TBR News May 7, 2020

The Voice of the White House Washington, D.C. May 7, 2020: Working in the White House as a junior staffer is an interesting experience.
When I was younger, I worked as a summer-time job in a clinic for people who had moderate to severe mental problems and the current work closely, at times, echos the earlier one.
I am not an intimate of the President but I have encountered him from time to time and I daily see manifestations of his growing psychological problems.
He insults people, uses foul language, is frantic to see his name mentioned on main-line television and pays absolutely no attention to any advice from his staff that runs counter to his strange ideas.
He lies like a rug to everyone, eats like a hog, makes lewd remarks to female staffers and flies into rages if anyone dares to contradict him.
It is becoming more and more evident to even the least intelligent American voter that Trump is vicious, corrupt and amoral. He has stated often that even if he loses the
election in 2020, he will not leave the White House. I have news for Donald but this is not the place to discuss it. “
Comment for May 7, 2020:” Dealing with Trump, at a high level, is like trying to herd cats or pick up mercury. Not possible. He waffles, lies, erupts and generally behaves like the ero-centric they are. Here is a clear description of the narcissist. “In psychological terms, narcissism doesn’t mean self-love—at least not of a genuine sort. It’s more accurate to say that people with narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) are in love with an idealized, grandiose image of themselves. And they’re in love with this inflated self-image precisely because it allows them to avoid deep feelings of insecurity. But propping up their delusions of grandeur takes a lot of work—and that’s where the dysfunctional attitudes and behaviors come in.
Narcissistic personality disorder involves a pattern of self-centered, arrogant thinking and behavior, a lack of empathy and consideration for other people, and an excessive need for admiration. Others often describe people with NPD as cocky, manipulative, selfish, patronizing, and demanding. This way of thinking and behaving surfaces in every area of the narcissist’s life: from work and friendships to family and love relationships.
People with narcissistic personality disorder are extremely resistant to changing their behavior, even when it’s causing them problems. Their tendency is to turn the blame on to others. What’s more, they are extremely sensitive and react badly to even the slightest criticisms, disagreements, or perceived slights, which they view as personal attacks. For the people in the narcissist’s life, it’s often easier just to go along with their demands to avoid the coldness and rages. However, by understanding more about narcissistic personality disorder, you can spot the narcissists in your life, protect yourself from their power plays, and establish healthier boundaries.
Signs and symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder
Grandiose sense of self-importance
Grandiosity is the defining characteristic of narcissism. More than just arrogance or vanity, grandiosity is an unrealistic sense of superiority. Narcissists believe they are unique or “special” and can only be understood by other special people. What’s more, they are too good for anything average or ordinary. They only want to associate and be associated with other high-status people, places, and things.
Narcissists also believe that they’re better than everyone else and expect recognition as such—even when they’ve done nothing to earn it. They will often exaggerate or outright lie about their achievements and talents. And when they talk about work or relationships, all you’ll hear is how much they contribute, how great they are, and how lucky the people in their lives are to have them. They are the undisputed star and everyone else is at best a bit player.
Lives in a fantasy world that supports their delusions of grandeur
Since reality doesn’t support their grandiose view of themselves, narcissists live in a fantasy world propped up by distortion, self-deception, and magical thinking. They spin self-glorifying fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, attractiveness, and ideal love that make them feel special and in control. These fantasies protect them from feelings of inner emptiness and shame, so facts and opinions that contradict them are ignored or rationalized away. Anything that threatens to burst the fantasy bubble is met with extreme defensiveness and even rage, so those around the narcissist learn to tread carefully around their denial of reality.
Needs constant praise and admiration
A narcissist’s sense of superiority is like a balloon that gradually loses air without a steady stream of applause and recognition to keep it inflated. The occasional compliment is not enough. Narcissists need constant food for their ego, so they surround themselves with people who are willing to cater to their obsessive craving for affirmation. These relationships are very one-sided. It’s all about what the admirer can do for the narcissist, never the other way around. And if there is ever an interruption or diminishment in the admirer’s attention and praise, the narcissist treats it as a betrayal.
Sense of entitlement
Because they consider themselves special, narcissists expect favorable treatment as their due. They truly believe that whatever they want, they should get. They also expect the people around them to automatically comply with their every wish and whim. That is their only value. If you don’t anticipate and meet their every need, then you’re useless. And if you have the nerve to defy their will or “selfishly” ask for something in return, prepare yourself for aggression, outrage, or the cold shoulder.
Exploits others without guilt or shame
Narcissists never develop the ability to identify with the feelings of others—to put themselves in other people’s shoes. In other words, they lack empathy. In many ways, they view the people in their lives as objects—there to serve their needs. As a consequence, they don’t think twice about taking advantage of others to achieve their own ends. Sometimes this interpersonal exploitation is malicious, but often it is simply oblivious. Narcissists simply don’t think about how their behavior affects others. And if you point it out, they still won’t truly get it. The only thing they understand is their own needs.
Frequently demeans, intimidates, bullies, or belittles others
Narcissists feel threatened whenever they encounter someone who appears to have something they lack—especially those who are confident and popular. They’re also threatened by people who don’t kowtow to them or who challenge them in any way. Their defense mechanism is contempt. The only way to neutralize the threat and prop up their own sagging ego is to put those people down. They may do it in a patronizing or dismissive way as if to demonstrate how little the other person means to them. Or they may go on the attack with insults, name-calling, bullying, and threats to force the other person back into line. (helpguide)

The Table of Contents

• US unemployment rises another 3m, bringing total to 33m since pandemic began
• ‘The government is failing us’: Laid-off Americans struggle in coronavirus crisis
• Exclusive: U.S. companies got emergency government loans despite having months of cash
• Texas releases salon owner JAILED for reopening despite Covid-19 lockdown – after her case prompts Gov to ease penalties
• Testing Times
• Whistleblower Details How Trump’s Bureaucrats Refused to Secure N95 Masks as Pandemic Loomed
• Closing New York subway will have ‘devastating’ impact on homeless, experts warn
• Coronavirus breakthrough: Scientists isolate the Italian strain of the COVID-19 virus
• Italy’s virus is a different strain from Wuhan’s

US unemployment rises another 3m, bringing total to 33m since pandemic began
Pace of layoffs tests states’ unemployment benefits fund as 33m jobless Americans make claims in past seven weeks
May 7, 2020
by Dominic Rushe and Lauren Aratani
The Guardian
Another three million Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week as the coronavirus pandemic continued to exact its terrible toll on the US jobs market.
More than 33 million jobless Americans have now made claims in the past seven weeks.
The latest figures from the US labor department come ahead of the first official monthly report on the American jobs market since the pandemic triggered lockdowns across the country. In March, the official unemployment rate in the US was 4.4%, close to a 50-year low, but economists predict it could now be as high as 20%, a level unseen since the 1930s Great Depression.
