reopenings expose u.s. divisions · in alabama, clothing boutiques flung open their doors. nearly a...

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CHICAGO — Texas lifted stay-at-home orders for its 29 millionresidents. Hair salons in Mainewelcomed customers back inside.In Alabama, clothing boutiquesflung open their doors.

Nearly a dozen states tenta-tively returned to public life onFriday, the first mass reopening ofbusinesses since the coronaviruspandemic brought America to astandstill six weeks ago. But therewere clashes across the countryover how, when and even whetherit should be done.

Partisan battles flared in Illi-nois and Michigan, where pro-testers demanded that Democrat-ic leaders loosen restrictions. Theskirmishes there and elsewhererevealed political dividing linesand geographical differences, butalso something more basic — avast and widely varying range ofpersonal views about what thecountry should do.

In tiny Grants, N.M., the rene-gade mayor defied the governor’sorder to keep businesses closedamid the threat of the virus. “It’salready here and it’s going tospread no matter what,” MayorMartin Hicks said. “It’s going totake its course like all viruses do.Why do we freak out over this?”

The lifting of stringent rulesmarked a significant new phase inthe country’s response to the coro-navirus, and came even as con-firmed virus cases nationally con-tinue to grow. While the growthrate of the virus has slowed inNew York and California, new out-breaks are intensifying in Massa-chusetts, Nebraska and Wiscon-sin, among other states.

In Texas, some businesses werepermitted to open on Friday, a dayafter the state reported its highestsingle-day death toll from the co-ronavirus, with 50 fatalities.

Much is at stake in the reopen-ings, experts say.

“It’s clearly a life-or-death-sort-of-level decision,” said Dr. LarryChang, an infectious-diseasesspecialist at Johns Hopkins Uni-versity. “If you get this wrong,many more people will die. It’s assimple as that.”

After a period in which nine in10 residents in the United Stateswere told to stay at home, severalof those orders expired on Thurs-day, paving the way for certain

REOPENINGS EXPOSE U.S. DIVISIONS

Plenty of distance during lunch at the Main Street Cafe in Council Bluffs, Iowa. The state’s governor eased restrictions in 77 counties.CALLA KESSLER/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Continued on Page A14

Risky New PhaseBrings Discord

and Unease

By JULIE BOSMANand SARAH MERVOSH

The old friend shows up everynight, big and brawny as ever.He’s on a Brooklyn family’s sev-enth-floor balcony in Windsor Ter-race, and above the Portofino Ris-torante in Forest Hills, and bel-lowing out of a truck rolling slowlyup and down the empty canyons ofManhattan’s avenues, right ontime to — with the crash of a cym-

bal — start spreadin’ the news.It is 7 p.m., and the city is al-

ready clapping, a nightly outpour-ing of support for health careworkers that has taken place forweeks. And many have added a

soundtrack to their applause, asfamiliar as the skyline. It’s asbrassy and over the top as ever —and yet, playing out across acooped-up city of crowded apart-ments and masks and gloves, itsbottomless optimism can visiblybring smiles, a short pause to ThePause.

I want to be a part of it — NewYork, New York.

An Anthem Buoys New York, New York, AgainBy MICHAEL WILSON De Niro’s Ear, Sinatra’s

Voice, a City’s Soul

Continued on Page A10

BRYAN DERBALLA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

A worker at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden helped prune the beauty behind closed gates. Page C1.Spring Has Sprung, in Near Solitude

The U.S. is taking a more aggressivestand against China on important eco-nomic, diplomatic and scientific issues,deepening the open rivalry between theworld’s superpowers. PAGE A8

TRACKING AN OUTBREAK A4-17

Fraying Ties With Beijing

Uncertain if campuses will reopen,students are slow to commit for the fall.For schools, lower enrollment and lostrevenue could be devastating. PAGE A16

Waiting Game for Universities

Dermatologists say inflammationshould prompt testing for the virus,even without other symptoms. PAGE A12

Are Itchy Red Toes a Symptom?

