weren’t so many first-hand accounts on video, all readily available online.


vox--2020-03-20--The dilemmas facing cancer doctors and patients in the coronavirus pandemic

Silver Leo has been trying to keep her young children , ages 3 and 9 , entertained at home since March 13 , when their public schools in Alexandria , Virginia , announced closures .
Child care is a challenge for a lot of parents these days , but particularly for Leo .
She has metastatic breast cancer , and the lingering effects of her weekly chemotherapy infusions make it difficult to stay high-energy — and risky to leave the house .
“ Some of their friends are still having playdates , and doing this sort of ‘ small group @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , 40 .
“ I have to explain to them that their mom has cancer , so they can ’ t have any playdates at all.
” Leo can not even risk allowing anyone in her immediate family , including her husband , to go to the grocery store right now .
There ’ s a troubling amount we still don ’ t know about the novel coronavirus and the disease it causes , Covid-19 .
One thing we can say for certain is that the disease poses a far greater health risk @ @ @ @ @ @ @ including cancer patients in treatment .
For them , Covid-19 can be much more severe and more likely to be fatal .
This isn ’ t up for debate ; it ’ s a resounding warning , and one that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention highlights as a case for widespread social distancing .
There are limited data on Covid-19 outcomes among the immunocompromised , but according to a special March 17 preprint report from the National Comprehensive Cancer Network , early reports out of China show that patients with cancer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ higher chance of mechanical ventilation , ICU admission , or death compared with patients without cancer .
It ’ s a major concern , given there are about 650,000 patients with cancer who receive chemotherapy in the United States each year .
Given that the virus is spreading in the US , the question about whether to continue immune system-suppressing cancer treatments during the Covid-19 pandemic appears to have no clear cut answers .
“ Oncologists are in a very particular predicament right now , ” says Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee , a hematologist @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies .
“ Because on the one hand , you don ’ t want to delay treatment , but you also don ’ t want to expose patients to risk.
” There are about 650,000 patients with cancer who receive chemotherapy in the United States each year “ I ’ m very worried about my patients , ” says Narjust Duma , an oncologist at University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center who treats patients with advanced lung cancer .
“ Even with regular influenza @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
But these treatments are keeping them alive.
” Chemotherapy does to cells what the coronavirus pandemic is doing to the population : It goes after everyone .
Although chemo drugs vary in terms of their effects on immune function , the risks of the treatment damaging healthy white blood cells — the body ’ s best defense against viruses — can become life-threatening .
Oncologists like Duma are acutely aware of the risks of their immunocompromised patients contracting Covid-19 .
But they ’ re also aware that stopping or canceling chemo , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ certain dangers .
Under normal circumstances , oncologists usually give patients undergoing chemo a list of recommendations that echo the advice we ’ ve all been hearing for weeks : wash your hands as often as possible , stay away from crowds , dine at home , don ’ t touch your face , don ’ t shake hands .
But these are not normal circumstances .
Oncologists and patients are seeking further guidance , and that guidance isn ’ t one-size-fits-all .
“ Patients have no choice but to take the Covid @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” says Dr. Noel Brewer , a researcher in health behavior at the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health .
“ It is no longer optional.
” The American Society of Clinical Oncology ( ASCO ) has put out a series of FAQs for the more-than 45,000 oncologists who defer to them for practice guidelines .
But the organization has written that , “ At this time , no specific recommendations can be made … for delay in therapy or choosing alternate therapy in the context of Covid-19 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , care teams , and hospital administrators have been working to address each patient individually .
Individual treatment decisions should consider factors such as the stage of the cancer , the specific type of chemotherapy they ’ re receiving , and the risk of cancer recurrence if treatment should be delayed , ASCO says .
There is currently no evidence to suggest a benefit to delaying chemo in light of Covid-19 risks , the group says , although there may be cases in which adjuvant chemotherapy , meaning chemotherapy that ’ s given @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , such as surgery or radiation , may be appropriate to delay .
Marc Lippman , a researcher and breast cancer oncologist at Georgetown University Medical Center , argues that , at least in the context of breast cancer , treatment delays aren ’ t appropriate .
“ Delaying chemotherapy out of a fear of coronavirus is a total misunderstanding of risks and gains , ” he says .
“ We know from a lot of studies that if you delay the administration of chemo , it ’ s less effective .
Chemotherapy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ women will be harmed than possibly disadvantaged by the risk of the virus in my view.
” Having practiced oncology for decades , Lippman ’ s assessment stems from his view that the drugs typically used to treat breast cancer in the adjuvant setting aren ’ t known to be as immunosuppressive as , say , some of the regimens used to treat leukemia or lymphoma .
“ But , obviously , it ’ s still their choice , ” Lippman says of his patients .
As of this past weekend , one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 36-year-old woman with breast cancer who requested her name not be used to protect her privacy , had made her own decision to skip her chemotherapy infusion on Wednesday .
“ I thought of all the different places I would have to touch getting from my house to the clinic , ” she says .
“ The doors , the elevators … ” “ We know what would happen if we delayed ” As Covid-19 continues to spread , hospitals are taking drastic measures to care for those who have already been infected @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at great costs , those who have not .
For many hospitals and clinics , including Columbia ’ s Irving Cancer Center where Mukherjee treats patients , this has meant canceling elective surgeries , postponing routine visits , and requesting that non-urgent patients consider telehealth for their appointments .
