vox--2020-03-16--The Verily coronavirus website is off to a rocky start

Two days after President Donald Trump announced that Google was racing to build a site to help Americans find coronavirus testing , people are still confused about what ’ s actually going on .
In the aftermath of the announcement , reports emerged that Google was not fully aware of the plan Trump said the company was participating in .
Given the threat the novel coronavirus poses to the US , this is not a good sign .
Trump said at a Sunday press conference , his earlier comments about Google had been “ substantiated ” and thanked “ the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” A few hours later , a site made by Google ’ s sister company went live with a tool for coronavirus risk screening that directed residents of two counties in Northern California to test centers .
It wasn ’ t long before the Verily site ran into trouble .
People with symptoms were told they weren ’ t eligible for the screening program , and those who were needed a Google login to use the tool .
On top of that , the Verily site reached capacity by Monday morning .
Now @ @ @ @ @ @ @ light of day , it ’ s more clear than ever that the Google website Trump described last week is not exactly what the American public will use to find coronavirus testing .
The situation is much more complicated than that .
Here ’ s what ’ s really going on Google does have a plan for responding to the coronavirus , but it ’ s not what the president said it was .
Rather than creating a site that guides people to testing locations , Google itself is building something much simpler @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it is “ partnering with the US Government in developing a nationwide website that includes information about COVID-19 symptoms , risk , and testing information.
” The site Trump promised on Friday sounds much more like what ’ s being developed by the life sciences research company Verily , which is related to Google but is a distinct company .
Verily said on Friday after Trump ’ s speech that it “ is in the early stages of development ” of a tool to triage potential coronavirus patients and “ is planning to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , with the hope of expanding more broadly over time.
” Verily used to be a subsidiary of Google , but now both Google and Verily are subsidiaries of their parent company Alphabet .
Since Google and Verily are separate companies , it ’ s hard to know how closely the two are collaborating on the efforts .
When Recode contacted Verily for more details about the project , the company directed us to a blog post it published on Sunday , shortly before the pilot site went live .
The new Verily @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s existing Project Baseline website , and it launched ahead of schedule on the evening of Sunday , March 15 .
The screening process starts by asking people if they ’ re symptomatic , though only those who say they have severe symptoms are directed to log in with a Google account to find a testing site .
The new Verily screening site only serves residents of San Mateo and Santa Clara counties in Northern California .
With limitations like this in mind , it ’ s clear that Verily ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ site Trump described on Friday .
Trump announced a website that did not exist In a bold declaration on Friday , Trump said that “ Google has 1,700 engineers working on ” a website that would help people figure out if they needed a coronavirus test and to direct them to testing sites .
As we now know , this statement was not entirely true .
The reality of Google ’ s role in addressing the coronavirus outbreak is more complex and , in some ways , more productive .
Within an hour @ @ @ @ @ @ @ speech on Friday , the company ’ s press team pushed back against Trump ’ s announcement and tweeted a statement from Verily , drawing a distinction between the two companies and clarifying that the Verily site was only nearing a testing phase , rather than being almost ready to launch .
This is actually a generous depiction of the truth behind the Trump declaration .
According to the New York Times , the plan for Verily to build a website to help with coronavirus testing was “ in its infancy.
” And @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The 1,700 number that Trump claimed in his speech actually refers to the number of Google engineers who , the Thursday before Trump ’ s speech , filled out a form volunteering to help Verily with its coronavirus triage site in the coming “ days and weeks.
” Even then , the Verily project was only meant to be used by health care workers .
Suffice it to say , Trump ’ s Rose Garden speech altered these plans .
It wasn ’ t until after Trump ’ s speech that Google announced @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it appears the launch of Verily ’ s triage site was expedited as a result of Trump ’ s remarks .
The Trump administration also sent an updated statement on Saturday , saying that the triage site could be rolled out in nine hotspots for coronavirus cases in the US .
Then , when asked directly about the Google website and the timing of its launch at a press conference on Sunday , Vice President Mike Pence said that “ at some point early next week we will have a website go up.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ this would be a Google website but rather alluded that state governments and local retailers would be collaborators .
This is not the same reality that Trump described in his Friday speech — there ’ s little reason to believe that most Americans will be able to access a website that will direct them to a nearby testing site in the near future — but it ’ s a start .
Easier access to information about the outbreak is certainly a positive thing as the outbreak continues to evolve in the US .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Google and its affiliates will develop all kinds of websites that can someday save lives .
For now , Verily has rolled out one pilot site for Bay Area residents this week , and its plans for future expansion remain unclear .
Jared Kushner talked to Verily ’ s CEO , who described a project in the works So it ’ s not quite accurate to say that Trump lied last Friday .
It ’ s worse than that .
Really , Trump gave a sales pitch based on piecemeal information collated by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The backstory of how the president publicly shared this twisted mess of misinformation is a wild but familiar ride .
In dueling reports published Saturday night , the New York Times and the Washington Post both explained how Kushner had asked tech executives for help in fighting the coronavirus outbreak .
Kushner found a promising pitch after conversations with Verily ’ s chief executive Andy Conrad , who described a project in the works .
It wasn ’ t until Thursday , the day before Trump ’ s big Rose Garden announcement @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out the call for Google engineers to volunteer in “ a planning effort ” to help with coronavirus testing .
At some point before that , Kushner and his cohort had decided to make the half-baked Verily plan public — and put Google ’ s name on it .
Part of this public announcement included a poster with a very simple flow chart to illustrate how the hypothetical Google site might work .
Dr. Deborah Birx , the White House ’ s coronavirus response coordinator , presented the chart on Friday and described @ @ @ @ @ @ @ screening website … facilitated by Google.
” According to the Washington Post , “ Pence and Kushner personally worked with digital staffers to design the graphic elements of the poster.
” There ’ s no indication that Google was involved in this part of the planning process .
Yet Trump ’ s overpromising sales pitch worked in a way .
On Sunday , Verily announced a new “ collaboration with the California Governor ’ s office , federal , state and local public health authorities.
” The company said : It ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ launch its pilot site , and who knows how quickly Google would have made its internal volunteer efforts public if Trump hadn ’ t misinterpreted them in an extremely public speech .
Then again , the philosophy of moving fast and breaking things doesn ’ t hold up all that well in a public health crisis .
“ It ’ s going to be very quickly done , unlike websites of the past , ” Trump said of the Google website that Google wasn ’ t actually building at the time of his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to be made that a hastily built coronavirus site could do more harm than good if it doesn ’ t work properly .
Trump ’ s coronavirus misinformation shows why it ’ s essential to prevent even more misinformation The awful irony of all this is that much of Google ’ s real efforts to fight the coronavirus outbreak are focused on protecting people from misinformation .
The company says it ’ s working to stop “ phishing , conspiracy theories , malware and misinformation ” on its platforms while “ promoting authoritative @ @ @ @ @ @ @ There ’ s also a new box on Google ’ s homepage that offers five tips for what people can do to stop the spread of the coronavirus .
That the company responded so quickly to the misinformation Trump shared — it was within an hour of the president ’ s speech — is similarly heartening .
Still , it remains to be seen if the now-rushed Verily website will do much good .
Based on what we know , it will be designed to direct Bay Area residents to any of three @ @ @ @ @ @ @ future .
If we believe the Trump administration ’ s latest statements , the site could be put to use in up to nine hotspots around the country , though it ’ s not yet clear where those hotspots are .
The informational website Google announced and that Trump failed to mention , meanwhile , sounds like it could be most useful to the most people .
The value of a boring-but-useful website feels like the most optimistic takeaway from all this .
While Trump described a transformative and ambitious website that didn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tech companies have been building smaller but much more productive solutions , including simple but authoritative links to the World Health Organization ( WHO ) and other trustworthy resources .
It would be wonderful if Silicon Valley giants could solve America ’ s testing problem overnight , just like it would be remarkable if banning all international travel would prevent the virus from spreading further within US borders .
But that ’ s just not how this works .
