BRUSSELS The coronavirus has created its own form of terror. It has upended daily life, paralyzed the economy and divided people one from another. It has engendered fear of the stranger, of the unknown and unseen. It has emptied streets, restaurants and cafes. It has instilled a nearly universal agoraphobia. It has stopped air travel and closed borders.
It has sown death in the thousands and filled hospitals with wartime surges, turning them into triage wards. People gird for the grocery store in mask and gloves, as if they were going into battle.
Particularly for Europe, which has experienced waves of terrorism that achieved some of the same results, the current plague has eerie echoes. But this virus has created a different terror, because it is invisible, pervasive and has no clear conclusion. It is inflicted by nature, not by human agency or in the name of ideology. And it has demanded a markedly different response.
People run screaming from a terrorists bomb and then join marches of solidarity and defiance. But when the all-clear finally sounds from the new coronavirus lockdown, people will emerge into the light like moles from their burrows.
People are more afraid of terrorism than of driving their car, said Peter R. Neumann, professor of security studies at Kings College London and founder of the International Center for the Study of Radicalization. Many more people die from car accidents or falling in the bathtub than from terrorism, but people fear terrorism more, because they cannot control it.
While terrorism is about killing people, Mr. Neumann said, its mostly about manipulating our ideas and calculations of interest.
As Trotsky famously said, the purpose of terror is to terrorize.
But the terrorism of the coronavirus is all the more frightening not only because it is so widespread, but also because it is impervious to any of the usual responses surveillance, swat teams, double agents or persuasion.
[Analysis: Peaks, testing and lockdowns: How coronavirus vocabulary causes confusion.]
Its not a human or ideological enemy, so its not likely to be impressed by rhetoric or bluster, Mr. Neumann said. The virus is something we dont know, we cant control, and so were afraid of it. And for good reason it has already killed more Americans than the nearly 3,000 who died on Sept. 11, 2001, and it will kill many times more.
There is a difference between man-made and natural disasters, said Thomas Hegghammer, an expert on terrorism and senior research fellow at the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment in Oslo. People are typically more afraid of man-made threats, even if they are less damaging.
But this virus is likely to be different, he said. It goes much deeper into society than terrorism, and it affects individuals on a much larger scale.
There is a similar sense of helplessness, however, said Julianne Smith, a former security adviser to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and now at the German Marshall Fund. You dont know when terrorism or the pandemic will strike, so it invades your personal life. With terror, you worry about being in crowds and rallies and sporting events. Its the same with the virus crowds spell danger.
Part of what makes terrorism terrifying is its randomness, said Joshua A. Geltzer, former senior director for counterterrorism on the National Security Council and now a professor of law at Georgetown. Terrorists count on that randomness, and in a sense this virus behaves the same way, he said. It has the capacity to make people think, It could be me.
But to defeat the virus requires a different mentality, Mr. Geltzer argued. You see the bomb at the Boston Marathon, so you wonder about going next year, its a pretty direct impact, he said. But the virus requires one greater step to think collectively, so as not to burden others by spreading the virus and overwhelm the health system.
And it requires a different sort of solidarity. After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, President George W. Bush urged Americans to go about their lives, to fly on airplanes, to travel, to work. After both the Charlie Hebdo and Bataclan attacks of 2015, President Franois Hollande did the same in France, leading marches and public demonstrations of public resilience and defiance.
But in the face of the virus, with so many societies so clearly unprepared, resilience now is not to get on a plane, wrote Mr. Geltzer and Carrie F. Cordero, a former security official at the Justice Department and a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. To be resilient now is to stay at home.
So it is difficult for governments that learned to urge citizens to be calm in times of terrorism to now learn how to frighten them into acting for the common good. Rather than mobilization, this enemy demands stasis.
[Analysis: The autocrats dilemma: You cant arrest a virus.]
People respond patriotically, and even viscerally, to the nature of the security response to terrorism, from the helicopters to the shootouts. But theres nothing sexy or cool about staying at home, or ordering a company to produce face masks and gowns, said Mr. Geltzer. We dont usually chant, U.S.A.! U.S.A.! about home schooling.
It will also be difficult for governments to adjust their security structures to deal with threats that do not respond to increased military spending and enhanced spying.
For a long time, Mr. Neumann said, analysts who worked on softer threats, like health and climate, were considered secondary. Hardcore security people laughed at that, but no one will doubt that now, he said. There will be departments of health security and virologists hired by the C.I.A., and our idea of security will change.
And there will be new threats afterward worries about economic collapse, widespread debt, social upheavals. Many fear the impact of such low oil prices on Arab and Persian Gulf countries that need to pay salaries for civil servants and the military, let alone deal with subsidies on bread.
But even the Islamic State has warned its adherents that the healthy should not enter the land of the epidemic and the afflicted should not exit from it, which may provide some respite.
Mr. Hegghammer lived in Norway during the terrorist attacks there in July of 2011 by Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 people to publicize his fear of Muslims and feminism. The response in Norway was collective solidarity and resolve and a widespread sense of dugnad, the Norwegian word for communal work, as individuals donate their labor for a common project.
Dugnad is being invoked again in the face of the virus, Mr. Hegghammer said, with the young aiding the elderly, and government and opposition working almost too closely together.
The virus and the attacks carried out by Mr. Breivik are being linked explicitly in the debate here, Mr. Hegghammer said. But it is being done in a critical way, to criticize how unprepared the government has been, both then and now, to deal with a major threat.
People say, Weve already been through this, so how can we be so unprepared?
In the aftermath, as with Mr. Breivik, there is likely to be a commission of inquiry in Norway, just as there will inevitably be one in the United States, too, as there was after Sept. 11, to see how the government failed and what can be done in the future.