For many patients with advanced cancer , though , hospital visits are far from elective and most certainly not “ non-urgent.
” Postponing elective surgeries and follow-up appointments should be fairly straightforward decisions , according to the National Comprehensive Cancer Network special report , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to prepare for the coming weeks and months .
The more difficult decisions , it reads , are “ clinical decisions regarding delay of treatment for patients who are currently undergoing chemotherapy or about to begin.
” “ We have a commitment to treat patients as per their normal protocols and not delay any treatments that are required , ” Mukherjee says .
“ This is a time for patients to work closely with their oncologists and then figure out how to appropriately manage their care.
” On March 13 — the day @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pandemic a national emergency — Duma met with a patient who had just been diagnosed with advanced small-cell lung cancer , the most aggressive type of lung cancer .
“ We need to get going on his treatment right away , ” Duma says .
The patient was already coughing up blood and would continue to do so unless he was treated .
“ We know what would happen if we delayed.
” What months of social distancing could mean for cancer patients The biggest deterrent , perhaps , to postponing chemo due @ @ @ @ @ @ @ don ’ t know how long this pandemic , and the response to it , could last .
Many patients are okay skipping one or two chemo doses , but if a patient were to delay their chemo treatment right now , it might not be any safer to resume the treatment should they reschedule it for the coming weeks or months .
“ This is a dynamic situation , ” Mukherjee says .
“ It might change .
But right now , at least in my practice , we haven ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you know , terrible bargains thus far.
” For Jamie Hecker , a 54-year-old man with a bone marrow cancer called myelofibrosis , the potentially months-long duration of the pandemic poses a far more serious set of concerns than does skipping a dose or two of his chemo .
Right now , Hecker ’ s chemo is working well .
For about a year , he ’ s been receiving four injections of the drug Vidaza ( azacitidine ) in his abdomen for seven days in a row once a month .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is common after a year or two on the drug , according to Hecker ’ s oncologist — Hecker would have to turn to his only other available treatment option , a bone marrow transplant .
The transplant would temporarily wipe out Hecker ’ s immune system , making it one of the riskiest treatments a patient could receive during a global pandemic .
This is why , given the risks of Covid-19 , ASCO , and the American Society for Transplantation and Cellular Therapy list these transplants as unique cases for which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be appropriate .
The question of the pandemic ’ s duration has been especially difficult for Leo in Alexandria , who has already been told she has just three to five years to live .
Every treatment and chemo infusion is factored into that life expectancy .
“ With terminal cancer , there ’ s this sense of time , ” she says .
“ Vacations matter .
Being with family and friends matters .
Now vacations are all postponed , my elderly parents can ’ t fly , and I can no @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to expose themselves by going to brunch … when you ’ re not sure how much time you have left , isolation means something different.
” For now , Leo is still going in for her chemotherapy infusions , because , as she says , “ cancer doesn ’ t care about coronavirus.
” The malignant cells will continue to spread , social distancing or no social distancing .
What if patients on chemo test positive for Covid-19 ?
When asked how he would proceed if one of his patients receiving chemotherapy were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said , “ What we would do would be to follow the guidelines for giving chemotherapy in the context of an infection — any infection , Covid or otherwise — which is to wait until the infection is resolved to resume chemotherapy.
” Of course , following these protocols would require more Covid-19 testing kits , which are not currently available in every clinical setting .
If there were not a test-kit shortage , doctors would be able to test every patient prior to beginning chemotherapy , symptoms or no symptoms , to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ compromising their immune systems with chemotherapy .
This could be worth considering because the virus has been shown to have roughly a five-day incubation period , meaning symptoms could be delayed .
“ Many of our patients who are immunocompromised might show up with tests that are positive , but have no clinical manifestations of disease , ” Mukherjee says .
“ And there are no guidelines for this .
This is where we are practicing the art of medicine.
” As more information on this virus becomes available , the hope is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an art and more of a science again .
But for now , patients with cancer are living in a state of uncertainty — a state that , for many of them , is already familiar .
While her treatment has left her less equipped to fight off Covid-19 should she get it , Leo believes the whole cancer experience , somehow , has left her better prepared to handle the pandemic mentally .
“ I believe something good will come out of this , ” she says .
“ And believing something @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a muscle … it ’ s something you train yourself into.
” Leo has been training that muscle ever since her terminal diagnosis .
“ That ‘ something good , ’ I hope , is that we will come together as a society .
That once after everyone is done with brunch and grandma dies , maybe we can become more aware of what life is about … that it ’ s not always about distraction and entertainment , but real connection.
” Caroline Hopkins is a Brooklyn-based health and science reporter .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the American Society of Clinical Oncology ( ASCO ) Daily News , SurvivorNet , and Women ’ s Health Magazine .
She has a master ’ s degree in journalism from Columbia University .

Silver Leo has been trying to keep her young children, ages 3 and 9, entertained at home since March 13, when their public schools in Alexandria, Virginia, announced closures. Child care is a challenge for a lot of parents these days, but particularly for Leo. She has metastatic breast cancer, and the lingering effects of her weekly chemotherapy infusions make it difficult to stay high-energy — and risky to leave the house.
