Your Friday Evening Briefing

April 3, 2020

Your Friday Evening Briefing

By Penn Bullock and Marcus Payadue

Good evening. Here’s the latest.

Shane Lavalette for The New York Times

1. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that Americans wear face masks in public to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, though President Trump said the guidance was “voluntary.”

A surge in demand for masks has led to a kind of global supply-chain bedlam. In the United States, the federal government has decided against ordering factories to produce more protective gear and is instead competing against states, hospitals and medical suppliers for the same worldwide pool of masks, which are mostly made in China.

States and hospitals have little experience negotiating with China, and that opens the way for middlemen of all stripes to step in. The result is that production of masks is soaring, but so are scams, logistical hurdles and, of course, prices.

Quotable: “All of these people are coming out of the woodwork, and all of them mysteriously now have access to an abundant supply,” said Susan Houghtelling, a hospital manager in upstate New York.

The Trump administration is trying to use its wartime powers, though, to cut off 3M’s ability to export face masks and claim more of the ones manufactured by the company in other countries.

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David Dee Delgado for The New York Times

2. Cellphones blared in unison across New York City this evening.

In the epicenter of the United States’ coronavirus outbreak, an emergency alert went out seeking health care workers to treat a deluge of patients, as hospitals run short of both personnel and supplies.

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The number of deaths in New York State nearly doubled in just three days, to 2,935 on Friday. More people were reported to have died of the virus over the past 24 hours — a total of 562 — than in the first 27 days of March.

In New York City, officials are warning that hospitals are just days away from a “D-Day,” when the caseload overwhelms the system. Specialists who haven’t worked an intensive care shift in years are being pressed into duty.

“It’s hard to go through this all day, and then it’s hard to stay up all night, watching those numbers come in and the number of deaths tick up,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo said at his daily briefing.

3. The official unemployment rate is now 4.4 percent — but that number is a keyhole’s view of a mountain.

The data that went into the March jobs report, released today, largely missed the last two weeks, when almost 10 million people filed for unemployment. The actual jobless rate is probably higher than at any point since the Great Depression: We think it’s around 13 percent, and climbing at a velocity never seen in American history.

The stock markets finished lower, giving up much of the gains of Thursday. President Vladimir Putin said Russia would cut oil production to raise prices if the U.S. dropped its traditional price policy and did the same. Here are live updates from our Business desk.

As small-business owners decide whether to cut jobs to keep business alive, the factors they’re weighing are fraught and extremely personal. Meanwhile, high above the devastation, some hedge funds and private equity firms are eagerly circling.

MCC3 Nicholas Huynh/United States Navy

4. A martyr emerges from an aircraft carrier.

The removal of Capt. Brett Crozier, above, as commander of the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt is being greeted by civilians and many in the military as emblematic of a failed, evasive government response to the coronavirus.

In gripping scenes, Captain Crozier was escorted off the carrier in Guam after he was removed from command for disseminating a letter — in violation of the chain of command, the Pentagon says — calling for the evacuation of about 5,000 crew members to protect them from a coronavirus outbreak on the ship.

While the exact circumstances of his relief from duty are disputed, the rank and file shouted their support in his cinematic exit. The firing could have a chilling effect at U.S. military outposts all over the world, where commanders are curtailing elite operations under threat from contagion.

Leon Neal/Getty Images

5. “Terrible decisions” for Britain’s doctors.

For years, the country has told doctors that in the case of a pandemic, they should prepare to withhold scarce resources from the weakest patients in order to save more of the strong, especially with the use of ventilators.

But that guidance was mostly theoretical, until now. Since the pandemic arrived, the country’s health authorities have failed to detail exactly how to make those agonizing choices. Several recent attempts at establishing rankings for patient care have triggered a public outcry, and some doctors are seeking to reassure frail patients that they won’t be left to die.

Fin Costello/Redferns

6. “I wouldn’t know a pop chart from a Pop-Tart,” Bill Withers said in 2015.

But the singer and songwriter was being more than a little modest: Over his career, he won three Grammys and recorded immortal tunes like “Lean on Me,” “Use Me” and “Ain’t No Sunshine.”

He died this week at the age of 81.

Sumy Sadurni/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

7. Criticizing Uganda’s longtime president is a risky endeavor.

It has landed one of his most potent foes, Stella Nyanzi, above, in prison — but that has not kept her from speaking out. The scholar and feminist mixes profanity and bawdy humor with razor-sharp political insights to taunt President Yoweri Museveni, who has ruled the country for 34 years.

Elizabeth Weinberg for The New York Times

8. It’s far from the usual Pornhub fare.

“Shakedown,” a verité-style documentary directed by Leilah Weinraub, above, and produced by the pornography site (which is seeing increased visits these days, of course), looks at a strip club in Los Angeles that caters to black lesbians.

Though decidedly not-safe-for-work, the film isn’t voyeurism but an intimate look at a tight-knit community with a utopian air, and at the lives of dancers whose cash goes to things like nail appointments and babysitters.

9. It sounds like an ingredient in a witch’s brew: thousands of living skin cells taken from a frog embryo.

Scientists working under the umbrella of DARPA, the futuristic research wing of the U.S. Department of Defense, have turned that organic muck into tiny creatures — if they can be called that.

No bigger than a poppy seed, these programmable organisms — called xenobots and revealed in a scientific paper in January — live for about a week and can heal from injuries. Their uses could conceivably extend to medicine and even to clean up plastics in the oceans.

via Raquel Acevedo Klein

10. Sonic meditation, anyone?

Here’s something offbeat you could try this weekend: Every Saturday in April, anyone who likes to sing can be part of a global “Tuning Meditation” via zoom. Our music critic gave it a try last Saturday and she said it ended up sounding like a “cosmic flock of bleating sheep.”

Or let us guide you through a short meditation session, with advice from experts and soothing sights and sounds from nature.

Have a peaceful evening.

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