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Gradual Reopening to Enter Second Phase Governor Leaves Curfew Hours in Place, Green-lights More Areas of Business, with Conditions How We Shopped at Malls Is Now a Thing of the Past Churches to Reopen with Limited Accommodations; Forget a Whole Day at Beach

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May 22-24, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

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May 22-24, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star, the only paper with News Service in English in Puerto Rico, publishes 7 days a week, with a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday edition, along with a Weekend Edition to cover Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Gov’t challenges fiscal board’s authority in US Supreme Court

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uerto Rico Gov. Wanda Vázquez Garced has recently challenged before the U.S. Supreme Court the scope of the federal Financial Oversight and Management Board’s (FOMB) authority over the island’s fiscal decisions.

The brief filed May 15 seeks to overturn lower court rulings that upheld the oversight board’s prohibition of the “reprogramming” of funds in the 2019-2020 fiscal plan and budget.

The case deals with the interpretation of certain statutes in the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA), and the ability of the government to make fiscal decisions.

“Because of Puerto Rico’s territorial status, Congress was able to enact a law that altered Puerto Rico’s framework of self-government. Yet in doing so, Congress was not seeking to eliminate Puerto Rico’s self-governing structure,” the government’s filing said in the case Wanda Vazquez Garced vs FOMB. “Congress carefully calibrated PROMESA to balance the oversight board’s considerable fiscal powers against the political powers of the island’s elected government.”

The administration of former Gov. Ricardo Rosselló Nevares sued the oversight board in U.S. District Court for banning the practice of “reprogramming,” or reassigning funding that had been authorized but not actually spent in the previous fiscal year, 2019, so that it could be used during the current fiscal year 2020, which began July 1.

The Rosselló administration said that because the board had unsuccessfully recommended that the governor agree to such a ban, it could not thereafter adopt the ban as binding over the governor’s objection citing Section 205 of PROMESA. U.S. District Court Judge Laura Taylor Swain sustained the ban on reprogramming, ruling that the oversight board did not surrender its powers to act unilaterally regarding a policy proposal by first seeking agreement from the governor. She said the board’s “certification of a budget under PROMESA precludes reprogramming of previously authorized expenditures from prior years.”

The federal Appeals Court in Boston agreed, ruling in December 2019 that while there should be a collaboration between the government and the board in developing a fiscal plan and budget, the oversight board ultimately decides.

The government disagreed, telling the Supreme Court that PROMESA’s section 303 preserves the “exercise of the political or governmental powers of the territory or territorial instrumentality,” and also preserves the elected government’s policymaking powers.

“Even after fiscal plans and budgets are certified, PROMESA still provides substantial flexibility for the elected Government and the Oversight Board to collaborate on important adjustments in spending,” the government argued. “In particular, to address needs that may arise over the course of a fiscal year, PROMESA permits the Governor to seek to reprogram funds provided for in an Oversight Board-certified budget.”

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The San Juan Daily Star

May 22-24, 2020

Businesses to reopen on Tuesday Beaches and parks, too; reopening guidelines not in full compliance with CDC and WHO recommendations

By JOSÉ A. SÁNCHEZ FOURNIER Twitter: @SanchezFournier Special to The Star

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fter more than two months of a government-mandated curfew that has brought the Puerto Rico economy to a virtual standstill, Gov. Wanda Vázquez Garced announced on Thursday the next phase of her business reopening plan, which includes new protocols and an expansion of commercial activities in a plethora of industries, as well as in areas of government.

And, Vázquez said, the biggest ally in the government’s strategy will be safety masks, an item that has become an integral part of people’s dress attire during the islandwide emergency.

“Wearing a protective mask is now mandatory [in public spaces],” said the governor, who arrived at Pedro Rosselló Convention Center in San Juan’s Miramar sector wearing a mask, which she then took off when she walked onstage.

“The mouth and nose area must be covered always. It is a key for living with COVID-19. We all must wear the mask.”

