First Edition: June 8, 2020

Kaiser Health News: Baltimore’s ‘Squeegee Boys’: ‘If We Don’t Go Out, We Don’t Eat’
On the corner of South President and East Pratt streets in Baltimore a little over a month ago, a young man in a black hoodie stood out on an otherwise empty intersection. A single gold chain with a cross hung around his neck. With a squeegee in his left blue-latex-gloved hand and a plastic spray bottle in his right — filled with a solution of vinegar, water and glass cleaner — he watched for the traffic lights to turn red and a chance to make some money. Evay H., 21, tries to clean windshields for a small donation from the drivers. He’s lucky if he gets $2 a vehicle. It’s not much, but it’s something. (Giles, 6/8)

Kaiser Health News: Exclusive: Nearly 600 — And Counting — US Health Workers Have Died Of COVID-19
Nearly 600 front-line health care workers appear to have died of COVID-19, according to Lost on the Frontline, a project launched by The Guardian and KHN that aims to count, verify and memorialize every health care worker who dies during the pandemic. (Jewett, Bailey and Renwick, 6/6)

Kaiser Health News: Rapid Changes To Health System Spurred By COVID Might Be Here To Stay
The U.S. health care system is famously resistant to government-imposed change. It took decades to create Medicare and Medicaid, mostly due to opposition from the medical-industrial complex. Then it was nearly another half-century before the passage of the Affordable Care Act. But the COVID-19 pandemic has done what no president or social movement or venture capitalist could have dreamed of: It forced sudden major changes to the nation’s health care system that are unlikely to be reversed. (Rovner, 6/8)

ProPublica: On The Minds Of Black Lives Matter Protesters: A Racist Health System
On Tuesday, when he decided to protest, William Smith, 27, used a red marker to write a message on the back of a flattened cardboard box: “Kill Racism, Not Me.” As he stood alone, somber, he thought about George Floyd, a fellow black man whom he’d watched die on video as a Minneapolis cop kneeled on his neck eight days earlier. “Seeing the life leave his body was finally the last straw that broke the camel’s back for me,” he said. But he also thought about people he knew, a handful of them, who died after catching the new coronavirus. (Johnson, 6/5)

The New York Times: A Delicate Balance: Weighing Protest Against The Risks Of The Coronavirus
None of the plans for how the nation might safely emerge from the coronavirus lockdown involved thousands of Americans standing shoulder to shoulder in the streets of major cities or coughing uncontrollably when the authorities used tear gas to disperse them. No one planned on protesters being herded into crowded prison buses or left in crowded cells. Before the eruption of outrage over the killing of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis, debates about reopening centered on whether states had adequate systems in place to detect and treat cases of the coronavirus, which has killed more than 110,000 people in the United States since the beginning of the year. (Harmon and Rojas, 6/7)

The Washington Post: The Nexus Between Coronavirus And Protests: 'The Virus Was The Kindling. Police Brutality Lit The Fire.' 
In the middle of the night, as some of the first protests raged in Louisville, Shae Smith and her husband, Walt, decided to break out of their pandemic quarantine and take to the streets. “We were actually in bed and I finally woke Walt up and said, ‘Babe, I think you need to go down there,’ ” Shae recalled. “ ‘You need to see what’s going on, we need to be a part of this.’ ” At 2:15 a.m., Walt went downtown to see, to make a statement. The Smiths had talked and talked about the virus; they knew joining the protests against police brutality meant a higher risk of being infected. (Fisher, Jamison and Wallace, 6/7)

The Washington Post: Amid Reopenings And Street Protests, Coronavirus Transmission Remains High In Much Of The U.S.
The coronavirus appears to be in retreat in regions that moved decisively to contain it after being hit hard, including New York and New Jersey. But the virus is persisting — and, in some places, spreading aggressively — in parts of the South, Midwest and West, including in states that were among the last to impose shutdowns and the first to lift them. Data compiled by The Washington Post shows that 23 states, as well as the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, have seen an increase in the rolling seven-day average of coronavirus cases compared with the previous week. Most have registered an increase of 10 percent or more. (Achenbach and Janes, 6/5)

