#also t&t for delivering my groceries early despite the weather and my future employer for sending me a gift card for more coffee

[ivettel]

EVERYBODY CLAP AND CHEER I SURVIVED MY FIRST YR OF LAW SCHOOL!!!

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Headlines

Historic blast of polar vortex sets scores of records, scatters rare May snow in Eastern U.S. (Washington Post) A blast of Arctic air marched south across the eastern Lower 48 to start the weekend, bringing winterlike temperatures to millions of people and even a confetti of snowflakes. Records fell like dominoes as the icy air mass spilled south, first lapping at the Midwest before surging all the way east to the Atlantic. It’s one of the most prolific late-season cold outbreaks on record, thanks to a piece of the low-altitude polar vortex breaking off and meandering uncharacteristically far south. From Texas to Maine, record lows for May 9 fell in every state in the eastern half of the Lower 48 north of Florida. Several locations also registered their lowest May temperatures ever recorded and coldest weather this late in the season. Lows dipped into the 20s in 20 states.

A distinct possibility: ‘Temporary’ layoffs may be permanent (AP) In late March, Britney Ruby Miller, co-owner of a small chain of steakhouse restaurants, confidently proclaimed that once the viral outbreak had subsided, her company planned to recall all its laid-off workers. Now? Miller would be thrilled to eventually restore three-quarters of the roughly 600 workers her company had to let go. “I’m being realistic,” she said. “Bringing back 75% of our staff would be incredible.” Call it realism or pessimism, but more employers are coming to a reluctant conclusion: Many of the employees they’ve had to lay off in the face of the pandemic might not be returning to their old jobs anytime soon. Some large companies won’t have enough customers to justify it. And some small businesses won’t likely survive at all despite aid provided by the federal government.

One-Third of All U.S. Coronavirus Deaths Are Nursing Home Residents or Workers (NYT) At least 27,600 residents and workers have died from the coronavirus at nursing homes and other long-term care facilities for older adults in the United States, according to a New York Times database. The virus so far has infected more than 150,000 at some 7,700 facilities. Nursing home populations are at a high risk of being infected by—and dying from—the coronavirus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, is known to be particularly lethal to older adults with underlying health conditions, and can spread more easily through congregate facilities, where many people live in a confined environment and workers move from room to room. While just 11 percent of the country’s cases have occurred in long-term care facilities, deaths related to Covid-19 in these facilities account for more than a third of the country’s pandemic fatalities.

Coronavirus shuts the Mexican beer industry down, and the country is running dry (Washington Post) During the bone-dry days of Prohibition, Americans slipped over the border to guzzle beer in Mexico. A century later, Mexican towns are the ones going dry. The government has largely shut down beer production, saying that it is not essential during the country’s coronavirus outbreak. The last bottles of Tecate, Corona, Modelo Especial and Dos Equis for Mexican consumption rolled off the lines in early April. “Many people are desperately searching for beer,” said Raúl Funes, the head of a craft-brew association in Tijuana, just south of San Diego. “It’s like toilet paper.”

The red flags of Colombia (Washington Post) When the food supply at the community shelter had dwindled to a single package of Swiss chard, Robinson Álvarez Monroy stepped outside and hung a red scarf. Across Colombia, the red flag—or scarf, or towel, or T-shirt—has come to symbolize an urgent need for assistance. It’s a cry for help. In some places, the scarf, towel, or T-shirt has been waving for more than a month. Colombia had reported more than 10,000 cases of the coronavirus and 420 deaths as of Friday night, far fewer than South American neighbors Peru, Ecuador and Brazil. But lockdowns have devastated the region’s fragile economy, and the informal laborers who must work to eat. People in the slums say help comes from those who see the flags and stop to give them food.

Pandemic shows contrasts between US, European safety nets (AP) The coronavirus pandemic is straining social safety nets across the globe—and underlining sharp differences in approach between wealthy societies such as the United States and Europe. In Europe, the collapse in business activity is triggering wage support programs that are keeping millions on the job, for now. In contrast, in the United States more than 33.5 million people have applied for jobless benefits and the unemployment rate has soared to 14.7%. Congress has passed $2 trillion in emergency support, boosting jobless benefits and writing stimulus checks of up to $1,200 per taxpayer. That is a pattern seen in earlier economic downturns, particularly the global financial crisis and the Great Recession. Europe depends on existing programs kicking in that pump money into people’s pockets. The U.S., on the other hand, relies on Congress taking action by passing emergency stimulus programs. Economist Andre Sapir, a senior fellow at the Bruegel research institute in Brussels, said budget policy in the U.S. plays partly the role that Europe’s welfare system plays because the American welfare system is less generous and a recession can be much harsher on workers.

French parents anguish over sending children back to school (AP) As France prepares to start letting public life resume after eight weeks under a coronavirus lockdown, many parents are deeply torn over a question without a clear or correct answer: Should I send my child back to school? Due to the slow startup, as well as ongoing fears about COVID-19 in hard-hit France, school attendance will not be compulsory right away. Parents and guardians may keep children at home and teachers will provide lessons like they have during the nationwide lockdown. Returning students will find their classrooms running differently. Teachers will wear masks and remind children to social distance from each other and to wash their hands several times a day.