The pace of layoffs has overwhelmed state unemployment systems across the country. Over a million people in North Carolina have now made unemployment insurance benefit claims, equivalent to 20% of the state’s workforce. Some 4 million have applied in California and the state’s jobless benefits fund is “very close” to running out, Governor Gavin Newsom said this week.
In Nashville, Tennessee, where the unemployment compensation trust fund is also close to exhaustion, Brenda Waybrant said she was still waiting on unemployment insurance to come in, even though she filed her application on 28 March. Waybrant was laid off mid-March from her job waiting tables at an event venue in downtown Nashville.
Without payments, Waybrant has had to put off paying her rent and car payments, and uses a credit card to buy groceries. She said she was worried that she is racking up expensive interest because she can’t make the card’s payments.
“It’s a whole lot of mess, and I’m hoping that as we come out of this, we can rebuild our social systems to actually work,” Waybrant said. “Not enough was done to take care of the everyday American.”
The pace of layoffs has slowed and as parts of the US reopen economists expect the numbers to keep dropping. But the numbers remain historically high and many states still have a backlog of claims to work through. Epidemiologists have also warned that there may be more outbreaks, and further lockdowns, as some states relax quarantine restrictions.
On Wednesday, ADP, the US’s largest payroll processor, said 20m jobs had been cut from the private sector in April. The figure was the worst job loss ADP has recorded since it began compiling the report in 2002.
“Job losses of this scale are unprecedented. The total number of job losses for the month of April alone was more than double the total jobs lost during the Great Recession,” said Ahu Yildirmaz, co-head of the ADP Research Institute.

‘The government is failing us’: Laid-off Americans struggle in coronavirus crisis
May 7, 2020
by Andy Sullivan and Brad Brooks
Reuters
For Claudia Alejandra, unemployment has become a full-time job.
Since losing her position at the makeup counter at the Macy’s department store in Orlando, Florida, on March 28, Alejandra spends her days trying to secure the unemployment benefits that should have arrived weeks ago, sometimes placing more than 100 calls a day.
The online application, a 10-hour ordeal of error messages, ended with a notice that her identity could not be verified. If she’s lucky, she’ll reach a representative who will say there’s nothing they can do to help. Otherwise, it’s a busy signal, or an hours-long wait on hold, followed by a sudden hang-up.
Alejandra, 37, cashed out her retirement fund — $800, a year’s worth of savings — to make the monthly payments on her 2010 Mazda, but doesn’t know how she’ll pay the rent for her studio apartment or her phone bill. Longer-term goals — a promotion, a family, a house of her own — seem even more elusive.
Alejandra’s experience is similar to that of more than two dozen Americans thrown out of work during the coronavirus pandemic who Reuters interviewed over the past week.
While U.S. government guidelines say jobless workers who qualify for assistance should get payments within three weeks of applying, many — like Alejandra — are waiting twice that long. Increasingly desperate, some are lining up at food banks or bargaining with landlords to postpone bills. Most fill their days seeking answers from overwhelmed state bureaucracies.
Alejandra has not heard anything from the state — though she has gotten a fundraising email from Republican Senator Rick Scott, who set up the current unemployment system during his tenure as governor.
“I feel like the government is failing us,” she said in a telephone interview.
Florida has overhauled and expanded the computer system and brought in 2,000 agents to field calls, and plans an investigation of the system’s failings, Governor Ron DeSantis said at a Monday news conference. People who applied in March and haven’t gotten payments yet likely have not provided all of the required information or might not be eligible, he said.
“You’ve started to see a really significant volume of payments going out, and it’s really taken a major overhaul behind the scenes,” he said. His office did not respond to an email with detailed questions on the situation.
In the past six weeks, states have struggled to process over 33 million jobless claims, more than they typically see in a year. That figure does not capture those who have been unable to even file a claim due to bureaucratic hurdles — up to 14 million more, according to an Economic Policy Institute study released last week.
The Reuters interviews across four states — Florida, Michigan, Arizona and Minnesota — revealed a wide disparity in whether or when people received payments depending on where they live. In Minnesota, where state employees field queries on social media platforms as well as by phone, six out of seven jobless people said they were getting benefits — sometimes more than they were earning before.
In Florida, where a buggy computer system has spurred widespread outrage, only three out of eight people said they were getting payments, while all six people interviewed in Arizona and all eight in Michigan said they had not yet received a payment.
The interviews, to be sure, do not represent a scientific sample of Americans’ experiences with jobless benefit systems. But the people interviewed described similar situations in each state. Some who had begun to be paid benefits said they believed public servants were doing their best to respond to a fast-moving crisis, but even those described difficulties in getting the system to work.

Exclusive: U.S. companies got emergency government loans despite having months of cash
May 7, 2020
by Joshua Franklin and Lawrence Delevingne
Reuters
NEW YORK/BOSTON (Reuters) – When American companies recently applied for U.S. government loans meant to help small businesses survive the coronavirus crisis, they had to certify they needed the cash to cover basic needs like salaries and rent. The money, up to $10 million, was meant to tide them over for eight weeks.
Some recipients, though, had considerable cash on hand. Forty-one publicly traded companies that got the emergency aid already had enough to cover basic expenses for two months or more when they applied for the funds, a Reuters analysis found — even if their revenue dropped to zero. Thirty had three months or more of cash. Six had enough to last at least until December, according to the review, which was based on average monthly operating expenses from 2019.
All told, these relatively flush 41 companies were able to secure $104 million in government aid, at a time when legions of smaller companies with little in their coffers were being turned down. Seventeen of the 41 recipients had market capitalizations of at least $100 million.
“It’s disheartening to see relief spending go to companies that don’t appear to desperately need a lifeline,” said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project On Government Oversight, a Washington-based non-profit that monitors government spending. “This shows just how urgently we need more oversight of this program and the rest of the federal government’s relief spending.”
Reuters examined the latest available financial information for 276 publicly traded companies that applied for the forgivable loans in the first round of the U.S. government’s Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) in April. The list includes companies tracked by data provider FactSquared through the end of April.
A WIDELY CRITICIZED PROGRAM
The PPP program, crafted by Congress to aid small businesses, has come under wide criticism. One critique is that publicly traded companies who received the cash could have raised funds elsewhere, given their easier access to capital markets. Until now, though, the accuracy of the borrowers’ claims about their financial needs to the government has not been closely scrutinized. The Reuters analysis is the most comprehensive to date.
As part of the loan application, company executives had to certify in good faith that “current economic uncertainty makes this loan necessary to support” their ongoing operations. In regulatory filings and in press releases, some of the 41 recipients sounded a different note as they took the loans, signaling optimism about their finances. At least five of the 41 made statements attesting to solid financial health or projecting additional revenues because of the crisis.
