Good morning. In case you were beginning to feel optimistic about the flattening of the coronavirus curve, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a stark warning: the second wave of Covid-19 infections could prove “even more difficult” for the US than the first. If such a surge comes during the winter months, Robert Redfield told the Washington Post on Tuesday, it would coincide with the regular annual flu season, when the healthcare system is already strained.
The coronavirus has now killed more than 44,000 people in the US and 175,000 worldwide.
Trump’s favourite malaria drug is not a miracle cure … The president has touted hydroxychloroquine as a potential treatment for Covid-19. But an analysis of its use in US veterans hospitals found more deaths among those who were given the drug than those who received standard care.
… and nor is bleach. The US government is taking legal action against pseudoscience groups peddling a potentially dangerous quack cure for coronavirus: bleach solution.
Trump says his immigration ban protects American workers
The president has framed his latest plan to tackle the pandemic – a 60-day ban on immigration to the US – as an effort to protect US workers from foreign competition. His executive order, which could be extended beyond two months, “will help put unemployed Americans first in line for jobs as America reopens”, he said. On Tuesday Trump also pledged to prop up the oil and gas industry, as the price of US crude again fell below zero.
In times of national tragedy, the president traditionally acts as America’s consoler-in-chief, writes David Smith. But Trump is less concerned with the human cost of the crisis than he is with its economic cost – and the threat to his own political future:
The message Trump delivers each day in press briefings seems to be motivated more by his quest for re-election than any fellow feeling for beleaguered Americans.
‘Some household names will not survive’ the coming recession
Most business leaders now expect a lengthy global recession to result from the coronavirus crisis, according to a survey of more than 3,000 chief executives in 109 countries by the business leadership network YPO. The boss of one Singapore-based health services firm said: “We have not seen a crisis like this for over 100 years, and some household names will not survive.”
At last, a lifeline for small businesses. The US Senate has passed a new $500bn aid package for small firms, after the first congressional coronavirus bailout was criticised for appearing to favour big business.
Netflix enjoys a subscriber boom. The streaming service is a rare lockdown success story, adding 15.77 million new customers over the past three months – more than double the number it had forecast.
Stay-at-home orders are causing heated debates in the states
Almost 20,000 Georgians have tested positive for the coronavirus, at least 86 died on Sunday and Monday alone, and the state still has no way to conduct widespread testing. But the governor, Brian Kemp, has joined the governors of Florida and South Carolina in planning to reopen parts of their states’ economies over the weekend, a decision decried by the mayor of Savannah as “reckless, premature and dangerous”. The situation pits Kemp, a white Republican, against Georgia’s mostly black Democratic mayors.
In Wisconsin, by contrast, the Democratic governor, Tony Evers, is facing a legal challenge to his stay-at-home order from GOP state leaders, as the question of coronavirus lockdowns across the US becomes increasingly political and partisan.
South Dakota won’t stay at home. Some governors refused to issue stay-at-home orders in the first place, including South Dakota, whose governor, Kristi Noem, told Fox News: “So many people give up their liberties for just a little bit of security, and they don’t have to do that.”
Missouri sues China. The Republican-led state of Missouri is suing China over the coronavirus, claiming the Chinese government is to blame for the pandemic.
In other news …
An IVF toad offers hope in an age of extinction. Olaf, from an endangered species of Puerto Rican toad, recently hatched at Fort Worth zoo in Texas. As the first amphibian to be born from frozen sperm, his example shows that scientists could bank frozen sperm and eggs to protect the genetic lineage of threatened species.
The death toll from a shooting in Nova Scotia is now 22. Police in Canada revised up the number of victims of the weekend rampage, the country’s worst mass shooting of modern times, after more were publicly identified.
How many US troops are in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria? The Pentagon stopped publishing the numbers two years ago, but the Trump administration may now be forced to reveal them following a Freedom of Information Act request.
Great reads
Ramadan in a time of plague
Under normal circumstances, the holy month of Ramadan would be a time when mosques are crowded and iftar dinners stretch into the early hours. But in the Covid-19 era, Muslim places of worship will be deserted and day-long fasts broken in isolation, as Guardian journalists report from across the Islamic world.
How historians are documenting the pandemic
The New-York Historical Society has started accumulating photos and ephemera related to the coronavirus, for a collection aimed at teaching future generations about the crisis. “We hope people will be able to learn from it and be better prepared in an event like this in the future,” the museum’s director tells Nadja Sayej.
Jameela Jamil: ‘I am a human, prone to error’
The Good Place star is launching a new podcast and a YouTube show. She tells Emine Saner about the possible benefits of lockdown, including the return of women’s body hair and the death of the handshake. “The fact you know that a hand has been on a dick at some point before touching your hand is deeply unsettling.”
Opinion: California fire victims were prepared for a pandemic
The northern California communities ravaged by fire for the past several years already knew nature was more powerful than humanity, writes Christina Nicol – and they had rehearsed leaving “normal life” behind.
When Covid-19 erupted, it felt a little like a ‘Hold my beer. We’ve got this!’ kind of a moment, not because we had any control – quite the opposite – but because we’d had an apprenticeship with our own powerlessness against the forces of nature.
Last Thing: stare at a dot and see the world anew
Olafur Eliasson has unveiled his latest interactive artwork, designed to change the way we look at the world as we mark Earth Day 2020. The artist will post nine images on Instagram throughout the day: orange and pink depictions of the Earth with a dot in the middle. Stare at the dot for 10 seconds, then shift your focus to a blank surface where an afterimage should appear – literally, a new view of the world.
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