A magic website — much like a poorly planned travel ban — is no @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is key to help slow the spread of the pandemic .
Other basic precautions like washing your hands and staying informed are also productive .
If tech companies can focus their resources on anything for now , it makes sense that those efforts focus on spreading valid information about the coronavirus outbreak and how to slow it down .
Despite Trump ’ s misleading remarks , it sounds like Google is making progress in doing just that .
Updated , March 16 , 2020 , 6:50 pm ET : This story has been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ press conference on Sunday as well as more information about the Verily website that went live on Sunday night .

Nearly two weeks after President Donald Trump announced on March 13 that Google was racing to build a site to help Americans find coronavirus testing, people are still confused about what’s actually going on. In the aftermath of the announcement, reports emerged that Google was not fully aware of the plan Trump said the company was participating in. Given the threat the novel coronavirus poses to the US, this is not a good sign.
Trump said at a March 15 press conference that his earlier comments about Google had been “substantiated” and thanked “the head of Google, a great gentleman.” A few hours later, a site made by Google’s sister company Verily went live with a tool for coronavirus risk screening that directed residents of two counties in Northern California to test centers. It wasn’t long before the Verily site ran into trouble. People with symptoms were told they weren’t eligible for the screening program, and those who were needed a Google login to use the tool. On top of that, the Verily site reached capacity the morning after launch. Google announced a week later that it would expand to two more testing sites in Northern California.
After being delayed by several days, Google finally launched its coronavirus portal on March 21. The informational website includes “state-based information, safety and prevention tips, search trends related to COVID-19, and further resources for individuals, educators and businesses,” according to Google’s announcement. It does not include the things Trump said the site would include, like information about local testing sites. The belated launch came not long after Vanity Fair reported that President Trump was angry at Jared Kushner for overselling Google’s plans, before the president announced the new website at a White House press conference.
Now that the Verily and Google sites are live, it’s more clear than ever that the website Trump described is not what the American public will use to find coronavirus testing. The situation is much more complicated than that.
Here’s what’s really going on
Google does have a plan for responding to the coronavirus, but it’s not what the president said it was. Rather than creating a dynamic site that guides people to testing locations, what Google built is much simpler. The company announced on March 15 that it was “partnering with the US Government in developing a nationwide website that includes information about COVID-19 symptoms, risk, and testing information.” The new Google site includes plenty of information culled from sources like the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO). It does not include much information about how to find testing centers.
The site Trump initially promised sounds much more like what’s being developed by the life sciences research company Verily, which is related to Google but is a distinct company. After Trump’s speech, Verily said that it was “in the early stages of development” of a tool to triage potential coronavirus patients and “is planning to roll testing out in the Bay Area, with the hope of expanding more broadly over time.” Verily used to be a subsidiary of Google, but now both Google and Verily are subsidiaries of their parent company Alphabet. Since Google and Verily are separate companies, it’s hard to know how closely the two are collaborating on the efforts.
When Recode contacted Verily for more details about the project, the company directed us to a blog post it published shortly before the pilot site went live on March 15. The new Verily coronavirus triage site works through the company’s existing Project Baseline website, and it launched ahead of schedule. The screening process starts by asking people if they’re symptomatic, though only those who say they have severe symptoms are directed to log in with a Google account to find a testing site.
The Verily screening site now serves residents of San Mateo, Santa Clara, Riverside, and Sacramento counties in California. With limitations like this in mind, it’s clear that Verily’s new tool is quite different from the site Trump described in mid March.
Trump announced a website that did not exist
In his bold but unexpected announcement on March 13, Trump said that “Google has 1,700 engineers working on” a website that would help people figure out if they needed a coronavirus test and to direct them to testing sites. As we now know, this statement was not entirely true. The reality of Google’s role in addressing the coronavirus outbreak is more complex and, in some ways, more productive.
Within an hour of the president’s Rose Garden speech, the company’s press team pushed back against Trump’s announcement and tweeted a statement from Verily, drawing a distinction between the two companies and clarifying that the Verily site was only nearing a testing phase, rather than being almost ready to launch.
This is actually a generous depiction of the truth behind the Trump declaration. According to the New York Times, the plan for Verily to build a website to help with coronavirus testing was “in its infancy” at the time of Trump’s announcement. And Verily only has about 1,000 employees. The 1,700 number that Trump claimed in his speech actually refers to the number of Google engineers who, the Thursday before Trump’s speech, filled out a form volunteering to help Verily with its coronavirus triage site in the coming “days and weeks.” Even then, the Verily project was only meant to be used by health care workers.
Suffice it to say, Trump’s Rose Garden speech altered these plans. It wasn’t until after Trump’s speech that Google announced plans for its informational website, and it appears the launch of Verily’s triage site was expedited as a result of Trump’s remarks. The Trump administration also sent an updated statement on March 16, saying that the triage site could be rolled out in nine hotspots for coronavirus cases in the US. Then, when asked directly about the Google website and the timing of its launch at a press conference on March 15, Vice President Mike Pence said that “at some point early next week we will have a website go up.” He did not specifically say that this would be a Google website but rather implied that state governments and local retailers would be collaborators.
The CDC and the WHO recommend several basic measures to help prevent the spread of Covid-19: Wash your hands often for at least 20 seconds.
Cover your cough or sneeze with a tissue, then throw the tissue in the trash.
Clean and disinfect frequently touched objects.
Practice social distancing, and stay home when you are sick.
Contact a health worker if you have symptoms; fever and a dry cough are most common. Guidance may change. Stay informed, and stay safe, with Vox’s coronavirus coverage hub.
This is not the same reality that Trump described in his original speech — there’s little reason to believe that most Americans will be able to access a website that will direct them to a nearby testing site in the near future — but it’s a start. Easier access to information about the outbreak is certainly a positive thing as it continues to evolve in the US. But more than a week after Trump’s speech, Google told The Verge that its informational website was still not ready but that it would “surface authoritative information for people in the US, including on screening and testing.”
Again, the informational Google site launched on March 21 and included very little information on screening and testing.
Maybe, if everything works out, Google and its affiliates will continue to develop all kinds of websites that can someday save lives. For now, Verily has rolled out a pilot site for a limited number of residents, and its plans for future expansion remain unclear. Google’s informational website is not at all what Trump described.
Jared Kushner talked to Verily’s CEO, who described a project in the works
So it’s not quite accurate to say that Trump lied about the Google site. It’s worse than that. Really, Trump gave a sales pitch based on piecemeal information collated by his son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner.
The backstory of how the president publicly shared this twisted mess of misinformation is a wild but familiar ride. In dueling reports published on March 14, the New York Times and the Washington Post both explained how Kushner had asked tech executives for help in fighting the coronavirus outbreak. Kushner found a promising pitch in conversations with Verily’s chief executive Andy Conrad, who described a project in the works. It wasn’t until the day before Trump’s big Rose Garden announcement that Google CEO Sundar Pichai put out the call for Google engineers to volunteer in “a planning effort” to help with coronavirus testing. At some point before that, Kushner and his cohort had decided to make the half-baked Verily plan public — and put Google’s name on it.
Part of this public announcement included a poster with a very simple flow chart to illustrate how the hypothetical Google site might work. Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House’s coronavirus response coordinator, presented the chart on Friday and described how testing would start with a “screening website … facilitated by Google.” According to the Washington Post, “Pence and Kushner personally worked with digital staffers to design the graphic elements of the poster.” There’s no indication that Google was involved in this part of the planning process.
Yet Trump’s overpromising sales pitch worked in a way. Two days after his speech, Verily announced a new “collaboration with the California Governor’s office, federal, state and local public health authorities.” The company said:
Californians will be able to take an online COVID-19 screener survey through Project Baseline beginning Monday, March 16. People who meet eligibility and requirements for testing will be directed to mobile testing sites based on capacity, where they will complete a nasal swab test. Once tested, individuals will be informed of their COVID-19 test results within a few days.