Among them was biotech company Athersys Inc. It issued an upbeat outlook in an April 15 securities filing for a $50 million share offering, in which it also said it had secured a $1.3 million PPP loan.
“As of the date of this prospectus supplement, the COVID-19 pandemic has not had a significant adverse effect on our business,” the company wrote.
Other recipients issued bright outlooks. Medical device maker Repro Med Systems Inc and electronics supplier Micropac Industries Inc said the pandemic had not had a significant impact on their businesses.
Diagnostics company Enzo Biochem Inc said it expected COVID-19 related products to partially offset revenue declines. Infectious disease testing business Accelerate Diagnostics Inc said its first-quarter sales were expected to rise – and entered into a collaboration for coronavirus testing.
‘WE RISKED MISSING THE OPPORTUNITY’
In a statement to Reuters on Tuesday, Athersys said that it fully met the program certification requirements when it applied, due to the uncertain outlook and upcoming costly clinical trials. It said it returned the money after the Treasury Department said in late April that many public companies were unlikely to satisfy the certification criterion. The company was planning to disclose the loan’s return on Thursday, when it releases first-quarter financial results.
“There was uncertainty regarding whether we might be able to complete a financing, given market chaos and uncertainty, as well as other factors,” the company said in explaining why it sought the loan. “If we had not applied for the funding at the time we did, we risked missing the opportunity altogether.”
Micropac did not respond to a request for comment on Monday. On Tuesday morning, it said in a securities filing that it planned to return the loan. Enzo, Accelerate and Repro Med did not respond to requests for comment.
The U.S. Treasury, which oversees the program, referred Reuters to Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s recent comments. Mnuchin told reporters last week that he was shocked that some large companies had taken the loans, and said the certifications had been put in the loan application forms to force borrowers to read the requirements. He said there were 26,000 loans over $2 million, and those would likely be audited.
The small business loan program was initially funded with $349 billion. Congress had to top it off with another $310 billion because the money, which was supposed to be handed out on a first-come, first-served basis, ran out while many applicants were still awaiting the grants.
Mnuchin said on Monday that 2.2 million loans worth an average $79,000 had been made in the second round. The $104 million the 41 public companies were granted would have been enough to keep some 1,300 small businesses afloat with an average grant.
‘WHAT THE HELL ARE THEY DOING?’
Jeff Lewis-Mathieu, co-owner of security systems installer Prairie Signal Company Inc, said his small Chicago-based business has been waiting for weeks in its application for a $40,000 PPP loan.
Lewis-Mathieu said he is continuing to pay his two employees, but is not paying himself, and doesn’t know how long the business can survive after a roughly 50% drop in revenue. He said he has watched in frustration as larger public companies get millions of dollars in loans.
“When you see that, it’s like, ‘What the hell are they doing?’ They are sucking all the funds out that guys like me actually need,” Lewis-Mathieu said.
Part of the problem, some critics say, is the loose wording of the program’s rules. Virginia Canter, chief ethics counsel at nonprofit watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said the administration should have issued clearer guidance about who’s eligible. “The government should have seen this coming and is now trying to clean it up,” Canter said.
The Treasury has offered amnesty to public companies that return any money they borrowed by May 14, saying it would deem they made the application in good faith if they did so. Of the 41 companies identified by Reuters, 12 have said so far that they already had or planned to return the money by the deadline. In one case, the company said it declined the loan before receiving the money.
Mnuchin said last month that companies could be subject to a Department of Justice investigation if they did not return the money. Several white collar defense attorneys said prosecutors would likely probe the most egregious cases of conflicting representations and seek internal communications showing executives knew they didn’t really need the money.
“Federal regulators are going to be looking at discrepancies very closely. If there’s a big disconnect, subpoenas may be on the way,” said Michael Birnbaum, a former U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement attorney who is now at Morrison & Foerster LLP.
KEY TERMS LOOSELY DEFINED
Such cases may be hard to prove, however. Alan Wink, managing director at accounting firm EisnerAmper, said it was clear from the Reuters analysis that some healthy companies received PPP funds. But he noted that PPP terms were loosely defined by the government, and that key ones, like “current economic uncertainty” and “necessary,” were open to interpretation.
The Reuters analysis of borrowers’ needs has a limitation: The ratio of cash to average operating expenses used by the news agency does not provide a complete picture of a company’s financial health. The analysis is based on financial information disclosed through Wednesday morning.
Still, Wink and two finance professors consulted for this article said the Reuters metric was a conservative way to assess the ability of a business to meet operating expenses.
Some of the companies that took loans said publicly they were financially secure, with some seeing increased demand for their products around the time they asked for the aid.
Athersys, for example, said its stem cell therapy was being tested on COVID-19 patients. The company’s shares have more than doubled since mid-March, giving it a market value of more than $500 million.
In its April 15 announcement, Athersys noted that it had $37.5 million in cash and cash equivalents as of April 9. That’s enough to cover nearly nine months of operating expenses, based on the company’s average expenses for 2019.
In its statement to Reuters, Athersys said the nine-month ratio did not present a complete picture of its financial condition and operational plans, which include two clinical trials. “Our historical spending is not an accurate indicator of our future needs given how our business is evolving,” the company said.
Repro Med said on Monday it was an essential business under New York guidelines and had seen net sales rise 27% in the first quarter. The company said its devices, which are used to help inject drugs, allow high-risk patients to receive treatment at-home, “important advantages during these challenging times.”
“We have not experienced any material disruption to our business thus far,” Chief Executive Don Pettigrew said in the statement. The company, which has a market value of about $430 million, secured some $1.5 million under the PPP in late April.
A HEALTHY RISE IN REVENUE
Accelerate Diagnostics received a $4.78 million PPP loan on April 14. The company has a market value of around $570 million. The next day, the company noted in a press release that first-quarter sales rose 28% to $2.3 million from the same period in 2019, based on preliminary figures. It also announced a new agreement to distribute its coronavirus antibody tests in the United States and abroad.
It said total cash and cash equivalents were $92 million as of March 31. That’s enough to cover average 2019 operating expenses for 13 months, the review found.
Another company, Enzo Biochem, said on April 9 it “expects COVID-19 related products and services to partially offset revenue declines” caused by the crisis. The company, with a market value of about $130 million, said it had $48 million in cash as of March 31. That was enough to cover seven months of its average 2019 operating expenses.
The company applied for and got a PPP loan of nearly $7 million, a regulatory filing shows. On April 23, it announced it had launched its first COVID-19 diagnostic test, sending its shares soaring.
