Newspaper & online reporters and analysts explore the cultural and news stories of the week, with photos frequently added by Esco20, and reveal their significance (with a slant towards Esco 20's opinions)
China’s economy slowed to 4.9 percent in the third quarter compared to the same period last year, a steep decline from nearly 8 percent growth the previous quarter, due to a number of problems including supply chain disruptions, power outages, and a new limit on debt for real estate developers. [The Week / Catherine Garcia]
Amid soaring prices, the Chinese government ordered several provinces to ration electricity supply, causing blackouts that have decreased labor output as factories are forced to shut down. To make matters worse, severe floods in China’s biggest coal-producing region have also limited productivity, further raising costs, in a downturn experts say may continue in the months to come. [BBC / Katie Silver]
Further adding to the country’s woes: China’s government limited how much debt property developers can take on. Now, Evergrande, a massive Chinese real estate company and the world’s most indebted firm, could default on its loans, which could damage the global economy. [CNBC / Weizhen Tan]
So far, Chinese government officials are blaming the country’s economic struggles on international problemssuch as the continuing coronavirus pandemic. [Washington Post / Eva Dou]
The pandemic did bring one economic bright spot for China, as Chinese exports rose 28.1 percent in September compared to the same period last year. The increase was driven by global consumer spending on products made in China as much of the world locked down due to the spread of the delta variant. [NYT / Keith Bradsher]
The talking point on the Sunday talk shows, pushed hard by Republicans and enabled by the media, was that Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden needs to explain his stance on “court-packing,” that is, adding more justices to the Supreme Court. Some Democrats have begun to talk about that outcome if the Republicans ram through Amy Coney Barrett in these last few days before the election.
This is bizarre first of all because the Republican Party did not even bother to write a platform this year to explain any policies at all for another Trump term, and Trump has been unable to articulate any plans for the future, while the idea of “court-packing” is a future hypothetical, dependent on what today’s Republican Senate does.
It’s bizarre because Trump is egging on his followers to violence—just today he urged supporters to “FIGHT FOR PRESIDENT TRUMP.” He is so misrepresenting the reality of the coronavirus pandemic that today Twitter tagged one of his tweets as a violation of Twitter rules and Dr. Anthony Fauci publicly objected to the Trump campaign’s misrepresentation of his statements about Trump’s handling of the pandemic. The campaign quoted Fauci out of context and without his permission, but campaign spokesperson Tim Murtaugh dismissed Fauci’s complaint, saying that they were indeed Fauci’s words, and Trump agreed. The New York Times has also continued its coverage of Trump’s taxes, showing him to be deep in what amounts to a pay-to-play scandal, in which he has essentially turned the U.S. government over to the highest bidder, revealing himself to be the most corrupt president in U.S. history.
And yet, today the chair of the Republican National Committee, Ronna McDaniel, told Margaret Brennan on CBS’s “Face The Nation” that she would not talk about Trump’s financial scandals because “You have a Democrat running on the biggest power grab – the absolute biggest power grab in the history of our country and reshaping the United States of America and not answering the question. That’s all we should be talking about.” The media seems to be taking this distracting bait.
What makes this so especially bizarre is that it is Republicans, not Democrats, who have made the courts the centerpiece of their agenda and have packed them with judges who adhere to an extremist ideology. Since the Nixon administration began in 1969, Democrats have appointed just 4 Supreme Court justices, while Republicans have appointed 15.
The drive to push the court to the right has led Republicans under Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to take the unprecedented step of refusing to hold a hearing for Barack Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court, the moderate Merrick Garland, on the grounds that it was wrong to appoint a Supreme Court justice during an election year. There have been 14 justices confirmed during election years in the past, but none has ever been confirmed after July before an election.
Obama nominated Garland in March 2016, but now, in October, McConnell is ramming through Trump’s nominee Amy Coney Barrett.
Americans are worried that the increasingly conservative cast to the court does not represent the country. Four, and now possibly five, of the current justices were appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote, and have been confirmed by senators who represent a minority of the American people: Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s Senate support represented just 44% of the country.
So there is talk of increasing the size of the Supreme Court. This is legal. The Constitution does not specify the size of the court, and it has changed throughout our history. But the current number of justices—9— has been around for a long time. It was established in 1869.
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Since Nixon, Republicans have made control of the nation’s courts central to their agenda. But while most voters tend to get distracted by the hot-button issues of abortion or gay rights, what Republican Supreme Courts have done is to consolidate the power of corporations.
In 1971, a corporate lawyer for the tobacco industry, Lewis Powell,[above] wrote a confidential memo for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce warning that corporate America needed to work harder to defend what he called “free enterprise.” Angry that activists like Ralph Nader had forced safety regulations onto automobile manufacturers and the tobacco industry, he believed that businessmen were losing their right to run their businesses however they wished. Any attack on “the enterprise system,” he wrote, was “a threat to individual freedom.”
Powell believed that business interests needed to advance their principles “aggressively” in universities, the media, religion, politics… and the courts. “The judiciary,” he wrote, “may be the most important instrument for social, economic and political change.” He wrote that “left” institutions like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), labor unions, and civil rights activists were winning cases that hurt business. “It is time for American business—which has demonstrated the greatest capacity in all history to produce and to influence consumer decisions—to apply its great talents vigorously to the preservation of the system itself.”