The Wall Street Journal: Experts Sound Alarm Over Coronavirus Spread As U.S. Ramps Up Reopening, Prepares For More Protests
Experts and officials warned about a possible increase of coronavirus infections as U.S. states continued this week to ease restrictions and thousands of people took to the streets nationwide to protest against the killing of George Floyd in police custody. Nationally, there have been more than 1.87 million confirmed cases and more than 108,000 deaths from Covid-19, according to the latest figures from Johns Hopkins University. Last Friday, the U.S. had 1.74 million cases and reported deaths exceeded 102,000. (Ansari, 6/6)

The Wall Street Journal: Protests Complicate Mayors’ Efforts To Combat Coronavirus
The sudden outbreak of large protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd on May 25 at the hands of Minneapolis police came at the same time mayors across the country were working to implement more aggressive testing and tracking programs to combat the coronavirus pandemic, complicating their efforts. Public-health doctors say the federal government hasn’t played a leading role in urging broader testing, so mayors and local officials are increasingly thrust into the breach. Scores of them are guided by leading university institutes and public-health experts. (Burton, 6/7)

The New York Times: George Floyd Protests Add New Front Line For Coronavirus Doctors
Outside medical centers across the country, doctors and other health care workers have been stopping work in recent days for 8 minutes and 46 seconds to join in protesting the death of George Floyd, who was pinned down by a police officer in Minneapolis for that amount of time before his death. For doctors in New York who have strained to meet the challenges of coronavirus care for months, participating in the demonstrations has been especially poignant. Workers at a number of the hospitals hit hard by Covid-19 including Bellevue, Downstate, Lincoln, Mount Sinai and Montefiore have held events displaying their support for the protests this week. (Goldberg, 6/7)

The Washington Post: Louisville’s Black Community Protests Police Brutality Amid Coronavirus Pandemic
What Christopher 2X saw in Jefferson Square Park, on the sixth day of protests here, were white and black hands locked in prayer, hundreds listening in the shadow of city hall, all while a man pleaded for justice through a microphone. But one person was missing. “Some people protest. Some people post. Some people donate. Some people pray. There’s no WRONG way to support but NOT supporting at all IS wrong.” (Stubbs, Dougherty and Wallace, 6/7)

USA Today: Coronavirus, Police Violence Boost Risks Of Rising Black Youth Suicide
A decade after she tried to take her life as a college freshman, Victoria Waltz, a gifted child who played the harp, is only beginning to understand how things got so bad. "It's been a journey and a process from then to now," said Waltz, now 28. "It was a slow build up over time, starting in middle school. I had a lot of challenges trying to fit in and not knowing to talk about how I was really feeling." Girls started to bully the too tall, too smart girl with acne and glasses, who grew up middle class in Prince George's County, Maryland, one of the wealthiest black counties in the U.S.  (O'Donnell, 6/7)

The Associated Press: Report: NYC Police Misconduct Often Involves Minority Youths
The vast majority of complaints about New York City police officers’ mistreatment of youths stemmed from encounters with black and Hispanic children, according to a new study by the city’s police watchdog agency. Nearly two-thirds of youth complaints to the Civilian Complaint Review Board involved children of color, the report says, including some “stopped for seemingly innocuous activities such as playing, high-fiving, running, carrying backpacks, and jaywalking.” (Mustian, 6/8)

The Washington Post: In New York, Social-Distancing Enforcement Was Tense Even Before The Protests
A call came over from dispatch for a rowdy group on a block of two-story houses in Brownsville, a mostly poor section of Brooklyn with a painful history of violent crime and bitter distrust of the police. "It's a gathering," said one of the NYPD officers en route to the scene. "They don't have masks." Three complaints had been made to 311, the city’s non-emergency line, and another three to 911. When the officers arrived on Pine Street, they were greeted with jeers. People reached for their phones to record the interaction. (Jacobs, 6/7)

