Sweden made headlines for never shutting down. Here’s what’s really happening there.

MEDIUM

To outsiders, life in Stockholm, Sweden, appears perfectly normal: Walk down a cobblestone street, and you may see two friends sitting at a cafe enjoying the spring air or a group of kids kicking a soccer ball in the park. Cars and bicyclists may zip by; a family may walk past you on their afternoon stroll.

Whereas most of the Western world has been in lockdown for weeks, Sweden has opted to forgo any sort of shelter-in-place policy in response to the coronavirus and instead allow businesses and parks to stay open and groups of under 50 to gather.

That’s not to say the country hasn’t been proactive at all. The policy in effect in Sweden is similar to what had been implemented in much of the United States before shelter-in-place orders were issued — and the one that will soon be in place in states that reopen. The Swedish government has recommended that people wash their hands frequently, maintain social distance, work from home if they can, and those who are elderly or more susceptible to Covid-19 stay home. The government recommended that universities switch to online teaching; they quickly followed course. Social distance is required by law in restaurants, and bar service is banned. The government changed its sick leave rules to encourage anyone who is feeling symptoms to stay home. “Instead of saying ‘close down all of society,’ we have looked at society and closed down… aspects of society,” where the disease is most likely to spread, Anders Tegnell, the epidemiologist at Sweden’s Public Health Agency in charge of recommending policy to the government, told The Daily Show. “I think that’s had a great effect.”

Sweden’s approach has been hailed by critics of American and European pandemic policies as a less restrictive — and less economically devastating — alternative to state or national shutdowns, but it’s also been lambasted by others as an unnecessarily risky strategy that has led Sweden to have the highest Covid-19 death toll among the Nordic nations. As more and more areas of the United States reopen, Sweden may not be so much an alternative as a glimpse of the future.As of Sunday afternoon, the country had 25,921 confirmed cases and 3,220 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. These are much higher figures than those of the country’s neighbors, but lower than those in some other wealthy Western European countries on both an overall and population-adjusted basis. Sweden also has suffered problems familiar to residents of countries that have had more severe outbreaks and stricter policies. Nursing homes have been hard hit, and Tegnell described Sweden’s failure to protect nursing home residents as its greatest shortcoming so far. Immigrant and ethnic minority communities also have suffered, due in part to their larger households. Just over half of all households in Sweden in 2016 consisted of only one person, while immigrants were substantially more likely than native-born residents to live in overcrowded conditions or multigenerational households.

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Even with the less aggressive containment measures, the economic effects of the virus have been severe for the country. Sweden’s National Institute for Economic Research projected that gross domestic product would contract by 7% in 2020 and the unemployment rate would rise to just over 10%. The large fall in consumer and business confidence, the institute said in a release, point “to a rapid and severe downturn, not least in large parts of the service sector.”

“The economy will shrink both due to a drop in exports and is already contracting due to lower consumption. But the underlying causes differ: The export sector is mostly affected by the international situation, whereas the drop in consumption is directly related to the government’s recommendation of social distancing,” said Lina Maria Ellegård, an economist at Lund University.

In the first three months of the year, the Swedish economy contracted by less than 1% — less than the United States’ fall — but the production of both goods and services declined in March. The car industry — one of Sweden’s major export sectors — along with real estate, hospitality, and restaurants led the way.

That’s because even without lockdowns or orders, the behavior of Swedes still changed — to an extent. According to data collected by Google and Apple, Swedes have cut back on their travel to places like stores and restaurants and decreased their use of transit-like buses substantially, though not as dramatically as their Nordic neighbors in Denmark. Still, travel over the Easter holiday fell by 90%, Tegnell said on The Daily Show.

Multiple experts in Sweden I spoke to agreed that because a recommendation made by Swedish leadership is culturally viewed as more of a demand, the freedoms allowed have not resulted in free-for-alls. “There’s a basic misconception that there’s one big huge after-ski party,” said Lars Trägårdh, a Swedish historian. “That’s not true.”

Sweden’s voluntary restrictions policy is made possible by the high levels of trust throughout Swedish society. “We have a lot of social trust and a lot of trust in the institutions, and the institutions have confidence in the citizens,” said Trägårdh. “That’s why we decided to have this voluntary approach as opposed to one that’s more hardcore.”

The photos circulating online don’t fully represent the broader reality on the ground either. “I’ve seen pictures in the newspapers and news media of what looks to be crowded restaurants in Stockholm. What I’ve seen is mostly pretty sparse restaurants. Every other table is empty, and there’s very little business,” said Bo Becker, an economist at the Stockholm School of Economics. “Life doesn’t go on as usual, but maybe the lockdown is less severe than in other countries.”

But even if Sweden’s policy of allowing businesses to open and people to move out and about is not that different from some policies American states have or will soon implement, there’s been one major difference: the schools. Schools for children up to age 15 have remained open, all the way down to daycares and preschool. “That makes a world of difference,” Trägårdh told me. “It’s a gender issue.”

Sweden has one of the highest rates of female participation in the labor force for rich countries. Forcing young children to stay home would put many mothers in a bind or even knock them out of the workforce entirely.

“Closing down schools works well if you are in a well-to-do, middle-class family that has a house and a garden and can afford to have one person staying at home,” Trägårdh said. “That may not look like a doable proposition if you are a single parent or do not make a lot of money.”

Shutting down daycare and schools could increase risk as well, Angner explained, by leading working parents to turn to their own parents for help. “If you close daycares, then either one parent has to stop working or grandma or grandpa shows up,” he said. But since the elderly are most at risk, it was even more important to keep schools and daycares open.