“Some of their friends are still having playdates, and doing this sort of ‘small group social isolation’ thing” says Leo, 40. “I have to explain to them that their mom has cancer, so they can’t have any playdates at all.”
Leo cannot even risk allowing anyone in her immediate family, including her husband, to go to the grocery store right now.
There’s a troubling amount we still don’t know about the novel coronavirus and the disease it causes, Covid-19. One thing we can say for certain is that the disease poses a far greater health risk to those with compromised immune systems, including cancer patients in treatment. For them, Covid-19 can be much more severe and more likely to be fatal. This isn’t up for debate; it’s a resounding warning, and one that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention highlights as a case for widespread social distancing.
There are limited data on Covid-19 outcomes among the immunocompromised, but according to a special March 17 preprint report from the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, early reports out of China show that patients with cancer infected with Covid-19 have a 3.5 times higher chance of mechanical ventilation, ICU admission, or death compared with patients without cancer.
It’s a major concern, given there are about 650,000 patients with cancer who receive chemotherapy in the United States each year.
Cancer doctors face a “particular predicament”
Given that the virus is spreading in the US, the question about whether to continue immune system-suppressing cancer treatments during the Covid-19 pandemic appears to have no clear cut answers.
“Oncologists are in a very particular predicament right now,” says Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee, a hematologist and oncologist at Columbia University Medical Center and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies. “Because on the one hand, you don’t want to delay treatment, but you also don’t want to expose patients to risk.”
There are about 650,000 patients with cancer who receive chemotherapy in the United States each year
“I’m very worried about my patients,” says Dr. Narjust Duma, an oncologist at University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center who treats patients with advanced lung cancer. “Even with regular influenza, my patients could get very sick. But these treatments are keeping them alive.”
Chemotherapy does to cells what the coronavirus pandemic is doing to the population: It goes after everyone.
Although chemo drugs vary in terms of their effects on immune function, the risks of the treatment damaging healthy white blood cells — the body’s best defense against viruses — can become life-threatening.
Oncologists like Duma are acutely aware of the risks of their immunocompromised patients contracting Covid-19. But they’re also aware that stopping or canceling chemo, for many patients, could present more certain dangers.
Flattening the curve — and managing cancer care
Under normal circumstances, oncologists usually give patients undergoing chemo a list of recommendations that echo the advice we’ve all been hearing for weeks: wash your hands as often as possible, stay away from crowds, dine at home, don’t touch your face, don’t shake hands.
But these are not normal circumstances. Oncologists and patients are seeking further guidance, and that guidance isn’t one-size-fits-all.
“Patients have no choice but to take the Covid pandemic into account in their treatment decisions,” says Dr. Noel Brewer, a researcher in health behavior at the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health. “It is no longer optional.”
The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) has put out a series of FAQs for the more-than 45,000 oncologists who defer to them for practice guidelines. But the organization has written that, “At this time, no specific recommendations can be made … for delay in therapy or choosing alternate therapy in the context of Covid-19 infection.”
Accordingly, oncologists, nurses, care teams, and hospital administrators have been working to address each patient individually.
Individual treatment decisions should consider factors such as the stage of the cancer, the specific type of chemotherapy they’re receiving, and the risk of cancer recurrence if treatment should be delayed, ASCO says. There is currently no evidence to suggest a benefit to delaying chemo in light of Covid-19 risks, the group says, although there may be cases in which adjuvant chemotherapy, meaning chemotherapy that’s given in combination with another type of treatment, such as surgery or radiation, may be appropriate to delay.
Dr. Marc Lippman, a researcher and breast cancer oncologist at Georgetown University Medical Center, argues that, at least in the context of breast cancer, treatment delays aren’t appropriate. “Delaying chemotherapy out of a fear of coronavirus is a total misunderstanding of risks and gains,” he says. “We know from a lot of studies that if you delay the administration of chemo, it’s less effective. Chemotherapy should not be delayed. Far more women will be harmed than possibly disadvantaged by the risk of the virus in my view.”
Having practiced oncology for decades, Lippman’s assessment stems from his view that the drugs typically used to treat breast cancer in the adjuvant setting aren’t known to be as immunosuppressive as, say, some of the regimens used to treat leukemia or lymphoma.
“But, obviously, it’s still their choice,” Lippman says of his patients.
As of this past weekend, one of Lippman’s patients, a 36-year-old woman with breast cancer who requested her name not be used to protect her privacy, had made her own decision to skip her chemotherapy infusion on Wednesday.
“I thought of all the different places I would have to touch getting from my house to the clinic,” she says. “The doors, the elevators …”
“We know what would happen if we delayed”
As Covid-19 continues to spread, hospitals are taking drastic measures to care for those who have already been infected with the virus and to protect, at great costs, those who have not. For many hospitals and clinics, including Columbia’s Irving Cancer Center where Mukherjee treats patients, this has meant canceling elective surgeries, postponing routine visits, and requesting that non-urgent patients consider telehealth for their appointments.
For many patients with advanced cancer, though, hospital visits are far from elective and most certainly not “non-urgent.”
Postponing elective surgeries and follow-up appointments should be fairly straightforward decisions, according to the National Comprehensive Cancer Network special report, which lays out guidance for hospital staff to prepare for the coming weeks and months. The more difficult decisions, it reads, are “clinical decisions regarding delay of treatment for patients who are currently undergoing chemotherapy or about to begin.”
