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Coronavirus Briefing: What Happened Today - The New York Times

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This is the Coronavirus Briefing, an informed guide to the global outbreak. Sign up here to get the briefing by email.

Credit...The New York Times

Pogo said it about litterers in 1971, but the comic-strip possum might have been reading the minds of many Americans of today. As the nation starts to reopen, what really worries them, perhaps as much as the coronavirus itself, is the threat they feel from other people’s irresponsible behavior.

When The Times and Siena College surveyed people in the New York area about when they might feel comfortable attending live events like concerts, plays and ballgames again, a majority said that they would probably wait until 2021. The No. 1 reason for hesitating: They did not trust that everyone in the audience would obey the rules, wear masks and keep a safe distance away.

The holiday weekend provided plenty of fresh reason for feeling that way. Social media and TV reports showed people flocking heedlessly to beaches, parks and resorts around the country as if there were no such thing as a pandemic.

Images of large crowds gathering at one popular spot, the Lake of the Ozarks, in defiance of social distancing guidelines prompted health officials in Kansas and Missouri to issue warnings that people who had been there should quarantine themselves for two weeks.

“This reckless behavior endangers countless people and risks setting us back substantially from the progress we have made in slowing the spread of Covid-19,” Dr. Sam Page, the St. Louis County executive, said in the statement.

Assault with infectious intent: By keeping people home, the pandemic has greatly reduced some kinds of crime, but it has given rise to an alarming new one: wielding the virus as a weapon. Police officers in Michigan reported being spit on by people claiming to have Covid-19 and at least one instance of a suspect’s licking a police-car window in hopes of spreading the virus.

The Times is providing free access to much of our coronavirus coverage, and our Coronavirus Briefing newsletter — like all of our newsletters — is free. Please consider supporting our journalism with a subscription.

Credit...States that have seen a rise in newly reported cases over the last 14 days.

While the numbers of new cases and deaths reported each day in the United States as a whole are gradually declining, the trend is not the same everywhere. In about a dozen states, the figures are heading upward.

Many of those states began reopening their economies on the early side — in April or the beginning of May — and have seen new cases jump in the weeks since then. They include Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee. Others, like Arkansas, North Dakota and Oklahoma, never issued statewide stay-at-home orders and have begun lifting the narrower restrictions they did impose.

The data may reflect greater testing capacity in some places — in other words, more detection rather than more infection. But they may also be signs of a “second wave” of new cases: Many experts have warned that relaxing social distancing measures too soon could allow the virus to bounce back and start spreading rapidly again.

Many experts have talked about the need for widespread or even universal testing to truly get hold of the coronavirus, but few governments have attempted such a huge undertaking. One that did — the city of Wuhan, China, where the global outbreak began — offers some lessons.

The city spent months under one if the most draconian lockdown regimes anywhere, but several new cases emerged afterward. So officials decided to have every resident tested as quickly as possible. Thousands of workers were dispatched to make house calls, and messages urging people to be tested were blared over loudspeakers. In less than two weeks, the city has already screened 6.5 million people.

The city has found only about 200 new coronavirus cases so far, mostly in people with no symptoms — a confirmation of its success in taming its outbreak.

But some Chinese medical experts have disputed the need for Wuhan’s comprehensive approach, given that the city now has only a tiny handful of symptomatic cases. One virologist argued that a city of that size would need to test a sample of only about 100,000 people to accurately assess its outbreak.

Chopstick changes? The Chinese government has called for the use of serving utensils instead of personal chopsticks to share food. But many citizens have resisted, unwilling to abandon an important expression of communal culture.

Credit...The New York Times

As the virus death toll in the United States nears 100,000, The Times gathered names of the dead and memories of their lives from obituaries in local newspapers across the country.

“A number is an imperfect measure when applied to the human condition,” Dan Barry writes in an accompanying essay. “A number provides an answer to how many, but it can never convey the individual arcs of life, the 100,000 ways of greeting the morning and saying good night.”

  • Las Vegas is planning to allow casinos and resorts to reopen in early June; many will have new rules, like not allowing players to touch cards, and will spread out slot machines and mark tables with tape to keep players apart.

  • Almost all of New York State has begun reopening or is set to do so this week — except for New York City.

  • Dozens of U.S. meatpacking plants that closed because of outbreaks have begun reopening, but it is hard to tell whether the outbreaks have been contained, because the companies and local officials are releasing little or no data.

Here’s a roundup of reopenings and remaining restrictions in all 50 states.

The Coronavirus Outbreak

  • Frequently Asked Questions and Advice

    Updated May 26, 2020

    • How can I protect myself while flying?