But unlike largely homogeneous Norway, the sprawling United States is deeply divided.
Unlike Sept. 11, when a single set of events united the country in an instant in its grief, this is a slowly rolling crisis that affects different parts of the country and the society at different speeds, said Ms. Smith of the German Marshall Fund. So were not united as a country.
Given the already deep political polarization in the United States, with partisan battles over science and facts, the virus is likely to have the same impact as the plague did in Athens during the Peloponnesian War, creating indifference to religion and law and bringing forward a more reckless set of politicians, said Kori Schake, director of the foreign and defense policy program at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
But ultimately, she added, the delayed response from the White House delegitimizes the existing political leadership. If the political consequences are severe enough, she said, they could lead to the end of the imperial presidency and a return to the kind of federal and congressional activism that the Founding Fathers designed our system for.
The virus may be politically divisive, but it is also a reminder, Ms. Schake said, that free societies thrive on norms of civic responsibility.
In the midst of a pandemic, state governments have very strong power to make restrictions in the name of public health, Professor Metzger said, adding: As we know more about the virus, as we do more testing, the kinds of restrictions that will be allowed will change.
One exception: Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York threatened to sue the state of Rhode Island when the governor there considered stopping cars with New York license plates at the border March 28. Soon after, Gov. Gina Raimondo changed tactics, signing an executive order instructing anyone not just New Yorkers but even other Rhode Islanders coming from out of state to quarantine at home for 14 days.
Data suggests that a restriction of movement helps to slow the rate of infection. But the government whether local, state or federal likely cannot keep all of the 273.6 million vehicles registered in the United States off the road.
Much of the control of the outbreak in the U.S. will depend on individuals in the U.S. making good choices, said Dr. Henry Wu, director of Emory TravelWell Center in Atlanta, which provides health services for international travelers.
Noting the asymmetric nature of the disease different parts of the country experiencing different stages of the pandemic he said, increased travel between different regions of the country would increase the likelihood that it would spread.
Even AAA suggests that you talk to your health care provider before you go.
Some of the countrys most famous drives, like Californias Route 1, remain open. But authorities along some roadways like the Blue Ridge Parkway are trying to discourage its use. Drivers there can still take in the scenic views of the Shenandoah Valley, but will find that restrooms, visitor centers and campgrounds along the route are closed.
Allen Pietrobon, an assistant professor of Global Affairs at Trinity Washington University in Washington, D.C., who teaches a course titled The Great American Road Trip, said that the two most comparable driving restrictions go back to the oil crisis of 1973 and World War II, when car manufacturing was halted, all pleasure driving in some eastern states was temporarily prohibited and rations limited drivers in some places to as little as 3 gallons of gas per week. (When you ride ALONE you ride with Hitler! propaganda posters warned.)
Atlanta under lockdown. Photo: Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images
For a month, American journalists and public-health experts have praised the coronavirus response of South Korea and Singapore above all others. On Tuesday, Singapore will close its schools and most businesses to guard against an out-of-control outbreak; South Korea just extended its social-distancing policy. In the early months of this pandemic, the most developed parts of Asia have visibly outperformed the rest of the world a differential that has produced a string of viral charts showing the benefits of mask-wearing and universal testing. But in recent days, Hong Kong and Taiwan, noting a rise of new cases arriving via international visitors, have shut their borders. Cases are spiking in Japan, and a second wave of infections is feared in China, as well. Which means that, all told, many of the nations desperate Americans have spent the last few months praising as exemplary models of public health management do not actually have the virus under control or at least not to the degree it appeared a few weeks ago, or to the degree you might be hoping for if you expected a (relatively) quick end to quarantine measures and economic shutdown followed by a (relatively) rapid snapback to normal life and economic recovery.
If the countries held up as models for how we should proceed cant figure it out, what does it mean for the U.S., which is saddled with broken institutions and has already bungled and delayed its response at nearly every stage? Here in New York, we are about to enter our third week of sheltering in place; in San Francisco and Seattle, the social-distancing orders have been in effect even longer. Yet there is no clarity to be found from the federal or state or local level for how long these measures will last. And there is no public or concrete plan for, and little visible discussion about, what it would mean to sunset them: how and at what point and in what ways we will try to exit this temporary-but-indefinite wartimelike national bunkering almost all 330 million of us now find ourselves in. What, exactly, is the endgame here?
Some of this ambiguity is inevitable it may be hard to remember, given the way the coronavirus has distended our sense of time, but this crisis is just a few months old and the scientific and public health wisdom just as preliminary. But while it may not be possible to pinpoint a date, or a month, at which point we can expect to transition out of bunker living, no one seems to have any sense of how well arrive at that determination, how much we will have wanted to contain the outbreak, at what levels, before moving forward, and what steps moving forward would then entail. That there is no coherent federal plan to deal with the outbreak as it currently stands is horrifying enough an absolute evacuation of presidential leadership that has already cost thousands of lives and will likely cost tens of thousands more.But the fact that there is also no planning to speak of for how we might leave behind the present crisis means all we can see looking forward from the darkness is more darkness.
Last week, Helen Branswell of Stat news reported that public-health experts in the U.S. are increasingly worried that the public is underestimating how long the coronavirus disruptions are going to last with many Americans assuming a sort of national reopening will begin in early May and most public-health experts expecting at least a month beyond that. Possibly more, even considerably more.
