CHICAGO — My mother believes that God and the Chinese Communist Party will defeat the novel coronavirus. “Pray for Wuhan. Pray for China,” she urges me, referring to the capital of Hubei Province, where the outbreak started. It is early February, a week and some since Wuhan was placed under lockdown. My mother lives in […]
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Making sense of the coronavirus pandemic requires getting up to speed on semantics as much as epidemiology. Government officials and health-care professionals toss off mentions of mortality rates, flattening the curve and lockdowns, assuming that we know what they mean. But the terms mean different things from country to country, state to state, even city […]
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MOSCOW — In the early 1990s, amid the poverty-ridden collapse of the Soviet Union, American food aid in the form of a flood of cheap chicken thighs — Russians called them “Bush legs” — symbolized the humiliating downfall of a superpower. Three decades later, Moscow got a chance to turn the tables. A giant An-124 […]
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DETROIT — Dwight Jones, my high school basketball coach, died on Monday from the coronavirus. He had devoted 50 years of his life to helping young men and women, using his quick wit to get his point across. “Nick, you’re slower than Christmas,” he often told me during practice. He pushed me to be faster […]
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New York City has already set up 45 new mobile morgues. Local crematories are now allowed to work around the clock. At one Brooklyn hospital, the in-house morgue was filled to capacity on Tuesday. The next day, the nursing staff ran out of body bags. As the coronavirus epidemic enters its second month, the casualties […]
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The United States now leads the world by many measures of the coronavirus outbreak, whether it’s a dubious distinction like the largest number of confirmed cases or a more positive one, like total coronavirus tests. But the United States is one of the most populous nations in the world. It might lead these measures simply […]
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Here’s what you need to know: President Trump strikes a somber note as he warns of a “painful two weeks” ahead. Video On Tuesday, the coronavirus task force used models to deliver an update on the expected spread of the disease. They projected that Covid-19 could kill up to 240,000 Americans, but pledged to do […]
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A fire swept through the top floor of a Bronx apartment building on Tuesday night, killing four people and injuring one, officials said. The roof of the six-story apartment building at 1560 Grand Concourse near East Mount Eden Road was ablaze as 140 firefighters responded to the call around 7:20 p.m. The victims, four adult […]
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This article is part of David Leonhardt’s newsletter. You can sign up here to receive it each weekday. China and South Korea have flattened their curves. Italy, Spain, Germany and the Netherlands have begun to flatten their curves. The United States still has not. More than half of all confirmed coronavirus cases in the United […]
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WASHINGTON — The numbers the health officials showed President Trump were overwhelming. With the peak of the coronavirus pandemic still weeks away, he was told, hundreds of thousands of Americans could face death if the country reopened too soon. But there was another set of numbers that also helped persuade Mr. Trump to shift gears […]
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In just the last eight months, I’ve had two cycling accidents when inattentive drivers made right turns and cut me off. So far I’ve been lucky, escaping with bloody scrapes and a bent bike wheel. But I can’t help wondering how long my luck will last. According to data compiled by The New York Times […]
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SEATTLE — The Seattle area, home of the first known coronavirus case in the United States and the place where the virus claimed 37 of its first 50 victims, is now seeing evidence that harsh containment strategies, imposed in the earliest days of the outbreak, are beginning to pay off — at least for now. […]
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Here’s what you need to know: Mayor Bill de Blasio, and many other elected leaders, stress their urgent needs for medical supplies. ImageA group of nurses protested the lack of medical equipment at Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx on Saturday.Credit…Gregg Vigliotti for The New York Times New York City has a one-week supply of […]
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Here’s what you need to know: ImageHealth care providers at a drive-through coronavirus testing location in Jericho, N.Y., on Wednesday.Credit…Johnny Milano for The New York Times America’s lost month: How the U.S. fell behind on coronavirus testing. As the deadly coronavirus spread across the United States between late January and early March, large-scale testing of […]
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Six people were left dead in a fire that destroyed a family home in rural Indiana early Saturday morning, officials said. Investigators have not yet positively identified the victims of the fatal blaze, Sgt. Stephen Wheeles of the Indiana State Police said on Twitter. The fire was reported at 3:40 a.m. and may have started […]
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BERLIN — Europe is in crisis. Countries across the Continent are in lockdown. Borders are closed off. Health care systems are dangerously overstretched. Economies are contracting. And people are dying, in terrifying numbers. Here is much the same. Though not in full lockdown, schools, shops, restaurants and theaters are closed; gatherings of more than two […]
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PARIS — One of the world’s best health care systems is facing its severest test ever, and whether it succeeds will say much about the ultimate adequacy of a well-funded, well-equipped and broadly accessible national treatment plan. If France’s experiment in confining its citizens — less rigorous than the Chinese, more precocious than the Italian, […]
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Dear President Trump, I have not been one of your supporters, but when it comes to combating the coronavirus, saving lives and getting as many Americans back to work as quickly as possible, I am praying for your success, because so much is riding on the decisions that you, and only you, can make. So […]
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YONKERS, N.Y. — On Monday, around 5 a.m., I drove my father to Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey, where he works as an emergency room doctor. He sat in the back seat, just as I did when he used to drive me to school, and slept. The coronavirus is exhausting. Since he developed […]
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This article is part of David Leonhardt’s newsletter. You can sign up here to receive it each weekday. “The higher the peak, the longer it lasts,” Tom Frieden, a former head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told me yesterday. Frieden’s point was that a local surge in coronavirus cases isn’t only a […]
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WASHINGTON — The American population is growing at its slowest pace since 1919, new government data shows, as a drop in births and an acceleration in deaths put the country closer than ever to an overall decline. The figures, released by the Census Bureau on Thursday and analyzed by demographers, were for the 12 months […]
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Can we measure the cost of hundreds of thousands of dead? President Trump and leading business figures are increasingly questioning the wisdom of a prolonged shutdown of the American economy — already putting millions out of work — to curb the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. “Our people want to return to work,” Mr. Trump […]
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Dez-Ann Romain, principal of the Brooklyn Democracy Academy, a public high school, always kept her office neat and freshened with new flowers, and kept the school decorated with inspirational quotes. “She was one of the most innovative school leaders I’ve ever worked with — her students just adored her,” said Courtney Winkfield, a New York […]
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