The Permian Basin was long the epi-center of the American oil boom. Now,it’s the epicenter of its demise. PAGE B1

‘This Feels Very Different’

Lawmakers want to question Jeff Be-zos, Amazon’s chief executive, as part ofits antitrust investigation. PAGE B1

BUSINESS B1-9

Seeking Answers From Bezos

Laurie Hernandez said her love ofgymnastics was tainted by MaggieHaney, who is now suspended. PAGE B10

SPORTSSATURDAY B10-12

Olympian Recalls Coach’s Abuse

The show, which features some of thebest pals on TV, returns for a sweet,goofy special that embodies this come-dy’s overriding philosophy, that commu-nity helps us survive. PAGE C1

ARTS C1-7

‘Parks and Recreation’ Reunion

The friendship between the directorMira Nair and the actor Irrfan Khan,who died this week, endured for dec-ades. In an interview, she speaks oftheir special bond. PAGE C1

A Filmmaker and Her Friend

Zoltan Istvan PAGE A27

EDITORIAL, OP-ED A26-27

THIS WEEKEND

Remdesivir, an antiviral drugdesigned to treat both hepatitisand a common respiratory virus,seemed fated to join thousands ofother failed medications afterproving useless against those dis-eases. The drug was consigned tothe pharmaceutical scrap heap,all but forgotten by the scientistswho once championed it.

But on Friday, the Food andDrug Administration issued anemergency approval for remde-sivir as a treatment for patientsseverely ill with Covid-19, the dis-ease caused by the coronavirus.

The story of remdesivir’s res-cue and transformation testifiesto the powerful role played by fed-eral funding, which allowed scien-tists laboring in obscurity to pur-sue basic research without obvi-ous financial benefits. This re-search depends almost entirely on

government grants.Dr. Mark Denison of Vanderbilt

University is one of a handful ofresearchers who discoveredremdesivir’s potential. He beganstudying coronaviruses a quarter-century ago, when few scientistscared about them — the ones in-fecting humans caused colds, herecalled, and scientists justwanted to know how they worked.

“We were interested from thebiologic perspective,” Dr. Denisonrecalled. “No one was interestedfrom a therapeutic perspective.”

Neither he nor the scores ofother scientists interested in coro-naviruses foresaw that a new one

would unleash a plague that haskilled nearly a quarter-millionpeople worldwide. The F.D.A.rushed to approve remdesivir un-der emergency use provisions, af-ter a federal trial demonstratedmodest improvements in severelyill patients.

The trial, sponsored by the Na-tional Institute of Allergy and In-fectious Diseases, included morethan 1,000 hospitalized patientsand found that those receivingremdesivir recovered faster thanthose who got a placebo: in 11days, versus 15 days. But the drugdid not significantly reduce fatal-ity rates.

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director ofthe National Institute of Allergyand Infectious Diseases, said theresults were “a very importantproof of concept” but not a “knock-out.” President Trump hailed thedrug on Friday as “an important

A Failed Ebola Drug Is Approved for Covid-19By GINA KOLATA Pulled From the Scrap

Heap, RemdesivirOffers Promise

Continued on Page A11

Former Vice President JosephR. Biden Jr. on Friday denied anallegation of sexual assault by aformer Senate aide, Tara Reade,breaking a monthlong silence thathad frustrated some Democraticactivists as his presidential cam-paign grapples with issues of ac-countability and gender that arevitally important to many mem-bers of his party.

Sounding emphatic and attimes agitated in an interview onMSNBC, Mr. Biden, the presump-tive Democratic nominee, tried toaddress concerns about Ms.Reade’s claim by saying that shehad a right to be heard while alsoinsisting that he had not assaultedher. “No, it is not true,” Mr. Bidensaid. “I’m saying unequivocally itnever, never happened.”

Mr. Biden also called on the Na-tional Archives to release any ex-isting complaint related to the al-legation, even as he continued tooppose requests to release hisSenate papers, which, he said, donot contain personnel records.

The interview, as well as a state-ment posted on Medium,amounted to the Biden cam-paign’s most concerted effort yetto contain any possible danger forhis candidacy just as the Demo-

BIDEN, BREAKINGSILENCE, DENIESASSAULTING AIDE

A STRAINED INTERVIEW

Seeking a Release of AnyComplaint, but Not of

His Senate Papers

This article is by Katie Glueck,Lisa Lerer and Sydney Ember.

Joseph R. Biden Jr.HANNAH YOON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Continued on Page A21

Orphaned as a youth in Bangla-desh, Jamal Uddin worked in aribbon factory in Lower Manhat-tan while attending high school,before graduating from collegeand ultimately finding a careerhelping people with H.I.V./AIDS.