Vázquez announced that the 7 p.m.-5 a.m. curfew will be extended until June 15.

Among the many businesses that will have extended commercial liberties beginning on Tuesday are eateries and restaurants, which will be allowed to admit up to 25 percent of their clientele capacity, while also being able to offer delivery services until midnight.

“How did we arrive at the 25 percent figure? It was an industry recommendation,” Vázquez said.

Restaurant industry executive Ramón Leal, who was one of several private businessmen and clergy invited by La Fortaleza to the press conference, claimed that many island eateries are already planning to not only comply with the government’s health requirements, but in some instances will surpass them.

“In some restaurants they are already planning to take your temperature before entering and if you register in the range considered symptomatic of COVID-19, they will not allow you to enter, only to order for pickup, as a health measure,” Leal said. “Our controls in some areas are even stricter than the government’s. In some restaurants you already see employees wearing plastic face masks, which is not mandatory, but it is an excellent measure.”

However, the governor’s plan does not comply with World Health Organization and Centers for Disease Control guidelines, which recommends registering a 14-day period of reducing infection cases before implementing a reopening of commercial areas.

“These decisions were taken after considering all recommended requirements,” the governor said. “Some were implemented, others are still under consideration.”

Also starting next Tuesday, barbershops and beauty salons will be allowed to open Monday to Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., but only with previously scheduled visits and complying with all cautionary health measures and utilizing gloves and masks. Clients will not be allowed to wait for their turn inside the shops, to avoid unnecessary gatherings.

“Beauty salons and barber shops were some of the businesses that people asked the most about,” Vázquez said.

Laundry establishments, as well as pet grooming stores, car dealerships, car washes and general retail stores can also operate Monday through Saturday, with up to 50 percent of

their maximum occupancy capacity.

Strip malls will also be able to open to up to 50 percent of their permitted clientele capacity starting Tuesday, while enclosed shopping malls will only be open for employees and managers for training on safety measures, and will only be able to admit one person per 100 square feet of total space. The governor said the island’s indoor malls will be permitted to open on June 8, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. As a health measure, the trying on of clothing or shoe attire will not be allowed.

“How are people going to buy clothes without trying them on? Easy. The same way they do when buying through the internet,” Vázquez said.

Beaches, golf courses and parks will be open for general exercise but not for “picnic type” activities.

“You can go to the beach to swim, walk and the like, but not to go with a cooler to sit and spend all day there,” the governor said. “We have very clear precedents in Florida and California of what kind of risks opening beaches would entail.”

“We have to learn to live with the risk of COVID-19.

Some experts say there is a risk of another wave [of the coronavirus],” she added. “We hope that does not happen here, but we must remain alert to it.”

Health scare for the Health secretary Health Secretary Lorenzo González Feliciano was conspicuously absent from Thursday’s COVID-19 press conference due to the fact that just before it began, he found out he had been exposed to a coronavirus carrier and left to be tested immediately.

“I must excuse the Health secretary. He was here but had a sudden matter to attend to,” Vázquez said during the press conference.

In a written statement later sent to The San Juan Daily Star, González Feliciano said that “as part of my official duties in the last couple of days I came in contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19 in a molecular test.”

The statement added that he and his team immediately took COVID-19 molecular tests and that he would comply with health protocols until his test results come back.

Committee chairman: NPP had no part in Apex scandal

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

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ith the island House of Representatives’ investigation into the aborted $38 million contract for the purchase of rapid COVID-19 detection tests drawing to a close, House Health Committee Chairman Juan Oscar Morales said Thursday that the New Progressive Party (NPP) had nothing to do with the transaction, while distancing himself from the disclosure of a WhatsApp conversation heard in an executive hearing earlier this week.