But the bigger question isnt how long our shutdown will last; its what will follow it. In theory, lockdowns of the kind that are now in place in much of the country are designed to contain an outbreak before it gets out of control this is why China instituted its shutdown in January. But even relatively modest spread of a disease requires more than simple lockdown; it requires an aggressive program to identify those infected, isolate them, and monitor those they may have come into contact with, to be sure those people arent themselves spreading the disease. This is the test and trace method of pandemic containment; among public-health experts, it is the ideal. But in the U.S., and indeed throughout Europe, as well, the pandemic has progressed much too far for this approach to work. And so again, in theory the current lockdowns could provide another opportunity, as well: buying the country time to ramp up a comprehensive testing regimen. We would shelter in place until such a program was ready to go, then reenter normal life through that portal of medical surveillance. This program would be a dramatic change to American life obligatory temperature checks, intrusive testing, and mandatory isolation in quarantine camps for anyone whod even come into contact with a positive case but it is the fastest path out of our current predicament. Beyond Twitter, the periodic suggestion from Trumps executive pals that we should reopen the economy, and a few op-ed pages sketching out vague pathways, there is no sign of any real plan to do it at any level of government.
The Nobel Prizewinning economist Paul Romer has suggested that, while imperfect, an aggressive testing regime without tracing would also be effective, at the population level, allowing a country like the U.S. to emerge from shutdown without imposing quite as aggressive a medical surveillance state. That is potentially promising, since the latter would be enormously challenging at the logistical, legal, and cultural levels here. But the U.S. is very far from instituting that kind of testing regimen. The only COVID-19 testing being done anywhere in the country is of symptomatic patients coming to doctors and hospitals. Nowhere are we doing the kind of community testing Romer envisions, nor are we testing for coronavirus antibodies to confirm how many people have already had otherwise undetected cases of COVID-19. And since we are still so hopelessly short on testing equipment needed to even test all the patients complaining of symptoms, we are very, very far from being able to even imagine a massive nationwide rollout of testing that would allow us to not just swab everyone but continue to swab everyone pretty regularly over the next few months. On top of which, the tests we are using may have a failure rate of about 30%. That means about one in every three people being tested could be getting the wrong result. You cant build any kind of public-health response on top of information that faulty.
In this context, the complete absence of federal leadership Ive written about before is especially conspicuous. The White House has offered no meaningful guidance, best-practices advice, or coordinated support to those states and communities around the country living either in fear of the arrival pandemic or in its grip already. Absent a federal policy or public plan, all we have are vague and poorly informed hopes: for a vaccine, which may take a year or more, though tests are already underway (no vaccine for any coronavirus has ever been created, and 18 months would mark the fastest production of any vaccine of any kind in medical history); for treatment (at the moment, we have no drugs proved to help cure the disease, despite the presidents premature endorsement of chloroquinine); for herd immunity (which may take as long to develop as a vaccine); and for seasonality (which could dampen the spread come summer but which most epidemiologists suspect wont radically alter the trajectory of disease).
So we have no idea how long this will last and how it will end. In the meantime, all we have is a daily White House press conference starring a shortsighted, uninformed, and self-contradicting showman of a president, with multiple competing response teams occasionally emerging from the shadows to reveal a basic ignorance about the meaning of federalism. Neither Jared Kushner nor Donald Trump seem to understand what it means for the federal government to act as a backstop, or what the purposes of a federal medical-supply stockpile could be (given the comparatively tiny size of that government), and how few medical supplies could ever be required by its workforce.
The notion of the federal stockpile was, its supposed to be our stockpile, Kushner said Thursday. Its not supposed to be states stockpile, which they can then use.
The more troubling interpretation of that statement is that it isnt ignorant but strategic and sadistic. The continued messaging from the White House is that at every stage of this pandemic, states and governors will be left to do their own work rather than rely on federal support and critically guidance. About a particular untested treatment, the president said on Friday, literally, What do you have to lose? Take it. I really think they should take it. But its their choice Try it, if youd like. Those rolling their eyes this weekend about the fact that both the Republican governor of Georgia and the Democratic mayor of New York seem only to have learned, in the last few days, that asymptomatic people can still spread the disease a fact familiar to anyone following the story since January is less an indictment of those two men than the vacuum of guidance from Washington, which requires every state and local leader to piece together their own understanding of the disease.
To the extent Washington is providing help, it is providing it, already, in disproportionate ways: more aid to those states considered friendly to the president, and less to those considered hostile. As the crisis grows, that leverage will become even more brutal, which is to say, for a president like Trump, even more tempting medical resources used to punish and torture rather than heal. One hopes the White House wont be that naked, or extreme, in treating desperate states and municipalities as political hostages in the middle of deadly and economically devastating pandemic. But this is, at present, the closest the White House seems to be to an exit strategy or end-game.
The one story you shouldn't miss today, selected byNew York's editors.
Europes governments have begun to look ahead to the post-lockdown phase of their battle against Covid-19 as curves on the continent flatten, while the US braces for peak death week and Japan prepares to declare a state of national emergency.
Austria on Monday became the first EU country to publicly announce plans to lift its restrictions. The aim is that from April 14 ... smaller shops up to 400 square metres, as well as hardware and garden stores, can open again, under strict security conditions, the chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, said.
If the governments timetable goes to plan, larger shops could reopen on 1 May and hotels, restaurants and other services from mid-May, Kurz said, adding that everything will depend on whether citizens continue to obey draconian distancing rules this week and over the Easter break.
Denmark also announced plans to start reopening nurseries and primary schools from 15 April if the number of Covid-19 deaths and new cases remain stable.
It will probably be a bit like walking the rope. If we stand still along the way we could fall and if we go too fast it can go wrong. Therefore, we must take one cautious step at a time, said the Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, adding that a ban on large social gatherings would remain in place until at least August.