“We have a commitment to treat patients as per their normal protocols and not delay any treatments that are required,” Mukherjee says. “This is a time for patients to work closely with their oncologists and then figure out how to appropriately manage their care.”
On March 13 — the day when President Trump officially declared the Covid-19 pandemic a national emergency — Duma met with a patient who had just been diagnosed with advanced small-cell lung cancer, the most aggressive type of lung cancer. “We need to get going on his treatment right away,” Duma says. The patient was already coughing up blood and would continue to do so unless he was treated. “We know what would happen if we delayed.”
What months of social distancing could mean for cancer patients
The biggest deterrent, perhaps, to postponing chemo due to Covid-19 risks is that we just don’t know how long this pandemic, and the response to it, could last. Many patients are okay skipping one or two chemo doses, but if a patient were to delay their chemo treatment right now, it might not be any safer to resume the treatment should they reschedule it for the coming weeks or months.
“This is a dynamic situation,” Mukherjee says. “It might change. But right now, at least in my practice, we haven’t had to make those sort of, you know, terrible bargains thus far.”
For Jamie Hecker, a 54-year-old man with a bone marrow cancer called myelofibrosis, the potentially months-long duration of the pandemic poses a far more serious set of concerns than does skipping a dose or two of his chemo.
Right now, Hecker’s chemo is working well. For about a year, he’s been receiving four injections of the drug Vidaza (azacitidine) in his abdomen for seven days in a row once a month. But if the chemo stops working — which is common after a year or two on the drug, according to Hecker’s oncologist — Hecker would have to turn to his only other available treatment option, a bone marrow transplant.
The transplant would temporarily wipe out Hecker’s immune system, making it one of the riskiest treatments a patient could receive during a global pandemic. This is why, given the risks of Covid-19, ASCO, and the American Society for Transplantation and Cellular Therapy list these transplants as unique cases for which deferrals may, in some cases, be appropriate.
The question of the pandemic’s duration has been especially difficult for Leo in Alexandria, who has already been told she has just three to five years to live. Every treatment and chemo infusion is factored into that life expectancy.
“With terminal cancer, there’s this sense of time,” she says. “Vacations matter. Being with family and friends matters. Now vacations are all postponed, my elderly parents can’t fly, and I can no longer see my friends because they decided to expose themselves by going to brunch … when you’re not sure how much time you have left, isolation means something different.”
For now, Leo is still going in for her chemotherapy infusions, because, as she says, “cancer doesn’t care about coronavirus.” The malignant cells will continue to spread, social distancing or no social distancing.
What if patients on chemo test positive for Covid-19?
When asked how he would proceed if one of his patients receiving chemotherapy were to test positive for Covid-19, Mukherjee said, “What we would do would be to follow the guidelines for giving chemotherapy in the context of an infection — any infection, Covid or otherwise — which is to wait until the infection is resolved to resume chemotherapy.”
Of course, following these protocols would require more Covid-19 testing kits, which are not currently available in every clinical setting. If there were not a test-kit shortage, doctors would be able to test every patient prior to beginning chemotherapy, symptoms or no symptoms, to determine if they have the virus before compromising their immune systems with chemotherapy. This could be worth considering because the virus has been shown to have roughly a five-day incubation period, meaning symptoms could be delayed.
“Many of our patients who are immunocompromised might show up with tests that are positive, but have no clinical manifestations of disease,” Mukherjee says. “And there are no guidelines for this. This is where we are practicing the art of medicine.”
As more information on this virus becomes available, the hope is that these decisions will become less of an art and more of a science again.
But for now, patients with cancer are living in a state of uncertainty — a state that, for many of them, is already familiar.
While her treatment has left her less equipped to fight off Covid-19 should she get it, Leo believes the whole cancer experience, somehow, has left her better prepared to handle the pandemic mentally.
“I believe something good will come out of this,” she says. “And believing something good will come out of it is a muscle … it’s something you train yourself into.”
Leo has been training that muscle ever since her terminal diagnosis.
“That ‘something good,’ I hope, is that we will come together as a society. That once after everyone is done with brunch and grandma dies, maybe we can become more aware of what life is about … that it’s not always about distraction and entertainment, but real connection.”
Caroline Hopkins is a Brooklyn-based health and science reporter. She has written for National Geographic, the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Daily News, SurvivorNet, and Women’s Health Magazine. She has a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University.


vox--2020-03-20--How Mrs. Meyer’s took over the hand soap aisle

Hand soap is , of course , having a moment .
At my local Target last week , stockpilers loading up on Purell , toilet paper , and dried beans had also picked the hand soap aisle practically clean .
( A number of grocery stores have since enacted limits on how many items individual shoppers can buy at one time . )
As someone who reflexively reaches for Mrs. Meyer ’ s more by force of habit than a conscious decision , I wondered how many others intentionally chose the brand for their quarantine soap of choice , bypassing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I had to imagine a band of wild-eyed , panicked shoppers flooding the soap section , only to pause and consider whether they wanted their quarantine to have notes of rosemary , basil , or oat blossom .
Though some are skeptical that an organic soap brand touting essential oils is effective in the face of a virus , experts say that soap , period , is one of the best tools we have at our disposal right now , and it doesn ’ t have to be harsh or hospital-grade .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wisely ) not overtly using Covid-19 as a marketing peg , but it doesn ’ t have to : Amid all the coronavirus service journalism to emerge in recent weeks , Mrs. Meyer ’ s soap and surface cleaner have been recommended by CNN , The Strategist , Mashable , and CNET , to name a few .