Micropac makes electronic components for the defense, medical and other industries. The company, with a market capitalization of about $34 million, had enough cash to cover eight months of average 2019 operating expenses as of February 29, the review shows.
Micropac “has not experienced significant financial impact directly related to the pandemic,” it said in a regulatory filing on April 14. Three days later, it obtained nearly $2 million in PPP funds.
Reporting by Lawrence Delevingne and Joshua Franklin. Additional reporting by Noel Randewich. Editing by Paritosh Bansal, Greg Roumeliotis and Michael Williams.

Texas releases salon owner JAILED for reopening despite Covid-19 lockdown – after her case prompts Gov to ease penalties
May 7, 2020
RT
Texas salon owner Shelley Luther has been ordered released from jail after the governor and attorney general protested her imprisonment over violating the state’s lockdown and modified the shutdown orders to exclude imprisonment.
Luther, who became a symbol of the movement to end Texas’ lockdown when she was arrested for refusing to shutter her Dallas salon despite a district judge’s restraining order, was ordered released from jail on Thursday by the Texas Supreme Court after serving two days of a seven-day sentence.
Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick personally paid the $7,000 fine the judge had imposed on Luther in addition to her confinement.
Hours before her release, Texas Governor Greg Abbott altered the executive order he had issued in March that mandated the closure of “non-essential” businesses to remove imprisonment as a penalty. It had previously allowed judges to whack violators with up to 180 days in jail. Abbott had issued a statement specifically condemning Luther’s imprisonment on Wednesday after state Attorney General Ken Paxton wrote to the sentencing judge calling the salon owner’s punishment “a shameful abuse of judicial discretion” and “a political stunt.”
“Throwing Texans in jail who have had their businesses shut down through no fault of their own is nonsensical, and I will not allow it to happen,” Abbott wrote in the modification of his executive order, mentioning Luther by name as well as two Laredo residents – Ana Isabel Castro-Garcia and Brenda Stephanie Mata – who were arrested last month by undercover officers for merely offering in-home salon services on social media.
Hair salons in Texas are legally permitted to reopen on Friday as the state gradually comes out of its coronavirus-induced suspended animation, but Luther explained she had no choice but to reopen hers in late April after her family ran out of money. While acknowledging the family weren’t exactly starving before the statewide shutdown, her husband –a musician by trade– told local media that had she not reopened the salon, they would have been unable to pay May’s rent, as the pandemic response had put them both out of work.
District Judge Eric Moyé imposed a temporary restraining order on Luther’s business in late April, just a few days after she reopened Salon à la Mode, which had been closed since March in accordance with state orders. A visit from a city inspector and a cease-and-desist order from a county judge followed, though Luther insisted she was implementing safety protocols, including keeping customers six feet apart and only permitting those indoors who were receiving services. She infamously tore up the order at a protest, declaring that anyone who “wants to take away” one’s “rights to feed your children and make income” is “wrong.”
Paxton, the state attorney general, told Fox News that “public pressure” was key to getting lockdowns lifted across the country, pointing out that prisons and jails across the country are releasing “thousands of convicted felons” out of concern one might contract the coronavirus. Dallas alone has released “around 1,000 inmates,” the AG observed on Twitter, complaining “working mom Shelley Luther is still locked up for trying to feed her family.”
Luther’s case has become a lightning rod for controversy as conservatives demand the country reopen for business immediately and liberals insist lockdowns continue. While Texas and other states have begun the slow process of reopening their economies, other states – including California and pandemic epicenter New York – look to remain locked down for the considerable future.

Testing Times
A Journal of the Onset of the Plague Year
by Ann Jones
TomDispatch
Donald Trump is not a president. He can’t even play one on TV. He’s a corrupt and dangerous braggart with ill-concealed aspirations for a Crown and, with an election coming up, he’s been monopolizing prime time every day, spouting self-congratulation and misinformation. (No, don’t inject that Lysol!) His never-ending absurd performances play out as farce against the tragic background of the Covid-19 pandemic sweeping the nation. If we had a real president, which is to say, almost anybody else, things would be different. We would have seen the pandemic coming. It would not have attacked me in my old age. And most of the dead might still be alive.
The records of other countries make this clear. South Korea, Taiwan, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Iceland, New Zealand, and Norway have all had commendable success in protecting their people. Could it be by chance that seven out of eight of the most successful nations in combating the Covid-19 pandemic are headed by women? Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan, Mette Frederiksen of Denmark, Sanna Marin of Finland, Angela Merkel of Germany, Katrín Jakobsdóttir of Iceland, Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand, and Erna Solberg of Norway have all been described in similar terms: as calm, confident, and compassionate leaders. All of them have been commended for thorough preparations, quick decisive action, and clear, empathic communication. Erna Solberg has even been hailed as the “landets mor,” the mother of her country.
Perhaps in such disturbing times as these we feel some primal yearning for a capable, comforting mother, but we need not resort to such psychological speculation. The fortunate countries turn out to be those with the fairness and foresight to have welcomed women into government decades ago.
What seems anachronistic in this critical time is the presence in leadership posts of so many self-aggrandizing, sociopathic male autocrats: Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, Viktor Orbán of Hungary, Vladimir Putin of Russia, Donald Trump of the United States, and more. Faced with the pandemic, none of these “powerful” men had a clue. They encountered an invader that could not be bullied, bribed, banished, or bombed. And for their ignorance and vanity, the people pay (and pay and pay).
Lessons in Leadership
I know something about the difference good leadership makes because I’ve been locked down now in two different countries. One kept me safe, the other nearly killed me. I happened to be in Norway when the virus arrived and saw firsthand what a well-run government can actually do. (Yes, I know Norway seems small indeed when compared to the United States, but both of the governments that locked me down, Norway and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, where I now reside, represent roughly 5.5-6.5 million people, and Norway’s capital, Oslo, is only slightly more populous than Boston. So some comparisons may be revelatory.)
More to the point, with any population, the difference between success and failure is preparation, swift action, and the techniques applied to overcome the pandemic. On February 26th, the Norwegian Institute of Public Health announced the first case of Covid-19: a woman who had returned a week earlier from China. The next day, it reported two cases in travelers returning from Italy and another from Iran. After that came two skiers also back from Italy. One of them, an employee of Oslo’s largest hospital, went right back to work, where tracers would soon witness just how fast the unseen virus could move.
And here’s the key that escapes political leaders in America: in Norway, testers and tracers were on the job from the start. As February rolled into March, they were already testing and tracking some 500 Norwegian skiers returning from the Austrian Alps and northern Italy. Some had frequented convivial après-ski taverns there and, once back home, were quick to catch up with friends. One Norwegian tracer labeled such skiers “very sociable people.”