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Asother countries work through their peak infections, they will have to figure out how to reach a new status quo where the disease’s spread is still slow but restrictions can be lightened. “Now that everybody else is starting to shift toward opening up, people are talking about Sweden,” said Trägårdh. “Other Nordics are realizing you can’t keep schools closed forever. We’re in the long run here. It’s not a 60-meter race, it’s more like a marathon.”While Sweden has a higher death rate than its Nordic neighbors and other wealthy European nations like Germany, it has been lower than rates in the Netherlands, France, and the United Kingdom. According to the Financial Times’ figures, Sweden has seen an 18% jump in excess deaths since the start of the outbreak, while Denmark has seen a 5% rise. Excess deaths in England and Wales are up 37%.

“The data out of Finland, Norway, and Denmark looks much better,” said Angner. “But everything will hinge on what will happen next.”

There’s some evidence that Sweden has managed to take the heaviest blow from the virus already — about a fourth or fifth of the population of Stockholm may have been infected, which would put the infection rate at a level similar to that found in New York City, which has had many more deaths and been under a near-total lockdown for almost two months. On Tuesday, health officials in Stockholm said the number of new deaths linked to Covid-19 was slowly decreasing from one week to the next.The Swedish example carries both optimistic and pessimistic tidings for the United States as it embraces a partial, scattered reopening cheered on by the White House. It suggests that, even without punitive mandates, people can and will take measures to keep themselves safe from the disease. But even though people are protecting themselves without formal orders, the economy will be only slightly better off than it was under lockdown. Meanwhile, the American push to reopen is being driven by distrust of the government combined with the absence of robust safety-net programs to stem the economic bleeding. In the American context, Sweden’s example may be no example at all.

Trump Tweets and Golfs, but Makes No Mention of Virus’s Toll

NY TIMES, PETER BAKER

As President Trump’s motorcade pulled into his golf club in Virginia on an overcast Sunday, a small group of protesters waited outside the entrance. One held up a sign.

“I care do U?” it read. “100,000 dead.”

Mr. Trump and his advisers have said that he does, but he has made scant effort to demonstrate it this Memorial Day weekend. He finally ordered flags lowered to half-staff at the White House only after being badgered to do so by his critics and otherwise took no public notice as the American death toll from the coronavirus pandemic approached a staggering 100,000.

While the country neared six digits of death, the president who repeatedly criticized his predecessor for golfing during a crisis spent the weekend on the links for the first time since March. When he was not zipping around on a cart, he was on social media embracing fringe conspiracy theories, amplifying messages from a racist and sexist Twitter account and lobbing playground insults at perceived enemies, including his own former attorney general.

This was a death toll that Mr. Trump once predicted would never be reached. In late February, he said there were only 15 coronavirus cases in the United States, understating even then the actual number, and declared that “the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.” In the annals of the American presidency, it would be hard to recall a more catastrophically wrong prediction. Even after he later acknowledged that it would not be zero, he insisted the death toll would fall “substantially below the 100,000” mark.

As it stands now, the coronavirus has infected 1.6 million and taken so many lives it is as if an entire midsize American city — say Boca Raton, Fla., just to pick an example — simply disappeared. The toll is about to match the 100,000 killed in the United States by the pandemic of 1968 and is closing in on the outbreak of 1957-58, which killed 116,000. At this pace, it will stand as the country’s deadliest public health disaster since the great influenza of 1918-20 — all at the same time the nation confronts the most severe economic collapse since the Great Depression.

The historical comparisons are breathtaking. More Americans have died of the coronavirus in the last 12 weeks than died in the Vietnam and Korean Wars combined and nearly twice as many as died of battle wounds during World War I. The death toll has nearly matched the number of people killed by the initial blasts of the world’s first atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In terms of American deaths, it is the equivalent of 22 Iraq wars, 33 Sept. 11 attacks, 41 Afghanistan wars, 42 Pearl Harbors or 25,000 Benghazis.

Mr. Trump, who has been sharply criticized for a slow and initially ineffective response to the pandemic, focused on Sunday on the more recent progress, looking ahead, not behind. “Cases, numbers and deaths are going down all over the Country!” he exulted on Twitter.

Even that was not completely true. While total new cases nationally have begun declining, hospitalizations outside New York, New Jersey and Connecticut have increased slightly in recent days, as Mr. Trump’s own former Food and Drug Administration commissioner, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, pointed out.

Altogether, cases are falling in 14 states and Washington, D.C., but holding steady in 28 states and Guam while rising in eight states plus Puerto Rico, according to a New York Times database. The American Public Health Association said the 100,000 milestone was a time to reinforce efforts to curb the virus, not abandon them.

“This is both a tragedy and a call to action,” it said in a statement. “Infection rates are slowing overall in the U.S., but with 1.6 million cases across the nation in the past four months, the outbreak is far from over. New hot spots are showing up daily, and rates remain steady in at least 25 states.” 

Coffins in a viewing room at a funeral home in Elmhurst, Queens, last month.Credit...Stephen Speranza for The New York Times

The president’s critics said he would not be able to convince voters this fall that he should be celebrated for a death toll of 100,000 or more just because it could have been worse.

“It’s not the moving of the goal posts on loss of life that hurts Trump as much as the loss of life itself,” said Margie Omero, a Democratic pollster and principal at the firm GBAO. “The facts are what worry people — majorities hold Trump responsible for high death tolls, high unemployment and a lack of testing. And even more now than a month ago.”

On a three-day weekend in a stay-home era, when gatherings posed risks and remembrances of the war dead vied with mourning for the nearly 100,000 Americans who had died of the virus, the politics of the pandemic burst into fresh view.

President Trump visited Arlington National Cemetery on Monday morning for a wreath-laying ceremony, then traveled to Fort McHenry in Baltimore, where he spoke of the sacrifice of soldiers and described current service members as being “on the front lines of our war against this terrible virus.”

 Trump and the first lady, Melania Trump, did not wear masks, though the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has urged all Americans to wear them.

Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, did wear a mask when he emerged in public on Monday for his first public appearance since mid-March, when he began campaigning from his home.

He and his wife, Jill Biden, both in black masks, laid a wreath at a veterans memorial in Delaware in an unannounced visit. “Thanks for your service,” Mr. Biden said, saluting a small group of veterans and other onlookers from a distance.

