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Important
developments in the pandemic.
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The Post's coronavirus coverage linked in this newsletter is free
to access from this email.
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The latest
Many of the first testing sites in the United States went up
in areas that happened to be whiter and more affluent, despite the
requests of black leaders. In the first months of the
pandemic, health officials were focusing on risk factors such as
travel, age and chronic health conditions — not race. It
was time wasted to protect black Americans from the coronavirus, which
today is three times more likely to kill someone in a black community
than it is a white community.
The pandemic has killed more than 107,000 Americans, and now the
country is reeling from the death of George Floyd at the hands of
Minneapolis police. If you want to protest, how can you
protect yourself from the coronavirus while doing so?
An infectious-disease physician shares advice on how
to demonstrate in crowds of thousands and do your part to limit the
spread at the same time.
The race to develop a successful vaccine is starting to look
like the jockeying for technological dominance during the Cold War
and the space race. Scientists see researchers,
companies and countries that are working in rare unity against a
common enemy — the virus — but
health policy experts already see “vaccine nationalism” creeping in,
and the winning nation would have a lot to gain. With the
November election approaching, it's possible that a
successful vaccine could also be a potent campaign tool.
In an interview Tuesday night, Anthony S. Fauci said
he was “cautiously optimistic” that a vaccine will show some degree
of effectiveness. The
question is how long that effectiveness will last. “There’s
never a guarantee ever that you’re going to get an effective
vaccine,” Fauci said. “I’m concerned a little bit more about … the
durability of response than I am about whether” the vaccine will
provide some protection.
Other
important news
Hydroxychloroquine, a drug promoted by President Trump and one he
said he took himself, failed
to prevent healthy people from getting covid-19 in a new trial.
The
new rules of visiting a pool this summer with coronavirus in
mind.
Robots, lampshades and mannequins: How
restaurants around the world are adapting to business during
coronavirus.
As coronavirus took jobs or workers fell ill, teens
have worked full-time, becoming lifelines to their families.
Trump says the
GOP is working to move its August convention out of North Carolina
after the governor refused to pre-authorize a gathering for at least
19,000 people.
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Live updates and more
Track
deaths and confirmed cases in the U.S. and across
the world.
Where
states are reopening and
how many new cases have been reported in each one.
Post
reporters are publishing
live dispatches nearly 24 hours a day.
Read
the latest about what's
happening in the D.C. area.
Submit
a question and The Post may answer it in a future
story, live chat or newsletter.
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Your questions, answered
“Can anyone explain why The Washington Post's chart of ‘new
deaths reported per day’
seems to show cycles, peaks and valleys in a frequency of
approximately 7 days?” — Michael in Washington
It's because of the way state health departments report their
daily covid-19 numbers, which
has been problematic since the beginning of the crisis.
Hospitals, labs and government agencies generally have fewer staff
working over the weekends, which leads to artificially low statistics
early in the week, and higher figures later.
“Even within that, there is a difference between the rhythm of the
rises and falls between cases and deaths,” said Jacqueline Dupree, a
Washington Post editor who oversees our covid-19 tracking project. “Death
reports are lowest on Sundays and Mondays and
generally highest on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. New
case reports are lowest on Sundays, Mondays and Tuesdays
(because not as many tests are run on weekends), rising to their
highest generally on Thursdays and Fridays. And if there's a
three-day weekend, then everything shifts another day.”
Here's a picture of what she's talking about:
Some politicians appear to be taking advantage of the daily
ups and downs. “Today Texas had the fewest covid-19
fatalities since March 30th,” Texas
Gov. Greg Abbott (R) tweeted Monday. “We've also had the fewest
Texans testing positive for covid-19 in the past six weeks.”
Strictly speaking, that was almost true. Texas
reported six deaths and 593 new cases Monday. But
Monday counts are always low, and both figures roughly tripled the
very next day as they followed the weekly cycle. In
fact, Texas reported one
of its highest daily totals on record Tuesday: 1,688 new cases.
That's why our
tracker now shows a seven-day moving average for each state and
the U.S. as a whole, which smoothes out the daily fluctuations. The
average makes it clear that Texas's infection rate has risen sharply
in the past several days, even though Monday's post-weekend count was
particularly low.
Dupree mentioned that some other news organizations track deaths
and positive tests on the day they occurred, rather than the day they
were reported.
“Each [method] has its pros and cons,” she said. “For instance,
there are complaints that the states that choose to graph their new
cases by the test dates rather than the report dates are obscuring
the trends, because the most recent days on those graphs will always
be lower given that it can take a few days for tests to be completed
and then reported to the state. We feel that using the date the state
reports cases and deaths gives a clearer picture sooner of whether
overall new cases and new deaths are rising or falling.”
The trade-off is the jagged daily totals Michael asked about.
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Today’s top reads
Find more stories, analysis and op-eds about the outbreak on
our coronavirus
page, including:
- How airport screenings
have changed since the pandemic began
- The NBA is poised to
vote Thursday on a plan to resume the 2019-20 season
- Rebel threats, secret
burials and shuttered hospitals mask spread of Yemen’s epidemic
- It might be time to
upgrade that temporary home office — and we have tips
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Perspective ● By Anne M. Coughlin and Hunter
W. Bezner ● Read more »
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