It’s unclear when Verily had originally planned to launch its pilot site, and who knows how quickly Google would have made its internal volunteer efforts public if Trump hadn’t misinterpreted them in an extremely public speech.
Then again, the philosophy of moving fast and breaking things doesn’t hold up all that well in a public health crisis. “It’s going to be very quickly done, unlike websites of the past,” Trump said of the Google website that Google wasn’t actually building at the time of his speech. There’s a case to be made that a hastily built coronavirus site could do more harm than good if it doesn’t work properly.
Trump’s coronavirus misinformation shows why it’s essential to prevent even more misinformation
The awful irony of all this is that much of Google’s real efforts to fight the coronavirus outbreak are focused on protecting people from misinformation. The company says it’s working to stop “phishing, conspiracy theories, malware and misinformation” on its platforms while “promoting authoritative information through Google Search and YouTube.” There’s also a new box on Google’s homepage that offers five tips for what people can do to stop the spread of the coronavirus. That the company responded so quickly to the misinformation Trump shared — it was within an hour of the president’s speech — is similarly heartening.
Still, it remains to be seen if the now-rushed Verily website will do much good. The site is currently designed to direct Bay Area residents to any of five local coronavirus testing sites. If we believe the Trump administration’s latest statements, the site could be put to use in as many as nine hotspots around the country, though it’s not yet clear where those hotspots are or when this might happen. The informational Google website — which, again, is not what Trump described — sounds like it could be most useful to the most people.
The value of a boring-but-useful website feels like the most optimistic takeaway from all this. While Trump described a transformative and ambitious website that didn’t exist, Google and other tech companies have been building smaller but much more productive solutions, including simple but authoritative links to the World Health Organization (WHO) and other trustworthy resources. It would be wonderful if Silicon Valley giants could solve America’s testing problem overnight, just like it would be remarkable if banning all international travel would prevent the virus from spreading further within US borders. But that’s just not how this works.
A magic website — much like a poorly planned travel ban — is no panacea. Experts say that social distancing is key to help slow the spread of the pandemic. Other basic precautions like washing your hands and staying informed are also productive. If tech companies can focus their resources on anything for now, it makes sense that those efforts focus on spreading valid information about the coronavirus outbreak and how to slow it down. Despite Trump’s misleading remarks, it sounds as though Google is making progress in doing just that.
Updated, March 23, 2020, 1:10 pm ET: This story has been updated with details about the informational Google website and expansion of the Verily site.


vox--2020-03-16--Understand the unfolding coronavirus pandemic with these Vox podcast episodes

The coronavirus outbreak that causes the Covid-19 illness continues to spread as a health threat across the globe .
As new coronavirus cases are discovered , questions keep popping up about how to prepare for an outbreak , how to travel , and the difference between quarantine , isolation , and social distancing — to name a few .
That ’ s where Vox podcasts come in .
From what it ’ s like to be quarantined with coronavirus to how prepared the US is set up to respond to this outbreak to how AI warned about coronavirus before the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , The Weeds , Worldy , Reset , Recode Decode , and Recode Media episodes will help you understand the situation as it unfolds .
March 16 , 2020 | The country ’ s largest school district told a million kids to stay home during the coronavirus pandemic .
It ’ s creating chaos for teachers , students , and parents .
Maggie Haberman : How coronavirus changes everything for President Trump March 16 , 2020 | Maggie Haberman , the White House correspondent for the New York Times , talks with Recode @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rest of the country has bypassed Trump ’ s failure to lead on the coronavirus outbreak ; his exposure to COVID-19 at Mar-a-Lago and refusal to self-quarantine ; and the toxic cocktail of practices in his administration : Infighting , tiptoeing , and sucking up .
She also discusses CDC director Anthony Fauci ’ s “ unimpeachable ” credibility vs. President Trump ’ s trust problem , how Vice President Pence is doing at the helm of the coronavirus task force , and how this period could have a bigger impact on Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Plus : Who is actually running things at the White House right now , and can Trump operate his campaign without mass rallies ?
March 14 , 2020 | Ezra and Matt on dueling pandemic response plans from Sanders and Biden , and Trump ’ s disastrous speech .
March 14 , 2020 | Italy has quarantined the whole country in an effort to slow the spread of coronavirus .
Vox ’ s Julia Belluz explains why the US might look like Italy soon .
Ron Klain : The coronavirus outbreak is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 13 , 2020 | Epidemic co-host Ron Klain , who led the White House ’ s ebola response under President Obama , talks to Recode ’ s Kara Swisher about how the COVID-19 outbreak will strain America ’ s healthcare system ; how President Trump downplayed the crisis , rattling public confidence and delaying the country ’ s response ; and the way people who work in the gig economy — including Uber drivers and food delivery workers — will be especially hurt by the situation .
He also discusses the logic behind @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , why it ’ s impossible for the US to completely cut itself off from China , and what Trump didn ’ t say in his Oval Office address , but should have .
Klain , an adviser and former chief of staff to Joe Biden , also talks about the ex-vice president ’ s surprisingly successful presidential campaign and how it ’ s reckoning with Biden ’ s history of verbal flubs .
How to slow down coronavirus March 12 , 2020 | President Trump has banned most Europeans from traveling to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Kirby explains why that won ’ t stop the novel coronavirus from spreading , and Eliza Barclay tells us what we can do to slow the spread .
Every country for itself March 12 , 2020 | Zack , Jenn , and Alex record an episode on coronavirus from their respective homes , under self-isolation .
They talk about the politics of Trump ’ s ban on European travel to the US and explore why the European Union seems to be neglecting to help Italy in its time of need .
They also @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a massive drop in oil prices — and why , at this particular time , this could seriously destabilize political systems around the world .
Why the coronavirus shut down the NBA , with ESPN ’ s Brian Windhurst March 11 , 2020 | In a conversation taped hours before the NBA suspended its season , ESPN ’ s Brian Windhorst and Recode ’ s Peter Kafka discuss how the Coronavirus could affect the NBA , and why the league could cancel games — including its playoffs this spring - entirely .
Windhorst @ @ @ @ @ @ @ problems , its dust-up with China last fall , and how LeBron James kickstarted his career .
March 10 , 2020 | The stock market ’ s going haywire .
Major companies are telling their employees to stay home .
Austin has canceled SXSW .
Vox ’ s Matthew Yglesias says governments across the world have to act fast to save the global economy .
March 10 , 2020 | The cost of China ’ s high-tech response to contain the coronavirus .
So you think you have Covid-19 March 6 , 2020 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hasn ’ t been doing the best job of testing for the novel coronavirus .
ProPublica ’ s Caroline Chen explains why .
March 6 , 2020 | The Kaiser Foundation ’ s Josh Michaud explains what the US is — and should be — doing to fight coronavirus .
March 5 , 2020 | Can we stop the spread of coronavirus misinformation on social media ?
Covid-19 , explained by Carl ( who has it ) March 3 , 2020 | Carl Goldman was on the Diamond Princess cruise ship and now @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Sean Rameswaram from a CDC quarantine in Omaha , Nebraska .
March 3 , 2020 | Jane Coaston , Dara Lind , and Brian Resnick talk about Covid-19 — how it started , its potential impact , and where we go from here .
February 18 , 2020 | One coronavirus .
Two cruise ships .
Lots of mistakes .
The Japanese case shows us that quarantining people on a cruise ship to stop the spread of Covid-19 can backfire , while the Cambodia case suggests that letting people disembark and disperse around @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nightmare .
Find out what these cruise ship emergencies reveal about the largest outbreak .
February 13 , 2020 | Zack Beauchamp and Alex Ward talk about the politics of the coronavirus outbreak in China : Why the Chinese government botched the initial response , why Chinese citizens are so angry about it , and the reasons why the problems with this response are inherent to the current Chinese governance model .
They then debate the claim from many analysts that this is the most serious crisis for China ’ s regime since @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the ( low ) probability that this could trigger another revolution-minded uprising .
How will the coronavirus outbreak end ?