The following year, Nixon appointed Powell to the Supreme Court. During his tenure in office, Nixon would appoint three more justices. Nixon’s successor, Gerald Ford, would appoint another.
Democratic President Jimmy Carter, who followed Ford, appointed none.
Under President Ronald Reagan, cementing the interests of business in the Supreme Court would become paramount. Reagan’s Attorney General, Edwin Meese, deliberately politicized the Department of Justice in an attempt, as he said, to “institutionalize the Reagan revolution so it can’t be set aside no matter what happens in future elections.” Reagan made 4 appointments to the Supreme Court.
During Reagan’s term, lawyers eager to push back on the judicial decisions of the post-WWII Supreme Court that had expanded civil rights and the rights of workers began to organize. They wanted to replace the current judges with ones who believed in “originalism” and who would thus cut regulations and expanded civil rights.
In 1982, law students at Yale, Harvard, and the University of Chicago organized the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies to advance a legal ideology that opposed what they believed was “judicial activism.” Judges who expanded rights through their interpretation of the laws were “legislating from the bench,” they believed, intruding on the rights of the legislative branch of the government.
By the time of President George W. Bush, the Federalist Society was enormously influential. Members of the society made up about half of his judicial appointments. The society also urged Bush to stop letting the American Bar Association rate judicial nominees, believing the ABA was too “liberal” and therefore rated conservative judges more harshly than others.
During the Obama administration, justices who were associated with the Federalist Society were deciding votes for the 2010 Citizens United decision permitting businesses unlimited contributions to political campaigns and the 2013 Shelby v. Holder decision gutting the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Under Trump, its power has grown even greater. Five of the 8 current members of the Supreme Court—Samuel Alito, John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh—and now Supreme Court nominee Amy Barrett, are members of the Federalist Society.
While Republicans desperately want to make the Barrett nomination about her religion, the reality is that the members of the Supreme Court who are wedded to an originalist interpretation of the document threaten far more than reproductive rights. Among other things, the court is taking up the Affordable Care Act just a week after the election.
Trump promised to bring China to heel. He didn’t. The result is a pitched conflict.
“Trump’s bet that he could tame China’s rise through a mix of personal charisma and dealmaking prowess has faltered in the fourth year of his presidency,” David Nakamura reports. “Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping … have not spoken since March. Tensions over the coronavirus pandemic have exposed Trump’s claims of friendship with Xi … Trump was on the precipice of declaring victory with his China strategy as recently as January, when he hosted senior Communist Party officials in a White House celebration of a modest trade pact. But the president has since shifted to attacking Beijing as an even greater danger than he suggested in 2016 … Yet Trump’s renewed tough talk has served as a tacit acknowledgment that his vow to bring China to heel has failed, even as he seeks to convince voters that [Biden] is not strong enough to stand up to Xi. … Trump has moved the U.S.-China relationship from one of skeptical cooperation to one of distrust and antagonism, leaving the world’s two major powers at odds on a range of economic and national security issues that are resonating around the globe."
North Korea’s massive, new intercontinental ballistic missile was paraded through the streets of Pyongyang over the weekend, a chilling reminder the regime poses a greater threat to the United States now than when Trump took office. Kim Jong Un has the capacity to strike our homeland. (Simon Denyer)
Heshy Tischler at a protest he organized on October 7th STEPHEN LOVEKIN/SHUTTERSTOCK
Four days after leading a violent mob against a journalist in clear view of NYPD officers, Heshy Tischler, the right-wing radio host and City Council candidate, was arrested by police outside his Borough Park home on Sunday night.
Tischler was charged with unlawful imprisonment and inciting a riot in connection with the assault of Hasidic journalist Jacob Kornbluh on October 7th, police said. Shortly after his arrest, Tischler's ultra-Orthodox supporters gathered outside Kornbluh's home, waving Trump flags and threatening him until the early hours of Monday morning.
Tischler, an outspoken Trump supporter and coronavirus denialist, has commanded the community's bubbling rage over Governor Andrew Cuomo's renewed lockdown measures, leading a string of protests that have erupted in violence against bystanders and journalists.
Within minutes of his arrest on Sunday, a post from Tischler's Twitter account revealed Kornbluh's address. Video shows hundreds of people gathered in the street and attempting to storm the building. A friend of Kornbluh's said the group stayed until 2 a.m.
Kornbluh, a veteran journalist with Jewish Insider, has drawn the ire of some in the community for his reporting on attempts to skirt social distancing restrictions during the pandemic.
On Wednesday night, Tischler urged a crowd to surround Kornbluh while chanting "moser" — a term for a Jewish informant, deserving of the death penalty, according to some religious texts. The mob repeatedly lunged at the reporter, pinning him against a wall, while kicking and spitting at him.
"Yeah he got beat up," one of the men involved in the beating told Gothamist afterward. "He's lucky to be alive."
On Friday, Tischler claimed he'd reached an agreement with NYPD to turn himself into police on Monday, after the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah.
According to Reverend Kevin McCall, a Black civil rights leader, Tischler had arranged with Chief of Detectives Rodney Harrison and Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez to surrender alongside McCall. Authorities changed their mind, McCall said, after Tischler claimed in a video that he was reconsidering the offer.
