Inhoudsopgave van April 6, 2020 - TIME Magazine

AS THE CORONAVIRUS CRISIS RAVAGED THE U.S., PRESIDENT Donald Trump weighed whether to lift or lessen social restrictions designed to save lives and avoid swamping hospitals with COVID-19 patients. To slow the spread of the pandemic, the White House had recommended upending daily life by working from home; limiting social gatherings to 10 or fewer people; and avoiding travel, restaurants and nonessential shopping, among other measures. But with industry grinding to a halt and unemployment set to soar, Trump began asserting that the damage to the economy may outstrip the damage to public health. “We have to go back to work much sooner than people thought,” Trump said March 24. He announced April 12, Easter Sunday, as a goal. Public-health officials warn that relaxing stringent social distancing that soon could…

When I was commander of U.S. Southern Command, in charge of all military operations south of the U.S., I was lucky enough to break my admiral’s flag in the U.S.N.S. Comfort, the massive U.S. Navy hospital ship. Now Comfort and her sister ship Mercy are soon to deploy to the East and West coasts, respectively, of the U.S. Both ships are highly capable—70,000 tons, a thousand hospital beds and 1,200 medical professionals in addition to the Navy sailors who actually operate the ship. In fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, their mission will be to supplement the hospitals ashore, bringing capability to bear so local medical facilities are not overwhelmed. They are a good example of what the military can do in the face of crisis. What else can our 1.2 million…

ON A RECENT DAY IN A FOREIGN CAPITAL, AN American spy was faced with an unexpected dilemma: how to cancel a clandestine meeting with a promising new recruit. People were not leaving their homes, so the crowded shops, bars, buses and parks that usually provided good cover were empty. There was no longer a place to meet without arousing suspicion. As the coronavirus pandemic exacts its immeasurable toll on people’s lives across the world, it also poses a problem for the U.S. intelligence collection that relies on human contact to track adversaries and secure communications to handle classified information. “It’s hard enough to maintain your cover in a crowded city,” says a U.S. intelligence officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity. With an increasing number of cities on lockdown, “it’s…

IN THE SOUTHEAST FLORIDA EMERGENCY room where 62-year-old nurse Penny Blake works, hospital administrators have locked up gloves, cleaning supplies and masks to keep them from disappearing. Twelve hundred miles away, at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, health care providers struggle with a similar dilemma. Faced with too few N95 respirators—specialized masks that are supposed to be worn for only up to eight hours—health care workers have begun hoarding them. Some doctors are spraying their masks with Lysol and keeping them in their lockers overnight. “Once you get one, the feeling is you keep it for as long as you can,” says Sinai’s Dr. Michelle Lin. In more than a dozen interviews with TIME, medical professionals from Los Angeles to Pittsburgh painted a picture of scarce resources, growing…

EVERYTHING CHANGED FOR ABDUL Rashid Dadabhoy on March 17. He heard that California’s Orange County was gearing up to ban public gatherings and impose restrictions on nonessential businesses like his T-shirt company, Bayside Apparel and Headwear, in order to stop the spread of coronavirus. But then Dadabhoy turned on CNN and saw doctors saying they didn’t have enough personal protective equipment to keep themselves safe while treating patients. “I have all these employees,” Dadabhoy recalls thinking to himself. “I’ve got to do something.” Within a day, the company had a face-mask prototype. Soon it was aiming to produce 100,000 masks per week. The masks are not yet medical-grade, but they’re better than nothing, and Bayside is donating them to hospitals that need them. From underwear manufacturers to haute couture…

ON DEC. 15, 2014, I BEGAN MY TENURE AS THE 19TH SURGEON GENERAL of the U.S. I expected that my focus as the “nation’s doctor” would encompass issues like obesity, tobacco-related disease, mental health and vaccine-preventable illness. But as I embarked on a listening tour of the U.S., one topic kept coming up. It wasn’t a frontline complaint. It wasn’t even identified directly as a health ailment. It was loneliness, and it ran like a dark thread through many of the more obvious issues people brought to my attention, like addiction, violence, anxiety and depression. It wasn’t always easy to tease out cause and effect—in some cases, loneliness was driving health problems; in others, it was a consequence of the illness and hardships that people were experiencing—but clearly there…