The Washington Post: Black Children Are Being Disproportionately Impacted By A Deadly Inflammatory Syndrome Linked To Covid-19.
Dar’Yana Dyson’s memorial service was set up as a block party. It stretched from the dilapidated yellow monkey bars where the 15-year-old high school sophomore played not too long ago, through the parking lot, all the way to the other end of the O’Donnell Heights public housing complex. Rap music played as relatives in face masks fired up barbecue grills for the crowd. (Cha, 6/6)

NPR: Doctors Race To Understand MIS-C, A Rare New Condition Affecting Kids
The first sign that something was wrong came with stomach pains. It was April 30, and 9-year-old Kyree McBride wasn't feeling well. His mother, Tammie Hairston, thought it might have been something that he ate. But soon, young McBride was battling a 102-degree fever. Worried he may have contracted the coronavirus, Hairston took her son to the hospital. "It was a quick in and out of the emergency room," she said. Doctors told her to take him home and monitor him. (Breslow and Garcia-Navarro, 6/7)

The Hill: Coronavirus Stalks Nation Focused On George Floyd Protests 
The protests over the murder of a black man at the hands of police officers have dominated news headlines for a week, even as the death toll from the deadly coronavirus pandemic continues to mount in the United States and across the world. Nearly 11,000 Americans have died from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, in the 11 days since George Floyd died on a Minneapolis street corner, and more than 200,000 people have tested positive. (Wilson, 6/6)

The Hill: Gottlieb: 'We're Certainly Going To See Transmission' Of Coronavirus Coming Out Of Protests 
Former Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said Sunday that some transmission of the novel coronavirus likely occurred at the protests that have swept the nation over the killing of George Floyd. “We’re certainly going to see transmissions coming out of these gatherings, there’s no question about that,” Gottlieb said on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” noting that the prevalence of infection in the U.S. was currently about one in 200 people. (Budryk, 6/7)

The New York Times: New York City Begins Reopening After 3 Months Of Outbreak And Hardship
Exactly 100 days since its first case of coronavirus was confirmed, New York City, which weathered extensive hardship as an epicenter of the worldwide outbreak, is set to take the first tentative steps toward reopening its doors on Monday. Getting here took the sacrifice of millions of New Yorkers who learned to live radically different lives. More than 205,000 have been infected, and nearly 22,000 have died. As many as 400,000 workers could begin returning to construction jobs, manufacturing sites and retail stores in the city’s first phase of reopening— a surge of normalcy that seemed almost inconceivable several weeks ago, when the city’s hospitals were at a breaking point and as many as 800 people were dying from Covid-19 on a single day. (Goodman, 6/7)

The Associated Press: 'All Eyes' On New York: Reopening Tests City Torn By Crises
The city that never sleeps had a curfew for much of last week. Famous stores were boarded up after days of unrest. The lights are out on Broadway theaters, and the subway no longer runs overnight. But after three bleak months, New York City will try to turn a page when it begins reopening Monday after getting hit first by the coronavirus, then an outpouring of rage over racism and police brutality. (Peltz, 6/8)

NPR: New York City Starts Easing Stay-At-Home Order For The Coronavirus Crisis
This first phase of reopening is a big move for the pandemic's national epicenter, which has seen more than 206,000 New Yorkers confirmed with the coronavirus and more than 21,800 people die from COVID-19 since March. "Getting people back their livelihood, that's what Phase 1 is about," New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said Friday during a news conference. A resurgence of activity in the country's largest and most densely populated major city — home to more than 8 million people — is expected to test the limits of social distancing for the coronavirus. (Wang, 6/8)

The New York Times: How To Navigate Your Community Reopening? Remember The Four C’s
When the country was largely under lockdown, at least the rules were mostly clear. Essential workers ventured out; everyone else sheltered in. Bars and restaurants were closed except for dining out; hair salons and spas were shuttered. Outings were limited to the supermarket or the drugstore. Now states are lifting restrictions, but detailed guidance about navigating the minutiae of everyday life is still hard to come by — and anyway, there’s never going to be a ready solution to every problematic circumstance you may encounter. (Rabin, 6/6)