"You're arresting me when we made a deal," Tischler can be seen shouting on Sunday night, as police dragged him away in handcuffs. "We made a deal that I was going to be arrested tomorrow."
"This is serious crime," Rev. McCall told Gothamist. "If it was in a Black community, he would've been arrested immediately. Even after the mayor and governor called for his arrest, for him not to be in police custody says something about the New York City police department. Are they afraid of Heshy?"
As calls for inquiries and reparations spread, Beijing has responded aggressively, mixing threats with aid and adding to a growing mistrust of China. NY TIMES
Australia has called for an inquiry into the origin of the virus. Germany and Britain are hesitating anew about inviting in the Chinese tech giant Huawei. President Trump has blamed China for the contagion and is seeking to punish it. Some governments want to sue Beijing for damages and reparations.
Across the globe a backlash is building against China for its initial mishandling of the crisis that helped loose the coronavirus on the world, creating a deeply polarizing battle of narratives and setting back China’s ambition to fill the leadership vacuum left by the United States.
China, never receptive to outside criticism and wary of damage to its domestic control and long economic reach, has responded aggressively, combining medical aid to other countries with harsh nationalist rhetoric, and mixing demands for gratitude with economic threats.
The result has only added momentum to the blowback and the growing mistrust of China in Europe and Africa, undermining China’s desired image as a generous global actor.
Even before the virus, Beijing displayed a fierce approach to public relations, an aggressive style called “Wolf Warrior” diplomacy, named after two ultrapatriotic Chinese films featuring the evil plots and fiery demise of American-led foreign mercenaries.
With clear encouragement from President Xi Jinping and the powerful Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party, a younger generation of Chinese diplomats have been proving their loyalty with defiantly nationalist and sometimes threatening messages in the countries where they are based.
Since the virus, the tone has only toughened, a measure of just how serious a danger China’s leaders consider the virus to their standing at home, where it has fueled anger and destroyed economic growth, as well as abroad.
Trump has pressed American intelligence agencies to find the source of the virus, suggesting it might have emerged accidentally from a Wuhan weapons lab, although most intelligence agencies remain skeptical. And he has expressed interest in trying to sue Beijing for damages, with the United States seeking $10 million for every American death.
“From Beijing’s point of view, this contemporary call is a historic echo of the reparations paid after the Boxer Rebellion,” said Theresa Fallon, director of the Centre for Russia Europe Asia Studies, referring to the anti-imperialist, anti-Christian and ultranationalist uprising around 1899-1901 in China that ended in defeat, with huge reparations for eight nations over the next decades. “The party’s cultivation of the humiliation narrative makes it politically impossible for Xi to ever agree to pay any reparations.”
Instead, it has been imperative for Mr. Xi to turn the narrative around, steering it from a story of incompetence and failure — including the suppression of early warnings about the virus — into one of victory over the illness, a victory achieved through the unity of the party.
In the latest iteration of the new Chinese narrative, the enemy — the virus — did not even come from China, but from the U.S. military, an unsubstantiated accusation made by China’s combative Foreign Ministry spokesman, Zhao Lijian.
Chinese diplomats are encouraged to be combative by Beijing, said Susan Shirk, a China scholar and director of the 21st Century China Center at the University of California, San Diego. The promotion of Mr. Zhao to spokesman and his statement about the U.S. Army “signals to everyone in China that this is the official line, so you get this megaphone effect,” she said, adding that it makes any negotiations more difficult.
But in the longer run, China is seeding mistrust and damaging its own interests, said Ms. Shirk, who is working on a book called “Overreach,” about how China’s domestic politics have derailed its ambitions for a peaceful rise as a global superpower.
“As China started getting control over the virus and started this health diplomacy, it could have been the opportunity for China to emphasize its compassionate side and rebuild trust and its reputation as a responsible global power,” she said. “But that diplomatic effort got hijacked by the Propaganda Department of the party, with a much more assertive effort to leverage their assistance to get praise for China as a country and a system and its performance in stopping the spread of the virus.”
In recent days, Chinese state media has run numerous inflammatory statements, saying that Australia, after announcing its desire for an inquiry into the virus, was “gum stuck to the bottom of China’s shoe.” Beijing warned that Australia risked long-term damage to its trading partnership with China, which takes a third of Australia’s exports.
In European countries like Germany, “the mistrust of China has accelerated so quickly with the virus that no ministry knows how to deal with it,” said Angela Stanzel, a China expert with the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.
In Germany, as in Britain, in addition to new questions about the advisability of using Huawei for new 5G systems, worries have also grown about dependency on China for vital materials and pharmaceuticals.
The MTA will soon cease overnight subway service, an unprecedented disruption that will allow crews to disinfect trains more frequently to help slow the spread of coronavirus.
In a joint press conference on Thursday, Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio said that subways will not run between the hours of 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. for the duration of the pandemic. The indefinite shutdown will begin the morning of May 6th.
Subway ridership has plummeted by 92 percent since the COVID-19 crisis began, and only 10,000 people were using the system during the overnight window, officials said. The MTA will provide buses, for-hire vehicles and "dollar vans" for essential workers traveling at night.
The bombshell announcement follows Cuomo's demand on Wednesday that the MTA begin disinfecting trains on a nightly basis. The governor singled out the number of homeless New Yorkers seeking shelter in the transit system, describing their presence "disgusting and disrespectful."