If the country’s losses were on his mind this weekend, Mr. Trump did a good job of hiding it. His Twitter feed was full of everything but that. He tweeted or retweeted messages falsely implying that “Psycho Joe Scarborough,” the MSNBC host, murdered an aide in 2001; suggesting that Speaker Nancy Pelosi has denture problems and likes to “drink booze on the job”; and declaring that former Attorney General Jeff Sessions “had no courage” and “ran for the hills” by recusing himself from the Russia investigation in 2017 as required by ethics rules.

Mr. Trump reposted eight tweets from John K. Stahl, a conservative who ran unsuccessfully for Congress in California in 2012. Mr. Stahl has a history of racist and sexist posts, especially against black women like Senator Kamala Harris of California (“Willie’s Ho”); Stacey Abrams, the former candidate for governor of Georgia (“Shamu”); and Joy Reid, the MSNBC host (“butt ugly” and a “skank”).

Imperial College London predicted last week that the relaxation of quarantine measures encouraged by Mr. Trump “will lead to resurgence of transmission” and that “deaths over the next two-month period could exceed current cumulative deaths by greater than twofold” — in other words, another 200,000 deaths by August.

As the nation reaches this macabre milestone, that is the grim worry: That it is not the last one. “To me,” Dr. Frieden said, “the most important question is are we going to do what we need to do to prevent the next 100,000?”

Tired of being inside, many people flock to beaches for the unofficial start of summer.

Memorial Day crowds flocked to beaches, amusement parks, lakes and boardwalks on Monday, on the first long weekend since the pandemic began to tear through the United States, taking almost 100,000 lives.

For many, the day was an attempt to turn the page from the grim shutdowns of the past months to something closer to the traditional beginning of summer. Still, the juxtaposition of past and present was at times jarring.

At beaches and seaside arcades even in states where infections remained on the rise, many did not wear masks and disregarded social distancing.

In Florida, near Daytona Beach, hundreds of people had to be rescued from the surf over the long weekend as huge crowds took over beaches in Volusia County.

Videos of partygoers enjoying the weekend at Lake of the Ozarks, Mo., and Ocean City, Md. — often with little more than sunscreen and bathing suits to separate them — dismayed and angered many on social media. But the mayor of one resort town in Missouri said nothing could stop the defiance of social-distancing guidelines, short of shutting down the whole area.

Even in places where the weather was rainy or overcast, a beach trip offered a chance at a feeling of normalcy.

In New York City, beaches were still closed to swimming, though most shorelines in the region were open. Still, the relatively cool weather and public safety measures — most beaches were operating at half-capacity, and many had limited their use to locals only — dampened the urge to pack the sand.

But many people simply stayed home, unlike in years past, when they gathered on stoops and in public parks to barbecue and toast the arrival of the warmer season.

Judge rules against Florida Republican-'Pay to Vote' law blocking felons from voting until they pay legal fees.

A federal judge in Tallahassee ruled on Sunday night that Florida law can't stop felons from voting because they can't pay back any legal fees and restitution they owe.
The judge's decision could have deep ramifications as the state’s estimated 774,000 disenfranchised felons represent a significant voting bloc.

Florida is well known for razor-thin election margins, and many of those felons are people of colour and presumed to be Democrats, which could have a major impact on the 2020 election.
In 2018, Florida voters approved Amendment 4, restoring voting rights for felons in the state who have served their sentences.

A subsequent bill, passed by the state legislature and signed by Governor Ron DeSantis, attempted to define what it means to complete a prison sentence, requiring felons to pay all fines, restitution and other legal financial obligations before their sentences can be considered fully served.
In a 125-page ruling, US District Judge Robert Hinkle called the law a “pay-to-vote system” saying that court fees are a tax, and that it creates a new system for determining whether felons are eligible to vote.

Acknowledging the partisan nature of the bill, during a trial earlier this month Hinkle asked during the state's closing argument: “Why is it all the Republicans voted yes, and all the Democrats voted no?”
“That was not a coincidence,” he said. “It would be stunning if somebody told me that they did not realise that African Americans tend to vote Democratic.”
The governor's office is reviewing the ruling. “The court recognised that conditioning a person's right to vote on their ability to pay is unconstitutional,” Ms Ebenstein wrote in an email. “This ruling means hundreds of thousands of Floridians will be able to rejoin the electorate and participate in upcoming elections.”

Convicted murderers and rapists remain permanently barred from voting, regardless of financial debts.

 New York will pay death benefits for essential public workers who died fighting the virus.

New York’s state and local governments will provide death benefits to the families of essential workers who died fighting the virus, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said on Monday.

The public employees whose families would receive death benefits included health workers, police officers, firefighters, transit workers and emergency medical workers, the governor said. The benefits would be paid out of state and local pension funds.

“We want to make sure that we remember them, and we thank our heroes of today, and they’re all around us,” Mr. Cuomo said at his daily news briefing.

As people paused on Memorial Day to remember military personnel who died while serving the country, Mr. Cuomo linked the fallen service members to New York’s front-line workers, whom he called today’s “heroes.”

Mr. Cuomo also called on the federal government to provide funds to give hazard pay to workers who were crucial to keeping states and municipalities operating.

Last week, Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York City urged the state to approve line-of-duty death benefits for the families of municipal employees who died of the virus. Some lawmakers in New Jersey are also urging their state to consider taking similar action.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs New York City’s subway and buses, has also said it would give death benefits to the families of virus victims.

As meatpacking plants reopen, data about how many workers are ill is elusive.

The Smithfield Foods plant in Tar Heel, N.C., is one of the world’s largest pork processing facilities, employing about 4,500 people and slaughtering roughly 30,000 pigs a day at its peak. And like more than 100 other meat plants across the United States, the facility has seen a substantial number of virus cases.

But the exact number is anyone’s guess.