The New York Times: Returning To Work On The Subway? Here’s What You Need To Know.
When the coronavirus pandemic swept across New York City, over 90 percent of the subway’s 5.5 million daily riders abandoned the system — an icon of urban crowding turned into a symbol of the threat that a deadly virus posed. But now as some businesses begin to reopen Monday after nearly three months, and city life slowly rebounds, New Yorkers will trickle back to public transportation during their daily commutes. (Goldbaum, 6/8)

The New York Times: ‘Cruise Ships On Land’: As Las Vegas Reopens, A Huge Test For Casinos 
It was among the last of the big conferences before the coronavirus pandemic shuttered the massive casinos lining the Las Vegas Strip in March. More than 1,000 people gathered at MGM Resorts International’s Mirage Hotel & Casino for the Women of Power Summit, after organizers of the networking event for executive women of color assured attendees that the risk of attendance was “extremely low.” That seemed a reasonable bet, given that Las Vegas had yet to record a single coronavirus case. What no one realized was that one of the conference speakers, a New Yorker, had already contracted the virus by the time she landed at McCarren International Airport on March 6. Two days later, she was in the hospital. (Becker, 6/8)

The Wall Street Journal: Covid-19 Stalks Large Families In Rural America
The Woods family did everything together at the house on Paden Road in Gadsden, Ala. They gathered there before going to high-school football games on Friday nights. They ate there after church on Sundays, when the family matriarch, Barbara Woods, would make chicken and dressing for her children and grandchildren. And this spring, they grew sick there together. For weeks in early April, seven family members staying in the three-bedroom home were stricken by the new coronavirus, several of them recounted. Five ended up in the hospital. Two died. (Lovett, Frosch and Overberg, 6/7)

Politico: Trump Plans A ‘Recovery Summer’ Message Against A Bleak Backdrop
President Donald Trump and his team are heralding a summer of economic recovery — a dramatic turnaround that will become the centerpiece of his pitch to voters, casting aside attention on nationwide protests and the coronavirus pandemic. Many fellow Republicans — and Democrats burned by hopeful economic messaging a decade ago — view the coming months with far greater caution, warning about a chest-thumping declaration of victory. (Cook, 6/6)

The Washington Post: Talking Past The Pandemic: Trump Attempts To Shift Focus From Deadly Virus To Jobs, Law And Order
Minutes before a news conference Friday in which President Trump declared victory over the coronavirus pandemic by touting historic job growth, White House aides moved chairs that had been six feet apart and placed them right next to one another in the Rose Garden. The move to defy the federal government’s own social distancing rules during the televised event reflected a broader shift within the White House, which is attempting to turn the page from a pandemic that has killed more than 107,000 Americans by focusing on other issues and playing down the continuing danger posed by the virus. (Olorunnipa, Abutaleb and Dawsey, 6/5)

The Associated Press: Virus, Racial Unrest Force Trump Campaign To Recalibrate
Less than five months before voters will decide his fate, President Donald Trump is confronting a vastly different political reality than he once envisioned. For starters, if the election were held today, he’d likely lose. The president, West Wing advisers and campaign aides have grown increasingly concerned about his reelection chances as they’ve watched Trump’s standing take a pummeling first on his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and now during a nationwide wave of protests against racial injustice. (Lemire and Miller, 6/8)

The Associated Press Fact Check: Trump Exaggerations On Blacks' Economic Gains
President Donald Trump is exaggerating economic gains for African Americans during his administration. He claims full credit for achieving the best economic figures for blacks across the board. That’s not accurate. Black unemployment did reach a low last year, but much of the progress came during the Obama administration. Household median income also was higher for blacks prior to Trump taking office. (Woodward, Yen and Lajka, 6/8)

The New York Times: Despite Big Promises, U.S. Has Delivered Limited Aid In Global Virus Response
The Trump administration has lauded itself as leading the world in confronting the coronavirus. But it has so far failed to spend more than 75 percent of the American humanitarian aid that Congress provided three months ago to help overseas victims of the virus. In two spending bills in March, lawmakers approved $1.59 billion in pandemic assistance to be sent abroad through the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development. As of last week, $386 million had been released to nations in need, according to a government official familiar with the spending totals that the State Department has reported to Congress for both agencies. (Jakes, 6/7)