Systematically, Norway would test all its returning travelers (every one of them!), then track down all the contacts of those who had tested positive and test them and their contacts as well, and so on down the line. Working with remarkable speed, the tracers used immediate test results — a tool apparently available in the U.S. only to the rich and famous — to track the trajectories of the virus as it spread. When cases began to multiply without known contacts, the tracers knew that the virus had begun to hitchhike through an unwitting community and were quick to surround it and shut it down.
In response to the pandemic, the government gradually closed down the capital and other centers of contagion. In Oslo, places of assembly went first: theaters, cinemas, concert halls. Norwegians were even asked to stay away from the World Cup Ski Championships being held at Holmenkollen, on the edge of Oslo.
Universities and schools moved online, while offices of all sorts soon followed suit. Restaurants and bars shut their doors. By March 12th, only two weeks after the first reported case, the capital and much of the country had closed down. On that day, in fact, officials reported the death of an elderly man, the first Norwegian casualty of Covid-19.
By mid-April, some five weeks after the shutdown went into effect, the government began to open up public life again, proceeding carefully step by step. Toddlers were the first to return to their preschools on April 20th, with grade schoolers to follow. By April 30th, Norway had administered 172,586 tests and recorded 7,667 positive cases of the coranavirus, 2,221 of them in Oslo. The dead numbered 207, suggesting a per capita mortality rate lower than that of any other European country and far from America’s tragic loss of life. But how to explain this Norwegian record?
Experts attribute it to the government’s early and deep preparations, enabling it to respond immediately to the very first case to appear in the country and, after that, to its quick, unrelenting testing and tracing of the contagion. This painstaking effort, backed by Norway’s universal health care system, enabled the state to get ahead of the virus, save lives, and stop the pandemic short.
The country’s remarkably effective welfare system has bolstered its population throughout the shutdown. Furloughed workers drew full pay from the government for 20 days, and about 62% of their full salaries after that. They’ll return to their jobs ready for work in factories, shops, and businesses as the quarantine is lifted. The government’s effective and well-targeted expenditures are ensuring smooth transitions; a quick return to production; and, best of all in this troubled time, some peace of mind for employers, workers, and families. The shutdown is bound to be costly, perhaps the worst blow to the economy since World War II, but such thoroughgoing, bottom-up arrangements are less expensive — in both financial and human terms — than America’s striking neglect of marginal (aka “essential”) workers, thrown under the bus of crony capitalism with nothing but lectures on the overrated American freedom to fend for yourself.
In Norway, the invasion of Covid-19 was seen from the outset as a national problem and part of a global emergency. It was never politicized. Norway’s conservative prime minister, Erna Solberg, is now receiving high marks indeed, even from opposition parties, for her calm leadership. Children like her too. During the crisis, she gave two nationwide “press conferences” to children to answer questions they submitted about the pandemic. (“Can I have a birthday party?” “How long does it take to make a vaccine?”) From the outset, she told them it was okay to be scared. And then she set an example of what a smart, hard-working leader and a collaborative, many-partied parliament can do for all the people, even in scary times.
Remarkably, Norway very quickly achieved the lowest rate of contagion in Europe. From the start, it aimed to stifle the virus to the point where one infected person might infect only one more. In scientific terms, it aimed for an R-0 rate (a rate of reproduction) of 1.0. By the time Solberg announced that goal on March 24th, however, the magic number had already fallen to 0.71. Today, with only 81 Covid-19 patients hospitalized and their contacts already traced and tested, Norwegians can begin to return with considerable confidence to something that edges ever closer to normal life.
Amateur Night
The United States has become an example for the world of just the opposite: a corrupt government unprepared for and even in denial of warnings from within and without. Years ago, President Obama created within the National Security Council a directorate for global health security and bio-defense to prepare for the pandemics sure to come. That directorate even briefed the incoming Trump team on the urgency of pandemic preparations before the president’s inauguration. But on taking office, Trump eliminated the threat by eliminating the directorate.
As president, he was also informed of a viral outbreak in Wuhan, China, in early January of this year, but he ignored the message. As has been widely reported, he wasted at least two months in self-serving fantasies, claiming the pandemic would disappear of its own accord, or was Fake News, or a “new hoax” of Democrats plotting his downfall. By March, his conduct had become increasingly erratic, obtuse, combative, and often just flat-out nasty. In April, he abandoned altogether his most pressing presidential duty, first claiming “total power” as president and then shifting the job of testing and protecting the people from an unrestrained pandemic onto state governors already struggling to find basic medical supplies for front-line health care personnel in their own states.
Worse, he roused his most militant followers, some heavily armed, to defy the emergency directives of several states led by Democratic governors. In short, he first unloaded the responsibilities of his office onto state governors, then made it his mission to undermine and threaten some of them. For good measure, he cut off U.S. funding for the World Health Organization, the single U.N. agency best equipped to deal with global health emergencies. Trump already had a proud record of getting away with highly offensive, even criminal, acts in plain sight. Now, through egotism, bravado, and just plain ignorance he’s made an epidemic great again (MEGA!), for Covid-19 cases and fatalities in the United States have by now far outstripped those anywhere else on Earth.
Welcome to America
On March 11th, as Oslo was shutting down, President Trump issued an order to take effect in 72 hours: no one flying from Europe would be allowed to enter the United States. It sounded crazy, but — worried about worse to come — I changed my flight home to meet the deadline. The next day, the American embassy clarified the president’s ultimatum: the travel ban did not apply to U.S. citizens. By that time, of course, it was impossible for me to change my ticket back.
So I left Oslo on March 14th, after assuring friends that I would be okay because Massachusetts, home of Elizabeth Warren, is a progressive state.
Hah!
Changing planes in London, I found myself in a different world: packed into the tail section of that flight among a crowd of American students summoned home from European universities by their anxious parents. Some were in transit from northern Italy, already the heartland of the European Covid-19 outbreak. From the seats behind me came insistent sounds of boys coughing. The flight attendants wore rubber gloves and made themselves scarce. I wrapped a long scarf round and round my face, feeling as if somehow I’d been suckered into a trap.
Seven hours later, we stumbled into Boston’s Logan Airport, destined to spend a few more all-too-intimate hours together. I crept along a zigzag trail, amid those coughing boys, with no way of putting distance between us, to the passport inspectors and then beyond. Finally, one by one, we were ushered into a curtained area to experience that airport’s first night of official “screening.”
I was pleased to think that we were all, at least, to be tested for the virus. But no such luck. When my turn came, the official screener voiced no greetings, asked no questions, offered nothing but a single order: “Go home and take your temperature.” Had I been held all that time among those coughing boys for this? Later that week, a local paper reported approvingly that the new airport screening, the first line of defense against the foreign plague, took “less than a minute.”