Smithfield would not provide any data when asked about the number of illnesses at the plant. Neither would state or local health officials.

Along with nursing homes and prisons, meatpacking facilities have proven to be places where the virus spreads rapidly. But as dozens of plants that closed because of outbreaks begin reopening, meat companies’ reluctance to disclose detailed case counts makes it difficult to determine whether the contagion is contained or new cases are emerging even with new safety measures in place,

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said there were nearly 5,000 meatpacking workers infected with the virus at the end of last month. But the nonprofit group Food & Environment Reporting Network estimated last week that the number had climbed to more than 17,000, with 66 meatpacking deaths.

Trump’s struggles to stand still didn’t go unnoticed during Memorial Day visit to Arlington

DAILY NEWS

Oh sway can you see.

President Trump’s struggles to stand still during a Memorial Day visit to Arlington National Cemetery lit up social media Monday, prompting users to recall past incidents in which the commander in chief, who turns 74 next month, battled to find a balance.

“Is the President having trouble standing up straight as the National Anthem begins at Arlington Cemetary (sic) or am I seeing things?” Joshua Potash from Queens asked on Twitter.

The Trump critic posted that video, along with another clearly showing the president swaying in front of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

Potash wasn’t alone in finding the somber moment moving in a different way.

“I think it’s the bone spurs,” joked tweeter Kimberley Cooke, referring to one of the five draft deferments that got the president out of serving in the military during the Vietnam War

Some critics wondered about the president’s physical and mental well-being after seeing the bizarre video. Others suggested he may be wearing uncomfortable shoes.

It was also pointed out that the president could be tired from the weekend he spent on the golf course after several months away from the links on account of the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump started Memorial Day by rage-tweeting that the press was out of line for covering his decision to golf when nationwide deaths tied to the COVID-19 pandemic neared the 100,000 mark.

“What they don’t say is that it was my first golf in almost 3 months,” he wrote on Twitter.

The President frequently uses a golf cart rather than walking the course.

The fact that Trump recently said he’d been taking the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine also arose in the Twittersphere, though the president reportedly said Sunday he was no longer using that medication.

Weather.com indicates winds were coming in around 4 mph Monday.

Young, healthy people like me are getting very, very sick from the disease caused by the coronavirus.

NY TIMES
The day before I got sick, I ran three miles, walked 10 more, then raced up the stairs to my fifth-floor apartment as always, slinging laundry with me as I went.

The next day, April 17, I became one of the thousands of New Yorkers to fall ill with Covid-19. I haven’t felt the same since.

If you live in New York City, you know what this virus can do. In just under two months, an estimated 24,000 New Yorkers have died. That’s more than twice the number of people we lost to homicide over the past 20 years.

Now I worry for Americans elsewhere. When I see photographs of crowds packing into a newly reopened big-box store in Arkansas or scores of people jammed into a Colorado restaurant without masks, it’s clear too many Americans still don’t grasp the power of this disease.

The second day I was sick, I woke up to what felt like hot tar buried deep in my chest. I could not get a deep breath unless I was on all fours. I’m healthy. I’m a runner. I’m 33 years old.

In the emergency room an hour later, I sat on a hospital bed, alone and terrified, my finger hooked to a pulse-oxygen machine. To my right lay a man who could barely speak but coughed constantly. To my left was an older man who said that he had been sick for a month and had a pacemaker. He kept apologizing to the doctors for making so much trouble, and thanking them for taking such good care of him. I can’t stop thinking about him even now.

Finally, Dr. Audrey Tan walked toward me, her kind eyes meeting mine from behind a mask, goggles and a face shield. “Any asthma?” she asked. “Do you smoke? Any pre-existing conditions?” “No, no, none,” I replied. Dr. Tan smiled, then shook her head, almost imperceptibly. “I wish I could do something for you,” she said.

I am one of the lucky ones. I never needed a ventilator. I survived. But 27 days later, I still have lingering pneumonia. I use two inhalers, twice a day. I can’t walk more than a few blocks without stopping.

I want Americans to understand that this virus is making otherwise young, healthy people very, very sick. I want them to know, this is no flu.

Even healthy New Yorkers in their 20s have been hospitalized. At least 13 children in New York state have died from Covid-19, according to health department data. My friend’s 29-year-old boyfriend was even sicker than I was and at one point could barely walk across their living room.

Maybe you don’t live in a big city. Maybe you don’t know anybody who is sick. Maybe you think we are crazy for living in New York. That’s fine. You don’t have to live like us or vote like us. But please learn from us. Please take this virus seriously.

When I was at my sickest, I could barely talk on the phone. I’d like to say that I caught up on some reading, but I didn’t. I’m a newswoman, but I couldn’t look at the news.

Instead, I closed my eyes and saw myself running along the New York waterfront, healthy and whole, all 8.5 million of my neighbors by my side. I pictured myself doing the things I haven’t gotten to do yet, like getting married, buying a house, becoming a mother, owning a dog.

I stared at the wall of photographs beside my living room window and promised the people in them over and over again that we would see each other soon.

I watched movies, dozens of them. I rediscovered “Air Force One” and fantasized about what it would be like if Harrison Ford were actually president right now. I stayed up late at night doing breathing exercises and streaming episodes of “Longmire,” a show about a Wyoming sheriff in which the good guys always win.

One thing I learned is how startlingly little care or advice is available to the millions of Americans managing symptoms at home.

In Germany, the government sends teams of medical workers to do house calls. Here in the United States, where primary care is an afterthought, the only place most people suffering from Covid-19 can get in-person care is the emergency room. That’s a real problem given that it is a disease that can lead to months of serious symptoms and turn from mild to deadly in a matter of hours.

The best care I received came from my friends. Fred, an emergency room resident treating patients at a New York hospital, called me on his bike ride to work, constantly checking in and asking about my symptoms. Chelsea, my college roommate and a physician assistant, has largely managed my recovery from pneumonia. Zoe, my childhood friend and a nurse, taught me how to use a pulse oximeter and later, the asthma inhaler I now use.