I ’ ve never been particularly attuned to hand soap brands , but once I started looking for it , I realized Mrs. Meyer ’ s was everywhere .
On an overnight trip to New @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the bathrooms of two out of the three Williamsburg restaurants I patronized , and in the studio of the artist I was there to meet .
Back home in Atlanta , it lurked at friends ’ kitchen sinks and in the bathroom of my neighborhood bakery .
In conversations with other people who regularly buy Mrs. Meyer ’ s , the same three or four reasons were echoed again and again : It looks nice on a countertop .
( In an era when trash cans , cookware , and other formerly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ statement , this feels important . )
The fragrance is nice , and never too sweet , too artificial , or too astringent .
It seems gentler on hands .
It feels just a tiny bit indulgent yet can be procured easily at most major grocers .
And my favorite : “ It ’ s environmentally friendly … I think ?
” My $ 4 bottle of basil hand soap says , perhaps obnoxiously , that I ’ m not the kind of person who springs for Aesop ( $ 39 ) , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more discerning than basic “ lemon zest.
” “ Consumer expectations , in general , are much higher than they ever have been , ” explains Cara Salpini , an editor at the industry trade magazine Retail Dive .
“ They ’ re expecting products to have sustainable , clean ingredients , to look and smell nice , to be really pleased with the product , and for it to function.
” It ’ s why a mattress can ’ t just be a mattress anymore .
And it ’ s how , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on grocery store shelves in the early aughts , it was ideally and preemptively positioned to captivate millennial suckers like me .
It ’ s almost like , sometime around Y2K , a shrewd marketer got a glimpse into the buying habits of the future , and returned with the perfect formula for convincing people with a tiny bit of disposable income to spend it on something as objectively boring as soap for their hands .
Step one : Design packaging that looked nice on countertops , and fragrances that felt a little @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the brand around a rustic and virtuous character from simpler times who loved gardening , taking care of her living space , and other wholesome activities one might categorize as “ self-care ” today .
Step three : Gesture at being environmentally conscious .
Step four : Profit .
For years , Mrs. Meyer ’ s was one of few brands offering something slightly elevated for the kind of person who needed hand or dish soap , and wasn ’ t particularly willing to look for it outside of the grocery store — @ @ @ @ @ @ @ extra for it not to be orange Dial .
Jarod Jones , a Mrs. Meyer ’ s loyalist who works in e-commerce and product merchandising , attributes the brand ’ s early success in part to its packaging : “ When you see it next to the Dials and the Softsoaps , you ’ re like , ‘ Well , clearly this is cuter , ’ ” he says .
“ It seemed like trendy design at the time.
” Jones also makes candles , and found inspiration for one of his favorite @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) in a bottle of Mrs. Meyer ’ s Radish , the scent that converted him into a fan of the brand .
“ That was something where I was like , ‘ I am not finding this anywhere else , ’ ” he adds .
“ Especially with kitchen stuff , it ’ s either ‘ fresh scent ’ or citrus over and over again ... so radish was really rad , because it smelled fresh but it ’ s not standard.
” When Mrs. Meyer ’ s launched in 2001 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ development .
Helms continues to hold that title at S.C. Johnson , which acquired the brand in 2008 .
“ When [ founder Monica Nassif ] explained the idea , I thought it was a radical approach , to bring this beauty of experience to a cleaning product , ” says Helms .
Nassif , a former Target marketer , named the line after her Iowan mother , Thelma , a hardworking homemaker , gardener , and mother of nine .
Thus , Helm explains , those early fragrances were mostly literal interpretations @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a Midwestern backyard : herbs like basil and rosemary ; produce like radishes and rhubarb ; Iowa pine during the holiday season .
She describes these fragrances as having “ a halo of healthiness to them.
” ( The line has since expanded that definition a bit to include less literal expressions , like “ snowdrop , ” “ plum berry , ” and “ oat blossom.
” ) Around the same time Mrs. Meyer ’ s entered the marketplace , Method , which hit Target shelves in 2002 , also joined the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ modern fragrances and Karim Rashid-designed packaging felt , and still feels , like a youthful foil to Mrs. Meyer ’ s homespun , folksy vintage ; both looked distinctive from anything else on shelves at the time .
Like Mrs. Meyer ’ s , Method worked sustainability and social responsibility into its messaging , trumpeting nontoxic ingredients and recycled packaging .
In 2017 , S.C. Johnson & Son ( which also owns decidedly non-green chemical products like Windex , Drano , and Off insect repellent ) acquired Method , too .
By the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ its way into higher-end grocery stores like Whole Foods nationwide in the mid-aughts , the New York Times Magazine nailed the brand ’ s throwback packaging , and the virtuous rural Midwestern homemaker for whom it was named , as part of the allure .
“ The goal isn ’ t to sell to the Mrs. Meyers of the world ; it ’ s to sell to those who like the idea of her.
” It ’ s labor turned aesthetic , scrubbed bare of its dirt and elevated into an upper-middle-class Pinterest @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the same way that actual farmers ’ homes probably don ’ t look like what Joanna Gaines calls “ farmhouse , ” actual homesteaders probably don ’ t spend $ 4 on 12 ounces of hand soap because it smells like geraniums .