I was angry to have been forced onto that dangerous flight by the president’s arbitrary edict and doubly angry that he had terminated travel from Europe without consulting any of his European counterparts. By the look of things that evening, no one from his administration had even informed key American airports receiving flights from Europe until the last minute. I saw a bunch of those coughing boys board a Silver Line bus into Boston and others grabbing taxis. And so we all went off into the night, apparently leaving behind no trace of the state of our health or where we were headed. Some days later, I was not merely angry but very ill.
Ten days after that, in a hospital parking garage, a masked nurse worked a giant Q-tip up my nose. A doctor told me to quarantine myself at home (as I had been doing anyway) until I got the test results in about 5 days. But why should it take so long? Wasn’t the whole point of a test to learn what was going on as quickly as possible? The speed of the test result had been the very point in Norway. Combined with the immediate work of the tracers, it enabled the National Health Service to stay ahead of the pandemic and, in the end, essentially, to shut it down.
I went home and got worse. Five days passed with no word. On the 12th day, I felt well enough to call my doctor, who tracked down the result of my test (“just in”). It was positive, but almost two weeks old. So, over the telephone, the doctor gave me the all-clear to put on my mask (a souvenir of my trip to the ER) and go forth to shop. Knowing no Norwegian doctor would turn me loose so soon without another test, I asked for one. Sorry, short supply, only one to a customer. I’ve kept myself in quarantine at home ever since.
Covid-19 Hitches a Ride in America
On April 10th, came news of the death of 59-year-old Vitalina Williams, an immigrant from Guatemala, who worked a full-time job at a Walmart in Lynn, Massachusetts, as well as a part-time job at a supermarket in Salem. Like the nurse and doctor in the ER, this cashier was an “essential worker,” the first grocery store employee in Massachusetts to work herself to death. Here’s an immense difference between Massachusetts and Norway. In that country, one job would have paid her a good wage and also given her paid leave to see her own doctor in the National Health Service when she first felt ill. She would have been taken in, diagnosed, cared for, and very likely saved. That is simply how a national health care system works in a social democracy.
So what was my Covid-19 test for? What useful information did it give anyone? I had walked home from the ER in the dark (so as not to endanger others by taking a bus) and gone to bed. Nobody checked up on me because nobody knew my test was positive — something I, of course, didn’t know either. And throughout those nearly two weeks of waiting for the test results, no tracer called to learn if I lived with other people who might be endangered and available for testing. (There were, in fact, no tracers then.) No one asked me a single question about my family, friends, or others I might have contacted since that “screening” at the airport. And had I died in my bed, no one would or could have traced that bright red line between me, those coughing boys, and Donald Trump’s compulsory flight to a state caught totally off guard in a country both dysfunctional and unprepared.
On April 20th, five weeks after I returned to Boston, Massachusetts was designated a Covid-19 “hot spot.” With 38,077 cases and 1,706 deaths at that time, the state stood in third place behind New York and New Jersey. This was not an honor, but it may be what prompted Governor Charlie Baker to turn to testing — and belatedly to tracing.
The number of new cases in this state was rising every day, as it has from the first reported case in February. The governor, who also holds a press conference every day, explained that we are now “right in the middle of an expected surge,” apparently unaware that a “surge” is what you get when you have missed the moment for preventative testing and tracing. (This is also what you get when, as in the nation’s capital, politicians rather than scientists run the show.)
Belatedly, Massachusetts started testing people at the rate of about 9,000 per day, while private agencies funded by the state are in the process of hiring perhaps 1,000 tracers to conduct phone interviews with the contacts of all Massachusetts residents who have already tested positive. Today, May 6th, we official “positives” number 70,271, though 4,212 of us are already dead.
In the first few days of May, the number of positive patients hospitalized fell slightly and state officials adopted an attitude of “cautious optimism.” Presumably, something of importance will be learned from those belated tests. As Norway recognized, however, if you don’t jump on this virus fast, it rapidly disperses beyond simple person-to-person contacts. It spreads out sociably like so many Norwegian skiers — or American students. It rides the chairlift and the bus. It gets on the plane. It hangs out at the airport. It hitches a ride with someone stopping at the grocery store. To tally its contacts may become simply a matter of counting the dead.
Tracers in Norway have already moved on to other tests to find asymptomatic carriers who may be contagious or perhaps have developed antibodies. Anyone in that country with even the mildest symptoms may ask for a test. These precautionary studies are essential in case the virus should find new life as the quarantine is lifted. What scientists might learn from such studies, like the new tracing one in Massachusetts, remains to be seen, but surely one inescapable conclusion is that this virus is smarter, more agile, and faster on its feet than any of its associates we’ve met before or, for that matter, than most of our public officials, from a failed president on down. And for any readers who believe in politics more than science, let me just say that without science you won’t even know what hit you.

Whistleblower Details How Trump’s Bureaucrats Refused to Secure N95 Masks as Pandemic Loomed
May 7 2020
by Sharon Lerner
The Intercept
A whistleblower complaint filed earlier this week partially solves the mystery of how the country with the most expensive health care system on earth wound up unable to provide enough face masks to protect its workers. The report from Richard Bright, who was ousted from his job as director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, a division of Health and Human Services, in April, also provides a new villain in the tragic saga of the Trump administration’s mismanagement of the coronavirus crisis: Robert Kadlec.
Though officially tasked with quickly mobilizing a national response to public health crises, Kadlec, the assistant secretary for preparedness and response and formerly Bright’s boss, is described in the report as a petty tyrant who ignored, mocked, and thwarted Bright’s repeated efforts to address the imminent shortage of masks and other personal protective equipment in January and February, as the virus began spreading across the country.
In a lengthy, detailed account that reads like a script from a horror movie and will likely earn Kadlec the lasting enmity of everyone who has lost a front-line worker to the virus, Bright lays out a series of unsuccessful and increasingly desperate attempts to push Kadlec and HHS Secretary Alex Azar to recognize and address the looming shortage of personal protective equipment. The attempts to call attention to the crisis began in mid-January, when Bright, a virologist who has spent decades in government preparing for public health emergencies, called for a senior-level meeting to coordinate the response to the coming pandemic.
But Bright’s bosses were unconvinced of the need for the meeting of the “disaster leadership group.” In a January 18 email, Kadlec responded to Bright’s suggestion that he was “not sure if that is a time sensitive urgency.”
Among the concerns Bright repeatedly raised to Kadlec was the need for N95 face masks, which are used to protect health care workers from infectious diseases. Bright, who had served as head of BARDA since 2016, realized that the masks and other equipment would be in short supply. On January 21, Mike Bowen, co-owner of Prestige Ameritech, the largest surgical mask producing company in the U.S., contacted Bright to express concern about the shortage of the masks.
