This is the Coronavirus Briefing, an informed guide to the global outbreak. Sign up here to get the briefing by email.
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The pandemic has drastically curbed migration around the world, particularly people from poorer nations seeking work in richer ones.
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The Supreme Court held its first remote hearing, listening to arguments and asking questions by phone.
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The Senate reconvened in Washington after a month away, but the House remained on an extended recess.
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Get the latest updates here, plus maps, a tracker for U.S. metro areas, and full coverage.
A ‘new normal’ that experts say looks grim
Most of the United States has hunkered down for the past seven weeks, but the spread of the coronavirus has not stopped. It has slowed a bit in some places, including the hard-hit New York area, while accelerating in others.
Even so, governors in state after state are easing stay-at-home orders and allowing some businesses to reopen — which public health experts say could put us right back where we were in mid-March, when the virus was raging unchecked.
Despite optimistic talk from the White House, the Trump administration is privately projecting that 3,000 people a day will be dying from Covid-19 by the beginning of June, nearly double the current toll. And with wider testing, the new-case count will surge to 200,000 a day, nearly seven times the present pace.
Those figures, based on government models, are summarized in chart form in an internal document obtained by The New York Times. The charts show that the “flattened curves” of U.S. diagnoses and deaths never did turn downward — and are now likely to bend more steeply upward as restrictions are eased.
“While mitigation didn’t fail, I think it’s fair to say that it didn’t work as well as we expected,” Scott Gottlieb, President Trump’s former commissioner of food and drugs, said Sunday on the CBS program “Face the Nation.” “We expected that we would start seeing more significant declines in new cases and deaths around the nation at this point. And we’re just not seeing that.”
That means, he said, that Americans “may be facing the prospect that 20,000, 30,000 new cases a day diagnosed becomes the new normal.”
Mr. Trump, who has frequently understated the impact of the disease, said on Sunday that “we’re going to lose anywhere from 75, 80 to 100,000 people” in all. That estimate is as much as twice what he was saying two weeks ago, but it is still far below what his administration now projects by the end of May, never mind the months thereafter.
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The rise of social-distance snitching
Some frustrated Americans have turned into citizen informants, reporting other people’s violations of social-distancing edicts or stay-at-home orders to the police, public health authorities and even their employers.
Tips from the public have prompted officials to issue citations and have helped shutter nonessential businesses like dog groomers and massage parlors that defied closure orders.
The vigilantism has also taken the form of anonymous public shaming, like scolding fliers left on cars at weekend destinations, or posters rebuking people who go maskless.
Some cities and counties have set up phone numbers and websites for people to report infractions, which have attracted a flood of tips — along with complaints about encouraging citizens to inform on one another the way authoritarian regimes do.
The problem with pictures: We’ve all seen images of jammed beaches and parks held up as evidence of heedlessness. But Vice notes that some public spaces may not really be as crowded as they seem in photos, which tend to foreshorten distances toward or away from the camera.
Italy tiptoes out of its lockdown
At least a dozen countries took measured steps on Monday to ease restrictions on public life and reopen their economies. Italy, an early hot spot with the second-most coronavirus deaths after the United States, had locked down much tighter than most, so its reopening carried some symbolic weight.
Restaurants and bars could reopen, but only for takeout. Some buses and subway lines restarted, but the number of passengers was limited. Work-related travel is now allowed, but moving between regions is still tightly controlled.
For the first time in seven weeks, the government also allowed Italians to visit congiunti, a word that can mean relatives or personal connections more broadly. The ambiguity caused some confusion, so the government tried to clear it up: Spouses, partners in civil unions and people with a “stable affectionate connection” would qualify and could see each other again, but not people who are just friends.
As Jason Horowitz, the Rome bureau chief for The Times, put it in a tweet: “Freedom rests between Like and Like Like.”
Reopenings
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Spain allowed small stores and businesses like hairdressers to reopen, starting a four-stage plan to return the country to a “new normalcy” by late June.
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Australia and New Zealand are moving closer to creating a “travel bubble,” allowing people to fly between them without quarantines.
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India is easing its lockdown, one of the most severe, in areas with few or no known infections, allowing businesses, local transportation and gatherings like weddings to resume.
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Restaurants, stores, museums and libraries in Florida are allowed to reopen with fewer patrons, except in the state’s most populous counties.
Here’s a roundup of restrictions in all 50 states.
What you can do
Celebrate milestones. Virtual events you host during the pandemic may be the easiest parties you ever throw. Here’s some advice on holding a great event online.
Keep your children active. With schools shuttered, the inactivity and snacking typical of summer breaks put more students at risk of obesity and health problems.
Nurture your small hobbies. A writer found that sketching his dish rack helped him cope with the loss of a job a few years ago. It’s also getting him through the pandemic.
What else we’re following
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Companies selling antibody tests must prove their accuracy within 10 days or face removal from the market, the Food and Drug Administration said.
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Noncompliance with social distancing in Gallup, N.M., a virus hot spot, prompted Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham to seal off and lock down the whole city using the state’s riot control law.
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Carnival Cruise Lines said it planned to resume some cruises on Aug. 1.
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The clothing company J. Crew filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, the first major American retailer to do so since the pandemic began.
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The virus may spell the end of open-floor offices, as employers consider how to reconfigure the workplace for social distancing.
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The Navy is keeping the aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman from returning to port on schedule, Reuters reports, because the ship has zero coronavirus cases on board and the Navy needs it to stay “clean” awhile longer.
What you’re doing
Every evening it’s Real Madrid vs. Atlético Madrid — a friendly family soccer match on our front lawn. Our two sons need an outlet after six hours of virtual schooling and over a month of “staying in place.” Occasionally, our socially distant neighbors cheer us on from across the street.
— Cristina Perez, Coral Gables, Fla.
Let us know how you’re dealing with the outbreak. Send us a response here, and we may feature it in an upcoming newsletter.
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Lara Takenaga and Jonathan Wolfe helped write today’s newsletter.
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