“This has nothing to do with any [political] game. We cannot mix this up with the [New Progressive] Party, only with people who unfortunately used this emergency for other purposes,” Morales said in a radio interview. “[The NPP is completely exonerated] from this. You have not seen in the hearings that there was any instruction from the party. The party is an institution. They [the principal subjects of the investigation] are people who act differently and who deviate from norms and

laws, and we cannot blame that on any party.”

After 11 public hearings, the House Health Committee completed the investigative process regarding the transaction to purchase a million rapid tests for COVID-19 for $38 million through Apex General Contractors LLC, despite the fact that representatives of the company 313 LLC, which was also involved, were not summoned to testify.

“We have already started writing the report and we hope to issue it soon,” Morales said. “I think it will take a little over a week. We have to go through all the testimonies again.

There were testimonies that lasted 11.5 hours, there were others that lasted eight hours. We want to make a good report, so that no detail escapes us and that it can efficiently collect everything we had under our consideration so that it reflects everything that happened.”

Meanwhile, the legislator said he regretted the disclosure of the details of the WhatsApp conversation between the owner of Apex, Robert Rodríguez and the company’s lawyer, Juan Maldonado, about the handling of the transaction.

“It is regrettable that this information [was disclosed], despite the fact that we warned each and every person who was at that [closed executive] hearing, members and non-members of the committee, not to disclose any related matter,” the lawmaker said. “I am sorry. Thus we have not been able to go into details of how that hearing transpired, what was stated in that hearing.

The truth is that in the report, part of that evidence that was discussed in [the executive hearing] is going to be attached in that Health Committee report.”

Morales maintained that the situation will entail taking precautionary measures when delivering documents and evidence to the members of the committee. He added that what was learned from the Apex contract situation is that the government has to ensure that purchasing processes comply with the requirements and regulations regardless of whether the island faces an emergency situation.

“Totally satisfied,” Morales said in response to a question about whether he

thought the House investigation accomplished its purpose. “We have fulfilled our ministerial duty to conduct this investigation. Many, I don’t know for what reason, did not want this research to be done. Many rationalized that this Apex purchase did not have to be investigated because everything had been done in order. At the end of the day, the people have already judged, according to what they have seen, that in fact these purchases that were made in the Health Department did not comply with due process.”

“Here there are several people who have absolute responsibility with regard to this purchase order, and that will be confirmed in the report that the Health Committee that will have to render. Many people have tried to say that we wanted to find a culprit or point to someone in La Fortaleza, and that was never the objective of the investigation,” he added when asked if the investigation sought to implicate Gov. Wanda Vázquez Garced. “The objective was to search for the truth of how the events occurred.”

The San Juan Daily Star

May 22-24, 2020

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Last stand for WIPR employees Union leaders and station workers protest privatization of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting

By JOSÉ A. SÁNCHEZ FOURNIER Twitter: @SanchezFournier Special to The Star

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caravan composed of more than 50 automobiles carrying more than 100 demonstrators in total drove Thursday from WIPR headquarters in Hato Rey to the Capitol building in Old San Juan as a show of opposition to the order to turn over the government-operated Puerto Rico Corporation for Public Broadcasting into private hands.

WIPR, as it is commonly known, was ordered to be turned over to private hands by the federal Financial Oversight and Management Board. Although the island government has missed several deadlines to do so, Gov. WandaVázquez Garced said

last week that they already had a proposal to do so and that her administration would comply with the oversight board order.

Gerson Guzmán, president of the General Workers Union, said the more than 80 union employees at WIPR are feeling saddened and stressed by the difficult situation.

“There is a total sense of uncertainty.

We don’t know how they [the government] are planning to do it, or when, or what will happen with the specialized personnel who work at the station,” Guzmán said.

“There is no reason to turn the station over to private industry hands.”

On its way to the Capitol, the caravan made an unannounced stop at Pedro Rosselló Convention Center in San Juan, where the governor was going to participate in a press conference related to the next phase of the reopening of the island economy after 10 weeks of lockdown necessitated by the coronavirus pandemic.