In an email sent the following day, Bowen offered a solution. “He explained that Prestige Ameritech had four N95 manufacturing lines that were currently not operational, but could be reactivated ‘in a dire situation and with government help,’” according to the whistleblower report. But Bright couldn’t get sign-off from his boss, Kadlec, to get the emergency production started.
The problem partly stemmed from long-simmering tensions between Bright and Kadlec. According to the complaint, since he was appointed by President Donald Trump in 2017, Kadlec had repeatedly pushed Bright to award government contracts to politically connected companies, including one tied to Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. Prior to that, Kadlec had served on the staff of Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., who is now best known for dumping his stocks while assuring the public about the coronavirus.
In any case, Kadlec did not take kindly to Bright’s urgent pleas about the pandemic. On January 23, the disaster leadership group finally met. Bright spoke about the fact that BARDA didn’t have funds available to address the emerging epidemic, as well as his concern that he would be forced to redirect funds from existing projects until new funding was made available.
But at that meeting and another held that day, both Kadlec and Azar seemed surprised by Bright’s level of alarm, according to the report. While Bright described the dire need for action and supplies, Kadlec and Azar “asserted that the United States would be able to contain the virus and keep it out of the United States. Secretary Azar further indicated that the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] would look at the issue of travel bans to keep the virus contained.”
Rather than getting a response from his superiors, Bright’s urgency got him excluded from the next meeting about the coronavirus. According to the complaint, Bryan Shuy, Kadlec’s chief of staff, told Bright after the meeting that his request for urgent funding set off “quite a shit storm” and had offended HHS leadership.
Meanwhile, Bowen, the co-owner of the mask company, continued to email Bright about the mask shortage, explaining that his company was getting requests from China and that nearly half of the masks in the U.S. are imported from Chinese manufacturers. “If the supply stops, US hospital will run out of masks. No way to prevent it,” Bowen warned in a January 25 email.
That night, Bright emailed Kadlec about the problem. “Hearing face mask supply is also getting very low as China and HK trying to procure,” he wrote to his boss. “I’ve alerted [Critical Infrastructure Protection, a division of HHS over which Kadlec has authority] on this throughout week. May need to consider options here also before things are gone.”
On January 27, after several emails to Bright, Bowen, who had yet to receive authorization to proceed with mask production, sent another email, saying, “Rick, I think we’re in deep shit. The world.” That same day, although the agency hadn’t addressed the severe mask shortage, an HHS spokesperson told Axios that the Strategic National Stockpile, a collection of lifesaving supplies for public health emergencies, which is overseen by BARDA, “holds millions of face masks as well as N95 respirators that could be used if needed in responding to a public health emergency when local supplies are exhausted and aren’t available from commercial suppliers.”
Two days later, still without a contract, Bowen sent yet another desperate email. “This week, we sent 1,000,000 masks to China and Hong Kong,” he wrote to Bright. “I think China will cut off masks to the USA. If so, US hospitals are going to have a very rough time, as up to half of the supply is made in China. A horrible situation will become unbearable.”
On February 7, Bright made the case for ramping up federal production of N95 masks at a meeting of the disaster leadership group but was shot down. While Bright again warned of imminent shortages, two members of Kadlec’s staff, Laura Wolf and Jessica Falcon, told him that there was no need for immediate action.
“Dr. Wolf and Dr. Falcon responded that the plan was to monitor for any supply chain issues and, if needed, ask the CDC to update its guidelines to tell people who ‘don’t need’ masks to not buy them,” as Bright’s complaint explains.
After weeks of being foiled by his superiors, Bright met on Saturday and Sunday, February 8 and 9, with Trump adviser Peter Navarro, who seemed to share his urgency about the need for masks. The two drafted a memo sent to the White House coronavirus task force that called for the U.S. to immediately halt the export of N95 masks and ramp up production.
But Kadlec did not seem to appreciate being subject to a directive that had clearly come from Bright, who was both a longtime adversary and beneath him in the pecking order. Rather than acknowledge that thousands of lives were at stake and immediately swing into action, the assistant secretary of disaster preparedness complained to his colleagues about Bright going above his head, referring in emails to Bright’s “weekend at Peter’s” and calling Navarro “Rick’s friend” in the White House.
On February 25, more than a month after Bowen’s first email, Azar testified to the Senate Appropriations Committee that the Strategic National Stockpile had only 30 million masks. That number is less than one one-hundredth of the 3.5 billion that a specialized group within HHS that focuses on the risk from viral outbreaks has estimated are necessary.
On March 4, as increasing numbers of health care workers were becoming sick and dying from the coronavirus, HHS finally put in a request for 500 million N95 face masks. Meanwhile, Kushner was assembling a team of handpicked corporate volunteers to procure protective equipment. The group, which included recent college graduates who had no experience with disaster response or supply procurement, had little success, according to the Washington Post, which first reported on the team.
That same month, as Bright predicted, BARDA was forced to stop its work addressing other potential public health emergencies in order to have enough money to fund its coronavirus efforts. As The Intercept reported at the time, BARDA suspended projects aimed at preventing anthrax, Sudan Ebola virus, Marburg virus, smallpox, viral hemorrhagic fevers, and antimicrobial resistant threats so that it could redirect its funds to buy supplies to fight the current emergency.
Later that month, BARDA received its first direct funding: $3.5 billion specifically for addressing Covid-19. In the past, its budget had fallen within that of the assistant secretary for disaster preparedness. This time, Bright would be able to use the new money without having to go through Kadlec.
But the freedom was shortlived. On April 17, Kadlec informed Bright that he was being transferred to a position within the National Institutes of Health. Asked on his whistleblower complaint form why he thinks he was retaliated against, Bright wrote that “I pushed for a more aggressive agency response to COVID-19. My supervisor became furious when Congress appropriated billions of dollars directly to my office.”
The Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Closing New York subway will have ‘devastating’ impact on homeless, experts warn
System will shut down every night for cleaning, forcing homeless on to streets or into shelters where over 700 have tested positive
May 5, 2020
by Miranda Bryant in New York
The Guardian
New measures to close the New York subway for nightly coronavirus cleaning will have “devastating” consequences for the thousands of homeless people who regularly sleep there, experts have warned.
Starting on Wednesday, for the first time in its history the usually 24-hour service will shut down every night between 1am and 5am to be disinfected in a bid to improve travel conditions for essential workers during the Covid-19 outbreak.
But homelessness groups and charities said the move will have “counterproductive and harmful” impacts for those who seek safety and shelter in subway trains and stations – forcing them on to the streets or into the city’s shelters, where more than 700 people have tested positive for coronavirus in recent weeks.
“It’s actually extraordinarily counterproductive and harmful,” said Giselle Routhier, policy director at Coalition for the Homeless, which works with 3,500 people in New York every day.
