Attention to the Unseen

The Hill reports: After an unprecedented month of strict social distancing and an economic lockdown that has cost tens of millions of jobs and untold billions in damage, Americans saw the faintest glimmers of hope last week that the worst of the coronavirus crisis may be passing. Modelers at the University of Washington downgraded their projections of the number of people who would die. Some states closed field hospitals they never had to use. Major professional sports leagues began considering…

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The Washington Post reports: The Trump administration still has no clear plan for ending the coronavirus crisis, but it does have many task forces. There is the official task force led by Vice President Pence that meets daily and is supposed to oversee the government’s sprawling response to the deadly pandemic that has cratered the economy and, as of Saturday, killed more than 19,000 in the United States alone. There is the “Opening Our Country Council,” an economic task force…

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The Washington Post reports: Through rain, sleet, hail, and even a pandemic, mail carriers serve every address in the United States, but the coronavirus crisis is shaking the foundation of the U.S. Postal Service in new and dire ways. The Postal Service’s decades-long financial troubles have worsened dramatically as the volume of the kind of mail that pays the agency’s bills ― first-class and marketing mail ― withers during the pandemic. The USPS needs an infusion of money, and President…

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The New York Times reports: You could find Beatriz Diaz at this spring’s Winter Party Festival in Miami Beach, giving out hand sanitizer. It was early March. She knew the coronavirus was beginning to make its way around the world, but she figured if she kept her hands clean and avoided sweaty people, she would be safe. “I was thinking, ‘OK, well, hold on, the government did not cancel it, so it should be fine,’” she said. Within days, reports…

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NPR reports: It’s the question on everyone’s minds: What will it take for us to come out of this period of extreme social distancing and return to some semblance of normal life? It turns out that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been working on a plan to allow the U.S. to safely begin to scale back those policies. CDC Director Robert Redfield spoke with NPR on Thursday, saying that the plan relies on not only ramped-up testing…

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Politico reports: Speaker Nancy Pelosi signaled Thursday that the House is unlikely to return to session later this month, her clearest indication yet that Congress — like the rest of the country — could remain shuttered for weeks or even longer as the coronavirus crisis continues. In a half-hour interview, Pelosi issued a stark warning to President Donald Trump, urging him not to prematurely rush to reopen major segments of the country before the coronavirus is under control, which she…

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Susan B. Glasser writes: On Saturday, March 21st, while Donald Trump was tweeting about the “Chinese virus” and circulating praise for the “great job we’ve done,” Eric Ries received a phone call from another Silicon Valley C.E.O. His friend Jeff Lawson, of the firm Twilio, told Ries that, to deal with the rapidly escalating coronavirus crisis, the White House was recruiting tech executives to help. Ries—the founder and C.E.O. of a new company, the Long-Term Stock Exchange, and the author…

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The Guardian reports: The rise of Peter Navarro – the man put in charge of marshalling emergency US production of medical equipment in the midst of a pandemic – is in many ways a classic story of the Trump era. The 70-year-old White House trade adviser was first recruited by Trump because he wrote a string of books about the Chinese strategic threat – one called Death by China – despite having spent almost no time in the country and…

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Politico reports: They could have known. They should have prepared. They didn’t listen. Europe, in early April, remains the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic — where the outbreak, uncontrolled, morphed into catastrophe. Nearly 50,000 dead. More than 600,000 infected. And the devastation is far from over. The world’s largest economy is paralyzed. The planet’s most open societies are frozen in fear — with the Continent’s treasured freedoms blamed for accelerating the spread of the most pernicious contagion to afflict humankind…

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The New York Times reports: In his daily briefings on the coronavirus, President Trump has brandished all the familiar tools in his rhetorical arsenal: belittling Democratic governors, demonizing the media, trading in innuendo and bulldozing over the guidance of experts. It’s the kind of performance the president relishes, but one that has his advisers and Republican allies worried. As unemployment soars and the death toll skyrockets, and new polls show support for the president’s handling of the crisis sagging, White…

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