The New York Times: Amid Pandemic And Upheaval, New Cyber Risks To The Presidential Election
With the general election less than 150 days away, there are rising concerns that the push for remote voting prompted by the pandemic could open new opportunities to hack the vote — for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, but also others hoping to disrupt, influence or profit from the election. President Trump has repeatedly said that mail-in ballots invite voter fraud and would benefit Democrats. It is a baseless claim: Mail-in voting has resulted in little fraud in the five states that have used it for years, and a recent study at Stanford University found that voting by mail did not advantage either party and might increase voter turnout for both parties. (Sanger, Perlroth and Rosenberg, 6/7)

The Associated Press: Democrats Look To Counter GOP Vote-By-Mail Fraud Claims
Democrats are mounting a new effort to push back against a well-funded Republican campaign that seeks to undermine public confidence in mail-in-voting, which President Donald Trump has said, without offering proof, will lead to election fraud. Fair Fight, an organization led by former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, has joined forces with Priorities USA, the largest Democratic outside group, and American Bridge, the party’s opposition research clearinghouse, to form a new effort called Voter Suppression Watch. (Slodysko and Riccardi, 6/8)

Politico: The $7,000 Covid Test: Why States Are Stepping In To Shield Consumers
Insurance regulators from Tennessee to Washington state have stepped up efforts to protect patients from unexpected bills for coronavirus tests, concerned the federal government has failed to shield people from thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket expenses. Washington's insurance commissioner, Mike Kreidler, this week issued an emergency order banning labs for billing insured patients for doctor-ordered Covid-19 diagnostic tests. That followed moves in Tennessee, North Dakota, Oklahoma and Georgia to cap costs or more narrowly define what insurers should pay for as the number of tests processed daily surges to 465,000 as of June 4. (Luthi, 6/8)

The New York Times: The Idea: Build It, And They Can Find Coronavirus Tests
For the past two months, the nine-to-five jobs at their recruiting software company were just the start of a busy work day for Joe Essenfeld, Boris Kozak and Matt Geffken. After a short break for dinner and a little family time, the three friends would jump on an 8:30 p.m. Zoom call with a dozen other volunteers to work on AllClear, a website to help people find information about testing locations for Covid-19, and stay at it until 2 or 3 a.m. AllClear now has a directory of more than 10,000 locations in the United States where people can be tested for Covid-19 or for antibodies to the coronavirus. (Wakabayashi, 6/8)

The Hill: Urgency Mounts For A Contact Tracing Army 
Health experts are signaling increased urgency over the need to build an army of people to trace the spread of coronavirus, as states try to put together a patchwork network in an effort to contain the disease. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Robert Redfield warned Thursday that the country needs between 30,000 and 100,000 people to do contact tracing by September to try to stop a major resurgence of the virus in the fall and winter. Other estimates have put the need even higher, with former CDC Director Tom Frieden calling for up to 300,000 contact tracers. (Sullivan, 6/7)

The Wall Street Journal: Vaccine Giant Promises A Billion Covid Shots For Poor Countries
An Indian drug giant, little-known outside the vaccine world, has agreed to make and distribute a billion doses of a yet-to-be approved coronavirus vaccine—a move aimed at providing pandemic protection to the world’s poorest. AstraZeneca this week tapped Serum Institute of India, or SII, to be part of a global manufacturing and distribution network for a potential coronavirus vaccine being developed by University of Oxford researchers. Under the agreement, SII would be the main contract manufacturer for low- and middle-income countries and produce one billion doses—400 million of those this year—if the vaccine proves safe and effective. (Bellman, 6/6)

The New York Times: U.K. Lab To Sidestep Drug Industry To Sell Potential Virus Vaccine
A prominent British laboratory is forming a special partnership that would sidestep the drug industry to sell a potential vaccine against the coronavirus without profits or licensing fees in Britain and in low- and middle-income countries. Scientists, nonprofit groups and public health experts have urged that any successful vaccine to combat the pandemic be distributed at the lowest possible cost and on the basis of need rather than profit. But for-profit drug giants or biotechnology start-ups have dominated the development race, especially in the United States, a vital market because of its high drug prices. (Kirkpatrick, 6/7)