IT IS ALMOST A TRUISM THAT AMERICA IS MORE DIVIDED THAN EVER. In fact, it feels like our lack of consensus is the only thing there is a consensus about. But go ask someone who just got an early release from federal prison about this idea of division. Go ask a coal miner, whose health care and pension the government recently saved. Talk to families facing America’s addiction crisis, as policies begin to shift to honor their struggle. Quietly, below the radar, a new kind of bipartisanship is emerging. It tells a different story about who we are as a country—and who we could become. Bipartisanship today is different from the top-down bipartisanship of the 1990s and early 2000s, which gave the term a bad odor. That old approach—led…

IN THE AFTERMATH OF MURDERING HIS BROTHER, Cain is posed a simple question by God. “Where is your brother Abel?” God asks. Cain—we imagine him here as a sullen teenager, which perhaps he was—responds with a question of his own. “I do not know,” he says. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” It’s an insubordinate question, a trick of a young man trying to shirk responsibility and hide a dark secret. To stay home is to say yes to the question ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ I live in California, where the governor recently announced that all individuals must stay home or at their place of residence until further notice. That means not going out except for essential errands, like picking up groceries or medication or getting medical attention. My…

AMONG PEOPLE OF ALL AGES TODAY, THERE’S A SENSE THAT hippies were a phenomenon of the past, a group of idealistic people who agitated for change and then faded into the ether as grownup responsibilities, like work and family, took over. But Crip Camp, a documentary by Nicole Newnham and Jim LeBrecht—released under Barack and Michelle Obama’s Higher Ground umbrella—suggests that in some areas their influence has been much more profound. The movie shows how a group of activists with disabilities pressed for the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. But their movement first took root years earlier, springing largely from the influence of an upstate New York summer camp for disabled teenagers called Camp Jened, in operation from the early 1950s until 1977. As co-director LeBrecht,…

IT’S A COOL, CLEAR WEDNESDAY NIGHT IN MID-MARCH, and Ady Barkan is at home in Santa Barbara, Calif., hosting an emergency call with 3,200 supporters. As COVID-19 sweeps across the country, triggering emergency prohibitions and thousands of hospitalizations, people are looking to Barkan for leadership. But for a few long minutes, the line is quiet. The technology on Barkan’s computer that’s supposed to help him speak using his eye movements isn’t working. He tries once, then again, and after another minute of anxious silence, Barkan’s synthetic voice suddenly fills the air. “Out of this emergency, America will emerge a new nation,” he says. “But in what direction will we go?” While the point of this call is to catalyze immediate action—to reach out to vulnerable people during the crisis and…

THE U.S. AND Chinese governments now appear more interested in taunting each other than cooperating to contain the damage wreaked by COVID-19. That’s bad news for the whole world, because if they worked together to limit further human and economic damage from this crisis and to prevent future viral emergencies from going global, there is much they could do. U.S.-China relations have now reached their lowest point since the immediate aftermath of the Tiananmen Square massacre in June 1989. Both countries have suffered large-scale loss of life and a sharp economic slowdown, but political officials in both countries are working to protect their own domestic standing by blaming the other’s government. President Trump has taken to calling COVID-19 the “Chinese virus,” while senior Chinese officials and state media have…

WHILE COUNTRIES WITH ADVANCED HEALTH CARE systems struggle in the fight against COVID-19, its effects on countries with weaker health systems, including Liberia and other parts of Africa, will be significant. We were directly engaged in Liberia’s Ebola epidemic from 2014 to 2016, which claimed the lives of more than 11,000 people and resulted in massive economic losses. Ebola taught us painful but valuable lessons that can help the world today. SLOW DOWN THE VIRUS. Take swift action to temporarily ban public gatherings. To slow Ebola’s spread, in August 2014, the government of Liberia imposed a curfew to reduce movements and virus transmission. Evidence shows measures to keep people apart (a.k.a. “social distancing”), such as temporarily closing bars and restaurants and prohibiting public gatherings, can slow coronavirus too. China dramatically…