February 6 , 2020 | In 2015 , Dr. Vineet Menachery said a SARS-like virus could spread to humans more easily than previously believed .
Now he explains what we can do to stop it .
An AI warned about coronavirus before the CDC February 4 , 2020 | How AI could predict the next big outbreak .
You can check out our guide to news of the coronavirus outbreak here .

The coronavirus outbreak that causes the Covid-19 illness continues to spread as a health threat across the globe. As new coronavirus cases are discovered, questions keep popping up about how to prepare for an outbreak, how to travel, and the difference between quarantine, isolation, and social distancing — to name a few.
That’s where Vox podcasts come in. From what it’s like to be quarantined with coronavirus to how prepared the US is set up to respond to this outbreak to how AI warned about coronavirus before the CDC, the following Today, Explained, The Weeds, Worldy, Reset, and Recode Decode episodes will help you understand the situation as it unfolds.
How coronavirus is impacting education
April 23, 2020 | Teachers and students are still struggling with online education.
Conspiracy-19
April 23, 2020 | Vox’s science editor, Eliza Barclay, arms you with the facts you need to fight your uncle’s favorite coronavirus conspiracy theories.
This one’s for Earth
April 22, 2020 | Cryptic treehunters. Unknown apples. Flowers fighting back. On the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, Vox’s Umair Irfan and Brian Resnick explain what we learned about the planet in the last year.
Opening up
April 21, 2020 | Dara, Jane, and Matt on conservatives’ desire for a rapid reopening of American businesses, and a ‘feel good’ white paper about air pollution.
The 5G coronavirus conspiracy theory
April 21, 2020 | A coronavirus conspiracy theory has led to arson attacks in the UK. And - how to talk to friends and family about coronavirus misinformation.
One day, three healthcare workers
April 21, 2020 | A nurse, a paramedic, and a physician’s assistant record themselves throughout the course of a day in the fight against Covid-19.
The epicenter of the epicenter
April 20, 2020 | Covid-19’s victims, and the people they leave behind.
The year 2038 problem
April 19, 2020 | What’s the deal with January 19th, 2038? Why remembering Y2K correctly matters.
Help is on the way (sort of)
April 17, 2020 | Ezra and Matt break down the implementation problems that have bedeviled the CARES Act.
Long shot
April 17, 2020 | It could be a year or more before the vaccine is ready, but there’s a radical plan to speed up the process.
Contact Tracing, Explained
April 16, 2020 | Public health’s “tried and true” tactic against infectious disease, and how Google and Apple want to help end the lockdown.
Zeke Emanuel’s exit strategy
April 16, 2020 | President Trump wants to reopen the country yesterday. Bioethicist Zeke Emanuel, who served as a health policy advisor to former President Obama, offers a safe path.
Death Cab for The Postal Service?
April 15, 2020 | The United States Postal Service is on the brink of collapse. Vox’s Matthew Yglesias explains how and why the country should save it.
How indie bookstores might survive the pandemic
April 14, 2020 | There’s a new online bookseller in town that’s trying to save your local indie bookstore.
All praise, no pay
April 14, 2020 | Essential workers in the food, transportation, and retail industries are being called American heroes. They want to be paid as such.
The corporate bailout watchdog
April 14, 2020 | Congressional oversight committee member Bharat Ramamurti joins Matt to explain his new job and what’s wrong with shareholder capitalism.
Elizabeth Warren has a plan for this, too
April 13, 2020 | Friend of the show Ezra Klein speaks to Sen. Elizabeth Warren about several plans she has proposed to combat this pandemic.
The Internet Has a Crush on Dr. Fauci
April 12, 2020 | From fan pages to food pics, Dr. Anthony Fauci is everywhere. The Verge’s Makena Kelly explains the person behind the meme.
How does this end?
April 10, 2020 | Ezra and Matt review four major plans for after social distancing; plus the Democratic primary finally ends.
The loneliness pandemic
April 10, 2020 | Coronavirus has led to another pandemic: social isolation. Vox’s Ezra Klein says this sickness has a cure.
Six feet away from God
April 9, 2020 | While a few religious leaders flout shelter in place ordinances, Easter, Passover, and Ramadan are inspiring most to get creative with worship.
Toby Ord on existential risk, Donald Trump, and thinking in probabilities
April 9, 2020 | Oxford philosopher Toby Ord spent the early part of his career spearheading the effective altruism movement, founding Giving What We Can, and focusing his attention primarily on issue areas like global public health and extreme poverty. Ord’s new book The Precipice is about something entirely different: the biggest existential risks to the future of humanity. In it, he predicts that humanity has approximately a 1 in 6 chance of going completely extinct by the end of the 21st century. The coronavirus pandemic is a reminder that tail risk is real. We always knew a zoological respiratory virus could become a global pandemic. But, collectively, we didn’t want to think about it, and so we didn’t. The result is the reality we live in now.
But for all the current moment’s horror, there are worse risks than coronavirus out there. One silver lining of the current crisis might be that it gets us to take them seriously, and avert them before they become unstoppable. That’s what Ord’s book is about, and it is, in a strange way, a comfort.
This, then, is a conversation about the risks that threaten humanity’s future, and what we can do about them. It’s a conversation about thinking in probabilities, about the ethics of taking future human lives seriously, about how we weigh the risks we don’t yet understand.
Will your favorite restaurant survive?
April 9, 2020 | Why the pandemic is exposing the complicated relationship between delivery apps and restaurants and how a restaurateur and app developer is helping keep his industry alive.
Vote and die
April 8, 2020 | Wisconsinites had to choose between catching Covid-19 and voting on Tuesday. Is the rest of the country next?
Your phone knows if you’re staying at home
April 7, 2020 | And it is telling the government. The Verge’s Casey Newton explains how location data is helping fight coronavirus, and why even privacy advocates don’t think that’s such a bad thing. Featuring Casey Newton, Silicon Valley Editor at the Verge.
“The Great Equalizer”
April 7, 2020 | Madonna was wrong. Covid-19 isn’t an equalizer. It’s coming for America’s most vulnerable populations.
The immunity test
April 6, 2020 | A vaccine will take a while, but Vox’s Umair Irfan says the global effort to test for immunity and treat Covid-19 is well underway.
Elizabeth Warren has a plan for this, too
April 6, 2020 | In January, Sen. Elizabeth Warren was the first presidential candidate to release a plan for combatting coronavirus. In March, she released a second plan. Days later, with the scale of economic damage increasing, she released a third. Warren’s proposals track the spread of the virus: from a problem happening elsewhere and demanding a surge in global health resources to a pandemic happening here, demanding not just a public health response, but an all-out effort to save the US economy. Warren’s penchant for planning stands in particular stark contrast to this administration, which still has not released a clear coronavirus plan. There is no document you can download, no web site you can visit, that details our national strategy to slow the disease and rebuild the economy.
So I asked Warren to return to the show to explain what the plan should be, given the cold reality we face. We discussed what, specifically, the federal government should do; the roots of the testing debacle; her idea for mobilizing the economy around building affordable housing; why she thinks that this is exactly the right time to cancel student loan debt; why America spends so much money preparing for war and so little defending itself against pandemics and climate change; whether she thinks the Democratic primary focused on the wrong issues; and how this crisis is making a grim mockery of Ronald Reagan’s old saw about “the scariest words in the English language.”
The two types of tests we need to end this
April 5, 2020 | How testing technology will help end the spread of covid-19.
Mask on? Mask off?
April 3, 2020 | In an about-face, the Centers for Disease Control would now like you to cover your mouth and nose when you go outside.
Coronavirus meets health reform
April 3, 2020 | Ezra and Matt discuss Covid-19’s impact on insurance premiums, the case for single-payer, and more.
6.6 million more unemployed
April 2, 2020 | Last week’s unemployment numbers shattered all records. This week, they doubled. Vox’s Matthew Yglesias, host of The Weeds podcast, proposes a way out of this mess.
The race to make more ventilators
April 2, 2020 | Why life-saving ventilators for Covid-19 patients are in short supply, and how people like Dr. Richard Boyer are trying to fix that.