“We have a proposal to make this public corporation self-sustainable. It is an attainable goal that should have been

reached years ago,” the labor leader said.

“It is time to give it a complete turnaround and use it for its original purpose, to educate the public while promoting the historical and cultural values of Puerto Rico.”

“If you remember, after Hurricane

Maria wreaked havoc over the western part of the island, only WIPR communications antennas remained standing, and at a time when no other station could reach the area, WIPR kept them well informed,” Guzmán added.

Study shows COVID-19 impact, challenges for college students

By THE STAR STAFF

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he non-profit organization Mentes Puertorriqueñas en Acción (Puerto Rican Minds In Action) published this week the results of a study on the impact of COVID-19 and the ensuing lockdown on the university population.

The study among 535 college students asked about the economic impact felt by the student population, changes in their housing situation, challenges to continuing their studies and obstacles they face as they try to move forward with their professional plans.

The data shows that more than two-thirds of the students have lost their jobs and 67 percent have seen a cut in their incomes for diverse reasons such as having to endure a cut to their working hours. About 38 percent have moved in with a relative and 11 percent said they have no fixed place to live. Since more than a third of those surveyed have moved in with a relative, the economic burden has also affected the families of university students.

Luis Ferrán Colón, an economics student at the University of Puerto Rico and a member of the team that worked on the report, said the sectors in which the

students work were the same sectors most severely impacted by the lockdown of all non-essential businesses that began on March 15.

“Most young people begin to gain work experience in customer service and retail jobs, and these are some of the fields that will take the longest to recover,” Ferrán Colón said.

This week, Gov. Wanda Vázquez Garced allowed numerous businesses to resume operations but with restrictions on their operating hours and the number of customers allowed at their sites.

Alejandro Silva Díaz, executive director of Mentes Puertorriqueñas en Acción, said “the loss of opportunities and experience represents a greater challenge for young people to progress in the development of their careers.”

The report highlights that 42.4 percent of those surveyed expressed having lost job opportunities, while 20.5 percent have lost opportunities for academic development such as conferences, 20 percent have lost research opportunities and 16.4 percent have lost internship opportunities as a result of the pandemic.

Despite the fact that most of the students have been able to continue their academic courses through the internet, access to technology has represented an ad-

ditional challenge. One in four students revealed that their main source of access to courses was not the most optimal for the task, while 34.4 percent expressed having difficulty obtaining internet access.

Of particular concern is that many of the students face obstacles in the process of completing their degrees because certifications and licensing test examinations were paralyzed by the pandemic.

“This data is worrisome since the professions that generally require the taking of these tests to get a license are jobs in the field of health and law, which are essential to combat the pandemic and its effects,” Silva Díaz said.

Puerto Rican Minds in Action discussed the results of the survey and its recommendations through their social networks on Thursday. They said the organization has working groups of young people that they call “Civic Action Laboratories,” which will be developing projects to meet the needs of the population.

Recommendations included in the report include emphasizing the transition from remote jobs, developing summer job opportunities and internships, improving internet access, ensuring effective orientation processes, and articulating solutions for young professionals looking to take their licensing tests.

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May 22-24, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

2020 hurricane season has a 60% chance of being more severe than usual

By THE STAR STAFF

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e better get ready soon.

The Atlantic hurricane season is forecast “above normal” in 2020, according to the estimate of the National Weather Service’s (NWS) Climate Prediction Center.

“While we have focused on safety and health to reopen the country, it is highly important that we remember to take the necessary precautions for the hurricane season,” U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in a written statement.

The estimate predicts a 60 percent probability of an “above normal” season, 30 percent probability of a season “near normal,” and 10 percent probability

of a “below normal” season.

The Atlantic hurricane season begins June 1 and runs through Nov. 30. In addition, the NWS forecasts that there will be between 13 and 19 storms that may form (to be named) with winds of 39 miles per hour or higher.