In Germany, the chancellor, Angela Merkel, said on Monday that the coronavirus pandemic was the EUs biggest test since its foundation and thanked Germans for following the governments instructions. But she added that it was still too early to set a date for lifting the countrys lockdown.
However, as Germany reported its its fourth consecutive daily drop in cases, a leaked interior ministry document revealed a list of measures that officials seemingly believe might allow public life to gradually resume after the end of the countrys lockdown, currently scheduled for 19 April.
The measures include an obligation to wear masks in public, limits on public gatherings, and mechanisms to allow more than 80% of people an infected person has been in contact with to be traced within 24 hours of diagnosis, permitting schools to reopen on a regional basis and strict border controls to be relaxed.
Like several EU countries, Austria and Germany look set to rely on mobile phone apps to trace citizens movements and warn them of potential risks of infection, prompting the blocs data protection supervisor on Monday to urge the development of a single, more secure pan-European app.
Spain, which has recorded the second highest Covid-19 death toll in the world so far after Italy, also reported a fourth consecutive fall in its daily death tally as well as falls in hospital admissions and critical care cases.
While strict confinement rules introduced on 14 March will remain in force until 26 April, the government announced on Monday that it is planning to widen coronavirus testing to include people without symptoms, as a first step towards slowly easing the lockdown.
We are preparing ourselves for de-escalation, for which it will be very important to know who is contaminated, said the foreign minister, Arancha Gonzlez Laya.
Italy on Monday reported 636 deaths, roughly 100 more than the previous day, but its infection rate slowed again, with the number of new positive cases rising by under 2,000, or 2.1%. The health minister, Roberto Speranza, told the daily La Repubblica that the coming period was going to be hard.
There are difficult months ahead, he said. Our task is to create the conditions to live with the virus, at least until a vaccine arrives.
The daily death toll in France, which went into lockdown later than Spain and Italy, also fell on Sunday, to 357 from 441 in the previous 24 hours. The health ministry said hospital and intensive care admissions were also declining, but warned people it was still essential to continue respecting strict confinement measures.
According to the Johns Hopkins University tracker, the coronavirus has reached more than 210 countries and territories around the world, infecting 1.28 million people and killing more than 70,000. Nearly half of the worlds population is living in some form of lockdown.
Among other developments:
Norway said it considered its outbreak under control but cautioned it was too early to say if restrictions could be lifted.
As 51 African countries reported 9,198 cases of Covid-19 and 414 deaths, South Africas president, Cyril Ramaphosa, called for unity and a massive aid effort.
The trajectory of infections in Iran appears to have started a gradual decline, the government said.
Indonesia recorded its biggest daily jump in cases, with 218 confirmed on Monday, while the Philippines recorded 414 new infections.
Russia also recorded its biggest daily jump with 954 new cases of the disease.
France is facing its deepest recession since the end of the second world war, the finance minister, Bruno Le Maire, said.
But if curves are flattening in Europe, elsewhere there was little sign of a let-up. The Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, said on Monday the government planned to declare a state of emergency and proposed a $1tn stimulus package.
Pressure has increased on the government to take action as Tokyo announced a record 148 new cases on Sunday, followed by 83 more on Monday. Japan is unlikely to introduce a hard lockdown, but the government will aim to exert strong psychological pressure through requests and instructions.
The total number of positive cases in Japan has nearly doubled in the last seven days, with Tokyo the main hub. A rapid spread of the virus is a huge risk in the Japanese capital, a city of nearly 14 million, and Japan has one of worlds oldest populations, with nearly a third of the population 36 million people over the age of 65.
In the US, authorities have warned the worst is yet to come. Officials on Monday told the country to prepare for a deadly week as the accelerating US death toll, currently approaching 10,000, closed the gap with Italys and Spains.
Its going to be the peak hospitalisation, peak ICU week and, unfortunately, peak death week, said Adm Brett Giroir, a member of the White House coronavirus task force, raising the alarm in particular alarm for New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Detroit.
The US total of 336,000 confirmed cases is by far the worlds largest and roughly twice as many people a day are dying in the US as in Spain and Italy.
Donald Trump suggested the country was starting to see light at the end of the tunnel. But Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on Sunday that doesnt take away from the fact that tomorrow, the next day, are going to look really bad.
The UN secretary general, Antnio Guterres, on Monday urged governments to protect women from what he described as a horrifying rise in domestic violence as a consequence of coronavirus measures. For many women and girls, the threat looms largest where they should be safest: in their own homes, he said.
Guterres urged all governments to make the prevention and redress of violence against women a key part of their national response plans for Covid-19.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has begun conducting blood tests it says will help determine if a person has been exposed to the coronavirus, even without showing symptoms, a CDC spokesperson told Politico.
These serological tests, or sero-surveys, are different from the nose swabs used to diagnose active cases of Covid-19. By analyzing blood, researchers will be able to tell if a person developed certain antibodies in the blood, indicating that they were infected by the virus and recovered.
If a person can be shown to have developed those protections against reinfection, they could potentially reenter society and the workforce during a time when millions of Americans live under orders to stay home to prevent the spread of Covid-19.
These tests can also help to retroactively collect data about how widespread the virus has been. In the absence of readily available diagnostic testing, many people who have demonstrated symptoms have simply been told to stay home, without receiving a formal diagnosis, while many more people never display symptoms at all.
Were just starting to do testing and well report out on these very quickly, Joe Bresee, deputy incident manager for the CDCs pandemic response, told reporters. We think the serum studies will be very important to understand what the true amount of infection is out in the community.
