C M Y K Nxxx,2021-02-21,A,001,Bs-4C,E2

Source: Reports from state and local health agencies.

The Toll: America Approaches Half a Million Covid Deaths

Each dot represents one death from Covid-19 in the U.S.

LAZARO GAMIO, LAUREN LEATHERBY, BILL MARSH AND ANDREW SONDERN/THE NEW YORK TIMES

APRIL 2451,360

MAY 27100,422

JULY 29151,172

SEPT. 22200,738

NOV. 18250,415

DEC. 14301,016

JAN. 2350,343

JAN. 19401,836

FEB. 3450,703

AS OF10 P.M. SATURDAY497,380

55 days later, 50,000 deaths had been reported.

It took33 daysto reachthe next50,000deaths.

63 daysto reachthe next50,000deaths.

55 daysto reachthe next50,000deaths.

57 daysto reachthe next50,000deaths.

26 daysto reachthe next50,000deaths.

19 days

17 days

15 days

Feb. 29, 2020: first report of aU.S. death, in Washington State

Figures are based on 7-day rolling averages of U.S. virus deaths.

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Katie Engelhart PAGE 4

SUNDAY REVIEW

Dog trainers are overwhelmed, thanksto a boom in pet adoptions and sales,spurred by work-from-home policiesand social isolation. PAGE 1

SUNDAY STYLES

Sit. Roll Over. Wait Your Turn.To secure the release of an Israeli civil-ian, Israel secretly agreed to finance asupply of Russian-made Covid-19 vac-cines for Syria, an official said. PAGE 9

TRACKING AN OUTBREAK 4-9

Israel Funds Vaccines for SyriaYet another pandemic side effect: con-sumers who are eager to make onlinepurchases, and not just of groceries.Witness sales of Miracle-Gro. PAGE 1

SUNDAY BUSINESS

Boredom Is Making Us Buy

Even as Texas struggled to re-store electricity and water overthe past week, signs of the risksposed by increasingly extremeweather to America’s aging infra-structure were cropping up acrossthe country.

The continent-spanning winterstorms triggered blackouts inTexas, Oklahoma, Mississippi andseveral other states. One-third ofoil production in the nation washalted. Drinking-water systemsin Ohio were knocked offline.Road networks nationwide wereparalyzed and vaccination effortsin 20 states were disrupted.

The crisis carries a profoundwarning. As climate changebrings more frequent and intensestorms, floods, heat waves, wild-fires and other extreme events, itis placing growing stress on thefoundations of the country’s econ-omy: Its network of roads andrailways, drinking-water sys-tems, power plants, electricalgrids, industrial waste sites andeven homes. Failures in just onesector can set off a domino effectof breakdowns in hard-to-predictways.

Much of this infrastructure wasbuilt decades ago, under the ex-pectation that the environmentaround it would remain stable, orat least fluctuate within predict-able bounds. Now climate changeis upending that assumption.

“We are colliding with a futureof extremes,” said Alice Hill, whooversaw planning for climaterisks on the National SecurityCouncil during the Obama admin-istration. “We base all our choices

STORMS EXPOSINGA NATION PRIMEDFOR CATASTROPHE

CLIMATE CHANGE WRATH

Unprepared for ThreatsFacing Power Grids,

Water and Roads

This article is by ChristopherFlavelle, Brad Plumer and HirokoTabuchi.

Continued on Page 22

CHICAGO — A nation numbedby misery and loss is confrontinga number that still has the powerto shock: 500,000.

Roughly one year since the firstknown death by the coronavirusin the United States, an unfathom-able toll is nearing — the loss ofhalf a million people.

No other country has countedso many deaths in the pandemic.More Americans have perishedfrom Covid-19 than on the battle-fields of World War I, World War IIand the Vietnam War combined.

The milestone comes at a hope-ful moment: New virus cases aredown sharply, deaths are slowingand vaccines are steadily beingadministered.

But there is concern aboutemerging variants of the virus,and it may be months before thepandemic is contained.

Each death has left untold num-bers of mourners, a ripple effect ofloss that has swept over townsand cities. Each death has left anempty space in communitiesacross America: a bar stool wherea regular used to sit, one side of abed unslept in, a home kitchenwithout its cook.

The living find themselves amidvacant places once occupied bytheir spouses, parents, neighborsand friends — the nearly 500,000coronavirus dead.

In Chicago, the Rev. Ezra Jonesstands at his pulpit on Sundays,letting his eyes wander to the backrow. That spot belonged to MosesJones, his 83-year-old uncle, wholiked to drive to church in hisgreen Chevy Malibu, arrive earlyand chat everybody up before set-tling into his seat by the door. Hedied of the coronavirus in April.

“I can still see him there,” saidMr. Jones, the pastor. “It nevergoes away.”

There is a street corner inPlano, Texas, that was occupied

U.S. VIRUS DEATHS NEARING 500,000IN JUST ONE YEAR

MORE THAN IN 3 WARS

Empty Spaces in Cities, Towns, Restaurants,Homes and Hearts

By JULIE BOSMAN

Continued on Page 8

Late Edition

VOL. CLXX . . . No. 58,976 © 2021 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2021

WASHINGTON — Judge Mer-rick B. Garland always made apoint of wearing a coat and tiewhen he surveyed the wreckageat the site of the 1995 OklahomaCity bombing, the worst domesticterrorist attack in American his-tory.