      If air travel is unavoidable, there are some steps you can take to protect yourself. Most important: Wash your hands often, and stop touching your face. If possible, choose a window seat. A study from Emory University found that during flu season, the safest place to sit on a plane is by a window, as people sitting in window seats had less contact with potentially sick people. Disinfect hard surfaces. When you get to your seat and your hands are clean, use disinfecting wipes to clean the hard surfaces at your seat like the head and arm rest, the seatbelt buckle, the remote, screen, seat back pocket and the tray table. If the seat is hard and nonporous or leather or pleather, you can wipe that down, too. (Using wipes on upholstered seats could lead to a wet seat and spreading of germs rather than killing them.)

    • What are the symptoms of coronavirus?

      Common symptoms include fever, a dry cough, fatigue and difficulty breathing or shortness of breath. Some of these symptoms overlap with those of the flu, making detection difficult, but runny noses and stuffy sinuses are less common. The C.D.C. has also added chills, muscle pain, sore throat, headache and a new loss of the sense of taste or smell as symptoms to look out for. Most people fall ill five to seven days after exposure, but symptoms may appear in as few as two days or as many as 14 days.

    • How many people have lost their jobs due to coronavirus in the U.S.?

      Over 38 million people have filed for unemployment since March. One in five who were working in February reported losing a job or being furloughed in March or the beginning of April, data from a Federal Reserve survey released on May 14 showed, and that pain was highly concentrated among low earners. Fully 39 percent of former workers living in a household earning $40,000 or less lost work, compared with 13 percent in those making more than $100,000, a Fed official said.

    • Is ‘Covid toe’ a symptom of the disease?

      There is an uptick in people reporting symptoms of chilblains, which are painful red or purple lesions that typically appear in the winter on fingers or toes. The lesions are emerging as yet another symptom of infection with the new coronavirus. Chilblains are caused by inflammation in small blood vessels in reaction to cold or damp conditions, but they are usually common in the coldest winter months. Federal health officials do not include toe lesions in the list of coronavirus symptoms, but some dermatologists are pushing for a change, saying so-called Covid toe should be sufficient grounds for testing.

    • Should I wear a mask?

      The C.D.C. has recommended that all Americans wear cloth masks if they go out in public. This is a shift in federal guidance reflecting new concerns that the coronavirus is being spread by infected people who have no symptoms. Until now, the C.D.C., like the W.H.O., has advised that ordinary people don’t need to wear masks unless they are sick and coughing. Part of the reason was to preserve medical-grade masks for health care workers who desperately need them at a time when they are in continuously short supply. Masks don’t replace hand washing and social distancing.

    • What should I do if I feel sick?

      If you’ve been exposed to the coronavirus or think you have, and have a fever or symptoms like a cough or difficulty breathing, call a doctor. They should give you advice on whether you should be tested, how to get tested, and how to seek medical treatment without potentially infecting or exposing others.

    • How can I help?

      Charity Navigator, which evaluates charities using a numbers-based system, has a running list of nonprofits working in communities affected by the outbreak. You can give blood through the American Red Cross, and World Central Kitchen has stepped in to distribute meals in major cities.

When can you return to exercise? If you had Covid-19, experts advise waiting at least a week after your symptoms disappear.

Share safely. Give food to friends and family while reducing your risk of transmitting or getting the virus. Here’s one way: When delivering, wear a mask, place the food six feet from the door, and then back away so those inside can retrieve it.

Avoid burnout. Working from home can make it feel as though you’re always on the clock. Restore some balance by building some flexibility into your schedule, perhaps with a break to run errands or take a walk when work is slow.

  • Dr. Peter Piot, a virus hunter known for his research on AIDS and Ebola, underestimated Covid-19 — and then caught it. More than two months later, he’s still fighting the disease.

  • As child hunger soars, an emergency program Congress created two months ago has reached only about 15 percent of the 30 million children it was intended to help.

  • Do as I say, not as I do: Many leaders across the world are facing scrutiny for not following the social distancing guidelines they impose.

  • If you analyze the economic effects of shutdowns and stay-at-home orders the way the government usually assesses regulations, the restrictions actually did much more long-term good than short-term harm, Todd C. Frankel writes in The Washington Post.

  • Hoping to ease the burdens of virus restrictions on young readers, J.K. Rowling began publishing installments of a fairy tale called “The Ickabog.”

I am building a Corona Cairn in my front yard — one rock for each day in isolation. As I live near a beach, I bring rocks back on my daily walk. After an initial unsteady start, the cairn is now about 30 inches high and has about 70 rocks in it. I’ll continue building it until the pandemic is declared over.

— Ann Salpeter, Nanaimo, British Columbia

Let us know how you’re dealing with the outbreak. Send us a response here, and we may feature it in an upcoming newsletter.

Sign up here to get the briefing by email.

Lara Takenaga, Jonathan Wolfe and Tom Wright-Piersanti helped write today’s newsletter.

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