We rarely give our mirror neurons much thought. Many of us don’t even know that we have mirror neurons. But our brains are full of them—and that’s a very good thing. As their name suggests, it is mirror neurons that allow us to fathom one another, to learn from one another, to live inside one another’s heads. If I see you laugh, I’m inclined to laugh. If you smile, I smile. If you cry—especially if I know you, and certainly if I love you—I cry too. We cry even when actors cry—pantomimed tears; even pretend suffering touches us. If evolution designed our brains for empathy, for caring, for the love of community and the binding of the tribe, we’ve been letting those gifts go to waste. The world is defined…

A FEW YEARS AGO, I WAS RESEARCHING A BLACK women’s social club and mutual-aid society called the United Order of Tents, a group that began during slavery to help enslaved women escape to freedom. It was still operating in the 21st century, providing black communities with resources for senior citizens, banking and loans. But besides the economic benefits of this institution, I was struck by how much of what they were able to complete together was based on fostering a sense of community. The women I spoke to pointed as much to their gatherings, celebrations and parties as they did to their community work—for many, these were one and the same. It’s about listening to the needs and desires of the people Those women are the best examples I…

A NATIONAL RESPONSE TO THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC is under way. Congress is doing its part with a disaster-relief and economic-stimulus package. Our federal response, however essential it may be, is less critical than how we respond community by community to this disaster. We are facing a great test of American collectivism. As a Marine, I participated in the federal response to Hurricane Katrina and witnessed firsthand the importance of strong communities, the limits of a federal response and the consequences when a community falters. Three days after the hurricane, I arrived in New Orleans leading a platoon of 70 Marines. Our platoon was sent to a suburb to augment recovery efforts. The mayor said the most essential service we could provide would be to help first responders take care of…

REALITY TV HAS BECOME A MAJOR FRONT IN THE STREAMing wars, and Amazon is joining the fight with Making the Cut. Hosted by Heidi Klum and Tim Gunn, the 10-part competition, which will debut two new episodes weekly, pits a dozen fashion designers against one another in a series of creative challenges. While Klum anchors the sassy panel of judges, the avuncular Gunn, a paragon of good taste in his perfectly tailored suits, mentors the contestants. “This adventure is going to be like no other,” Heidi tells the cast in their first meeting. “This is an unprecedented opportunity,” Tim proclaims. Neither is entirely true—as evidenced by, well, reality. Gunn, on top of a career in the fashion department at New York City’s Parsons School of Design, has been a household…

‘WE ARE NOT OWED OUR DREAMS.’ALLYSON FELIX, sprinter and six-time Olympic gold medalist, in a TIME op-ed on coming to terms with disappointment after the 2020 Olympics were postponed on March 24 in the name of public health ‘We who don’t belong to a risk group have an enormous responsibility, our actions can be the difference between life and death for many others.’GRETA THUNBERG, climate activist, announcing on Instagram on March 24 that it’s “extremely likely” she had COVID-19 150,000 New jobs Walmart, the U.S.’s largest employer, said on March 19 it will need to fill because of COVID-19; as states across the country shut down nonessential businesses, retailers like Walmart have seen major increases in demand ‘Yes, I’m Asian. And yes, I have coronavirus. But I did not…

OVER THE PAST FEW MONTHS, MASSIVE swarms of locusts, one of which occupied an area more than three times the size of New York City, have devoured crops across the Horn of Africa and the Middle East, leaving an estimated 20 million people at risk of famine. The first generation’s eggs are starting to hatch, and now even bigger swarms are forming, threatening countries from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Yemen, Iran, Pakistan and India, “representing an unprecedented threat to food security and livelihoods,” says the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). PERFECT STORM Desert locusts are usually solitary creatures, but when weather conditions are right, their populations explode. That explosion can create dense swarms that can travel great distances—more than 90 miles in a day—in search of…

Matthew Fish of Holy Family Catholic Church in Hillcrest Heights, Md., waits for parishioners at his drive-through confessional on March 20. As the coronavirus disrupts lives around the world, Fish is among those who have sought ways to meet the needs of observant community members, even as their houses of faith remain closed. “The important thing is to not just keep that 6-ft. distance but to give people the option of anonymity and to preserve confidentiality,” Fish told Washingtonian of his setup in the parking lot next to the rectory. “I got some clamps, found an old curtain, and duct-taped and clamped it together … We advertise it at our usual Confession time.” For more of our best photography, visit time.com/lightbox…