What social solidarity demands of us in a pandemic
April 2, 2020 | There is no doubt that social distancing is the best way to slow the spread of the coronavirus. But the efficacy of social distancing (or really any other public health measure) relies on something much deeper and harder to measure: social solidarity.
“Solidarity,” writes Eric Klinenberg, “motivates us to promote public health, not just our own personal security. It keeps us from hoarding medicine, toughing out a cold in the workplace or sending a sick child to school. It compels us to let a ship of stranded people dock in our safe harbors, to knock on our older neighbor’s door.” Klinenberg, a sociologist by trade, is the director of the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University. His first book, Heat Wave, found that social connection was, at times, literally the difference between life and death during Chicago’s 1995 heat wave. Since then, he’s spent his career studying trends in American social life, from the rise of adults living alone to the importance of “social infrastructure” in holding together our civic bonds.
This conversation is about what happens when a country mired in a mythos of individualism collides with a pandemic that demands social solidarity and collective sacrifice. It’s about preventing an epidemic of loneliness and social isolation from overwhelming the most vulnerable among us. We discuss the underlying social trends that predated coronavirus, what kind of leadership it takes to actually bring people together, the irony of asking young people and essential workers to sacrifice for the rest of us, whether there’s an opportunity to build a different kind of society in the aftermath of Covid-19, and much more.
Lockdown while locked up
April 1, 2020 | Arthur Longworth calls Sean from Washington State Reformatory to explain what it’s like to serve a life sentence at a prison where the coronavirus is spreading.
There’s no social distancing in Animal Crossing
March 31, 2020 | Nintendo’s new game New Horizons has become a place to escape the reality of a global pandemic, gather with friends online - and even get married.
The trouble with Trump’s daily briefings
March 31, 2020 | Part rally, part media-bashing, part critical updates on the coronavirus crisis, President Trump’s daily press briefings are muddying the message.
Coronavirus has pushed US-China relations to their worst point since Mao
March 30, 2020 | The COVID-19 pandemic is a grim reminder that the worst really can happen. Tail risk is real risk. Political leaders fumble, miscalculate, and bluster into avoidable disaster. And even as we try to deal with this catastrophe, the seeds of another are sprouting.
The US-China relationship will define geopolitics in the 21st century. If we collapse into rivalry, conflict, and politically opportunistic nationalism, the results could be hellish. And we are, right now, collapsing into rivalry, conflict, and politically opportunistic nationalism.
The Trump administration, and key congressional Republicans, are calling COVID-19 “the Chinese virus,” and trying to gin up tensions to distract from their domestic failures. Chinese government officials, beset by their own domestic problems, are claiming the US military brought the virus to China. The US-China relationship was in a bad way six months ago, but this is a new level of threat.
Evan Osnos covers the US-China relationship for the New Yorker, and is author of the National Book Award winner, The Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth and Faith in the New China. In this conversation, we discuss the past, present and future of the US-China relationship. What are the chances of armed conflict? What might deescalation look like? And we know what the US wants — what, in truth, does China want?
Airborne, Explained
March 29, 2020 | What do we mean when we say “airborne?”; plus, the most important unanswered questions about how coronavirus is transmitted.
Your coronavirus questions, answered (Part II)
March 27, 2020 | On today’s show, more listener questions: Why isn’t everyone social distancing? Will I be immune after I get it? When will this end? My anxiety is spiking!
When $2 trillion isn’t enough
March 27, 2020 | Ezra and Matt analyze the huge but inadequate stimulus bill.
Deepak Chopra: “If this doesn’t bring us together, then we deserve whatever happens”
March 27, 2020 | Dr. Deepak Chopra talks with Recode’s Kara Swisher about how to cope with the global threat posed by coronavirus, the parallel “pandemic of panic,” and how to not be overwhelmed by fear and anxiety.
Is the cure worse than the disease?
March 26, 2020 | “We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself!” That was President Donald Trump, this week, explaining why he was thinking about lifting coronavirus guidelines earlier than public-health experts recommended. The “cure,” in this case, is social distancing, and the mass economic stoppage it forces. The problem, of course, is COVID-19, and the millions of deaths it could cause.
This is a debate that needs to be taken seriously. Slowing coronavirus will impose real costs, and immense suffering, on society. Are those costs worth it? This is the most important public policy question right now. And if the discussion isn’t had well, then it will be had, as we’re already seeing, poorly, and dangerously.
What this coronavirus does to your body
March 26, 2020 | Why does it spread so easily? And could it mutate into something worse? The Atlantic’s Ed Yong explains the science so far.
The two trillion dollar question
March 25, 2020 | Congress has settled on a historic stimulus package, but Ezra Klein is worried it might not be enough.
Chamath Palihapitiya: “The investing landscape is done,” taxes will go up, and a two-week lockdown is inevitable
March 25, 2020 | Social Capital CEO Chamath Palihapitiya talks with Recode’s Kara Swisher about how long it will take to recover from the coronavirus crisis, its impact on startups, and how the US government should and will react — including by tracking individuals via their technology and repatriating cash from tech companies like Apple. Palihapitiya says businesses should make sure they have at least 36 months worth of cash on hand to weather this recession and its slow recovery period and predicts the US will need to devote an entire year’s GDP to combat covid-19. He criticizes the corporate “shenanigans” that will make economic recovery harder says he’s done investing for at least nine months, because anyone trying to do deals now will be “decapitated.” Plus: What we can all learn right now from the histories of the Great Depression and the 2008 financial crisis, and which industries will come out of this crisis stronger than before?
Asia’s second wave
March 24, 2020 | Social Capital CEO Chamath Palihapitiya talks with Recode’s Kara Swisher about how long it will take to recover from the coronavirus crisis, its impact on startups,
Is Amazon primed for coronavirus?
March 24, 2020 | How the tech giant is responding to the pandemic, and what it says about Amazon as a company.
Fighting coronavirus with corporate conscription
March 24, 2020 | Jane, Dara, and Matt on the Defense Production Act, wartime mobilization, and pandemic-induced autarky.
Giving birth in a pandemic
March 23, 2020 | Vox’s Julia Belluz went from covering the global coronavirus pandemic to giving birth in the middle of it. (Transcript here.) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
An economic crisis like we’ve never seen
March 23, 2020 | “What is happening,” writes Annie Lowrey, “is a shock to the American economy more sudden and severe than anyone alive has ever experienced.”
It’s also different from what anyone alive has ever experienced. For many of us, the Great Recession is the closest analogue — but it’s not analogous at all. There, the economy’s potential was unchanged, but financial markets were in crisis. Here, we are purposefully freezing economic activity in order to slow a public health crisis. Early data suggests the economic crisis is going to far exceed any single week or quarter of the financial crisis. Multiple economists have told Ezra Klein that the nearest analogy to what we’re going through is the economy during World War II.
“I have a secret advantage when trying to understand moments of economic upheaval. I’m married to Annie Lowrey,” writes Ezra Klein. “I can give you the bio — staff writer at the Atlantic, author of Give People Money (which is proving particularly prophetic and influential right now) — but suffice to say she’s one of the clearest and most brilliant economic thinkers I know. Her viral piece on the affordability crisis is crucial for understanding what the economy really looked like before Covid-19, and she’s been doing some of the best work on the way Covid-19 will worsen the economic problems we had and create a slew of new ones. But this isn’t just a conversation about crisis. It’s also a conversation about how to respond. I wouldn’t call it hopeful — we’re not there yet. But constructive.”
The biggest experiment in online learning, ever
March 22, 2020 | COVID-19 has shut schools all over the country, and millions of American students are now learning at home, online. Are online tools enough to make up for lost classroom time?
Your coronavirus questions, answered
March 20, 2020 | On today’s show, we answer listener’s questions: Why is there no TP? Will we run out of food? Can I get the virus from sex? Should I finally write my will? How can I help?
How quickly can we treat covid-19?
