C M Y K Nxxx,2020-04-09,A,001,Bs-4C,E1
Late Edition
VOL. CLXIX . . . . No. 58,658 © 2020 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, THURSDAY, APRIL 9, 2020VOL. CLXIX . . . . No. 58,658 © 2020 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, THURSDAY, APRIL 9, 2020
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The world began this week tosee small but encouraging signsthat concerted efforts to drasti-cally change human behavior —to suspend daily routines by stay-ing at home — are slowing the in-sidious spread of the novel coro-navirus, which has killed tens ofthousands and sickened morethan a million others across sev-eral continents.
But — a simple word that epide-miologists say cannot be empha-sized enough — these early indi-cations, while promising, must notbe interpreted to mean that all willbe well by summer’s first days. Al-though President Trump tweetedon Monday about a light at the endof a tunnel, the cautions of scien-tists and other government offi-cials conjure one very, very longtunnel.
In the Chinese city of Wuhan,where the coronavirus publiclyemerged in December, the end to amonthslong lockdown has resi-dents taking baby steps towardsome version of normality. In Ita-ly, where the next viral wave haskilled more than 17,000, a delayedbut committed resolve to stay in-side has greatly decreased therate of contagion.
And in the United States, thedeath toll, now growing by wellover a thousand a day, has contin-ued to mount, with the last fewdays the country’s deadliest so farin this pandemic. Yet Dr. AnthonyS. Fauci, the director of the Na-tional Institute of Allergy and In-fectious Diseases, said Wednes-day on Fox News that he wasstarting to see “some glimmers ofhope,” so much so that he ex-pected that previous projectionsof 100,000 to 200,000 virus-relateddeaths would be lowered.
Even in New York City, now theghastly epicenter where hun-dreds continue to die every day,officials cite a slowdown in hospi-talizations as evidence that socialdistancing and other modifica-tions — not least the shutdown ofthe city’s vibrancy and economy— are working.
“We are flattening the curve,”Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New
DRAMATIC CHANGES IN BEHAVIORPRODUCE FLICKERS OF OPTIMISM
Scientists CautionThat Recovery
Is Far Away
By DAN BARRY
Continued on Page A7
A temporary morgue outside a Brooklyn hospital on Tuesday. Even in New York, where hundredsare dying each day, officials see signs that social distancing and other restrictions are working.
DEMETRIUS FREEMAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
In Omaha, a food pantry thattypically serves as few as 100 peo-ple saw 900 show up on a singleday. In Jonesboro, Ark., after apowerful tornado struck, a foodbank received less than half thedonations it expected becausenervous families held on to whatthey had. And in WashingtonState and Louisiana, the NationalGuard has been called in to helppack food boxes and ensure thatthe distributions run smoothly.
Demand for food assistance isrising at an extraordinary rate,just as the nation’s food banks arebeing struck by shortages of bothdonated food and volunteer work-ers.
Uniformed guardsmen help“take the edge off” at increasinglytense distributions of boxes filledwith cans of chicken noodle soup,tuna fish, and pork and beans, saidMike Manning, the chief execu-tive at the Greater Baton RougeFood Bank. “Their presence pro-vides safety for us during distribu-tions.”
Mr. Manning, who has workedat the food bank for 16 years, in-
cluding through Hurricane Kat-rina, said that he had never wit-nessed such a combination ofneed, scarcity and anxiety.“‘Crazy’ pretty much sums it up,”he said.
“I’ve never seen anything like
it,” said Stacy Dean, vice presi-dent for food assistance policy atthe Center on Budget and PolicyPriorities, a left-leaning researchorganization in Washington, D.C.She has studied food security formore than a quarter century.
“People love the phrase ‘the per-fect storm,’” she added, “but noth-ing is built for this.”
Feeding America, the nation’slargest network of food banks,with more than 200 affiliates, has
A Wave of Hunger Hits America, and Food Banks Are SwampedBy NICHOLAS KULISH
Army and Air Force National Guard personnel at a food bank in Tacoma, Wash., last week.RUTH FREMSON/THE NEW YORK TIMES
Continued on Page A16
The call came on March 24. BobMcGuire, the executive director ofCP Nassau, a nonprofit group thatcares for the developmentally dis-abled, received a report from afour-story, colonnaded building inBayville, N.Y., that houses severaldozen residents with severe dis-abilities ranging from cerebralpalsy to autism. For many ofthem, discussions of social dis-tancing or hand washing aremoot.
“Bob, we’re starting to seesymptoms,” Mr. McGuire wastold.