Reuters: Oxford Biomedica Eyes UK Supply Boost Of AstraZeneca's COVID-19 Vaccine
Oxford Biomedica has signed a new manufacturing agreement with a group backed by the UK government to help it scale up production of AstraZeneca’s potential COVID-19 vaccine to cater to demand in the United Kingdom and Europe. The gene and cell therapy firm said on Monday it agreed to a five-year partnership with the Vaccines Manufacturing and Innovation Centre (VMIC) for equipment at its facility in Oxford, UK which would also help it make other vaccines. (6/8)

Reuters: AstraZeneca Shares Down 2% After Report It Approached Gilead Over Tie-Up
Shares in Britain’s AstraZeneca fell 2.1% in early trades on Monday after a report it had approached U.S. rival Gilead Sciences about a possible merger to form one the world’s largest drug companies.If combined, the two companies would have a market capitalisation of about $232 billion, based on Friday’s closing share prices. A merger would also unite two drugmakers at the forefront of efforts to fight the new coronavirus but could be politically sensitive as governments seek control over potential vaccines or treatments. (6/8)

Reuters: WHO Continues Hydroxychloroquine Trial After UK Test Halts
The World Health Organization is continuing its clinical trial of hydroxychloroquine, after British scientists halted a large trial that had been exploring use of the drug to treat patients with COVID-19 when initial results showed no evidence of benefit. “There are two distinct trials with their own protocols, their own oversight committees. Therefore we will continue for now,” Soumya Swaminathan, the WHO’s chief scientist, told an online news briefing when asked about the British trial halt. (6/5)

The New York Times: W.H.O. Finally Endorses Masks To Prevent Coronavirus Transmission
Long after most nations urged their citizens to wear masks, and after months of hand-wringing about the quality of the evidence available, the World Health Organization on Friday endorsed the use of face masks by the public to reduce transmission of the coronavirus. Since the beginning of the pandemic, surprisingly, the W.H.O. had refused to endorse masks. The announcement was long overdue, critics said, as masks are an easy and inexpensive preventive measure. (Mandavilli, 6/5)

Reuters: Wear Masks In Public Says WHO, In Update Of COVID-19 Advice
“Masks on their own will not protect you from COVID-19,” the WHO’s director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters at a briefing. The WHO’s technical lead expert on COVID-19, Maria Van Kerkhove, said in a Reuters interview: “We are advising governments to encourage that the general public wear a mask. And we specify a fabric mask - that is, a non-medical mask. (Kelland, 6/5)

The Washington Post: Masks Don't Just Filter The Air, They Keep People Away
Massimo Marchiori, an Italian computer scientist, once used sensors to determine how the widths of shopping mall walkways shaped buying decisions. Another time he used GPS technology to track the movements of cows to see what behaviors led to the best milk. So when the novel coronavirus consumed Italy in February, Marchiori decided it was time for a new experiment — this time, on social distancing. (Timberg, 6/5)

The New York Times: Japan's Coronavirus Numbers Are Low. Are Masks The Reason?
When the coronavirus arrived in Japan, people did what they normally do: They put on masks. Face coverings are nothing new here. During flu and hay fever seasons, trains are crowded with commuters half-hidden behind white surgical masks. Employees with colds, worried about the stigma of missing work, throw one on and soldier into the office. Masks are even used, my hairdresser once told me, by women who don’t want to bother putting on makeup. (Rich, 6/6)

The New York Times: Hospitals Got Bailouts And Furloughed Thousands While Paying C.E.O.s Millions
HCA Healthcare is one of the world’s wealthiest hospital chains. It earned more than $7 billion in profits over the past two years. It is worth $36 billion. It paid its chief executive $26 million in 2019. But as the coronavirus swept the country, employees at HCA repeatedly complained that the company was not providing adequate protective gear to nurses, medical technicians and cleaning staff. Last month, HCA executives warned that they would lay off thousands of nurses if they didn’t agree to wage freezes and other concessions. (Silver-Greenberg, Drucker and Enrich, 6/8)