March 19, 2020 | The scientific community is moving at unprecedented speed to develop a way to treat COVID-19. But how soon can a treatment or a vaccine be available to the public?
Six feet away
March 19, 2020 | Vox’s Brian Resnick (safely) meets Sean in a Washington, D.C. park to deliver the Five Commandments of social distancing.
“The virus is more patient than people are”
March 19, 2020 | Ron Klain served as the chief of staff to vice presidents Al Gore and Joe Biden. In 2014, President Barack Obama tapped him to lead the administration’s response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. He successfully oversaw a hellishly complex effort preparing domestically for an outbreak and surging health resources onto another continent to contain the disease.
But Klain is quick to say that the coronavirus is a harder challenge even than Ebola. The economy is in free fall. Entire cities have been told to shelter in place. And there’s no telling how long any of this will last. In this conversation, Klain answers Ezra Klein’s questions about the disease and how to respond to it, as well as questions many of you submitted.
TFW your dad gives you Covid-19
March 18, 2020 | Sean speaks to a Brooklyn family that has Covid-19, and Vox’s Dylan Scott explains how the United States is still trying to get its act together on testing.
Rescuing the economy from coronavirus
March 17, 2020 | Jane, Dara, and Matt discuss President Trump’s new more serious tone and competing economic stimulus proposals.
Can President Trump fix this?
March 17, 2020 | After dismissing coronavirus concerns for months, President Donald is pivoting to serious action to slow the crisis in the United States.
School’s out for Covid
March 16, 2020 | The country’s largest school district told a million kids to stay home during the coronavirus pandemic. It’s creating chaos for teachers, students, and parents.
Maggie Haberman: How coronavirus changes everything for President Trump
March 16, 2020 | Maggie Haberman, the White House correspondent for the New York Times, talks with Recode’s Kara Swisher about how the rest of the country has bypassed Trump’s failure to lead on the coronavirus outbreak; his exposure to COVID-19 at Mar-a-Lago and refusal to self-quarantine; and the toxic cocktail of practices in his administration: Infighting, tiptoeing, and sucking up.
She also discusses CDC director Anthony Fauci’s “unimpeachable” credibility vs. President Trump’s trust problem, how Vice President Pence is doing at the helm of the coronavirus task force, and how this period could have a bigger impact on Trump’s re-election chances than previous crises. Plus: Who is actually running things at the White House right now, and can Trump operate his campaign without mass rallies?
Weeds 2020: The coronavirus election
March 14, 2020 | Ezra and Matt on dueling pandemic response plans from Sanders and Biden, and Trump’s disastrous speech.
Living in lockdown
March 14, 2020 | Italy has quarantined the whole country in an effort to slow the spread of coronavirus. Vox’s Julia Belluz explains why the US might look like Italy soon.
Ron Klain: The coronavirus outbreak is just getting started in the US
March 13, 2020 | Epidemic co-host Ron Klain, who led the White House’s ebola response under President Obama, talks to Recode’s Kara Swisher about how the COVID-19 outbreak will strain America’s healthcare system; how President Trump downplayed the crisis, rattling public confidence and delaying the country’s response; and the way people who work in the gig economy — including Uber drivers and food delivery workers — will be especially hurt by the situation. He also discusses the logic behind travel bans and limits of their efficacy, why it’s impossible for the US to completely cut itself off from China, and what Trump didn’t say in his Oval Office address, but should have. Klain, an adviser and former chief of staff to Joe Biden, also talks about the ex-vice president’s surprisingly successful presidential campaign and how it’s reckoning with Biden’s history of verbal flubs.
How to slow down coronavirus
March 12, 2020 | President Trump has banned most Europeans from traveling to the US. Vox’s Jen Kirby explains why that won’t stop the novel coronavirus from spreading, and Eliza Barclay tells us what we can do to slow the spread.
Every country for itself
March 12, 2020 | Zack, Jenn, and Alex record an episode on coronavirus from their respective homes, under self-isolation. They talk about the politics of Trump’s ban on European travel to the US and explore why the European Union seems to be neglecting to help Italy in its time of need. They also explain how the virus has led to a massive drop in oil prices — and why, at this particular time, this could seriously destabilize political systems around the world.
Coronavirus hits the markets
March 10, 2020 | The stock market’s going haywire. Major companies are telling their employees to stay home. Austin has canceled SXSW. Vox’s Matthew Yglesias says governments across the world have to act fast to save the global economy.
Does stopping coronavirus require more surveillance?
March 10, 2020 | The cost of China’s high-tech response to contain the coronavirus.
So you think you have Covid-19
March 6, 2020 | Thus far, the United States hasn’t been doing the best job of testing for the novel coronavirus. ProPublica’s Caroline Chen explains why.
The coronavirus rumor mill
March 5, 2020 | Can we stop the spread of coronavirus misinformation on social media?
Covid-19, explained by Carl (who has it)
March 3, 2020 | Carl Goldman was on the Diamond Princess cruise ship and now he has Covid-19. He speaks to Sean Rameswaram from a CDC quarantine in Omaha, Nebraska.
The floating petri dish
February 18, 2020 | One coronavirus. Two cruise ships. Lots of mistakes. The Japanese case shows us that quarantining people on a cruise ship to stop the spread of Covid-19 can backfire, while the Cambodia case suggests that letting people disembark and disperse around the world can create a public health nightmare. Find out what these cruise ship emergencies reveal about the largest outbreak.
Could coronavirus collapse Chinese communism?
February 13, 2020 | Zack Beauchamp and Alex Ward talk about the politics of the coronavirus outbreak in China: Why the Chinese government botched the initial response, why Chinese citizens are so angry about it, and the reasons why the problems with this response are inherent to the current Chinese governance model. They then debate the claim from many analysts that this is the most serious crisis for China’s regime since the 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising — and the (low) probability that this could trigger another revolution-minded uprising.
How will the coronavirus outbreak end?
February 6, 2020 | In 2015, Dr. Vineet Menachery said a SARS-like virus could spread to humans more easily than previously believed. Now he explains what we can do to stop it.
An AI warned about coronavirus before the CDC
February 4, 2020 | How AI could predict the next big outbreak.
You can check out our guide to news of the coronavirus outbreak here.


vox--2020-03-17--A coronavirus outbreak in jails or prisons could turn into a nightmare

The next site of a deadly coronavirus outbreak may not be a cruise ship , conference , or school .
It could be one of America ’ s thousands of jails or prisons .
Just about all the concerns about coronavirus ’ s spread in packed social settings apply as much , if not more , to correctional settings .
In a prison , multiple people can be placed in one cell .
Hallways and gathering places are often small and tight ( often deliberately so , to make it easier to control inmates ) .
There is literally no @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for social distancing or similar recommendations experts make to combat coronavirus .
Hand sanitizer can be contraband .
Such an outbreak could not only infect and kill hundreds or thousands of people in prison , but potentially spread to nearby communities as well .
Visitors and correctional staff could spread the disease when they go back home , and inmates could spread it when they ’ re released .
Even an outbreak contained within a jail or prison could strain nearby health care systems , as hundreds or thousands of people suddenly need @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can ’ t provide .
So if you want to “ flatten the curve ” to spread out the illness and avoid overwhelming health care systems , experts say , you should worry about coronavirus in prisons and jails .
In the US , the concern is particularly acute because America puts so many people in jail or prison .
The US locks up about 2.3 million people on any given day — the highest prison and jail population of any country in the world .
With an incarceration rate of 655 per @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people at nearly twice the rate of Russia , more than five times that of China , more than six times Canada and France , nearly nine times Germany , and almost 17 times Japan .
“ We can learn what works in terms of mitigation from other countries who have seen spikes in coronavirus already , but none of those countries have the level of incarceration that we have in the United States , ” Tyler Winkelman , a doctor and researcher at the University of Minnesota focused on health care and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s also a situation that ’ s particularly new to the US .
Since it dramatically ramped up its incarceration rates in the 1970s and ’ 80s , the country hasn ’ t faced an outbreak like Covid-19 , the disease caused by the novel coronavirus .