According to reporting by the health journalism outlet Stat, the surveys will target three groups in three phases: people living in hot spots of the disease, such as New York and Seattle, but who were not diagnosed; a representative sample of people living across the country, in areas with differing rates of infection; and health care workers.
The first phase, on people living in hot spots begun after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted an emergency authorization for testing kits on April 1.
The tests, developed by the company Cellex, involve pricking a finger and can deliver a reading in 15 minutes. Other test manufacturers are working to deploy their own tests in the coming months.
The second phase, on the national population, will likely begin this summer, and there is no timeline yet for the third phase of health workers, according to Stat.
About 80 percent of confirmed Covid-19 cases correspond with mild to moderate symptoms, including coughing, fever, and exhaustion. Many cases will show no symptoms at all perhaps 25 percent of cases, according to the CDC and therefore likely go undiagnosed, but asymptomatic people can still pass the virus on to others who are more vulnerable to serious complications.
But because it has been difficult to procure diagnostic tests, people across the spectrum those who feel perfectly healthy, those with presumed symptoms, and even some with more serious symptoms have been encouraged to stay home, away from other people and away from hospitals, where infection can spread even more rapidly.
Thats why learning more about the full scope of the disease, including how many people have already experienced it and recovered, and the profile of people who did not become sick from the virus, could help researchers better understand the virus and how it spreads.
These tests could also help authorities better prepare for future pandemic response, according to Stat: If its known that a high percentage of people in a community were likely infected when the virus moved through during its first wave of infections, the response to a reappearance later might be tailored to protect only high-risk people, for instance.
At a time when millions of Americans are forced to stay home in order to enact social distancing measures, figuring out who is protected against the diseases spread could be the first step toward getting some people back out into the world.
As Voxs Umair Irfan has written, testing may hold the key to a return to normal.
A person who has had the virus, recovered, and developed antibodies proteins built in the blood that help an immune system identify and neutralize threats may have some level of protection against future spread. This makes them much less at risk of becoming infected, or spreading infection, when touching a cart at the grocery store, preparing food, or visiting a loved one, to name just some of the quotidian activities currently hampered by the coronavirus.
It is not yet known whether antibodies to this virus correlate with immunity, however, as they do with other viruses.
But in a recent interview on The Daily Show, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the USs top infectious disease expert, said experts studying the disease feel really confident that recovered patients will have immunity against Covid-19.
If this virus acts like every other virus that we know, once you get infected, get better, clear the virus, then youll have immunity that will protect you against reinfection, he said.
There are other open questions, such as how long that immunity could last and whether certain people can be reinfected. It is also not yet known how this virus mutates; if its mutation patterns mirror influenza, there could be a new strain each year, for example.
Some early research also indicates repeated or protracted exposure to the virus may cause more severe infections. That opens up the question of whether antibodies can prevent infection from larger doses of the virus say, for hospital workers who are repeatedly exposed to the virus or whether they are more effective among the general population.
Without a clear way of knowing who poses a risk, who is at risk, and who carries immunity, lifting social distancing measures early would prove a nightmare scenario, one infectious diseases researcher told Vox.
The CDC has given no indication that this round of serological testing is being conducted with an aim toward returning people to the workforce. Still, these antibodies may provide a key clue about who can safely return to work. This may be especially important in freeing up health care workers at a time when many hospitals and clinics are facing staffing shortages due to coronavirus.
The UK has ordered 3.5 million of these tests, and both Italy and Germany are considering using them to provide citizens with certifications indicating they can return to the world.
As Irfan has written, these tests arent perfect:
Serological tests use blood serum, the liquid part of blood, excluding cells and clotting proteins. Even though SARS-CoV-2 isnt typically present in blood, an infection causes white blood cells to make antibody proteins that help the immune system identify viruses and stop them, or mark infected cells for destruction.
Although these proteins can be detected in the bloodstream and blood serum, it can take several days for someone to make these antibodies after an infection. So a serological test isnt always useful for finding an active infection and can yield a false negative, showing that someone doesnt have the virus when they actually do. The results of these tests can also be trickier to interpret than results from the more common RT-PCR tests used to diagnose Covid-19, which detect the viruss genetic material.
Instead, these tests can be a screening tool. Researchers are also studying how antibodies could be collected in order to treat current cases of Covid-19; they are looking into how to use blood plasma from recovered patients as a possible emergency treatment of current cases.
But there are many caveats, as Irfan points out. There are shortages of necessary testing materials and of personal protective equipment for medical staff conducting these tests. There are also many unknowns about how immunity to this new virus functions:
To safely return to work, a patient would have to ensure that they have immunity and that they are no longer spreading the virus. Since a serological test can only confirm the former, a patient may still need an additional RT-PCR test to establish the latter. That is, they need to test positive for immunity and negative for the virus itself.
SARS-CoV-2 is also a new virus, so researchers arent certain how long immunity will last. The virus could mutate and render past immunity ineffective, although scientists have found that it is mutating slowly, indicating that the protection from a past infection is likely to be effective for a while.
Putting too much stock in immunity, too, could create some kind of incentive for becoming infected in order to develop antibodies, which would be highly irresponsible during an outbreak of an infectious disease about which so much is still unknown.
Instead, Irfan argues, the best strategy remains not getting infected in the first place and buying time until researchers can develop and deploy a vaccine.
Amid this unprecedented public health and economic crisis, the campaign can no longer ask voters whether they are better off now than they were four years ago. Instead, it is shifting to pegging the President's success to his handling of the pandemic.
The crisis has impacted every facet of the Trump's campaign's strategy as aides and advisers now work to navigate virtual organizing and fundraising -- all while working from home, like many Americans, as its glossy Virginia headquarters and field offices across the country are now shuttered.