( Because , I mean , they probably use lye and lard instead . )
It ’ s labor turned aesthetic , scrubbed bare of its dirt and elevated into an upper-middle-class Pinterest board .
And in a time when an anxiety-riddled middle class might look for solace in soothing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ see : cottagecore ) , Mrs. Meyer herself and the wholesome , nurturing ethos she embodies welcomes one like a verdant meadow ; a caricature of A Time When Things Were Simpler .
Now , nearly two decades after the Meyer ’ s/Method disruption , even the most pedestrian soap brands seem to be getting in on the boutique fragrance action .
Last year , Softsoap debuted a special collection “ meant to bring style and happiness to washing your hands , ” with fragrances like orchid and coconut milk .
Dial ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tea and the eternally millennial-baiting pink Himalayan salt .
I asked Helms whether she felt other brands were cashing in on the allure Mrs. Meyer ’ s initially created .
“ We ’ re delighted that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery , ” she says .
Does that change the way they do business , or how they think about their fragrance portfolio ?
“ We ’ ve seen all kinds of sexy [ fragrance ] combinations out there , but we ’ re really staying true to what has got @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( Some might disagree — Jones , for one , sees some of Mrs. Meyer ’ s newer scents as straying from that path .
“ They ’ re not real scents .
They have one called ‘ oat blossom , ’ which I ’ m like , that ’ s not a thing .
It ’ s a made-up name.
” ) In 2019 , Target debuted a new store brand , Everspring , a range of cleaning products in sleek packaging with interesting fragrances , a trendy serif font , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The line hit shelves on Earth Day .
Like Mrs. Meyer ’ s , Everspring invokes its biodegradable packaging and plant-based ingredients in its copy .
Some of Everspring ’ s products have received mixed reviews from the EWG , due to synthetic ingredients like methylisothiazolinone , a possible allergy trigger that could also present a hazard to aquatic life — and Mrs. Meyer ’ s has gotten pushback on this issue as well .
In Mrs. Meyer ’ s case , there is also the ethical baggage of its parent company @ @ @ @ @ @ @ under fire for animal testing , including toxic ingredients in some of its products , and donating to Republican politicians .
From an environmental standpoint , Mrs. Meyer ’ s isn ’ t perfect , but few mass-market household cleaners or hand soaps are .
Whether it ’ s intentionally vague language ( “ chemical-free ” ) or straight-up obfuscation about ingredients , greenwashing has crept into many products sold by major retailers , from Simple Green to Raid “ EarthBlends.
” S.C. Johnson settled a lawsuit over misleading “ green ” language @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( The one truly great soap alternative that comes to mind is that clunky old stalwart Dr. Bronner ’ s , which is completely biodegradable and , thanks to its absurdly high concentration relative to its absurdly huge packaging size , lasts an actual lifetime . )
But the language on the label and the earthy scents at least make it feel like one isn ’ t harming the planet by purchasing .
For a lot of people who buy Mrs. Meyer ’ s , maybe that — the suggestion of sustainability , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ suggestion of digging around in a rural Midwestern garden — is enough .
Sustainability , as Salpini reminds me , has become not just a moral imperative but , in terms of capitalism , a crucial differentiator for brands , especially those that want to reach millennials and Gen Z consumers .
“ There ’ s a lot of interest [ in sustainability ] , and it ’ s mainly coming from younger consumers , ” she says .
“ I think you can imagine why.
” And maybe that ’ s the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to dominate so many middle-class vanities and kitchen counters these days .
Its products telegraph the sense of “ eco-friendliness ” distinctly enough to capture the attention of a wide swath of shoppers : those who are vaguely interested in “ green ” products but not quite interested in researching a parent company ’ s lobbying efforts , or learning how to actually pronounce “ methylisothiazolinone , ” or strictly scrubbing their house with vinegar .
When I shopped for last-minute provisions last week , I grabbed one of the remaining bottles of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in basil ) , just to be safe .
So did a friend of mine , Katie Lambert , who told me she purchased her backup Mrs. Meyer ’ s stash on March 6 , the same day she chose to re-up on Kleenex and Cup o ’ Noodles .
Prior to the pandemic , Lambert didn ’ t consider herself a Mrs. Meyer ’ s stan beyond the occasional hand soap splurge ; she now owns a full suite of products , including the multi-surface concentrate , the dish soap , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ she reached for this particular brand when any brand would do .
“ If I ’ m locked in my damn house , I might as well clean with geranium , ” she said .
Buying bleach in bulk felt extreme and a little austere , she added , “ but geranium-scented Mrs. Meyer ’ s feels like my life still , I guess .
Normalcy through soap.
” Sign up for The Goods newsletter .
Twice a week , we ’ ll send you the best Goods stories exploring what we buy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ why it matters .

Hand soap is, of course, having a moment.
At my local Target last week, stockpilers loading up on Purell, toilet paper, and dried beans had also picked the hand soap aisle practically clean. (A number of grocery stores have since enacted limits on how many items individual shoppers can buy at one time.) As someone who reflexively reaches for Mrs. Meyer’s more by force of habit than a conscious decision, I wondered how many others intentionally chose the brand for their quarantine soap of choice, bypassing the utilitarian workhorses in doing so. I had to imagine a band of wild-eyed, panicked shoppers flooding the soap section, only to pause and consider whether they wanted their quarantine to have notes of rosemary, basil, or oat blossom.