The closest point of comparison might be a bad flu season or the HIV/AIDS epidemic , but neither is closely comparable to a new virus that ’ s deadlier and more contagious than the common flu and can spread through limited contact .
Jails and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ They could release inmates , even temporarily , who don ’ t absolutely need to be there .
They could try to make handwashing and otherwise good hygiene easier for inmates and prison staff .
They should prepare to cancel activities , programming , or visits as an outbreak nears , replacing them with video conferences and phone calls when possible .
But as coronavirus spreads , the window to prepare is closing .
“ I ’ m incredibly worried , ” Wanda Bertram , a communications strategist for the Prison Policy Initiative @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is a matter of time before a prison or jail starts to suffer serious consequences of having a lot of people packed together , supervised by people that view them as a serious threat rather than a population to be cared for.
” She added , “ I don ’ t have a lot of faith that they ’ re going to do the right thing.
” A lot of countries are going to face new challenges in their jails and prisons due to the coronavirus pandemic .
But the US is unique @ @ @ @ @ @ @ millions of people incarcerated across thousands of jails , prisons , and other correctional facilities in America — any of which could become hotbeds for disease on their own .
It ’ s not just the number of people in jail and prison , but the number going in and out of them .
As criminal justice expert John Pfaff pointed out , roughly 5 million people go in and out of jails alone each year .
There are also visitors and correctional staff , who interact — sometimes in very limited spaces @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people can bring the virus in and take it out .
No other country faces a risk quite like this .
Even the states that incarcerate the least numbers of people in the US still lock up far more people than the vast majority of other countries : The Prison Policy Initiative in 2018 estimated that the incarceration rate of Massachusetts , the least carceral state , was more than double that of England and Wales and nearly triple that of South Korea .
So a prison outbreak would present a potentially deadly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which , on top of everything else , disproportionately suffers from chronic illnesses and other health conditions that could exacerbate Covid-19 .
“ It really is a matter of time before a prison or jail starts to suffer serious consequences of having a lot of people packed together , supervised by people that view them as a serious threat rather than a population to be cared for ” Jails and prisons also present an elevated risk for other types of facilities and institutions .
Winkelman , who works in the Hennepin County jail @ @ @ @ @ @ @ there is a lot of overlap between jailed and homeless populations .
Someone released from a jail , then , could infect people in a homeless shelter , or vice versa , causing an outbreak that could bounce back and forth between both places , infecting far more people than would be in a jail or homeless shelter alone .
But even if an outbreak is contained to a jail or prison , the effects could spill over outside .
“ All of these mitigation strategies — of closing schools , stopping conferences @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the speed at which people get the virus so that we don ’ t overwhelm our health care system , ” Winkelman said .
“ If Covid spreads in a large , thousand-person facility , and within five days you have a thousand people with multiple chronic conditions who just got the virus , that has the potential to really overwhelm a health care system.
” One problem is that jails and prisons notoriously do a bad job providing health care to inmates .
As a CNN investigation last year revealed , these @ @ @ @ @ @ @ medical care , causing preventable complications and deaths .
In the context of Covid-19 , those kinds of delays could mean more time for a sick inmate to infect others .
This is in part by design : To get to prison doctors and nurses , inmates usually have to go through guards who often have different priorities .
“ The system of care that exists around any given person , whether they ’ re incarcerated or not , is not just doctors or nurses , but it ’ s also the people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ taking care of them on a day-to-day basis , ” Bertram said .
“ That ’ s why it really matters when those people are family members as opposed to when those people are correctional staff , who think of you as a threat.
” People in jail or prison also have less access to things we might take for granted in the free world that help prevent the spread of infection .
“ If you spend even just a couple of minutes in any jail or prison area , you would quickly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for handwashing don ’ t work , or that there are no paper towels or no soap , ” Homer Venters , former chief medical officer for New York City Correctional Health Services , told the Brennan Center , a criminal justice reform group .
“ In other words , handwashing , the most basic tool that incarcerated people have , won ’ t be consistently available .
Jail and prison administrators should be thinking right now about how they can put more infection control measures into place very quickly.
” Jails and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ jails and prisons are already taking some steps to prevent the spread of coronavirus , particularly banning visits .
But most jails and prisons still aren ’ t fully prepared , Winkelman said .
“ No jail or prison in the world has ever seen anything like this .
There are policies in place to handle influenza , but we don ’ t have , historically , policies around what to do if prisons and jails can ’ t slow down the spread of a virus in a correctional facility.
” So what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ recent guidance by the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs , which he called the best he ’ s seen so far .
The guidance is especially relevant for Washington state , which has the second-highest number of reported Covid-19 cases in the US after New York state .
One recommendation : release some inmates .
“ Are there people you can release on their own recognizance ?
Do you have a priority list ( who do you release if you need to downsize by 5 % ?
10 % ?
etc @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ Are there alternatives to arrest for certain crimes , or , in dire situations , are there crimes for which your patrol division will not arrest ?
” Another possibility is a furlough , in which some inmates are released temporarily , particularly those who are older and have health conditions that could make Covid-19 more dangerous .
This isn ’ t unheard of .
Iran , for example , drew headlines for temporarily releasing 70,000 inmates as it deals with one of the world ’ s worst outbreaks , with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , after China and Italy .
And local criminal justice officials in San Francisco are pushing for similar action there .
The goal , however , should be to release inmates before an outbreak gets bad .
Once an outbreak begins , after all , releasing inmates could spread the disease outside , especially since coronavirus can spread even if someone doesn ’ t have symptoms .
Another possibility is for jails and prisons to try social distancing where they can .
For visitations , jails and prisons could host meetings in non-contact @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or phone calls in the meantime .
In other areas , they could push staff to stay home when they ’ re sick ( including by providing paid sick leave ) , work from home if possible , and temporarily curtail or cut activities or programming for inmates .
Prisons and jails could also make self-care like hand washing and cleaning easier , and make medical services more accessible .
Initially screening and testing inmates , and subsequently isolating them and those they may have come in contact with if they test positive @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Covid-19 in jails and prisons , just like it is in the outside world .
At the same time , it ’ s important for jails and prisons to not get too carried away , including with inmates who prove to be sick .
“ Inmates in isolation should have ample access to comfort , entertainment , and activity-related materials allowed by their custody level , ” the guidance from the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs explained .
“ An important reason for this suggestion is that you want to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ notify medical staff as early as possible if they experience symptoms of infection .
Fear of being placed in an overly-restrictive cell may delay their notification , which is counterproductive.
” Above all , though , jails and prisons should take coronavirus as a serious threat — not just to themselves , but the greater public too — and work with public health officials accordingly .
“ It ’ s an exaggerated version of what we talk about all the time when we talk about the public health impact of mass incarceration — @ @ @ @ @ @ @ just something that puts incarcerated people in danger but something that puts whole communities in danger , ” Bertram argued .
“ You ’ re creating hotbeds of illness , and you ’ re creating damage that ’ s eventually going to have to be borne by these people and their families once they ’ re released .
So it ’ s really a concern for everyone .
”

The next site of a deadly coronavirus outbreak may not be a cruise ship, conference, or school. It could be one of America’s thousands of jails or prisons.
Just about all the concerns about coronavirus’s spread in packed social settings apply as much, if not more, to correctional settings. In a prison, multiple people can be placed in one cell. Hallways and gathering places are often small and tight (often deliberately so, to make it easier to control inmates). There is literally no escape, with little to no space for social distancing or similar recommendations experts make to combat coronavirus. Hand sanitizer can be contraband.
Such an outbreak could not only infect and kill hundreds or thousands of people in prison, but potentially spread to nearby communities as well. Visitors and correctional staff could spread the disease when they go back home, and inmates could spread it when they’re released.
Even an outbreak contained within a jail or prison could strain nearby health care systems, as hundreds or thousands of people suddenly need medical care that jails and prisons themselves can’t provide.