De Blasio said the curtailed hours would allow for the city to better address that "unacceptable reality." Both state police and NYPD officers will provide a "robust and sustainable" presence during the overnight shutdown, the governor said.
Metro North and the Long Island Railroad trains will also be disinfected regularly, but without service interruptions.
Transit advocates cautioned that the subway shutdown should be a short-term intervention, and must be paired with increased bus service for frontline workers.
Another 3.8 million Americans lose jobs as US unemployment continues to grow
Pace of job losses appears to be slowing but figures increase and many people yet to receive benefits as backlog hits US system
Another 3.8 million people lost their jobs in the US last week as the coronavirus pandemic continued to batter the economy. The pace of layoffs appears to be slowing, but in just six weeks an unprecedented 30 million Americans have now sought unemployment benefits and the numbers are still growing.
The latest figures from the labor department released on Thursday showed a fourth consecutive week of declining claims. While the trend is encouraging, the rate of losses means US unemployment is still on course to reach levels unseen since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
The figures are also still undercounting the number of people out of work. Some states are still dealing with backlogs of claims after their systems were overwhelmed by the massive volume of applications.
Florida has become a notable black spot. As of Tuesday the state had received more than 1.9 million claims and processed just over 664,000, one of the slowest rates in the nation. Intelligence report concludes Covid-19 was not 'manmade or genetically modified'
The office of the director of national intelligence said the intelligence community does not believe coronavirus was manmade. The new statement comes amid reports that Trump has asked intelligence officials to investigate whether the virus originated from a Chinese government laboratory. Trump implied that he’d seen evidence proving the unproven theory that the coronavirus originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. He also repeated claims that China favored Joe Biden over him in the election,
Most epidemiologists believe that a natural transmission of the novel coronavirus from animal to human remains the most likely explanation for the pandemic’s origin.
Trump, under fire about coronavirus response, looks to shift blame to China
The Trump administration is reportedly pressuring the US intelligence community to seek out evidence supporting an unsubstantiated theory that the coronavirus pandemic has its origins in a Chinese government lab in Wuhan. [NY Times]
Simultaneously, the administration is said to be looking for ways to punish China for its response to the initial coronavirus outbreak. Administration officials have floated several strategies, including clearing the way for Covid-19 victims to sue the country and unilaterally canceling part of the US debt to China. [Washington Post]
Both actions are part of a broader strategy by the GOP: A memo obtained last week by Politico instructed Republican Senate candidates to shift their focus to attacking China rather than defending President Trump’s response to the pandemic. [Politico]
Although Trump has taken an increasingly hostile stance toward China in recent days, a month ago, the president complimented the country’s handling of the coronavirus crisis. Donald J. Trump(@realDonaldTrump)
Just finished a very good conversation with President Xi of China. Discussed in great detail the CoronaVirus that is ravaging large parts of our Planet. China has been through much & has developed a strong understanding of the Virus. We are working closely together. Much respect!
Armed protestors demonstrated against the extension of shelter in place orders in Michigan.
The demonstrators, some of whom were carrying assault rifles, compared the state’s Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer to Hitler.
Gov. Whitmer of Michigan, a prime political target in partisan clashes over stay-at-home orders during the coronavirus outbreak, signed three executive orders on Thursday to reinstate a state of emergency during the coronavirus pandemic.
The moves, which put into place a new state of emergency through May 28, were in response to the Republican-led State Legislature’s refusal to extend the original emergency declaration on the day it was set to expire.
Republican lawmakers have tried to strip the governor’s power to declare a state of emergency, which underpins the stay-at-home order. Michigan has had more Covid-19 deaths than every state except New York and New Jersey. “By refusing to extend the emergency and disaster declaration, Republican lawmakers are putting their heads in the sand and putting more lives and livelihoods at risk,” Ms. Whitmer, a Democrat, said in a statement. “I’m not going to let that happen.”
A tightly packed crowd of protesters, some carrying rifles, attempted to enter the floor of the legislative chamber, and were held back by a line of state police and capitol staff, according to video footage posted by local journalists. “Let us in! Let us in!” the protesters chanted, as they stood shoulder-to-shoulder inside the statehouse. Few of them were wearing face masks. FBI notes on Michael Flynn unlikely to convince judge he was entrapped, legal experts say
The notes, taken by a former senior FBI official, fuel expectations of a pardon for President Trump's former national security adviser.
New Jersey is reporting more new daily deaths than any other state.
New Jersey reported 460 new virus-related deaths on Thursday, more than any other state in the nation. The state is now reporting more new deaths than neighboring New York, which saw 306 new deaths on Thursday, less than half of what it was reporting each day when the outbreak peaked there this month.
Gov. Gavin Newsom of California on Thursday shut down the beaches in Orange County,rolling back earlier attempts at giving people there a chance to stroll along the shore while staying a safe distance from one another. But Alabama moved to reopen its beaches, and Texas will do the same in parts of the state on Friday, even as health experts warn that doing so could produce a surge in new virus cases.
“This disease isn’t going away,” Mr. Newsom warned, noting that the pandemic had claimed at least 95 lives in California in the previous 24 hours.