“What’s happening is that large groups of police officers are gathering at the end of the [subway] line, telling people to move, forcing people often to the streets, offering them access to congregate shelters which many are rightfully refusing to enter because of the safety issues and not actually offering real solutions to help people access a safer space.”
New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, who recently referred to a picture of homeless people on the subway as “disgusting” and “disrespectful to the essential workers”, made the announcement about closures last week amid concerns about conditions on the subway. More homeless people are thought to be seeking shelter on trains, while passenger numbers have dropped by 92%.
Routhier said the new policy will encourage a “more punitive approach”, leaving homeless
people vulnerable to the elements and potentially the criminal justice system.
Conditions for New York’s homeless are already “dire”, she added, especially with many of the city’s cafes, restaurants, public bathrooms, gyms and food banks that many rely on for hygiene and nourishment closed. Demand for Coalition for the Homeless’s mobile food programme has doubled on some nights.
Meanwhile, the virus is spreading in the city’s shelters – which many homeless people already feared for safety reasons before the outbreak. As of Tuesday, there had been 829 positive cases – 705 of which were in shelters – and 65 deaths.
Routhier believes the true number of cases could be higher.
“I don’t know that there’s really a precedent in our lifetime,” she said. “What we’re seeing now is a devastating event that is continuing to go on and on.”
Currently, 62,679 people are living in New York’s shelters, but this does not include the thousands living on the city’s streets and subway – a number which experts say is growing as the economic impact of the pandemic takes hold.
Joshua Goldfein, an attorney at the Legal Aid Society and a member of its Homeless Rights Project, said all homeless people should be offered hotel rooms.
“We have tens of thousands of empty hotel rooms in New York City right now, and rates that those hotels are asking for those rooms are much lower than they were before this, and Fema [Federal Emergency Management Agency] is going to pay for that, so it would be very simple to move people into hotel rooms, to offer case management services onsite.”
The city said it is using hotels, but that it is prioritising relocating older people and single adults “based on risk” from larger shelters. So far, they said about 7,000 people have been moved to hotels from shelters, with plans for 1,000 more “each week as needed”.
Under the new subway plan, more than 100 outreach workers will be deployed to 30 high-priority stations to “engage” homeless people when it closes about services, assess them for symptoms and connect them to care, isolation or shelter.
For essential workers, there will be extra buses between 1am and 5am and an “essential connector” programme of free cabs.
New York’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, has said the closures will enable the city to help people more effectively. But Josh Dean, executive director of the street homelessness organisation Human.nyc, said it will put many on the streets – potentially in an unfamiliar area. He also fears it will breach trust and damage existing relationships between homeless people and social workers.
“This is going to be a tragedy,” he said. “Tonight [Tuesday] at the same time 2,000 homeless folks or more are going to be thrown out of the train and into the streets … The impact of that is really going to be devastating.”
In recent days he said he has already witnessed police ordering homeless people to get off trains at end of the line stations at night.
He added: “They even forced a man with one shoe out into the rain one night. So it’s a pretty brutal and cruel operation.”
In collaboration with other organisations, Human.nyc has raised more than $63,000 for its #homelesscantstayhome campaign which has so far housed 27 people in hotels.
Anthony Williams, 57, who has been homeless on and off for decades, had been sleeping on the subway for the last two and a half years until he got a room in a hotel through the campaign three days ago.
He said: “Now that Covid-19 exists and they’re shutting it [the subway] down it leaves a void. Where do people go to find their safety, to sleep?”
He predicts some people will sleep in the day on the subway and walk the streets at night or try to hide in abandoned train stations or tunnels. But, he said, they will not go in shelters – both because of coronavirus and, like him, have negative past experiences.
He said he found the new police approach “intimidating” and “aggressive”.
Kelly Doran, an emergency physician and faculty member in the departments of emergency medicine and population health at NYU School of Medicine, said homeless people are especially vulnerable to Covid-19.
Premature ageing and higher rates of illnesses such as uncontrolled hypertension, diabetes and obesity combined with racial disparities, she added, are “compounding together to make this population at particular risk”.
If homeless people are not offered their own rooms, she said infection will continue. “Essentially they’re just displacing somebody from one bad setting to another bad setting is not decreasing risk of contracting coronavirus.”
The Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) said all passengers will have to leave trains and stations and there will be shuttle buses to transport homeless people. It said police will continue to work with them to connect homeless people to “the medical care and social services they need and deserve”.
A New York police department (NYPD) spokesperson said officers are patrolling the subways with nurses and that “homelessness is not a crime”. But they added: “Without a doubt, disruptive passengers are more visible now and burglaries are up. We are working hard to address both these issues.”
Isaac McGinn, a spokesman for the city’s social and homeless services departments, said they are “adapting and responding to meet need at a scale and speed never before seen, as we have in our pandemic response since this crisis began” and that they are in “regular conversations” with Fema.
Fema said it has conditionally approved New York state’s request for “non-congregate sheltering assistance”. New York state did not respond to requests for comment.

Coronavirus breakthrough: Scientists isolate the Italian strain of the COVID-19 virus
CORONAVIRUS researchers in Italy have isolated the strain of SARS-CoV-2 responsible for the biggest outbreak of COVID-19 in Europe.
by Sebastian Kettley
Express/UK
The coronavirus has infected more than 1,600 people in Italy, triggering the second biggest outbreak of COVID-19 outside of mainland China. Globally, the coronavirus has infected more than 89,000 people and has killed at least 3,048.
As the world scrambles to contain the coronavirus epidemic, scientists in Milan have made a major breakthrough towards finding a cure.
Dr Maciej Tarkowski, a Polish biologist studying the virus in Milan, told the Polish Press Agency (PAP) scientists have isolated the Italian strain of the coronavirus.
The pathogen was extracted from patients in Codogno, a town in northern Italy where some of the first coronavirus infections were confirmed.
Dr Tarkowski said the breakthrough will help illustrate the differences and similarities between different coronavirus strains.

Italy’s virus is a different strain from Wuhan’s
www.reddit.com
A Portuguese journalist (RTP) stated today, during a live report from Italy, that it is now known that the virus going around in Italy is a different strain from the Wuhan one: it has suffered a mutation.
The reporter cites researchers from Milan’s University Hospital.
https://www.rtp.pt/play/p6558/e458888/jornal-da-tarde
“A group of researchers from Milan’s University Hospital was able to identify the strain of the Italian virus. The researchers state that when compared to what was known about the Chinese virus, a mutation has occured and this discovery will allow to reach(?) the genetic code of the virus, its specific characteristics in order to find out the time and spread speed of the virus. This should be an important first step to develop specific treatment for the infected. The scientific community has already communicated this discovery to Brussels [to the European Union headquarters] and even President Materelli has already congratulated the researchers (…)”