Through them, I became an amateur expert. This is the advice they gave me. Here’s what I’m telling my family and my friends: If you can, get an oximeter, [above] a magical little device that measures your pulse and blood oxygen level from your fingertip. If you become sick and your oxygen dips below 95 or you have trouble breathing, go to the emergency room. Don’t wait.

If you have chest symptoms, assume you may have pneumonia and call a doctor or go to the E.R. Sleep on your stomach, since much of your lungs is actually in your back. If your oxygen is stable, change positions every hour. Do breathing exercises, a lot of them. The one that seemed to work best for me was pioneered by nurses in the British health system and shared by J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series.

Nearly a month later, I’m still sleeping on my stomach and still can’t go for a run. But I will be able to do those things, and much more. For now, every conversation with an old friend brings a new rush of love. Every sunny day feels like the first time I saw the ocean as a child and wanted to leap right in.

Many of my neighbors didn’t make it. I know because I heard the ambulances come for them late at night. The reports from the city’s heroic E.M.T. force suggest that for many of these New Yorkers, it was already too late.

Why are more people dying of this disease in the United States than in anywhere else in the world? Because we live in a broken country, with a broken health care system. Because even though people of all races and backgrounds are suffering, the disease in the United States has hit black and brown and Indigenous people the hardest, and we are seen as expendable.

I wonder how many people have died not necessarily because of the virus but because this country failed them and left them to fend for themselves. That is the grief for me now, that is the guilt and the rage
.
As I began to recover, others died.
There was Idris Bey, 60, a U.S. Marine and New York City Fire Department E.M.T. instructor who received a medal for his actions after the Sept. 11 attack.
There was Rana Zoe Mungin, 30, a New York City social studies teacher whose family said she died after struggling to get care in Brooklyn.
There was Valentina Blackhorse, 28, a beautiful young Arizona woman who dreamed of leading the Navajo Nation.

Theirs were the faces I saw when I lay on my stomach at night, laboring for every deep breath, praying for them and for me. Those are the Americans I think about every time I walk outside now in my tidy Brooklyn neighborhood, stepping slowly into the warming spring sun amid a crush of blooming lilacs and small children whizzing blissfully by on their scooters.
I hope the coronavirus never comes to your town. But if it does, I will pray for you, too.

Is Virus Death Rate in U.S. on a Slow Descent? Virus Rages at City Jails, Leaving 1,259 Guards Infected and 6 Dead. UPDATES

U.S. deaths reported per day

The novel coronavirus has taken a heartbreaking health and 

economic toll in America. But the course of the pandemic isn’t 

the same as it was a few months ago.  There are encouraging signs

all over the country — but no early indications of an overall

reopening. Nate Silver pointed out that the seven-day rolling 

average for deaths is 1,362, down from 1,761 the week prior and a

 peak of 2,070 on April 21. That’s still too much too high, but 

the trend is favorable.

Correction officers in New York City live in fear of bringing the virus home to families. They say the city has not protected them.

NY TIMES

For one Rikers Island correction officer, the low point came when he and his wife were both extremely sick with the coronavirus. She could hardly breathe and begged him to make sure she was not buried in a mass grave, he recalled. He was sure he had contracted the disease working in the jailhouse, where supervisors had discouraged him from wearing a mask.

“I’m looking at the person I care most about possibly dying from this thing I brought home,” he said, choking back tears. “That to me is the scariest thing I ever faced.”

Another officer at the Rikers jail said he worked for nearly two weeks while feeling ill but received no help from the jail’s administrators in getting a test. A third, who delivered mail to people in custody, some of them sick, was told he could not use a mask that he had at home but had to wait for a city-issued one. He, too, became infected.

The coronavirus has wreaked havoc on New York City’s 9,680 correction officers and their supervisors, who, like the police and firefighters, are considered essential workers. So far, 1,259 have caught the virus and six have died, along with five other jail employees and two correctional health workers. The officers’ union contends that the death of one other guard is also the result of Covid-19.

The virus has sickened more correction officers in New York, the center of the pandemic in the United States, than in most other large American cities, including Chicago, Houston, Miami and Los Angeles combined, according to data collected by The New York Times.

A majority of the officers in New York City are black and Hispanic and come from neighborhoods with high rates of Covid-19. Inmates also have also been hit hard: 545 have tested positive for the virus since the pandemic started, officials said. Three have died in custody, and two succumbed within hours of being released.

Correction officers and union officials have blamed the jail system’s management for the high number of infections. The union points to the department’s practice of asking officers to return to work after they recovered from the illness even if they had not yet tested negative for the virus. And they cited delays in providing many officers with protective gear during the critical month of March and failures to notify guards about colleagues who tested positive for Covid-19.

More than 160 inmates and 130 staff members at the Rikers Island jail complex have been infected with the virus.Credit...Todd Heisler/The New York TimesThey also have said that extra-long work shifts — sometimes 24 hours at a stretch — contributed to the epidemic among officers. At the peak of the epidemic, 36 percent of the uniformed jail staff called in sick, leading to long shifts for those still on the job.

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Coronavirus ‘does not spread easily’ on contaminated surfaces: CDC

DAILY NEWS

The uncertainty surrounding coronavirus has been a huge source of anxiety throughout this pandemic, as scientists have struggled to uncover not just a treatment for the disease, but also basic facts about its existence.

Though many have been concerned about infection through items like groceries or mail deliveries, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recently issued updated guidance saying that coronavirus “does not spread easily” from touching surfaces or objects.

“It may be possible that a person can get COVID-19 by touching a surface or object that has the virus on it and then touching their own mouth, nose, or possibly their eyes,” the CDC says. “This is not thought to be the main way the virus spreads, but we are still learning more about this virus.”