Jobs Figures Show the Breadth of the Economic Ruin
The data underscore the impact on every corner of the economy: hotels and restaurants, retailers, manufacturers and white-collar strongholds.
Even as political leaders wrangle over how and when to restart the American economy, the coronavirus pandemic’s devastation became more evident Thursday with more than 5.2 million workers added to the tally of the unemployed.
In the last four weeks, the number of unemployment claims has reached 22 million — roughly the net number of jobs created in a nine-and-a-half-year stretch that began after the last recession and ended with the pandemic’s arrival.
The latest figure from the Labor Department, reflecting last week’s initial claims, underscores how the downdraft has spread to every corner of the economy. The mounting unemployment numbers seem certain to add to pressure to lift some restrictions on business activity. President Trump on Thursday announced new guidelines for states eager to reopen, but many governors and health experts are more cautious.
If quarterly unemployment hits 30 percent — as the president of one Federal Reserve Bank predicted — 15.4 percent of Americans will fall into poverty for the year, researchers found, even in the unlikely event that the economy immediately recovers. That level of poverty would exceed the peak of the Great Recession and add nearly 10 million people to the ranks of the poor. Trump says governors can reopen sooner than May 1.
Trump told the nation’s governors on Thursday that they could begin reopening businesses, restaurants and other elements of daily life by May 1 or earlier if they wanted, abandoning his threat to use what he had claimed was his absolute authority to impose his will on them.
On a day when the nation’s death toll from the coronavirus increased by more than 2,000 for a total over 30,000, the president released a set of nonbinding guidelines that envisioned a slow return to work and school over weeks or months. Based on each state’s conditions, the guidelines in effect guarantee that any restoration of American society will take place on a patchwork basis rather than on a one-size-fits-all prescription from Washington that some of the governors had feared in recent days.
Protesters in MAGA hats and flying Confederate flags swarm Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Utah, Wyoming and Virginia to demonstrate 'tyrannical' and 'unconstitutional' lockdown orders that are 'worse than the virus'
Protesters have continued to gather across the United States, ignoring social distancing rules to demonstrate against lockdown orders they call 'tyrannical' and 'worse than the virus'. Thousands of protesters drove to Michigan's State Capitol to protest Democratic Gov Whitmer Wednesday. In Utah protesters held signs that read 'Resist like it's 1776' and 'America will never be a socialist country'. And in Kentucky protesters shouted out as Democratic Governor Andy Beshear spoke to the state. A Reopen North Carolina Facebook page has 42,000 members; a protester was arrested there Wednesday. And a startling image from Ohio shows a baying crowd at the window of the Statehouse Atrium on Monday. In Virginia a protest against Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam's lockdown is scheduled for Thursday. In Wyoming protesters led calls to 'defend liberty' and urged Gov. Mark Gordon to not 'flatten the economy'.
Early research suggests that obesity is a big risk factor, but not asthma.
Early research on underlying health conditions associated with the virus has highlighted that obesity appears to be one of the most important predictors of severe cases of the coronavirus illness, but asthma does not.
New studies point to obesity as the most significant risk factor, after only older age, for patients being hospitalized with Covid-19, the illness caused by the virus. Some 42 percent of American adults — nearly 80 million people — live with obesity. Young adults with obesity appear to be at particular risk, studies show.
The research is preliminary, and not peer reviewed, but it buttresses anecdotal reports from doctors who say they have been struck by how many seriously ill younger patients of theirs with obesity are otherwise healthy.
For people with asthma, the outbreak of a disease that can lead to respiratory failure was particularly worrisome. Many health organizations have cautioned that asthmatics are most likely at higher risk for severe illness if they get the virus.
But data released this month by New York State shows that only about 5 percent of Covid-19 deaths in New York were of people who were known to also have asthma, a relatively modest amount. Nearly 8 percent of the U.S. population — close to 25 million people — has asthma, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Death tolls are growing at nursing homes in New York, New Jersey and Virginia.
The virus has been sweeping through nursing homes across the country and claiming the lives of thousands of residents who are particularly vulnerable — older people, many with underlying health issues, who are living in close quarters, as well as the people who care for them.
In New York and New Jersey, funeral directors have been unable to keep up with the death toll at one nursing home after another. In New York City, the administrator for a home in Queens said that 29 residents have died, but other workers said the toll was considerably higher. In a small New Jersey township, the police on Monday found 17 dead bodies inside a nursing home morgue designed to hold four people. This brought the death toll at the long-term care facility to 68, including 26 people who tested positive. The $349 billion lending program for small businesses has run out of funds.
A federal loan program intended to help small businesses keep workers on their payrolls has proved woefully insufficient, with a staggering 22 million Americans filing for unemployment in the last four weeks.
The program, called the Paycheck Protection Program, was in limbo as the Small Business Administration said on Thursday that it had run out of money. Millions of businesses were unable to apply for the loans while Congress struggled to reach a deal to replenish the funds.
Congress initially allocated $349 billion for the program, which was intended to provide loans to businesses with 500 or fewer employees. The money went quickly, with more than 1.4 million loans approved as of Wednesday evening.
China’s economy shrinks, ending nearly half a century of continuous growth.
Chinese officials on Friday said the world’s second-largest economy had shrunk in the first three months of the year, ending a streak of untrammeled growth that survived the Tiananmen Square crackdown, the SARS epidemic and even the global financial crisis.