Though some are skeptical that an organic soap brand touting essential oils is effective in the face of a virus, experts say that soap, period, is one of the best tools we have at our disposal right now, and it doesn’t have to be harsh or hospital-grade. The Mrs. Meyer’s brand is (wisely) not overtly using Covid-19 as a marketing peg, but it doesn’t have to: Amid all the coronavirus service journalism to emerge in recent weeks, Mrs. Meyer’s soap and surface cleaner have been recommended by CNN, The Strategist, Mashable, and CNET, to name a few.
I’ve never been particularly attuned to hand soap brands, but once I started looking for it, I realized Mrs. Meyer’s was everywhere. On an overnight trip to New York in February, I spotted it in the bathrooms of two out of the three Williamsburg restaurants I patronized, and in the studio of the artist I was there to meet. Back home in Atlanta, it lurked at friends’ kitchen sinks and in the bathroom of my neighborhood bakery.
In conversations with other people who regularly buy Mrs. Meyer’s, the same three or four reasons were echoed again and again: It looks nice on a countertop. (In an era when trash cans, cookware, and other formerly unremarkable utilitarian objects now make an aesthetic statement, this feels important.) The fragrance is nice, and never too sweet, too artificial, or too astringent. It seems gentler on hands. It feels just a tiny bit indulgent yet can be procured easily at most major grocers. And my favorite: “It’s environmentally friendly … I think?”
My $4 bottle of basil hand soap says, perhaps obnoxiously, that I’m not the kind of person who springs for Aesop ($39), but I’m just a little more discerning than basic “lemon zest.”
“Consumer expectations, in general, are much higher than they ever have been,” explains Cara Salpini, an editor at the industry trade magazine Retail Dive. “They’re expecting products to have sustainable, clean ingredients, to look and smell nice, to be really pleased with the product, and for it to function.” It’s why a mattress can’t just be a mattress anymore. And it’s how, when Mrs. Meyer’s began appearing on grocery store shelves in the early aughts, it was ideally and preemptively positioned to captivate millennial suckers like me.
It’s almost like, sometime around Y2K, a shrewd marketer got a glimpse into the buying habits of the future, and returned with the perfect formula for convincing people with a tiny bit of disposable income to spend it on something as objectively boring as soap for their hands. Step one: Design packaging that looked nice on countertops, and fragrances that felt a little bit special. Step two: Build the brand around a rustic and virtuous character from simpler times who loved gardening, taking care of her living space, and other wholesome activities one might categorize as “self-care” today. Step three: Gesture at being environmentally conscious. Step four: Profit.
“It’s environmentally friendly … I think?”
For years, Mrs. Meyer’s was one of few brands offering something slightly elevated for the kind of person who needed hand or dish soap, and wasn’t particularly willing to look for it outside of the grocery store — but was willing to spend $2.50 extra for it not to be orange Dial. Jarod Jones, a Mrs. Meyer’s loyalist who works in e-commerce and product merchandising, attributes the brand’s early success in part to its packaging: “When you see it next to the Dials and the Softsoaps, you’re like, ‘Well, clearly this is cuter,’” he says. “It seemed like trendy design at the time.”
Jones also makes candles, and found inspiration for one of his favorite creations (a radish and fern scent) in a bottle of Mrs. Meyer’s Radish, the scent that converted him into a fan of the brand. “That was something where I was like, ‘I am not finding this anywhere else,’” he adds. “Especially with kitchen stuff, it’s either ‘fresh scent’ or citrus over and over again ... so radish was really rad, because it smelled fresh but it’s not standard.”
When Mrs. Meyer’s launched in 2001, Pamela Helms headed up product and fragrance development. Helms continues to hold that title at S.C. Johnson, which acquired the brand in 2008. “When [founder Monica Nassif] explained the idea, I thought it was a radical approach, to bring this beauty of experience to a cleaning product,” says Helms.
Nassif, a former Target marketer, named the line after her Iowan mother, Thelma, a hardworking homemaker, gardener, and mother of nine. Thus, Helm explains, those early fragrances were mostly literal interpretations of what might be realistically grown in a Midwestern backyard: herbs like basil and rosemary; produce like radishes and rhubarb; Iowa pine during the holiday season. She describes these fragrances as having “a halo of healthiness to them.” (The line has since expanded that definition a bit to include less literal expressions, like “snowdrop,” “plum berry,” and “oat blossom.”)
Around the same time Mrs. Meyer’s entered the marketplace, Method, which hit Target shelves in 2002, also joined the soap-disrupting fray. The brand’s modern fragrances and Karim Rashid-designed packaging felt, and still feels, like a youthful foil to Mrs. Meyer’s homespun, folksy vintage; both looked distinctive from anything else on shelves at the time. Like Mrs. Meyer’s, Method worked sustainability and social responsibility into its messaging, trumpeting nontoxic ingredients and recycled packaging. In 2017, S.C. Johnson & Son (which also owns decidedly non-green chemical products like Windex, Drano, and Off insect repellent) acquired Method, too.
