| Here’s the already-iconic image of a divided America in the middle of a pandemic. In one of a smattering of protests over the weekend against coronavirus lockdowns, a supporter of President Trump in Denver jeered at a counterprotesting medical worker from a silver Dodge truck. “This is a free country,” she said, before telling the medical worker to “go back to China.”
Trump later defended these scenes, arguing that the protesters — some of whom were mobilized by far-right, pro-gun groups on Facebook and assembled near city halls or other public buildings in mostly small numbers over the past few days — were agitating against governors “who had gone too far” in their imposition of restrictions on daily life. A recent poll found that a majority of Americans fear the government is moving too quickly to lift restrictions. But Trump may pull at this seam in the coming weeks, hoping to focus his base’s ire on domestic opponents even as he finds it impossible to dispel the scrutiny of his own missteps in the early stages of the crisis. Still, the economic anxiety in the United States, as is the case elsewhere in the world, is all too real. New projections from Columbia University researchers suggest that a coronavirus-provoked recession could spike U.S. job losses — and poverty — to five-decade highs. Far from U.S. state capitals, protests are building against lockdowns in poorer countries. About 2 billion people around the world depend on day work and live in countries whose governments are mostly unable to compensate for their loss of wages. “If people don’t work, they don’t get paid, and there is a risk of hunger,” Cátia Batista, professor of economics at Lisbon’s Nova University, told my colleagues. “The natural response is unrest.” But critics and experts argue that Trump and his supporters’ desire to open up the U.S. economy is premature. The country may be in the beginning of a long “plateau” in its battle with the virus — registering about 2,000 deaths a day for the past week — but still lags behind in testing a necessary proportion of its population. Countries such as Germany and South Korea moved to ease restrictions this week, but they have established far more efficient and widespread regimes of contact tracing and testing for the virus.
Even then, they remain wary about the possibility of a second wave ravaging their countries. “We must not be careless or irresponsible, even for a moment,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Monday, as small retailers in some German states began reopening. In contrast to Trump, Merkel urged local authorities to maintain and enforce social distancing rules to ensure that the country’s slowdown in infections would continue. In South Korea, some restaurants and shopping malls have restarted business, while various offices are slowly encouraging their employees to return — though with new precautions, including distancing measures and temperature checks. The country’s authorities, who have been singled out for their proactive handling of the outbreak, remain concerned about the possibility of new flare-ups. “We’re looking at the trend of group infections though it has mostly been small clusters over the past two weeks,” Vice Health Minister Kim Gang-lip told reporters. “If we let our guard down in social distancing, [the virus] could come back and greatly hurt and endanger our society.” Austria was one of the first European countries to begin restarting its economy, but it did so from a position of relative safety and strength. “Apart from the early lockdown, a rigorous mobile testing and health monitoring program caught cases early and kept people at home,” noted Denise Hruby in Foreign Policy. “Just 10 percent of cases have ended up hospitalized, such a low rate that three-quarters of the country’s intensive care unit beds remain vacant and patients from Italy and France have been taken to Austria for treatment.” Such conditions don’t exist yet in the United States. And none of the indignation of Trump supporters over their apparent loss of rights during a global public health crisis can be heard in the messaging from authorities in countries that are slowly trying to restart their economies. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, perhaps the world leader most feted in her management of the crisis, on Monday cautioned against moves that would risk “any of the gains we have made.” “As is the case in other parts of Europe, Germany’s partial reopening comes amid warnings from officials that a full return to normality is still far off,” wrote my colleague Rick Noack. “Last week, Spain allowed some workers to resume operations, even though it extended the restrictions that have kept citizens locked inside their homes for weeks. And while Austria reopened many shops, it also tightened rules on the use of face masks in public settings.” Even in Sweden, whose government’s unwillingness to impose strict lockdowns has been hailed by some U.S. conservatives, authorities insist they aren’t exactly keeping their heads in the sand. “We don’t have a radically different view,” Foreign Minister Ann Linde said in an interview with Radio Sweden. “The government has made a series of decisions that affect the whole society. It’s a myth that life goes on as normal in Sweden.” |
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Talking Points• Israel’s rival political leaders broke the country’s unprecedented political impasse Monday when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and challenger Benny Gantz announced a deal to join forces and form an emergency unity government. Under the terms of the agreement, Netanyahu would remain prime minister for the next 18 months with Gantz then succeeding him. • President Trump tweeted Monday night that he will be signing an executive order to temporarily suspend immigration to the United States. The president said he would be signing the order “in light of the attack from the Invisible Enemy, as well as the need to protect the jobs of our GREAT American Citizens.” It was not immediately clear what Trump was referring to or whether such an order would be possible, The Post reports. • The price of oil dropped below $0 on Monday, signaling an extreme collapse in demand. But what does that mean exactly? “It was fleeting, and symbolic, more than anything, and it won’t have much effect on the price of gasoline at the pump,” explains The Post’s Will Englund, “But it showed just how much the coronavirus pandemic has crushed the world’s energy markets — and how the global effort to stabilize them was failing.” • Across the Muslim world, the fasting month of Ramadan that begins this week will be unlike any other in memory as the coronavirus pandemic alters the rituals and rhythms of centuries-old traditions and practices. But clerics claiming the mantle of righteousness have in some places challenged the official prohibitions. My colleagues Sudarsan Raghavan and Susannah George have more.
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Viewpoints
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Promises made
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Monday that his government would move ahead on the gun-control legislation he promised during last year’s election campaign after the deadliest shooting in his country’s history, though it was not clear how soon he would do so. Authorities say a single gunman shot and killed at least 18 people in rural Nova Scotia during a rampage Saturday and Sunday before he died. On Monday, a coalition of gun-control groups implored Public Safety Minister Bill Blair to ban the new sale of military-style assault weapons. Authorities have not said what firearms suspect Gabriel Wortman used in the shootings or how he obtained them. Blair said he intended to introduce gun-control legislation “as quickly as possible.” Rod Giltaca, chief executive of the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights, said it was too soon to debate guns. Canada has the fifth-highest rate of civilian gun ownership in the world, but has suffered few of the mass shootings that afflict the neighboring United States. The country’s previous deadliest mass shooting was in 1989, when a gunman killed 14 women and himself at Montreal’s École Polytechnique. That shooting prompted Canada to overhaul its gun laws. Trudeau campaigned last year on a promise to ban and buy back legally purchased “military-style” assault weapons. He also pledged to help municipalities ban handguns, a measure supported by the mayors of Toronto and Montreal, among other cities — Amanda Coletta Read on: Trudeau promises gun-control legislation after deadliest shooting in Canadian history |
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1,000 Words
May-Ying Lam, a former Washington Post photo editor arrived in Hong Kong in March 2019, right before pro-democracy protests broke out. She left just as the coronavirus started to overshadow everything. “For me this has been a time of witnessing irreversible change, in my personal life and in society. There were so many moments of wanting to help and feeling helpless at the same time. But amid it all, I believe I did what was most important — as a photographer, as a granddaughter — to bear witness to it all,” she writes in the Washington Post Magazine. (May-Ying Lam/For The Washington Post) |
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Afterword |
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