A key component of Andrew Yang’s 2020 presidential platform was considered a particularly fringe idea: universal basic income (UBI). His proposal, which he dubbed the Freedom Dividend, would have put $1,000 in the pockets of all U.S. citizens over the age of 18 every single month. “I’m incredibly excited by the fact that our government seems like they’re on the cusp of doing the commonsense thing to help people get through this coronavirus crisis by putting cash straight into a family’s hands,” Yang tells TIME of the UBI-adjacent solutions that lawmakers in both parties have embraced. He argues that other economic solutions like paid sick and family leave would take too long to roll out. “We don’t have time right now,” Yang says. “This is something we actually can implement…

FOR WEEKS, I WATCHED THE EVOLVING CORONAVIRUS crisis the way one observes an avalanche: it looks distant until suddenly it is upon you. I was inclined to take advantage and “buy the dips.” Then, something snapped: I started selling. I wanted cash. I panicked. There. I said it. And I’m saying it to dispel the idea that the response of markets to what is happening is based on cold calculation of the future. It is based right now on a complicated mix of legitimate recalibration of what the economic future holds and pure unmitigated fear of loss. The former is absolutely necessary. The latter is utterly destructive. U.S. equity indices lost more than $10 trillion. I have been an investor for almost 20 years. Through the bursting of the dotcom…

I AM OBSERVING WHAT MAY BE THE FUTURE of work in a San Francisco skyscraper, watching a transparent, legless man in a T-shirt hover above a leather couch. The man is Jacob Loewenstein, head of business at Spatial, a software company that enables meetings via holograms. Though he is in New York City, a 3-D image of him appears a few feet in front of me in San Francisco, his face and slightly tousled hair a good likeness of the photo I later look up on LinkedIn. As I turn my head, which is decked in a clunky augmented-reality headset, I see that Loewenstein is holding a tablet, which he hands to me. When I try to grab it, though, I end up drawing pink lines through the air instead—I’ve…

ONCE UPON A TIME, ABOUT SIX WEEKS AGO, MORE THAN 50 MEMBERS of our Cleveland neighborhood left the warmth of our homes on a snowy weeknight to gather for a conversation about race. We live in the largest development built in the city of Cleveland since World War II, with 222 homes. We call it an “intentional” community in this deeply divided city. It is economically and racially diverse, and includes a number of LGBTQ families. We are white, black and Latino. We are working parents, empty nesters and retirees. We live in modest, well-tended homes. Our yards are small, and we have lots of front porches and stoops. This is by design. We are meant to be neighbors, not side-by-side strangers. An evening walk on summer nights easily…

ON JAN. 8, 2014, A HOMELESS MAN NAMED ALEXANDER BAXTER MADE a bad decision. A suspect in a burglary, he ran from the police and then compounded his error by entering a home that was not his. He made a mistake, but he did not deserve what came next. After police threatened to release their dog if he didn’t surrender, Baxter did not answer at first. Then, after the dog found him, he sat down and put his hands in the air, yet the police unleashed the dog again. The dog attacked and inflicted injuries that required emergency medical treatment. Baxter sued the police and lost. A court of appeals ruled that the arresting officers enjoyed immunity for their actions. The officers violated Baxter’s civil liberties, but he had no…

THE CORONAVIRUS THAT NOW POSES A DIRE THREAT TO PUBLIC HEALTH and to the world economy is so dangerous partly because it is novel—a new harm that our bodies and our governments must learn to face. But it is also a reminder of a lesson we should have learned long ago: that, to thrive, people of every nationality must combine strengths. There is something childish about the belief that one can be safe behind a wall, a moat or even an ocean. The principal threats we face, even beyond pandemic disease, do not respect boundaries. They include rogue governments, terrorists, cyberwarriors, the uncontrolled spread of advanced weapons, multinational criminal networks and environmental catastrophe. It was for good reason that world leaders strove in decades past to establish regional and global…

…