The Striking Racial Divide in How Covid-19 Has Hit Nursing Homes

Homes with a significant number of black and Latino residents have been twice as likely to be hit by the coronavirus as those where the population is overwhelmingly white.

The coronavirus pandemic has devastated the nation’s nursing homes, sickening staff members, ravaging residents and contributing to at least 20 percent of the nation’s Covid-19 death toll. The impact has been felt in cities and suburbs, in large facilities and small, in poorly rated homes and in those with stellar marks.

But Covid-19 has been particularly virulent toward African-Americans and Latinos: Nursing homes where those groups make up a significant portion of the residents — no matter their location, no matter their size, no matter their government rating — have been twice as likely to get hit by the coronavirus as those where the population is overwhelmingly white.

More than 60 percent of nursing homes where at least a quarter of the residents are black or Latino have reported at least one coronavirus case, a New York Times analysis shows. That is double the rate of homes where black and Latino people make up less than 5 percent of the population. And in nursing homes, a single case often leads to a handful of cases, and then a full-fledged outbreak.

Disparity in the share of nursing homes hit

In many states, facilities with a population of at least a quarter black and Latino residents were more likely to have at least one coronavirus case.

The nation’s nursing homes, like many of its schools, churches and neighborhoods, are largely segregated. And those that serve predominantly black and Latino residents tend to receive fewer stars on government ratings. Those facilities also tend to house more residents and to be located in urban areas, which are risk factors in the pandemic.

Yet the disparities in outbreaks among homes with more Latino and black residents have also unfolded in confusing ways that experts say are difficult to explain.

The race and ethnicity of the people living in a nursing home was a predictor of whether it was hit with Covid-19. But the Times analysis found that the federal government’s five-star rating system, often used to judge the quality of a nursing home, was not a predictor. Even predominantly black and Latino nursing homes with high ratings were more likely to be affected by the coronavirus than were predominantly white nursing homes with low ratings, the data showed.

Cuomo: Westchester to reopen Tuesday as COVID-19 deaths drop below 100 for first time since March

The death toll dropped to 84 people Friday, the first time it’s dipped below 100 since the pandemic slammed the city and surrounding suburbs more than two months ago.

Cuomo called it a bittersweet benchmark that shows how far New Yorkers have come.

“It doesn’t do any good for those 84 families that are feeling the pain,” Cuomo said. 'But we are making progress and that feels good."

In the city, 52 people died of coronavirus in the 24 hours ending Friday evening. The total death toll rose to 21,138. There have been nearly 195,000 COVID-19 cases in the five boroughs.

Gov. Cuomo gave Westchester and the Hudson Valley the green light to reopen starting Tuesday as the coronavirus death toll dipped below 100 for the first time since the crisis erupted in March.

The governor also suggested hard-hit Long Island could start the reopening process on Wednesday if the death toll and case numbers keep dropping in Nassau and Suffolk counties.

U.S. government scientists finally publish remdesivir data.

Nearly a month after U.S. government scientists claimed that an experimental drug had helped patients severely ill with the coronavirus, the research has been published.

The drug, remdesivir, was quickly authorized by the Food and Drug Administration for treatment of coronavirus patients, and hospitals rushed to obtain supplies.

But until now, researchers and physicians had not seen the actual data.

The long-awaited study, sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, appeared on The New England Journal of Medicine’s website on Friday evening. It confirmed the essence of the government’s assertions: Remdesivir shortened recovery time from 15 days to 11 days in hospitalized patients. The study defined recovery as “either discharge from the hospital or hospitalization.”

The trial was rigorous, randomly assigning 1,063 seriously ill patients to receive either remdesivir or a placebo. Those who received the drug not only recovered faster but also did not have serious adverse events more often than those who were given the placebo.

Testing remains far below need. Number of Unemployed increases. UPDATES

The inability of the United States to provide broad diagnostic testing, widely seen as a pivotal failing in the nation’s effort to contain the virus, has been traced to the botched rollout by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the tardy response by the Food and Drug Administration and supply shortages of swabs and masks.

 

But the fragmented, poorly organized American health care system has also made it difficult for hospitals and other medical providers to quickly overcome obstacles to testing.

The picture for testing is improving, slowly. The United States is completing more than 300,000 tests a day, double the amount of a month ago, according to The Covid Tracking Project.

Still, the level of testing in the United States is orders of magnitude less than what many epidemiologists say it should be. The country should be doing at least 900,000 tests a day — and as many as 20 million — to yield an accurate picture of the outbreak, they say. The need for extensive testing is even more acute as many governors have reopened their states before the epidemic has crested. Without sufficient testing it will be hard to identify and contain new outbreaks.

Most testing is not done by public health authorities — whose labs have been chronically underfunded — but by hospital laboratories and major for-profit testing companies.

 

There have been calls for more than a decade to create a national laboratory system that could oversee a testing response in a public health crisis. An effort to create one 10 years ago withered away over time because of a lack of funding.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="600"] Sami Adamson, a freelance scenic artist, had to wait more than two months to collect unemployment benefits from New Jersey after applying.Credit...Hannah Yoon for The New York Times[/caption]

Jobless claims reach 38.6 million in nine weeks.

Even as restrictions on businesses began lifting across the United States, another 2.4 million workers filed for jobless benefits last week, the government reported Thursday, bringing the total of new claims to more than 38 million in nine weeks.

A recent household survey from the Census Bureau suggests that the pain is widespread: Forty-seven percent of adults said they or a member of their household had lost employment income since mid-March. Nearly 40 percent expected the loss to continue over the next four weeks.

And there is increasing concern that many jobs are not coming back, even for those who consider themselves laid off temporarily.

Nicholas Bloom, a Stanford University economist who is a co-author of an analysis of the pandemic’s effects on the labor market, estimates that 42 percent of recent layoffs will result in permanent job losses. “I hate to say it, but this is going to take longer and look grimmer than we thought,” he said of the path to recovery.

Against Trump’s wishes, the push to vote by mail is growing in several states.