Fevers were spreading. Within24 hours, 10 residents were takento the hospital. A little more thantwo weeks later, 37 of the home’s46 residents had tested positivefor the coronavirus. Two weredead; nine remained hospitalized.
At least eight members of the staffhad tested positive as well.
“Forgive me if I get emotional,”Mr. McGuire said in an interview,choking up. “People discount peo-ple with disabilities and presumethey understand them when theydon’t know them. They think theirlives are not worth the same asyours or mine, and that’s just nottrue.”
As the coronavirus preys on themost vulnerable, it is taking rootin New York’s sprawling networkof group homes for people withspecial needs.
As of Monday, 1,100 of the
140,000 developmentally disabledpeople monitored by the state hadtested positive for the virus, stateofficials said. One hundred andfive had died — a rate, far higherthan in the general population,that echoes the toll in some nurs-ing homes.
Separately, a study by a largeconsortium of private serviceproviders found that residents ofgroup homes and similar facilitiesin New York City and surroundingareas were 5.34 times more likelythan the general population to de-velop Covid-19 and 4.86 timesmore likely to die from it. What’smore, nearly 10 percent of thehomes’ residents were displayingCovid-like symptoms but had notyet been tested, according to theconsortium, New York DisabilityAdvocates.
Trouble throughout the NewYork City region — and, to a lesser
Often Marginalized, and Especially VulnerableBy DANNY HAKIM Homes for Disabled Reel
as Illness Guts FragileSupport System
Continued on Page A13
ITALY Maps show why a nation-wide lockdown came too late tohalt the contagion. PAGE A8
LONDON — The eight menmoved to Britain from differentcorners of its former empire, all ofthem doctors or doctors-to-be, be-coming foot soldiers in the effortto build a free universal healthservice after World War II.
Now their names have becomestacked atop a grim list: the first,and so far only, doctors publiclyreported to have died after catch-ing the coronavirus in Britain’saching National Health Service.
For a country ripped apart in re-cent years by Brexit and the anti-immigrant movement thatbirthed it, the deaths of the eightdoctors — from Egypt, India, Ni-geria, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Su-dan — attest to the extraordinarydependence of Britain’s treasuredhealth service on workers fromabroad.
It is a story tinged with racism,as white, British doctors havelargely dominated the prestigiousdisciplines while foreign doctorshave typically found work in
places and practices that are ap-parently putting them on the dan-gerous front lines of the coro-navirus pandemic.
“When people were standing onthe street clapping for N.H.S.workers, I thought, ‘A year and ahalf ago, they were talking aboutBrexit and how these immigrantshave come into our country andwant to take our jobs,’” said Dr.Hisham el-Khidir, whose cousinDr. Adil el-Tayar, a transplant sur-geon, died on March 25 from thecoronavirus in western London.
“Now today, it’s the same immi-grants that are trying to work withthe locals,” said Dr. el-Khidir, asurgeon in Norwich, “and they aredying on the front lines.”
By Tuesday, 7,097 people haddied in British hospitals from thecoronavirus, the government said
They Immigrated to Save Lives, But Lost Theirs in the Pandemic
By BENJAMIN MUELLER Foreign Doctors in U.K.on the Front Lines
Continued on Page A4
Senator Bernie Sanders of Ver-mont ended his presidential can-didacy on Wednesday, concludinga quest that elevated him as astandard-bearer of American lib-eralism and clearing the way for ageneral election between the pre-sumptive Democratic nominee,Joseph R. Biden Jr., and PresidentTrump at a time of national crisis.
In a live-streamed speech, Mr.Sanders, eloquent but without hischaracteristic spark, cast his deci-sion in the broader context of thefight against the coronavirus. “Icannot in good conscience contin-ue to mount a campaign that can-not win and which would interferewith the important work requiredof all of us in this difficult hour,”Mr. Sanders said, adding, “While
this campaign is coming to an end,our movement is not.”
If Mr. Biden, the former vicepresident, can now lay claim to theDemocratic nomination, he stillfaces considerable challenges inuniting the party and mobilizing abroad base of voters for the No-vember election. Unlike Mr. Sand-ers, Mr. Biden inspired little en-thusiasm among young voters,nor did he develop signature pol-icy proposals. He triumphed be-cause many voters rejected Mr.Sanders’s policy agenda as too farto the left and prohibitively expan-sive, and were convinced that Mr.Biden had the best chance to beatMr. Trump in November.