So if you want to “flatten the curve” to spread out the illness and avoid overwhelming health care systems, experts say, you should worry about coronavirus in prisons and jails.
In the US, the concern is particularly acute because America puts so many people in jail or prison. The US locks up about 2.3 million people on any given day — the highest prison and jail population of any country in the world. With an incarceration rate of 655 per 100,000 people, the US locks up people at nearly twice the rate of Russia, more than five times that of China, more than six times Canada and France, nearly nine times Germany, and almost 17 times Japan.
“We can learn what works in terms of mitigation from other countries who have seen spikes in coronavirus already, but none of those countries have the level of incarceration that we have in the United States,” Tyler Winkelman, a doctor and researcher at the University of Minnesota focused on health care and criminal justice, told me.
It’s also a situation that’s particularly new to the US. Since it dramatically ramped up its incarceration rates in the 1970s and ’80s, the country hasn’t faced an outbreak like Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. The closest point of comparison might be a bad flu season or the HIV/AIDS epidemic, but neither is closely comparable to a new virus that’s deadlier and more contagious than the common flu and can spread through limited contact.
Jails and prisons still have time to prepare. They could release inmates, even temporarily, who don’t absolutely need to be there. They could try to make handwashing and otherwise good hygiene easier for inmates and prison staff. They should prepare to cancel activities, programming, or visits as an outbreak nears, replacing them with video conferences and phone calls when possible.
But as coronavirus spreads, the window to prepare is closing.
“I’m incredibly worried,” Wanda Bertram, a communications strategist for the Prison Policy Initiative, told me. “It really is a matter of time before a prison or jail starts to suffer serious consequences of having a lot of people packed together, supervised by people that view them as a serious threat rather than a population to be cared for.”
She added, “I don’t have a lot of faith that they’re going to do the right thing.”
Mass incarceration makes the coronavirus risk worse
A lot of countries are going to face new challenges in their jails and prisons due to the coronavirus pandemic. But the US is unique, because mass incarceration has led to millions of people incarcerated across thousands of jails, prisons, and other correctional facilities in America — any of which could become hotbeds for disease on their own.
It’s not just the number of people in jail and prison, but the number going in and out of them. As criminal justice expert John Pfaff pointed out, roughly 5 million people go in and out of jails alone each year. There are also visitors and correctional staff, who interact — sometimes in very limited spaces — with inmates. Any of these people can bring the virus in and take it out.
No other country faces a risk quite like this. Even the states that incarcerate the least numbers of people in the US still lock up far more people than the vast majority of other countries: The Prison Policy Initiative in 2018 estimated that the incarceration rate of Massachusetts, the least carceral state, was more than double that of England and Wales and nearly triple that of South Korea.
So a prison outbreak would present a potentially deadly risk to a relatively massive population, which, on top of everything else, disproportionately suffers from chronic illnesses and other health conditions that could exacerbate Covid-19.
“It really is a matter of time before a prison or jail starts to suffer serious consequences of having a lot of people packed together, supervised by people that view them as a serious threat rather than a population to be cared for”
Jails and prisons also present an elevated risk for other types of facilities and institutions. Winkelman, who works in the Hennepin County jail and local homeless shelters, noted that there is a lot of overlap between jailed and homeless populations. Someone released from a jail, then, could infect people in a homeless shelter, or vice versa, causing an outbreak that could bounce back and forth between both places, infecting far more people than would be in a jail or homeless shelter alone.
But even if an outbreak is contained to a jail or prison, the effects could spill over outside.
“All of these mitigation strategies — of closing schools, stopping conferences, decreasing travel — are to slow the speed at which people get the virus so that we don’t overwhelm our health care system,” Winkelman said. “If Covid spreads in a large, thousand-person facility, and within five days you have a thousand people with multiple chronic conditions who just got the virus, that has the potential to really overwhelm a health care system.”
One problem is that jails and prisons notoriously do a bad job providing health care to inmates. As a CNN investigation last year revealed, these facilities often deny or delay even basic medical care, causing preventable complications and deaths. In the context of Covid-19, those kinds of delays could mean more time for a sick inmate to infect others.
This is in part by design: To get to prison doctors and nurses, inmates usually have to go through guards who often have different priorities.
“The system of care that exists around any given person, whether they’re incarcerated or not, is not just doctors or nurses, but it’s also the people who are in their immediate vicinity and taking care of them on a day-to-day basis,” Bertram said. “That’s why it really matters when those people are family members as opposed to when those people are correctional staff, who think of you as a threat.”
People in jail or prison also have less access to things we might take for granted in the free world that help prevent the spread of infection.
“If you spend even just a couple of minutes in any jail or prison area, you would quickly find that many of the sinks there for handwashing don’t work, or that there are no paper towels or no soap,” Homer Venters, former chief medical officer for New York City Correctional Health Services, told the Brennan Center, a criminal justice reform group. “In other words, handwashing, the most basic tool that incarcerated people have, won’t be consistently available. Jail and prison administrators should be thinking right now about how they can put more infection control measures into place very quickly.”
Jails and prisons should prepare while they can
Some jails and prisons are already taking some steps to prevent the spread of coronavirus, particularly banning visits.
But most jails and prisons still aren’t fully prepared, Winkelman said. “No jail or prison in the world has ever seen anything like this. There are policies in place to handle influenza, but we don’t have, historically, policies around what to do if prisons and jails can’t slow down the spread of a virus in a correctional facility.”
So what can they do? Winkelman pointed to recent guidance by the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs, which he called the best he’s seen so far. The guidance is especially relevant for Washington state, which has the second-highest number of reported Covid-19 cases in the US after New York state.
One recommendation: release some inmates. “Are there people you can release on their own recognizance? Do you have a priority list (who do you release if you need to downsize by 5%? 10%? etc.)?” the guidance asked. “Are there alternatives to arrest for certain crimes, or, in dire situations, are there crimes for which your patrol division will not arrest?” Another possibility is a furlough, in which some inmates are released temporarily, particularly those who are older and have health conditions that could make Covid-19 more dangerous.
This isn’t unheard of. Iran, for example, drew headlines for temporarily releasing 70,000 inmates as it deals with one of the world’s worst outbreaks, with the third-highest number of confirmed coronavirus cases, after China and Italy. And local criminal justice officials in San Francisco are pushing for similar action there.
The goal, however, should be to release inmates before an outbreak gets bad. Once an outbreak begins, after all, releasing inmates could spread the disease outside, especially since coronavirus can spread even if someone doesn’t have symptoms.
Another possibility is for jails and prisons to try social distancing where they can. For visitations, jails and prisons could host meetings in non-contact rooms, or move visits to video or phone calls in the meantime. In other areas, they could push staff to stay home when they’re sick (including by providing paid sick leave), work from home if possible, and temporarily curtail or cut activities or programming for inmates.
Prisons and jails could also make self-care like hand washing and cleaning easier, and make medical services more accessible. Initially screening and testing inmates, and subsequently isolating them and those they may have come in contact with if they test positive, is crucial to stop the spread of Covid-19 in jails and prisons, just like it is in the outside world.
At the same time, it’s important for jails and prisons to not get too carried away, including with inmates who prove to be sick.
“Inmates in isolation should have ample access to comfort, entertainment, and activity-related materials allowed by their custody level,” the guidance from the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs explained. “An important reason for this suggestion is that you want to do everything possible to encourage inmates to notify medical staff as early as possible if they experience symptoms of infection. Fear of being placed in an overly-restrictive cell may delay their notification, which is counterproductive.”
Above all, though, jails and prisons should take coronavirus as a serious threat — not just to themselves, but the greater public too — and work with public health officials accordingly.
“It’s an exaggerated version of what we talk about all the time when we talk about the public health impact of mass incarceration — when we say that this is not just something that puts incarcerated people in danger but something that puts whole communities in danger,” Bertram argued. “You’re creating hotbeds of illness, and you’re creating damage that’s eventually going to have to be borne by these people and their families once they’re released. So it’s really a concern for everyone.”