The New York Times: Farmers Get Billions In Virus Aid, And Democrats Are Wary
Cotton farmers were paid 33 times as much in federal subsidies in 2019 as the income they actually lost to trade disruptions, one study showed. Farmers in Georgia, the home state of Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, were paid more in federal aid per acre than anywhere else in the nation, another found. Some farms collected millions of dollars in payments despite a limit of $250,000 per farmer. The Trump administration’s $28 billion effort in 2018 and 2019 to compensate farmers for losses from its trade wars has been criticized as excessive, devised on the fly and tilted toward states politically important to Republicans. (LaFraniere, 6/7)

Politico: ‘There’s Only So Much We Can Do’: Food Banks Plead For Help
The food bank that serves the Washington area bought as much food in April as it would normally buy over three years as it scrambled to respond to an unprecedented level of need. The economic fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic, which has now left at least 20 million Americans unemployed, has pushed the nation’s network of food banks to the brink. Food pantries and other nonprofits are still seeing lines of cars with families waiting for hours to pick up food. “There’s only so much we can do,” said Radha Muthiah, president and CEO of the Capital Area Food Bank. “The federal government has an incredibly important role to play here.” (Evich, 6/8)

The Washington Post: Coronavirus Job Loss Sends Florida Family Into Homelessness
The pandemic had forced them from their home. Then they had run out of money for a motel. That left the car, which is where Sergine Lucien, Dave Marecheau and their two children were one recent night, parked in a lot that was tucked behind a row of empty storefronts. Sergine eyed some men gathering by a fence in the opposite corner of the blacktop. “I just heard some f-bombs,” she said. “I’m not worried,” Dave replied. (Jaffe, 6/6)

The Washington Post: The Jobs Report Had A ‘Misclassification Error.’ Here’s What Happened
When the U.S. government’s official jobs report for May came out on Friday, it included a note at the bottom saying there had been a major “error” indicating that the unemployment rate likely should be higher than the widely reported 13.3 percent rate. The special note said that if this “misclassification error” had not occurred, the “overall unemployment rate would have been about 3 percentage points higher than reported,” meaning the unemployment rate would be about 16.3 percent for May. But that would still be an improvement from an unemployment rate of about 19.7 percent for April, applying the same standards. (Long, 6/6)

Reuters: Fed Says Beating Pandemic Is Key, But How Will It Know Things Are Better?
With a full three months of responding to a global pandemic under their belt, U.S. Federal Reserve officials have united around one point: lasting progress on the economic front will be dictated by success in containing the spread of the coronavirus. But agreement beyond that may be elusive as Fed policymakers meet this week to balance fresh signs the United States may be over the worst of the economic fallout from the pandemic against evidence the virus is not yet under control. (Schneider, 6/8)

The New York Times: A Nursing Home’s 64-Day Covid Siege: ‘They’re All Going To Die’
Betty LaBombard, a longtime waitress at Woolworth’s, celebrated her 95th birthday on March 1 at the Vermont nursing home where she had been a fixture for eight years, often perched in her wheelchair near the fourth-floor nurses’ station. Her niece brought her a chocolate cupcake. Down the hall, Frances McKenna, a social force on their floor, looked forward to getting her hair done in the home’s salon. One flight up, Joseph Metallo, who had moderate dementia, chatted with his son, Mike, while making a construction-paper lamb for Easter. He wore his new glasses and kept his large-print Bible nearby. (Barker, 6/8)

The Hill: Nursing Homes Fail To Get COVID-19 Under Control 
More than three months since the coronavirus first appeared in a Seattle-area nursing home, facilities are still struggling to contain its spread. According to federal data collected and released publicly for the first time this week, thousands of nursing homes across the country lack basic personal protective equipment (PPE). Facilities are also facing staffing shortages, and many are even running out of hand sanitizer. (Weixel, 6/7)