To motivate liberal Democratswho find him frustratingly con-
SANDERS ENDS BID AS BIDEN GETS SETTO BATTLE TRUMP
BIG CHALLENGES AHEAD
Last Man Standing SeeksUnity for Democrats
in National Crisis
By SYDNEY EMBER
Bernie Sanders told supportersthat their cause would go on.
ERIN SCHAFF/THE NEW YORK TIMES
Continued on Page A22
President Trump and his Re-publican allies are launching anaggressive strategy to fight whatmany of the administration’s ownhealth officials view as one of themost effective ways to make vot-ing safer amid the deadly spreadof Covid-19: the expanded use ofmail-in ballots.
The scene on Tuesday of Wis-consinites in masks and glovesgathering in long lines to vote, af-ter Republicans sued to defeat ex-tended mail-in-ballot deadlines,did not deter the president and topofficials in his party. Republicanleaders said they were pushingahead to fight state-level statutesthat could expand absentee ballot-ing in Michigan, Minnesota, Ari-zona and elsewhere. In New Mex-ico, Republicans are battling an ef-fort to go to a mail-in-only prima-ry, and they vowed on Wednesdayto fight a new move to expandpostal balloting in Minnesota.
The new political effort isclearly aimed at helping the presi-dent’s re-election prospects, aswell as bolstering Republicansrunning further down the ballot.While his advisers tend to see theissue in more nuanced terms, Mr.Trump obviously views the issuein a stark, partisan way: He hascomplained that under Democrat-ic plans for national expansion ofearly voting and voting by mail,“you’d never have a Republicanelected in this country again.”
At his daily news briefing onWednesday, Mr. Trump said thathe believed vote-by-mail had beenabused to hurt Republicans andthat “I will not stand for it,” thoughhe allowed that mail ballots couldhelp some older voters — an im-portant part of his voting base. Itwas a slight modulation that cameat the urging of his advisers.
He expanded on the idea onTwitter on Wednesday evening,calling absentee ballots “a greatway to vote for the many seniorcitizens, military, and others whocan’t get to the polls on ElectionDay.” He added that universalmail-in voting “shouldn’t be al-lowed!”
In their efforts to fight expand-ing vote-by-mail, Republican offi-cials are counting on a crucial andpowerful ally: like-minded judges.This week, conservative major-ities on the U.S. Supreme Courtand the highest court in Wisconsin
Virus Raging,G.O.P. Fights
Mail-In Votes
Strategy Ignores Viewsof Health Officials
This article is by Jim Rutenberg,Maggie Haberman and Nick Cora-saniti.
Continued on Page A21
Shoppers, hunting for comfort food andlonger shelf lives, are returning to oldprocessed standbys. PAGE B1
BUSINESS B1-7
Welcome Back, Chef BoyardeeOur critic Michael Kimmelman virtual-ly strolls the East River waterfront withthe architect Deborah Berke. PAGE C1
ARTS C1-8
Touring the City’s Tidal HeartJohn Prine, a raspy-voiced songwriterwhose lyrics delved into the humancondition, was revered by peers, includ-ing Bob Dylan. He was 73. PAGE A25
OBITUARIES A25, B11-12
Folk Singer to the Stars
Features that allow users to hold video-conferences also allow people to hijackmeetings and harass people. PAGE B1
Zoom Aims to Foil the TrollsQuibi, the mobile content app, could be aplace for innovation, but its first scriptedshows play it safe. A review. PAGE C1
The Incredible Shrinking TV
In Jordan, microloans offer easy cash tomany women. But unable to repay thedebt, they may face prison. PAGE A18
INTERNATIONAL A18-19
Buried by a Helping HandLimelight and Tunnel are long gone.But the story of their vilified owner,Peter Gatien, is still being written — inhis new memoir. PAGE D1
THURSDAY STYLES D1-6
‘Club King’ Remembers Reign
A criminalist manually plotted thedetails of a fingerprint to identify thevictim of a 50-year-old killing. PAGE A24
NATIONAL A20-24
‘Old School’ Tool Cracks Case
Both sides are losing a fight over whoshould bear the virus’s costs. PAGE B8
SPORTSTHURSDAY B8-10
Players 0, Premier League 0
Elizabeth Warren PAGE A27
EDITORIAL, OP-ED A26-27
Artificial intelligence is making itspresence felt in all aspects of our lives,from sports and science to entertain-ment and education.
SPECIAL SECTION
The Future of A.I.
Today, mostly cloudy, thunder-storms, damaging wind gusts, high60. Tonight, partly cloudy, a gustywind, low 41. Tomorrow, showers,high 52. Weather map, Page A28.
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