The outbreak has also played a role in how the campaign operates for the time being. Instead of being focused on growing its ground game in states that will be critical to Trump's election win in November, as officials had planned on doing at this time, they are now mainly focused on the digital effort. The Trump campaign's digital team currently employs over 100 people.
Messaging
Behind that strategic shift in messaging is the understanding that Americans are closely following the administration's response and the campaign's key job now is to ensure voters perceive Trump's response is effective.
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie claimed the campaign is now fundamentally about how Americans believe Trump handled the crisis.
"Whatever their campaign promises were or weren't, when you hit a major crisis -- with me it was Hurricane Sandy, with the President it's this pandemic now -- in my view, politically, nothing else matters," Christie, a key Trump ally, said on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday. "And, in fact, I've never seen a time when the opponent is more irrelevant. And that's not an insult to Vice President Biden."
"But in the end, the American people are going to decide: Has the President of the United States stood up to this crisis and done right by them and protected their lives and their property, or hasn't he?" Christie said. "It's almost as if now the selection as his position is going to be a referendum of President Trump rather than a binary choice between the Vice President (Biden) and the President."
As the administration ramped up Trump's response to the outbreak, so did his campaign with the polling. Polling that showed the country favored keeping stricter social distancing measures in place played a key role in Trump's decision to extend it 30 days this week, three people said.
"The campaign remains the same in focus, which is the President is leading on what we're talking about and we're echoing what he talks about -- that's always been the strategy and stance of the campaign. He's leading the country through a national crisis right now," Trump campaign spokeswoman Erin Perrine told CNN.
The campaign will talk about the work Trump is doing, as well as continue to push back against what it describes as "false narratives" from Democratic rivals and the media alike, Perrine said.
For now, the campaign has sought to highlight Trump's action through its social media channels. And top surrogates have touted a historic stimulus deal passed by Congress as a sign of Trump's leadership.
The campaign recently sent a cease-and-desist letter to television stations running the ad in key swing states of Florida, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, because it "contains the false assertion that President Trump called the coronavirus a 'hoax,' when in fact he was referring to Democrat criticisms and politicization of the federal response to the public health crisis."
In response, Priorities USA continued to air the ad and expanded it to Arizona. It also launched the ad digitally in Spanish.
The campaign's rapid response team has also gone after Joe Biden, including last week, accusing the former vice president of using the crisis "as an opportunity to cram the Green New Deal down Americans' throats," per a statement from communications director Tim Murtaugh, after comments Biden made about the next round of stimulus funding. And on Thursday, Murtaugh issued a statement reacting to Biden's statement slamming the administration on record unemployment claims, saying Biden is "ineffectively sniping from the sidelines."
Briefing is the new rally
The most visible change to the campaign's strategy is the indefinite pause on rallies -- a critical tool for capturing voter data -- as the administration encourages social distancing practices.
Last Thursday marked one month since Trump was in his comfort zone, surrounded by thousands of chanting supporters in the enclave of the Bojangles Coliseum in Charlotte, North Carolina.
For now, the campaign will continue to follow White House and US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines on crowd sizes. The campaign had previously been scheduling rallies to closely mirror and counter-program the Democratic primary: Des Moines the day before the Iowa caucuses, Manchester before the first in the nation New Hampshire primary, Las Vegas, Charleston, and Charlotte before their respective contests.
In lieu of rallies, the President has taken his wide-ranging, often lengthy speeches to the briefing room. Since the vice president was tapped to lead the task force February 26, Trump has led 21 press briefings. Much like his "Keep America Great" campaign rallies, the average length is 76 minutes, with the longest clocking in at 110 minutes.
The Newark case is one of a handful that federal prosecutors have brought over the past few weeks. In Austin, Texas, the F.B.I. shut down a website that promised consumers access to World Health Organization vaccine kits in exchange for a shipping charge of $4.95, payable by credit card. No vaccine for the virus exists.
In Georgia, F.B.I. agents arrested a 49-year-old man on charges of collecting kickbacks for Covid-19 tests and screenings for other respiratory illnesses in a scheme that aimed to submit $1.1 million in fraudulent Medicare claims. According to court documents, the man was upfront about his motives.
Everybody has been chasing the Covid dollar bird, he said in a telephone conversation, according to court papers. While there are people going through what they are going through, you can either go bankrupt or you can prosper.
That was apparently the view of another operator who promised a California union of nearly 100,000 health care workers that he could provide them 39 million N95 masks. But when health care providers like Kaiser Permanente sought to verify and inspect the mans supply chain, he proved more and more elusive.
Last week, a federal prosecutor contacted the union, the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, for details about the seller. As far as we know, no money changed hands, said Steve Trossman, a spokesman for the union, which was trying to serve as an intermediary to hospitals. The really bad thing was, the masks were desperately needed.
In Southern California, agents arrested a 53-year-old, small-time actor for seeking investments in a nonexistent company that he claimed was just days away from marketing pills that would ward off the virus and injections that would cure Covid-19. The authorities said his YouTube and Instagram videos, in which he displayed a syringe of clear liquid or nondescript white pills, had been viewed more than two million times.
A self-described genius entrepreneur, the man claimed in a text to a cooperating witness that a Los Angeles patient stricken by Covid-19 rose from a sickbed and walked out 51 hours after my injection, the authorities said. He claimed he knew a doctor with White House ties who was on his way to President Trumps Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida for an emergency order authorizing his drugs and promised a $300,000 investment in his company would yield a $30 million return.