The data reflects China’s dramatic efforts to stamp out the coronavirus, which included shutting down most factories and offices in January and February as the outbreak sickened tens of thousands of people.
The stark numbers make clear how monumental the challenge of getting the global economy back on its feet will be, and may help to explain why world leaders — including President Trump — are so eager to restart their own economies. Since it emerged from abject poverty and isolation more than 40 years ago, China has become perhaps the world’s most important growth engine.
Now China is trying to restart its $14 trillion economy, an effort that could give the rest of the world a much-needed shot in the arm. The coronavirus’s spread to the United States and Europe, which froze the economies there, has led to forecasts that the world’s output could shrink far more this year than it did even during the financial crisis.
At critical turning points, Chinese authorities put secrecy and order ahead of openly confronting the growing crisis and risking public alarm or political embarrassment.
Officials at the scene on Thursday where a man collapsed and died on a street near a hospital in Wuhan. It was unclear whether he had contracted the coronavirus.Credit...Hector Retamal/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
WUHAN, China — A mysterious illness had stricken seven patients at a hospital, and a doctor tried to warn his medical school classmates. “Quarantined in the emergency department,” the doctor, Li Wenliang, wrote in an online chat group on Dec. 30, referring to patients.
“So frightening,” one recipient replied, before asking about the epidemic that began in China in 2002 and ultimately killed nearly 800 people. “Is SARS coming again?”
In the middle of the night, officials from the health authority in the central city of Wuhan summoned Dr. Li, demanding to know why he had shared the information. Three days later, the police compelled him to sign a statement that his warning constituted “illegal behavior.”
The illness was not SARS, but something similar: a coronavirus that is now on a relentless march outward from Wuhan, throughout the country and across the globe, killing at least 304 people in China and infecting more than 14,380 worldwide.
The government’s initial handling of the epidemic allowed the virus to gain a tenacious hold. At critical moments, officials chose to put secrecy and order ahead of openly confronting the growing crisis to avoid public alarm and political embarrassment.
A reconstruction of the crucial seven weeks between the appearance of the first symptoms in early December and the government’s decision to lock down the city, based on two dozen interviews with Wuhan residents, doctors and officials, on government statements and on Chinese media reports, points to decisions that delayed a concerted public health offensive.
In those weeks, the authorities silenced doctors and others for raising red flags. They played down the dangers to the public, leaving the city’s 11 million residents unaware they should protect themselves. They closed a food market where the virus was believed to have started, but didn’t broadly curb the wildlife trade.
ImageThe Wuhan Red Cross Hospital on Jan. 25 — five days after China acknowledged a new virus could pass from human to human, but weeks after it had started to spread.Credit...Hector Retamal/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Their reluctance to go public, in part, played to political motivations as local officials prepared for their annual congresses in January. Even as cases climbed, officials declared repeatedly that there had likely been no more infections.
By not moving aggressively to warn the public and medical professionals, public health experts say, the Chinese government lost one of its best chances to keep the disease from becoming an epidemic.
“This was an issue of inaction,” said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations who studies China. “There was no action in Wuhan from the local health department to alert people to the threat.”
The first case, the details of which are limited and the specific date unknown, was in early December. By the time the authorities galvanized into action on Jan. 20, the disease had grown into a formidable threat.
Image Dr. Li Wenliang It is now a global health emergency. It has triggered travel restrictions around the world, shaken financial markets and created perhaps the greatest challenge yet for China’s leader, Xi Jinping. The crisis could upend Mr. Xi’s agenda for months or longer, even undermining his vision of a political system that offers security and growth in return for submission to iron-fisted authoritarianism.
On the last day of 2019, after Dr. Li’s message was shared outside the group, the authorities focused on controlling the narrative. The police announced that they were investigating eight people for spreading rumors about the outbreak.
That same day, Wuhan’s health commission, its hand forced by those “rumors,” announced that 27 people were suffering from pneumonia of an unknown cause. Its statement said there was no need to be alarmed.
“The disease is preventable and controllable,” the statement said.
Dr. Li, an ophthalmologist, went back to work after being reprimanded. On Jan. 10, he treated a woman for glaucoma. He did not know she had already been infected with the coronavirus, probably by her daughter. They both became sick. So would he.
Image Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan on Jan. 11. It was shut on Jan. 1 for an environmental and hygienic cleanup related to the outbreak.Credit...Noel Celis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Hazmat Suits and Disinfectants
Hu Xiaohu, who sold processed pork in the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, sensed by late December that something was amiss. Workers were coming down with nagging fevers. No one knew why but, Mr. Hu said, several were in hospital quarantine.
The market occupies much of a block in a newer part of the city, sitting incongruously near apartment buildings and shops catering to the growing middle class. It is a warren of stalls selling meats, poultry and fish, as well as more exotic fare, including live reptiles and wild game that some in China prize as delicacies. According to a report by the city’s center for disease control, sanitation was dismal, with poor ventilation and garbage piled on wet floors.
In hospitals, doctors and nurses were puzzled to see a cluster of patients with symptoms of a viral pneumonia that did not respond to the usual treatments. They soon noticed that many patients had one thing in common: They worked in Huanan market.