Over his 68 years he had provedthat he was a survivor, but the bat-tle of his life would take shape in aBrooklyn intensive care unit asthe new coronavirus swept thecity.

He had a ventilator to help himbreathe, the one piece of equip-ment everyone feared would beunavailable if the hospitals wereoverwhelmed. What Mr. Uddin

lacked, his family says, was ade-quate access to dialysis, a com-mon treatment for impaired kid-ney function that was not avail-able in sufficient quantities to dealwith wave after wave of Covid-19patients arriving in ambulancesat the emergency rooms.

His wife, Jesmin, and son,Shehran, grew increasingly anx-ious and then desperate over fourdays in April as Mr. Uddin re-ceived no dialysis treatments. “Asa physician it’s hard for me tofathom that that’s even a possibil-ity,” said Dr. Rasel Rana, an ortho-pedic surgeon and Mr. Uddin’sbrother-in-law, who said that heand his sister begged for dialysisin calls with the hospital as testsshowed worsening kidney func-tion.

At the peak of the outbreak, thenumber of Covid-19 patients fight-ing kidney failure led to soaringdemand for dialysis at hospitalsaround New York City, includingat NYU Langone Hospital-Brook-lyn, where Mr. Uddin was beingtreated. Nephrologists soundedthe alarm that they did not havethe medication, staffing or ma-chines to deal with the unexpect-ed influx of patients.

The hospital’s own records indi-

He Had a Ventilator, but DialysisIs What He Needed to Stay Alive

By NICHOLAS KULISH

Jamal Uddin, left, who died inApril, with his son, Shehran.

VIA SHEHRAN UDDIN

Continued on Page A13

Monty Bennett’s sprawling hos-pitality company is the biggestknown applicant of the govern-ment’s small-business relief pro-gram. The Texas conservative hasremained unwilling to return hisloans even as public anger buildsover large companies getting thefunds — a fact now drawing thescrutiny of a key lawmaker.

Hotels and subsidiaries over-seen by Mr. Bennett’s firm, Ash-ford Inc., have applied for $126million in forgivable loans fromthe Paycheck Protection Pro-gram. According to company fil-ings, about $70 million of that hasbeen funded. By comparison, theaverage loan size in the program’sfirst round was $206,000.

On Friday, Senator Chuck Schu-mer, the Democratic leader, sent aletter to the Small Business Ad-ministration demanding a thor-ough review of use of the programby Mr. Bennett’s companies, say-ing that he is “deeply concernedthat large, publicly traded compa-nies, like Ashford, may be exploit-ing” it.

“It is imperative that limitedtaxpayer dollars go to help legiti-mate small businesses,” he said inthe letter to Jovita Carranza, thesmall business administrator.

The $660 billion program, thecenterpiece of President Trump’seconomic rescue package, is in-tended to help small businessesand their workers stay afloatwhile quarantines and stay-at-home orders close shops and shut-ter economic activity.

The low-interest loans are for-givable if companies use most ofthe money, about 75 percent, tokeep staff employed. Ashford hassaid it expects to only “minimally”meet forgiveness requirements,suggesting it does not plan to usethe money to rehire a sufficientshare of its staff. The firm did notcomment when asked for clarifi-cation.

Mr. Bennett’s hospitality em-pire is one of several big compa-nies that qualified for the programthanks to an intentional loopholethat came after a lobbying push

Big CompaniesThat Took Aid

Face Scrutiny

One Hotelier Will NotReturn $70 Million

By JEANNA SMIALEKand KENNETH P. VOGEL

Continued on Page A10

Kim Jong-un’s visit to a factory, re-ported by state media, comes afterthree weeks of speculation over hiswhereabouts and health. PAGE A19

INTERNATIONAL A18-19

North Korea’s Leader Emerges

Rights groups have lost sight of boatscarrying hundreds of desperate refu-gees adrift for 10 weeks. PAGE A18

Rohingya Tragedy Deepens

Late Edition

VOL. CLXIX . . . No. 58,681 © 2020 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, SATURDAY, MAY 2, 2020

Today, clouds and sunshine, high 72.Tonight, clouds, mild, low 56. Tomor-row, cloudy and sunshine, high 75.Wind southwest at 5 to 10 miles perhour. Weather map is on Page C8.

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