The New York Times: Navigating Home Care During The Pandemic
In March, Amy Carrier asked one of the two women who provided home care for her mother to stop coming to work. Her mother, 74, has Alzheimer’s disease and lives with her in Corvallis, Ore. To protect her from the coronavirus, “it was clear that I needed to lock down my house,” said Ms. Carrier, 45, a foundation executive. She allowed one helper, who lived with only an adult daughter, to continue helping her mother bathe, take walks and play puzzles and games. But the other aide has a household of six, including four teenagers, and was visiting other clients’ homes. (Span, 6/6)

The Washington Post: Health-Care Workers Treating Coronavirus Patients Struggle With Burnout, Depression
Marc Ayoub remembers the woman in her 50s who came alone to the emergency room. She went into cardiac arrest and was hooked up to a ventilator. Ayoub, a resident at hard-hit Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, tried to reach her family all night, and when he finally connected with her daughter, he had only bad news. As he stood in his spacesuit of protective gear, holding his phone in front of the woman’s face so her daughter might see her one last time, Ayoub was indignant that this is what death had become during the coronavirus pandemic. (Cha, Buarino and Wan, 6/7)

The Washington Post: Hurricanes Present A Dangerous Scenario Amid The Pandemic: Stay At Home Or Risk Infection?
As Tropical Storm Cristobal churns through the Gulf of Mexico en route to likely landfall Sunday in Louisiana or Texas, it carries on its winds a message for residents of the United States’ hurricane-prone coastlines that runs counter to everything they have been taught during the pandemic: If a dangerous storm is coming, leave home and seek refuge, with strangers if necessary. But the hurricane season has just begun, and already there have been three named storms, including the one swirling above the warm gulf waters right now that dumped a deluge of rain and caused deadly flooding in the Mexican state of Chiapas. (Sellers and Freedman, 6/6)

The New York Times: When 511 Epidemiologists Expect To Fly, Hug And Do 18 Other Everyday Activities Again
Many epidemiologists are already comfortable going to the doctor, socializing with small groups outside or bringing in mail, despite the coronavirus. But unless there’s an effective vaccine or treatment first, it will be more than a year before many say they will be willing to go to concerts, sporting events or religious services. And some may never greet people with hugs or handshakes again. (Bui, Miller and Sanger-Katz, 6/8)

Reuters: Gargling With Bleach? Americans Misusing Disinfectants To Prevent Coronavirus, Survey Finds
Washing food with bleach, using household cleaning or disinfectant products on bare skin, and intentionally inhaling or ingesting these products were some of the most commonly reported “high-risk” practices in a May 4 online survey of 502 U.S. adults, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported. The survey’s lead author said it was undertaken following a “sharp increase” in calls to poison control centers for exposure to cleaners and disinfectants during the pandemic. (6/5)

The Associated Press: Bloodied Store Manager Describes Life In The Age Of COVID-19
For weeks Samantha Clarke calmly listened to the insults and threats directed daily at her and her employees by people who learned they couldn’t enter the Modesto, California, store without wearing a mask and following other coronavirus-related rules. But never, says the 17-year veteran of retail sales, did she expect she’d be sucker-punched and left with blood gushing from her battered face. Not until it happened recently after a customer was told the last above-ground swimming pool in stock had just been sold to someone else. (Rogers, 6/8)

The New York Times: When The Office Is Like A Biohazard Lab
Here’s what it will be like when Cisco employees return to the office: Before heading in each day, workers will be required to log on to a new app the giant networking company designed, and answer several questions about their health. Have they had close contact in the last 14 days with anyone who received a Covid-19 diagnosis or was suspected of having a coronavirus infection? Within the last 24 hours have they experienced chills, shortness of breath, or a loss of taste or smell? (Gelles, 6/7)

The Washington Post: As Summer Camps Begin To Reopen, Parents Wonder If There's Room For Their Kids
As stay-at-home orders in the Washington region are slowly lifted, the area’s summer camps are plan to reopen — but social distancing and other pandemic restrictions mean many won’t have enough slots for all the families that normally rely on them. That could hit low-income families especially hard. (Rosenzweig-Ziff, 6/7)