On Jan. 1, police officers showed up at the market, along with public health officials, and shut it down. Local officials issued a notice that the market was undergoing an environmental and hygienic cleanup related to the pneumonia outbreak. That morning, workers in hazmat suits moved in, washing out stalls and spraying disinfectants.
It was, for the public, the first visible government response to contain the disease. The day before, on Dec. 31, national authorities had alerted the World Health Organization’s office in Beijing of an outbreak.
City officials struck optimistic notes in their announcements. They suggested they had stopped the virus at its source. The cluster of illnesses was limited. There was no evidence the virus spread between humans.
“Projecting optimism and confidence, if you don’t have the data, is a very dangerous strategy,” said Alexandra Phelan, a faculty research instructor in the department of microbiology and immunology at Georgetown University.
“It undermines the legitimacy of the government in messaging,” she added. “And public health is dependent on public trust.”
Nine days after the market closed, a man who shopped there regularly became the first fatality of the disease, according to a report by the Wuhan Health Commission, the agency that oversees public health and sanitation. The 61-year-old, identified by his last name, Zeng, already had chronic liver disease and a tumor in his abdomen, and had checked into Wuhan Puren Hospital with a raging fever and difficulty breathing.
The authorities disclosed the man’s death two days after it happened. They did not mention a crucial detail in understanding the course of the epidemic. Mr. Zeng’s wife had developed symptoms five days after he did.
She had never visited the market.
Image The intensive care unit at Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University in Wuhan, China, on Jan. 24.Credit...Xiong Qi/Xinhua, via Associated Press
The Race to Identify a Killer
About 20 miles from the market, scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were studying samples from the patients checking into the city’s hospitals. One of the scientists, Zheng-Li Shi, was part of the team that tracked down the origins of the SARS virus, which emerged in the southern province of Guangdong in 2002.
As the public remained largely in the dark about the virus, she and her colleagues quickly pieced together that the new outbreak was related to SARS. The genetic composition suggested a common initial host: bats. The SARS epidemic began when a coronavirus jumped from bats to Asian palm civets, a catlike creature that is legally raised and consumed. It was likely that this new coronavirus had followed a similar path — possibly somewhere in or on the way to the Huanan market or another market like it.
Around the same time, Dr. Li and other medical professionals in Wuhan started trying to provide warnings to colleagues and others when the government did not. Lu Xiaohong, the head of gastroenterology at City Hospital No. 5, told China Youth Daily that she had heard by Dec. 25 that the disease was spreading among medical workers — a full three weeks before the authorities would acknowledge the fact. She did not go public with her concerns, but privately warned a school near another market.
By the first week of January, the emergency ward in Hospital No. 5 was filling; the cases included members of the same family, making it clear that the disease was spreading through human contact, which the government had said was not likely.
No one realized, the doctor said, that it was as serious as it would become until it was too late to stop it.
“I realized that we had underestimated the enemy,” she said.
At the Institute of Virology, Dr. Shi and her colleagues isolated the genetic sequence and the viral strain during the first week of January. They used samples from seven of the first patients, six of them vendors at the market.
On Jan. 7, the institute’s scientists gave the new coronavirus its identity and began referring to it by the technical shorthand 2019-nCoV. Four days later, the team shared the virus’s genetic makeup in a public database for scientists everywhere to use.
That allowed scientists around the world to study the virus and swiftly share their findings. As the scientific community moved quickly to devise a test for exposure, political leaders remained reluctant to act.
Image Wuhan on Jan. 27. The city went ahead with a giant potluck dinner in mid-January.Credit...Hector Retamal/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
‘Politics Is Always No. 1’
As the virus spread in early January, the mayor of Wuhan, Zhou Xianwang, was touting futuristic health care plans for the city.
It was China’s political season, when officials gather for annual meetings of People’s Congresses — the Communist Party-run legislatures that discuss and praise policies. It is not a time for bad news.
When Mr. Zhou delivered his annual report to the city’s People’s Congress on Jan. 7 against a backdrop of bright red national flags, he promised the city top-class medical schools, a World Health Expo, and a futuristic industry park for medical companies. Not once did he or any other city or provincial leader publicly mention the viral outbreak.
“Stressing politics is always No. 1,” the governor of Hubei, Wang Xiaodong, told officials on Jan. 17, citing Mr. Xi’s precepts of top-down obedience. “Political issues are at any time the most fundamental major issues.”
As the congress was taking place, the health commission’s daily updates on the outbreak said again and again that there were no new cases of infection, no firm evidence of human transmission and no infection of medical workers.
“We knew this was not the case!” said a complaint later filed with the National Health Commission on a government website. The anonymous author said he was a doctor in Wuhan and described a surge in unusual chest illnesses beginning Jan. 12.
Officials told doctors at a top city hospital “don’t use the words viral pneumonia on the image reports,” according to the complaint, which has since been removed. People were complacent, “thinking that if the official reports had nothing, then we were exaggerating,” the doctor explained. Even those stricken felt lulled into complacency.
When Dong Guanghe developed a fever on Jan. 8 in Wuhan, his family was not alarmed, his daughter said. He was treated in the hospital and sent home. Then, 10 days later, Mr. Dong’s wife fell ill with similar symptoms.
“The news said nothing about the severity of the epidemic,” said the daughter, Dong Mingjing. “I thought that my dad had a common cold.”