By the time Mrs. Meyer’s had made its way into higher-end grocery stores like Whole Foods nationwide in the mid-aughts, the New York Times Magazine nailed the brand’s throwback packaging, and the virtuous rural Midwestern homemaker for whom it was named, as part of the allure. “The goal isn’t to sell to the Mrs. Meyers of the world; it’s to sell to those who like the idea of her.”
It’s labor turned aesthetic, scrubbed bare of its dirt and elevated into an upper-middle-class Pinterest board
It’s true: In the same way that actual farmers’ homes probably don’t look like what Joanna Gaines calls “farmhouse,” actual homesteaders probably don’t spend $4 on 12 ounces of hand soap because it smells like geraniums. (Because, I mean, they probably use lye and lard instead.) It’s labor turned aesthetic, scrubbed bare of its dirt and elevated into an upper-middle-class Pinterest board. And in a time when an anxiety-riddled middle class might look for solace in soothing, cozy imitations of folk life (see: cottagecore), Mrs. Meyer herself and the wholesome, nurturing ethos she embodies welcomes one like a verdant meadow; a caricature of A Time When Things Were Simpler.
Now, nearly two decades after the Meyer’s/Method disruption, even the most pedestrian soap brands seem to be getting in on the boutique fragrance action. Last year, Softsoap debuted a special collection “meant to bring style and happiness to washing your hands,” with fragrances like orchid and coconut milk. Dial’s portfolio now includes options like white tea and the eternally millennial-baiting pink Himalayan salt. I asked Helms whether she felt other brands were cashing in on the allure Mrs. Meyer’s initially created. “We’re delighted that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” she says.
Does that change the way they do business, or how they think about their fragrance portfolio? “We’ve seen all kinds of sexy [fragrance] combinations out there, but we’re really staying true to what has got us to where we are today.” (Some might disagree — Jones, for one, sees some of Mrs. Meyer’s newer scents as straying from that path. “They’re not real scents. They have one called ‘oat blossom,’ which I’m like, that’s not a thing. It’s a made-up name.”)
In 2019, Target debuted a new store brand, Everspring, a range of cleaning products in sleek packaging with interesting fragrances, a trendy serif font, and sustainability vocabulary words sprinkled on the labels. The line hit shelves on Earth Day. Like Mrs. Meyer’s, Everspring invokes its biodegradable packaging and plant-based ingredients in its copy. Some of Everspring’s products have received mixed reviews from the EWG, due to synthetic ingredients like methylisothiazolinone, a possible allergy trigger that could also present a hazard to aquatic life — and Mrs. Meyer’s has gotten pushback on this issue as well. In Mrs. Meyer’s case, there is also the ethical baggage of its parent company, S.C. Johnson, which has come under fire for animal testing, including toxic ingredients in some of its products, and donating to Republican politicians.
From an environmental standpoint, Mrs. Meyer’s isn’t perfect, but few mass-market household cleaners or hand soaps are. Whether it’s intentionally vague language (“chemical-free”) or straight-up obfuscation about ingredients, greenwashing has crept into many products sold by major retailers, from Simple Green to Raid “EarthBlends.” S.C. Johnson settled a lawsuit over misleading “green” language on Windex labels back in 2010. (The one truly great soap alternative that comes to mind is that clunky old stalwart Dr. Bronner’s, which is completely biodegradable and, thanks to its absurdly high concentration relative to its absurdly huge packaging size, lasts an actual lifetime.)
But the language on the label and the earthy scents at least make it feel like one isn’t harming the planet by purchasing. For a lot of people who buy Mrs. Meyer’s, maybe that — the suggestion of sustainability, the general aura of nature, the suggestion of digging around in a rural Midwestern garden — is enough.
Sustainability, as Salpini reminds me, has become not just a moral imperative but, in terms of capitalism, a crucial differentiator for brands, especially those that want to reach millennials and Gen Z consumers. “There’s a lot of interest [in sustainability], and it’s mainly coming from younger consumers,” she says. “I think you can imagine why.” And maybe that’s the other reason Mrs. Meyer’s seems to dominate so many middle-class vanities and kitchen counters these days. Its products telegraph the sense of “eco-friendliness” distinctly enough to capture the attention of a wide swath of shoppers: those who are vaguely interested in “green” products but not quite interested in researching a parent company’s lobbying efforts, or learning how to actually pronounce “methylisothiazolinone,” or strictly scrubbing their house with vinegar.
(In other words: “It’s environmentally friendly ... I think?”)
When I shopped for last-minute provisions last week, I grabbed one of the remaining bottles of Mrs. Meyer’s hand soap (in basil), just to be safe. So did a friend of mine, Katie Lambert, who told me she purchased her backup Mrs. Meyer’s stash on March 6, the same day she chose to re-up on Kleenex and Cup o’ Noodles. Prior to the pandemic, Lambert didn’t consider herself a Mrs. Meyer’s stan beyond the occasional hand soap splurge; she now owns a full suite of products, including the multi-surface concentrate, the dish soap, and the everyday cleaner. I asked why she reached for this particular brand when any brand would do. “If I’m locked in my damn house, I might as well clean with geranium,” she said. Buying bleach in bulk felt extreme and a little austere, she added, “but geranium-scented Mrs. Meyer’s feels like my life still, I guess. Normalcy through soap.”
Sign up for The Goods newsletter. Twice a week, we’ll send you the best Goods stories exploring what we buy, why we buy it, and why it matters.