LAS VEGAS From the Stratosphere to the Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas is closed for business. With the exception of the security guards who remain perched outside casino entrances and occasional joggers, the Strip is deserted.
The haunting emptiness is a version of what many Americans are witnessing in the places they call home: vacant subways, wide open freeways and unoccupied city centers. But as measures to control the spread of the coronavirus shut down businesses across the country, those of us who live and work here in Vegas worry that well suffer more and longer than most.
On New Years Eve 2020, I worked one of my last shifts as a casino cocktail server. I sneaked out of the service well with my co-workers to watch the Strips fireworks alongside a crowd of thousands of tourists from all around the world. Thinking about leaving an industry in which Id spent almost a decade in was bittersweet. It will always be here if I want to come back, I told myself.
Just a few months later, the casinos are empty and my friends are out of work.
Like many other states, Nevada closed all nonessential businesses to stem the spread of the coronavirus. But here in Vegas, the majority of our economy is nonessential. Our economic well-being lives and dies by the booming and busting of a single, extremely fragile industry. This month last year, 3.5 million tourists visited here. A complete halt to the beating heart of our economy is devastating.
About 206,000 of Nevadas casino workers have been affected by the mandatory closings. The week after the shutdown, Nevadans set a record for the most unemployment claims in the states history: over 92,000. The Economic Policy Institute predicts that our unemployment rate will be 19.7 percent by summer.
Here, shutting down the hospitality industry means wiping out the economic security of entire families. In the past week, I havent just seen my friends lose jobs. Their spouses, parents, and their college-age and teenage kids that do full- or part-time service work are now unemployed, too.
The coronavirus pandemic awakens memories of the 2008 financial crisis. In fact, we have only recently recovered from that recession. It wasnt until 2016 that Nevada finally regained the nearly 175,000 jobs it lost during 2008, and at no point during that period did resort properties have to close operations completely.
But casino leaders seem to have learned from that time. Matthew Maddox, the chief executive of Wynn Resorts, cited the lessons of 2008 as the reason his 25,000 employees will still be paid during the mandatory closing. Some other casino leaders are also keeping workers on payrolls.
But the largest casino employer, MGM Resorts, which employees over 75,000 in Nevada, could only guarantee their furloughed workers two weeks of pay. And for those workers at small businesses or franchises that operate inside casino walls, layoffs are the new norm.
The federal governments passage of the $2 trillion stimulus bill, although historic, does not meet what the E.P.I. deems necessary to sustain wageworkers through this time. For most workers, a one-time check will not cover the cost of a single rent payment. And the reality is, when nonessential businesses are allowed to reopen, many of those former employees will not be immediately invited back to work.
Even when tourists are free to return here, we wonder if they will. Concerns about their physical health and safety could keep them off planes and out of hotel rooms for months. And a $1,200 check wont stretch far enough to cover the cost of a post-pandemic vacation.
Without additional help from the federal government, it will take a stroke of good fortune for the average Nevadan to survive this crisis. I feel this quite acutely, having secured a new job outside the service industry just two months before the casinos closed.
I got lucky. But economic security should not be left up to chance, or to the generosity of casino owners.
Many working-class Nevadans are in a precarious position: Their economic health depends on the reopening of nonessential businesses. But to reopen too soon is to risk their health, as front-line workers of all kinds experience the greatest risks of exposure.
With their typical marketing savvy, casino billboards and marquees are offering messages of optimism: We cant wait to have you back. Stay Vegas Strong. We will get through this. But as is always the case, the house has the advantage. They will survive this. For workers, the odds are not generous.
Brittany Bronson is a Las Vegas-based writer.
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By Christopher Burns, BDN Staff April 6, 2020 6:46 am Updated: April 6, 2020 12:20 pm
As of 11 a.m. Monday, there are now 499 confirmed cases of the new coronavirus spread across 15 Maine counties, according to the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
No new deaths were reported Sunday, leaving the total loss of life at 10. Additionally, 86 Maine residents who have been hospitalized with COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, while another 156 people have fully recovered from it, according to the Maine CDC.
Only one county Piscataquis has no confirmed cases of the virus.
Heres the latest on the coronavirus and its impact in Maine.
The Maine CDC will provide an update on the coronavirus in Maine later today. The BDN will livestream the briefing.
A record number of Mainers have been left without work because of the coronavirus outbreak, and by some estimates, it will only get worse. Even with that unprecedented number of people left jobless, Maines labor commissioner is confident that the states unemployment fund will be able to weather the coronavirus crisis. Maines unemployment system was in a historically good financial situation until the crisis forced it to pay out $6 million alone to people who filed between March 15 and March 21. For comparison, the state paid out a $10.4 million total in February before coronavirus started ravaging the job market. Experts say the speed at which job loss is occurring and the uncertainty of how long the virus pandemic will last say states should be prepared for the worst.
Self-employed Mainers hit hard by the economic shutdown due to the coronavirus pandemic are still waiting for relief as a federal program aimed at helping them will take at least another week to set up.
With more Mainers working from home, the states broadband infrastructure has been placed under strain, leading to slow speeds and, in some places, loss of connection. Jeff Letourneau, who monitors Maines internet as executive director of Networkmaine at the University of Maine System, told Maine Public there are parts of the state that simply dont have the capacity to handle the increased demand on home internet connections.
Democratic Gov. Janet Mills has ordered the suspension of most lodging operations through the end of the month in an effort to deter visitors from traveling to Maine. Thats caused immense uncertainty among those in the hospitality industry over details, such as who will be exempted and still allowed to stay in hotels, motels, campgrounds, RV parks and short-term rental facilities.