The government’s efforts to minimize public disclosure persuaded more than just untrained citizens.
“If there are no new cases in the next few days, the outbreak is over,” Guan Yi, a respected professor of infectious diseases at the University of Hong Kong, said on Jan. 15.
The World Health Organization’s statements during this period echoed the reassuring words of Chinese officials.
It had spread. Thailand reported the first confirmed case outside China on Jan. 13.
Image Health officials in Hangzhou, China, taking train passengers’ temperatures after they arrived from Wuhan on Jan. 23.Credit...China Daily, via Reuters
A City Besieged
The first deaths and the spread of the disease abroad appeared to grab the attention of the top authorities in Beijing. The national government dispatched Zhong Nanshan, a renowned and now-semiretired epidemiologist who was instrumental in the fight against SARS, to Wuhan to assess the situation.
He arrived on Jan. 18, just as the tone of local officials was shifting markedly. A health conference in Hubei Province that day called on medical workers to make the disease a priority. An internal document from Wuhan Union Hospital warned its employees that the coronavirus could be spread through saliva.
On Jan. 20, more than a month after the first symptoms spread, the current of anxiety that had been steadily gaining strength exploded into public. Dr. Zhong announced in an interview on state television that there was no doubt that the coronavirus spread with human contact. Worse, one patient had infected at least 14 medical personnel.
Mr. Xi, fresh from a state visit to Myanmar, made his first public statement about the outbreak, issuing a brief set of instructions.
It was only with the order from Mr. Xi that the bureaucracy leapt into action. At that point the death toll was three; in the next 11 days, it would rise above 200.
In Wuhan, the city banned tour groups from visiting. Residents began pulling on masks.
Guan Yi, the Hong Kong expert who had earlier voiced optimism that the outbreak could level off, was now alarmed. He dropped by one of the city’s other food markets and was shocked by the complacency, he said. He told city officials that the epidemic was “already beyond control” and would leave. “I hurriedly booked a departure,” Dr. Guan told Caixin, a Chinese news organization.
Two days later, the city announced that it was shutting itself down, a move that could only have been approved by Beijing.
In Wuhan, many residents said they did not grasp the gravity of the epidemic until the lockdown. The mass alarm that officials feared at the start became a reality, heightened by the previous paucity of information.
Crowds of people crushed the airport and train stations to get out before the deadline fell on the morning of Jan. 23. Hospitals were packed with people desperate to know if they, too, were infected.
“We didn’t wear masks at work. That would have frightened off customers,” Yu Haiyan, a waitress from rural Hubei, said of the days before the shutdown. “When they closed off Wuhan, only then did I think, ‘Oh, this is really serious, this is not some average virus.’”
Wuhan’s mayor, Zhou Xianwang, later took responsibility for the delay in reporting the scale of the epidemic, but said he was hampered by the national law on infectious diseases. That law allows provincial governments to declare an epidemic only after receiving central government approval. “After I receive information, I can only release it when I’m authorized,” he said.
Image Dr. Li in Wuhan Central Hospital on Friday.
The official reflex for suppressing discomforting information now appears to be cracking, as officials at various levels seek to shift blame for the government’s response.
With the crisis worsening, Dr. Li’s efforts are no longer viewed as reckless. A commentary on the social media account of the Supreme People’s Court criticized the police for investigating people for circulating rumors.
“It might have been a better way to prevent and control the new coronavirus today if the public had believed the ‘rumor’ then and started to wear masks and carry out sanitary measures and avoid the wild animal market,” the commentary said.
Dr. Li is 34 and has a child. He and his wife are expecting a second in the summer. He is now recovering from the virus in the hospital where he worked. In an interview via text messages, he said he felt aggrieved by the police actions.
“If the officials had disclosed information about the epidemic earlier,” he said, “I think it would have been a lot better. There should be more openness and transparency.”
Image Building a temporary field hospital in Wuhan on Thursday.Credit...Arek Rataj/Associated Press
This article is based on reporting and research by Elsie Chen, Sheri Fink, Claire Fu, Javier Hernandez, Zoe Mou, Amy Qin, Knvul Sheikh, Amber Wang, Yiwei Wang, Sui-Lee Wee, Li Yuan, Albee Zhang and Raymond Zhong.
Officials at the scene on Thursday where a man collapsed and died on a street near a hospital in Wuhan. It was unclear whether he had contracted the coronavirus.Credit...Hector Retamal/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The Wuhan Red Cross Hospital on Jan. 25 — five days after China acknowledged a new virus could pass from human to human, but weeks after it had started to spread.Credit...Hector Retamal/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Dr. Li Wenliang
Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan on Jan. 11. It was shut on Jan. 1 for an environmental and hygienic cleanup related to the outbreak.Credit...Noel Celis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The intensive care unit at Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University in Wuhan, China, on Jan. 24.Credit...Xiong Qi/Xinhua, via Associated Press
Wuhan on Jan. 27. The city went ahead with a giant potluck dinner in mid-January.Credit...Hector Retamal/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Health officials in Hangzhou, China, taking train passengers’ temperatures after they arrived from Wuhan on Jan. 23.Credit...China Daily, via Reuters
Dr. Li in Wuhan Central Hospital on Friday.
Building a temporary field hospital in Wuhan on Thursday.Credit...Arek Rataj/Associated Press