Coronavirus, Stimulus, Cabin Fever
Your Wednesday Evening Briefing |
Good evening. Here’s the latest. |
 | | Bryan Derballa for The New York Times |
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1. We got our first look at the details of the $2 trillion stimulus bill. |
Senate leaders are still wrangling over jobless benefits, but say they hope to vote on it tonight. The House will most likely follow suit on Thursday. |
- Taxpayers with incomes up to $75,000 per year would receive $1,200 in direct payments, which phase out and end altogether for those earning more than $99,000. Families would get an additional $500 per child.
- Unemployment benefits would be extended by 13 weeks and was broadened to include freelancers, furloughed employees and gig workers.
- Federally guaranteed loans would be available to small businesses that pledged not to lay off workers, and would be forgiven if they continued to pay workers for the duration of the crisis.
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Other industries like retailers, restaurants, like above in Manhattan’s Chinatown, community banks and for-profit schools are poised to benefit. Despite Democrats’ claims that President Trump’s businesses would be blocked from receiving benefits, that’s not entirely the case. |
 | | Jose A. Alvarado Jr. for The New York Times |
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2. Do people who survive the infection become immune to the coronavirus? |
Our bodies naturally make antibodies to infections with virtually all viruses, but how long they last after exposure to Covid-19 is an open question. And it’s an important one. People who are immune can venture out of their houses, and a growing immunity in the community is how the virus ends. |
In New York, the epicenter of the outbreak in the U.S., Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that the state would be the first to begin testing serum from people who had recovered from Covid-19 to treat those who were seriously ill. |
There were also signs that New York’s stringent restrictions on social gatherings could be working. On Sunday, hospitalizations were projected to double every two days. By Tuesday, that shifted to every 4.7 days — “almost too good to be true,” Mr. Cuomo said. |
But the state has over 30,800 confirmed cases, up more than 5,000 since Tuesday morning. |
 | | Yui Mok/Press Association, via Associated Press |
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3. Prince Charles tested positive for the coronavirus, Buckingham Palace said. |
Charles, 71, who is first in line to the British throne, has been experiencing mild symptoms but has “otherwise remained in good health,” a spokesman said. He last saw his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, on March 12, before he was infectious, doctors said. |
“It’s as if we are in a time warp” she wrote. Around them, everyone seems to be “blissfully, unconsciously” going about their lives while she, her daughter and her husband languish in a “makeshift sick ward, living in what will soon be the present for more and more of them.” |
 | | Atul Loke for The New York Times |
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4. The beginning of the world’s largest coronavirus lockdown is underway. |
India’s 1.3 billion people — a sixth of the world’s population — have been told to stay at home. Rule-breakers were threatened with public shaming and even “shoot on sight” orders in one state. For some, the lockdown could mean starving. And an already fragile economy may collapse. Above, people lining up for cooking gas in Mumbai. |
It’s an entirely different story in Mexico and Brazil, where the leaders of Latin America’s two largest nations have largely dismissed the dangers and have resisted calls for a lockdown. |
 | | Bulent Kilic/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images |
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5. Turkish officials indicted 20 Saudi nationals for the killing of Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. |
In a statement, the Istanbul prosecutor’s office said the indictments, which have not been released, would show how the killing had been planned. Turkish and U.S. authorities have concluded that the dissident writer was strangled and dismembered at the Saudi Consulate in Turkey. Above, a symbolic funeral for Mr. Khashoggi in 2018. |
 | | George Etheredge for The New York Times |
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6. A treat for theater lovers. |
Our architecture critic went with David Rockwell, the architect and Tony-winning set designer, on a virtual tour of shuttered Broadway and shared the stories and the history behind his favorite theaters. |
“Theaters are so resilient,” Mr. Rockwell said. “They can have many lives.” |
And for the first time, an industry built on caring for other people is pivoting to caring for its own: Around the country, restaurant customers and owners have mounted efforts to raise money for workers, including at least 6,000 online efforts at gofundme.com. |
 | | Sarah Mazzetti |
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Whether we’re working and studying remotely, or just freaking out at home, we all need something to do “that’s not panicky or scared but joyful, nourishing, fun,” writes Sam Sifton, our newly minted assistant managing editor overseeing The Times’s cultural and lifestyles coverage. |
 | | Lelanie Foster for The New York Times |
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Tonight, try “For Life,” a new series on ABC produced by the rapper Curtis Jackson, better known as 50 Cent, and based on the true story of a man who was convicted on false testimony of being a drug kingpin, but learned the law and got his life sentence overturned. |
 | | Los Angeles Rams, via Associated Press |
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Almost everybody hates them. One logo, a ram’s head, drew mostly negative feedback, but an image of a horn swooping over a capital L.A. drew the most derision. |
“The L.A. Rams are no longer a football team; they are a morning show,” one fan tweeted. Others thought it said “internet browser” or “life insurance company” more than “football team.” |
 | | Seth Casteel for The New York Times |
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10. And finally, taking the plunge. |
At 28, Jazmine Hughes, an editor at The Times Magazine, decided to learn how to swim. But the pool and the ocean (and an instructor at a Y.M.C.A.) ended up teaching her more than just to float on her own. Her months of learning to swim followed a two-year period of learning to date women. |
“In the ocean, I wasn’t afraid of what I might find beneath — seeing something new was the most appealing reason to get in,” she writes. “I would finally see what I had been missing all this time.” |
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