He had been dispatched fromWashington to oversee the casefor the Justice Department, andhe told colleagues that he viewedhis daily uniform as a gesture ofrespect for a community left dev-astated after Timothy J. McVeighplaced a 7,000-pound bomb in aRyder truck and blew up the Al-fred P. Murrah Federal Building,killing 168 people, including 19children.

“It really looked like a warzone,” Judge Garland said in re-calling the destroyed and still-smoldering building, part of anoral history he participated in forthe Oklahoma City National Me-morial and Museum. “The sitewas lit up like a sun, like the mid-dle of the day.” The worst part, hesaid, was seeing the demolishedday care center. “There was noth-ing there,” he said. “It was just abig empty concave.” His owndaughters were 4 and 2 at thetime.

The Oklahoma City case, he lat-er said, was “the most importantthing I have ever done in my life.”

When President Biden nomi-nated Judge Garland last monthto be attorney general, the newsconjured up his ordeal in 2016 asPresident Barack Obama’sthwarted nominee to the SupremeCourt. But Judge Garland’s expe-rience prosecuting domestic ter-rorism cases in the 1990s was theformative work of his career, fromthe nuances of federal statutesdown to the feeling of broken glasscrunching beneath his dressshoes.

The man has now met the mo-ment. At his Senate confirmationhearings starting on Monday, hewill almost certainly be askedabout the Department of Home-land Security’s warning that theUnited States faces a growingthreat from “violent domestic ex-

Garland FacesResurgent Peril

Of Extremism

Oklahoma City AttackShaped His Views

By MARK LEIBOVICH

Continued on Page 26

MOSCOW — Margarita Sim-onyan, the editor in chief of theKremlin-controlled RT televisionnetwork, recently called on thegovernment to block access toWestern social media.

She wrote: “Foreign platformsin Russia must be shut down.”

Her choice of social network forsending that message: Twitter.

While the Kremlin fears anopen internet shaped by Ameri-can companies, it just can’t quit it.

Russia’s winter of discontent,waves of nationwide protests setoff by the return of the oppositionleader Aleksei A. Navalny, hasbeen enabled by the country’s freeand open internet. The state con-trols the television airwaves, butonline Mr. Navalny’s dramatic ar-rest upon arrival in Moscow, hisinvestigation into President Vla-dimir V. Putin’s purported secretpalace and his supporters’ callsfor protest were all broadcast toan audience of many millions.

For years, the Russian govern-ment has been putting in place thetechnological and legal infrastruc-ture to clamp down on freedom ofspeech online, leading to frequentpredictions that the country couldbe heading toward internet cen-sorship akin to China’s great fire-wall.

But even as Mr. Putin faced thebiggest protests in years lastmonth, his government appearedunwilling — and, to some degree,unable — to block websites or takeother drastic measures to limit thespread of digital dissent.

The hesitation has underscoredthe challenge Mr. Putin faces as hetries to blunt the political implica-tions of cheap high-speed internet

Russia FearsBut Can’t QuitOpen Internet

By ANTON TROIANOVSKI

Continued on Page 16

SAN DIEGO DE LOS ALTOS,Venezuela — The moment Jo-hanna Guzmán, 25, discoveredshe was going to have her sixthchild she began to sob, crushed bythe idea of bringing another lifeinto a nation in such decay.

For years, as Venezuela spi-raled deeper into an economic cri-sis, she and her husband hadscoured clinics and pharmaciesfor any kind of birth control, usu-ally in vain. They had a third child.A fourth. A fifth.

Already, Ms. Guzmán was cook-ing meager dinners over a woodfire, washing clothing withoutsoap, teaching lessons without pa-per. Already, she was stalked by afear that she could not feed themall.

And now, another child?“I felt like I was drowning,” she

said.As Venezuela enters its eighth

year of economic crisis, a deeplypersonal drama is playing out in-side the home: Millions of womenare no longer able to find or affordbirth control, pushing many intounplanned pregnancies at a timewhen they can barely feed thechildren they already have.

Around Caracas, the capital, apack of three condoms costs $4.40— three times Venezuela’smonthly minimum wage of $1.50.

Birth control pills cost morethan twice as much, roughly $11 amonth, while an IUD, or intrauter-ine device, can cost more than $40— more than 25 times the min-imum wage. And that does not in-clude a doctor’s fee to have the de-vice put in.

With the cost of contraceptionso far out of reach, women are in-creasingly resorting to abortions,which are illegal and in the worst

Lack of Birth Control DeepensWomen’s Burden in Venezuela

By JULIE TURKEWITZ and ISAYEN HERRERA

Johanna Guzmán with two of her six children in northern Vene-zuela, where contraceptives are difficult to find, let alone afford.

MERIDITH KOHUT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Continued on Page 12

Naomi Osaka, 23, is now 4 for 4 inGrand Slam finals after a straight-setvictory over Jennifer Brady, 25, whowas in her first Slam final. PAGE 35

SPORTS 35-37

Osaka Wins Australian Open

A $16,752 BILL Texans havereported soaring electric feesduring a winter storm. PAGE 24

Today, plenty of sunshine, chilly,high 36. Tonight, increasing cloudi-ness, low 29. Tomorrow, intervals ofsnow and rain, little to no accumula-tion, high 41. Weather map, Page 30.

$6.00