The Maine seafood industry has taken a big hit from the coronavirus as restaurants shutter, taking away a significant market for its products and leaving fishermen and dealers scrambling for new markets. For some dealers, the solution has been to make sales directly to consumers, opening pick-up stations in parking lots and elsewhere.
The U.S. surgeon general, Jerome Adams, on Sunday warned that the nation could face its hardest and saddest week yet in the coronavirus outbreak in the coming days. That warning comes as infections and deaths continue to climb in the U.S. as states scramble to find needed equipment to treat the virus victims. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the virus is unlikely to be completely eradicated this year, meaning the U.S. could see a resurgence during the next flu season.
As of Monday morning, the coronavirus has sickened at least 337,646 people in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and the U.S. Virgin Islands, as well as caused 9,648 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Elsewhere in New England, the virus has killed 231 people in Massachusetts, 189 in Connecticut, 25 in Rhode Island, 22 in Vermont and nine in New Hampshire.
Since the early days of the Trump administration, an impassioned group of mental health professionals have warned the public about the presidents cramped and disordered mind, a darkened attic of fluttering bats. Their assessments have been controversial. The American Psychiatric Associations code of ethics expressly forbids its members from diagnosing a public figure from afar.
Enough is enough. As Ive argued before, an in-person analysis of Donald J. Trump would not reveal any hidden depths his internal sonar could barely fathom the bottom of a sink and these are exceptional, urgent times. Back in October, George T. Conway III, the conservative lawyer and husband of Kellyanne, wrote a long, devastating essay for The Atlantic, noting that Trump has all the hallmarks of narcissistic personality disorder. That disorder was dangerous enough during times of prosperity, jeopardizing the moral and institutional foundations of our country.
But now were in the midst of a global pandemic. The presidents pathology is endangering not just institutions, but lives.
Lets start with the basics. First: Narcissistic personalities like Trump harbor skyscraping delusions about their own capabilities. They exaggerate their accomplishments, focus obsessively on projecting power, and wish desperately to win.
What that means, during this pandemic: Trump says weve got plenty of tests available, when we dont. He declares that Google is building a comprehensive drive-thru testing website, when it isnt. He sends a Navy hospital ship to New York and it proves little more than an excuse for a campaign commercial, arriving and sitting almost empty in the Hudson. A New York hospital executive calls it a joke.
Second: The grandiosity of narcissistic personalities belies an extreme fragility, their egos as delicate as foam. They live in terror of being upstaged. Theyre too thin skinned to be told theyre wrong.
What that means, during this pandemic: Narcissistic leaders never have, as Trump likes to say, the best people. They have galleries of sycophants. With the exceptions of Drs. Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx, Trump has surrounded himself with a Z-team of dangerously inexperienced toadies and flunkies the bargain-bin rejects from Filenes Basement at a time when we require the brightest and most imaginative minds in the country.
Debatable: Agree to disagree, or disagree better? Broaden your perspective with sharp arguments on the most pressing issues of the week.
Faced with a historic public health crisis, Trump could have assembled a first-rate company of disaster preparedness experts. Instead he gave the job to his son-in-law, a man-child of breathtaking vapidity. Faced with a historic economic crisis, Trump could have assembled a team of Nobel-prize winning economists or previous treasury secretaries. Instead he talks to Larry Kudlow, a former CNBC host.
Meanwhile, Fauci and Birx measure every word they say like old-time apothecaries, hoping not to humiliate the narcissist never humiliate a narcissist while discreetly correcting his false hopes and falsehoods. They are desperately attempting to create a safe space for our president, when the president should be creating a safer nation for all of us.
Third: Narcissistic personalities love nothing more than engineering conflict and sowing division. It destabilizes everyone, keeps them in control.
What that means, during this pandemic: Trump is pitting state against state for precious resources, rather than coordinating a national response. (Its like being on eBay, complained Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York last week.) His White House is a petty palace of competing power centers. He picks fights with Democratic officials and members of the press, when all the public craves is comfort.
Narcissistic personalities dont do comfort. They cannot fathom the needs of other hearts.
Fourth: Narcissistic personalities are vindictive. On a clear day, you can see their grudges forever.
What that means, during this pandemic: Trump is playing favorites with governors who praise him and punishing those who fail to give him the respect he believes he deserves. If they dont treat you right, dont call, he told Vice President Mike Pence.
His grudge match with New York is now especially lethal. When asked on Friday whether New York will have enough ventilators, Trump bluntly answered No, and then blamed the state.
And most relevant, as far as history is concerned: Narcissistic personalities are weak.
What that means, during this pandemic: Trump is genuinely afraid to lead. He cant bring himself to make robust use of the Defense Production Act, because the buck would stop with him. (To this day, he insists states should be acquiring their own ventilators.) When asked about delays in testing, he said, I dont take responsibility at all. During Fridays news conference, he added the tests we inherited were broken, were obsolete, when this form of coronavirus didnt even exist under his predecessor.
This sounds an awful lot like one of the three sentences that Homer Simpson swears will get you through life: It was like that when I got here.
Most people, even the most hotheaded and difficult ones, have enough space in their souls to set aside their anger in times of crisis. Think of Rudolph Giuliani during Sept. 11. Think of Andrew Cuomo now.
But every aspect of Trumps crisis management has been annexed by his psychopathology. As Americans die, he boasts about his television ratings. As Americans die, he crows that hes No. 1 on Facebook, which isnt close to true.
But it is true that all eyes are on him. Hes got a captive audience, an attention-addicts dream come to life. Its just that he, like all narcissistic personalities, has no clue how disgracefully how shamefully, how deplorably hell be enshrined in memory.