Mr. Trump is continuing to rail against voting by mail, which is increasingly viewed as a necessary option for voting amid a pandemic.

 

His antipathy, however, has done little so far, to slow its growth as an option in both Democratic and Republican states. Eleven of the 16 states that limit who can vote absentee have eased their election rules this spring to let anyone cast an absentee ballot in upcoming primary elections — and in some cases, in November as well. Another state, Texas, is fighting a court order to do so.

 

Four of those 11 states are mailing ballot applications to registered voters. And that doesn’t count 34 other states and the District of Columbia that already allow anyone to cast an absentee ballot, including five states in which vote-by-mail is the preferred method by law.

Part of the growth is because of the specter of people voting and getting sick amid the pandemic, as happened in Wisconsin last month. But part reflects the growth of voting by mail as an increasingly desired option even before the coronavirus. In 2016, nearly one in four voters cast absentee or mail ballots, twice the share just 16 years ago, in 2004.

Nearly one in four New Yorkers lacks adequate food, the city says.

Two months into the coronavirus pandemic, with hundreds of thousands of people out of work, nearly one in four New Yorkers needs food, Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Thursday.

To address the problem, the city plans to increase to 1.5 million the number of meals it distributes each day by next week, officials said, with a million to be delivered and 500,000 available for pickup at schools.

Before the virus hit, Mr. de Blasio said, officials believed that “somewhere over a million” city residents “were food-insecure, needed food more, at some point in the year.”

As a result of the pandemic, he said, “we think that number is two million or more. So almost a doubling. That’s why we have made food such a central part of what we do in response to this crisis.”

 

The city has been expanding its food-distribution efforts for weeks and has given out 32 million meals during the crisis, the mayor said.

The mayor’s announcement came after a series of complaints about the quality and nutritional value of food delivered to some residents.

Subway ridership is up 50 percent from last month, but still far below normal.

New Yorkers are slowly beginning to return to the subway system, in another sign that Americans at the center of the global coronavirus pandemic are eager for a return to normalcy.

Subway rides are now averaging 600,000 a day, after a low of 400,000 in April, Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials said Wednesday.

Bus ridership is up too, from a low of 400,000 to some 700,000 trips a day.

The nation’s biggest mass transit system saw its ridership plummet over 90 percent, in part by government order: Only essential workers are supposed to use it, along with people who absolutely need to.

Sarah Feinberg, the interim president of the New York City Transit Authority, who oversees bus and subway service, said at the monthly MTA board meeting that these relatively modest increases in ridership make proper social distancing on public transit all but impossible.
“The goal will have to be, being absolutely vigilant about your mask use and putting as much distance from yourself and the next person as possible,” she said.
Since the statewide stay-at-home order was announced in late March for all non-essential workers, those essential workers who have had to keep taking mass transit have reported crowded subway cars and buses during rush hours.

The head of buses, Craig Cipriano, urged non-essential workers to avoid riding the buses over the Memorial Day weekend. “We can’t risk overwhelming the system. Part of keeping everyone safe for now is staying off the buses,” he said. “So please don't try to take them to the beach this weekend. We need all New Yorkers to do their part, that means staying away for now.”

The MTA has instituted measures to protect its workers, like protective plastic barriers in work places and on buses, rear door boarding for buses, and it is increasing its “temperature brigades.” Next week, it will roll out its experimental UV light treatment at a few limited locations.

Michael Cohen was released from prison amid coronavirus concerns.

Michael D. Cohen, President Trump’s former personal lawyer and fixer, was released from a federal prison on Thursday on furlough and returned to his home in Manhattan, one of his lawyers said. He had asked to be released over health concerns tied to the coronavirus.

Mr. Cohen, 53, who pleaded guilty in 2018 to campaign finance violations and other crimes, had been serving his sentence at a minimum-security camp about 75 miles northwest of New York City.

His projected release date was November 2021. A law enforcement official said it was expected that Mr. Cohen would serve the balance of his sentence under home confinement.

We Are Not Essential. We Are Sacrificial.’

NY TIMES

I’m a New York City subway conductor who had Covid-19. Now I’m going back to work.

When I heard that a co-worker had died from Covid-19 — the first in the Metropolitan Transportation Authority — on March 27, I thought, “It’s starting.” More deaths followed in quick succession, frequently more than once a day. Some of those people I used to see every day and fist bump.
On Facebook, when bad news comes, my co-workers and I express grief and offer condolences to the families. But our spontaneous response is the numb curiosity of an onlooker. We knew this was coming. We knew many among us wouldn’t make it through the pandemic.
Every day I see posts on the M.T.A. workers’ group pages striking a jaunty tone: “Oh Lord, here we go. I got the symptoms, see you all in 14 days. Or not.”

We work at the epicenter of the epicenter, with a mortality rate substantially higher than that of first responders. Common sense tells you that subway trains and platforms are giant vectors of this virus. We breathe it in along with steel dust. As a conductor, when I stick my head out of the car to perform the required platform observation, passengers in many stations are standing 10 inches from my face. At other times, they lean into the cab to ask questions. Bus drivers, whose passengers enter right in front of them, are even worse off.

My co-workers want doors locked on the two cars where the crew rides. Bus drivers want to let passengers enter through the back doors. We want hazard pay and family leave for child care.
In mid-March, a bulletin came out mandating that conductors make an announcement every 15 minutes. Wash hands, soap and water, sanitizer, elbow-sneeze. “Together we can help keep New York safe.”

The irony was that we didn’t have soap and water. At my terminal at that time, the restrooms were closed for three days after a water main break. Most employee restrooms are in similarly bad shape. Crew rooms are packed.

The M.T.A. takes stern action against workers seen without goggles or cotton knit safety gloves. Yet we had to work without protection against the coronavirus.
At first we were warned not to wear masks. The M.T.A. said it would panic the public. It said masks were dangerous for us. Later it said we could wear masks we bought ourselves. But by then there were few masks for sale.