Italy has long been Europe’s wild card. The coronavirus has upped the risk. (Washington Post) After two months of ambulance sirens, mourning and isolation, this is the damage report from Italy: The novel coronavirus death toll has surpassed 30,000. The country is hurtling into its steepest recession in modern times. Tourism has gone bust. Many restaurants and shops lack the cash to ever reopen. The government’s brittle finances are becoming ever more stretched. All the while, many Italians feel embittered and alienated. They are disappointed in the continent’s early response to the pandemic and its fallout. Anti-European sentiment has spiked. So has the uncertainty about what might happen next in Italy’s topsy-turvy politics. Even before it was hit by one of the world’s deadliest outbreaks, Italy was seen as the wild card of Western Europe—flirting on-and-off with populism, sometimes seeming to be only one mismanaged crisis away from becoming the continent’s next Brexit or Greek-style debt disaster. Now that crisis has arrived, and what hangs in the balance is not just Italy’s stability but that of Europe, as well.

In Japan, pandemic brings outbreaks of bullying, ostracism (AP) The coronavirus in Japan has brought not just an epidemic of infections, but also an onslaught of bullying and discrimination against the sick, their families and health workers. A government campaign to raise awareness seems to be helping, at least for medical workers. But it’s made only limited headway in countering the harassment and shunning that may be discouraging people from seeking testing and care and hindering the battle against the pandemic. Apart from fear of infection, experts say the prejudice against those even indirectly associated with the illness also stems from deeply rooted ideas about purity and cleanliness in a culture that rejects anything deemed to be alien, unclean or troublesome. Medical workers risking their lives to care for patients are a main target, but people working at grocery stores, delivering parcels and carrying out other essential jobs also are facing harassment. So are their family members.

Infections rise in Asia (AP) China and South Korea reported new spikes Sunday in coronavirus cases, setting off fresh concerns in countries where outbreaks had been in dramatic decline, and new protests against pandemic restrictions erupted in Germany despite the easing of many lockdowns in Europe. Worldwide, health officials are anxiously watching to see just how much infection rates rise in a second wave as nations and states emerge from varying degrees of lockdown. Later Sunday, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was expected to take a different tack, keeping most restrictions in place as he reveals a ‘road map’ for the future of the country that has the most official virus deaths in Europe at over 31,600.

Virus Forces Persian Gulf States to Reckon With Migrant Labor (NYT) The Kuwaiti talk show panelists were holding forth on an issue that the coronavirus has pushed to the forefront of national debate: whether their tiny, oil-rich monarchy should rely as heavily as it does on foreign laborers, who have suffered most of the country’s infections and borne much of the cost of its lockdown. “Go to malls in Kuwait—would you ever see a Kuwaiti working there?” said one guest, Ahmad Baqer. “No. They’re all different nationalities.” Not long after, a South Asian man slipped into the camera frame, serving tea to each panelist from a tray. He appeared three times during the program, his presence unacknowledged except by one panelist who waved away a fresh cup. In the Middle East’s wealthiest societies, the machinery of daily life depends on migrant laborers from Asia, Africa and poorer Arab countries—millions of “tea boys,” housemaids, doctors, construction workers, deliverymen, chefs, garbagemen, guards, hairdressers, hoteliers and more, who often outnumber the native population. They support families back home by doing the jobs citizens cannot or will not take. But as oil revenues plummet, migrant labor camps become coronavirus hot spots and citizens demand that their governments protect them first, the pandemic has prompted a reckoning with the status quo. “The two things that Gulf countries depend on the most, oil prices and foreign workers, these two have been hard hit with the coronavirus,” said Eman Alhussein, a fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. “The coronavirus has unleashed all these issues that have been put on the back burner for a long time.”

South Africa’s alcohol ban during lockdown reveals its deadly drinking habits (Washington Post) South Africa has taken some of the most drastic measures in the world to curtail the spread of the novel coronavirus, but one has generated fierce debate like no other: a ban on the sale, and even transport, of alcohol. On one side: drinkers who say their rights are being impinged on and bottle shop owners and liquor companies that are going broke. On the other: a public health system that is unburdened by thousands of monthly hospitalizations resulting from accidents and violence attributed to drunkenness. More than 5,000 fewer admissions to trauma units per week can be attributed to the alcohol ban, according to Charles Parry, director of alcohol research at the South African Medical Research Council. The council’s data also shows a decrease in excess deaths in South Africa, suggesting that the lockdown, with its alcohol ban and decrease in vehicle use, may have saved the lives of more South Africans than the 186 that the coronavirus is confirmed to have killed so far. “Instead of patching people up with stabbing wounds, nurses can focus on training how to handle covid cases,” Parry said, referencing covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. “Based on our model, at least 15 people who would have otherwise died from alcohol-related traumas are being saved every single day.”