Good morning. It’s Sunday. There’s not a lot of cheerful news.
Another astronaut offers tips on living in isolation.
The NYPD is reporting that 50 officers have tested positive for coronavirus. And others are banging in sick at increasing rates, so much so that it’s “forcing the NYPD to call the Movie and Television Unit to fill in.” I’m picturing the actors from Brooklyn Nine-Nine patrolling the streets.
There are lessons for the US in how other countries have handled the outbreak. South Korea acted early and its response was generally successful. Japan is still a bit of a mystery. Although their cases began before Italy’s, and their social distancing efforts have been pretty halfhearted, they haven’t seen much of a spike. It may still be coming. So what caused Italy’s situation to be so bad? They closed off travel to China before the US, then closed down the entire country, and still they ended up with a disaster. Maybe it was the hemming and hawing and denials by political leaders in the crucial early stages of the crisis.
Clayton Dalton reports from the emergency department at Mass General. It’s quiet before a storm that they hope doesn’t come. And don’t read this doctor’s account of treading Covid-19 patients unless you want to be up all night worrying.
Readers complained to Mike Allen that coverage of the pandemic has been “overly dramatic.” The reality, he says, is that they have been dialing it back to mostly best case scenarios, which are still pretty bad. I don’t think we want to talk about the worst case possibilities. Or the even worse ones.
And a photographer walked ten blocks in New York to capture the signs posted by closed businesses. An interesting snapshot of the time.