One week after the pandemic was declared, a vice president of TWU Local 100 came to my terminal to give a talk. I rose to my feet in outrage and asked why we weren’t receiving masks. I was told healthy people didn’t need masks and that doctors needed them more. Aren’t doctors healthy? No answer. How about rubber gloves and hand sanitizer? No answer.

Finally, the M.T.A. agreed to supply us with personal protective equipment. When signing in, we get an N95 mask and three small packets of wipes the size of those used before a shot at the doctor’s office. This is meant to last three days. We also get a small container to fill with hand sanitizer from a bottle in the dispatcher’s office.

The masks are cheaply made. My co-workers complain that the masks pinch their noses. The straps break easily. Many masks must be secured with duct tape.

Or so I have heard. Two days after the vice president’s visit, I developed severe body aches, chills and a dry cough. On March 27, I woke up at 6 a.m. to go to the bathroom and collapsed. I made a quick call to a close friend and then dialed 911. An ambulance took me to NYU Langone Medical Center, where I was treated and discharged. I stayed isolated for 14 days, after which I felt better. My co-workers told me about a place where I could get tested. On April 15, I tested positive. Further quarantine. My direct-deposit statement shows $692: less than half my wages for the first pay period and nothing thereafter. (I had used up all of my sick days).

The third death I heard about was a black co-worker I used to see every day who once saw me reading Michelle Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow.” He wanted to know why a woman from India was interested in the condition of black people. From then on, whenever we ran into each other we hugged and cheek-kissed.

I used to talk to another co-worker across the platform when his N train and my R train reached Atlantic Avenue. He was one of only two Orthodox Jews in the rapid transit operation. A train buff, he once noticed that a cable that connects one car to another had come loose and was hanging dangerously near the third rail. He may have saved lives that day. Now he’s dead, too.

We are stumbling upon dead bodies. I know of two cases. A train operator nearly tripped over one while walking between cars. The other person was sitting upright on a bench right outside the conductor’s window and discovered to be dead only at the end of an eight-hour shift after my co-workers kept noticing the person on each trip.

The conditions created by the pandemic drive home the fact that we essential workers — workers in general — are the ones who keep the social order from sinking into chaos. Yet we are treated with the utmost disrespect, as though we’re expendable. Since March 27, at least 98 New York transit workers have died of Covid-19. My co-workers say bitterly: “We are not essential. We are sacrificial.”
That may be true individually, but not in our numbers. Hopefully this experience will make us see clearly the crucial role we play in keeping society running so that we can stand up for our interests, for our lives. Like the Pittsburgh sanitation workers walking out to demand protective equipment. Like the G.E. workers calling on the company to repurpose plants to make ventilators instead of jet engines.
I took my second test on April 30. It was negative. Tomorrow, I will go back to work.

Sujatha Gidla, an M.T.A. conductor, is the author of “Ants Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India.”

The White House began requiring all staffers entering the West Wing to wear a facial covering from today.

White House staffers returned in the morning to a thoroughly cleaned West Wing and new protocols around testing and masks.


Meanwhile the president is not going to wear a mask while in the West Wing/Oval Office and he has avoided wearing a mask completely, while Mike Pence has avoided wearing one almost completely and they have done very little to promote the idea,

NBC adds that Secret Service members in close proximity to the president have begun wearing masks and visitors were asked additional questions before entering the White House grounds about whether they’d been experiencing any symptoms in addition to temperature checks. Staffers who are in regular, close contact with the president — roughly a dozen people — are also being tested daily.


A majority of Americans do not support the protests against stay-at-home orders and restrictions aimed at stemming the spread the coronavirus, according to a new survey from the University of Chicago Divinity School and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

The poll also showed that while support for such restrictions remains strong, the number has dipped in recent weeks. These findings match the results of another poll released today by Monmouth University.

According to the AP survey, 55% of Americans disapprove of the protests that have popped up in some states while 31% approve of the demonstrations. Unsurprisingly, Democrats are more likely than Republicans to disapprove of the protests, which have been organized with right-wing groups and often feature Trump campaign insignia.

Meanwhile, the survey found that 67% of Americans are in favor of orders requiring bars and restaurants to close, down from 76% in the earlier poll.

The poll also suggested declining support for requiring Americans to limit gatherings to 10 people or fewer. Support to 75% from 82%. A similar trend was found for limitations on nonessential medical care, which dropped to 57% from 68%.

Nearly 2,000 former Justice Department employees are calling on Attorney General William Barr to resign, arguing in an open letter that he has “once again assaulted the rule of law” by moving to drop the case against Michael Flynn, the president’s former national security adviser.

In the open letter, organized by the nonprofit group Protect Democracy and published online on Monday, the lawyers assert that Barr’s actions are “extraordinarily rare, if not unprecedented.”

Concern about contracting the coronavirus has fallen even as more Americans report knowing someone who has tested positive for Covid-19, according to a new Monmouth University poll.
The survey found that 42% of Americans are very concerned that a family member will get seriously ill from the coronavirus, down from 50% in April.

Weeks after right-wing protests erupted in response to states’ stay-at-home orders, there is some evidence that attendees have now contracted the virus.

According to Up North News in Wisconsin, 72 residents who reported attending a large gathering in the past two weeks have tested positive for Covid-19. The state did not ask individuals to specify which event they attended. But two weeks ago, 1,500 people gathered at a rally at the state’s Capitol in Madison in violation of the state’s social distancing restrictions. Photographs of the event show mask-less participants standing next to each other in a large crowd.

According to a New York Times database, new cases are decreasing in just 14 states of 50 states. Among them are densely populated states like New York and Michigan, which were among the hardest hit. The list also includes sparsely-populated states like Montana and Alaska.

New cases are still rising in nine US states, including states like Arizona that is pressing ahead with its re-opening on Monday. In the remaining states, the growth rate of new cases has remained relatively steady.