Of these, between six and 10 could become hurricanes (ranging from 74 miles per hour and upward) and of those, three to six could be category 3, 4 or 5 (with winds of 111 miles per hour or more). The NWS gave the forecast a degree of certainty of 70 percent.

According to the federal entity, an average season produces 12 named storms, of which six can become hurricanes and three of those can develop into major hurricanes.

Green energy projects to provide 500 MW of electricity production

By JOHN McPHAUL jpmcphaul@gmail.com

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fter over seven years in the effort, the Renewable Energy Producers Association of Puerto Rico (APER by its Spanish acronym) announced on Thursday an agreement for 16 new large-scale renewable energy projects.

The projects will provide the island with nearly 500 megawatts of clean, economical energy.

“After several years of continuous and arduous effort, and after fighting against hurricanes, earthquakes and a pandemic, the country has finally broken the inertia of immobility,” APER Executive Director Julián Herencia said. “We have broken through the wall of paralysis and opened a window into the future, giving way to several new large-scale renewable energy projects. Congratulations!”

Herencia also stressed that “APER is very proud to contribute to the development of the country through the agreements reached.”

“The projects will provide Puerto Rico with an ample source of clean energy at fair prices,” he said. “Today we are taking a significant step forward, not only at the economic level, but at the level of ecological health and well being.”

Herencia noted that the multi-million-dollar investment creates employment opportunities through the construction, operation and maintenance of the projects.

He also emphasized that through the projects, a clear message is sent to the national and international market that Puerto Rico is getting back on its feet and that it is possible to invest in the island with security and certainty. Another

benefit of the projects, he said is that their implementation is a significant step in reducing toxic emissions from electric power generation plants, which today are identified as the largest sources of pollutants in Puerto Rico. Such projects are also linked to a significant reduction in respiratory diseases, he added.

At the environmental level, the volume of fossil fuels the island burns will be reduced, thanks to the generation capacity that the projects will start to contribute 12 months from now.

“Our environment has been ruthlessly abused by the large amount of greenhouse gases that we release and which today are the cause of an environmental debacle, which is creating a serious disruption in weather patterns and air quality,” Herencia said. “Today we can seriously say that our island is starting to contribute to the goal of achieving zero net greenhouse gas emissions.”

Meanwhile, APER maintained that it is important to keep the focus on the procedural challenges that are beginning and that could hinder the implementation of projects.

While the approval of the different entities that are part of the process -- the governing board of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA), the federal Financial Oversight and Management Board, the Puerto Rico Energy Bureau and the federal bankruptcy court -- gets underway, APER stressed that it must be guaranteed that the agreements reached are firm, binding and exclusively subject to the approval of the aforementioned entities.

APER will maintain the focus on evaluating additional projects while current projects are built and come into operation, in order to keep Puerto Rico on track to achieve

the goals of renewable energy sources established by the Puerto Rico Energy Public Policy Act. “We cannot allow the upcoming projects to take seven years to materialize,” Herencia said. “APER remains on guard and vigilant to make more and frequent progress on this front and to achieve it more immediately.”

The objective of APER — formed mostly by renewable energy producers — is to help stabilize and reduce the price of energy in Puerto Rico through renewable energy.

The San Juan Daily Star

May 22-24, 2020

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All 50 states are now reopening. But at what cost?

By SARAH MERVOSH and AMY HARMON

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n Connecticut, flags that had been lowered during the somber peak of the coronavirus pandemic were raised to full-staff on Wednesday to signal a return to business.

In Kentucky, gift shops creaked open their doors.

And across Alaska, restaurants, bars and gyms, which have been open to small numbers of customers for weeks, were getting ready to rev back up to full capacity. “It will all be open,” Gov. Mike Dunleavy announced, “just like it was prior to the virus.”

The United States has crossed an uneasy threshold with all 50 states beginning to reopen in some way, two months after the coronavirus thrust the country into lockdown. But there are vast variations in how states are deciding to open up, with some forging far ahead of others.

The increasing moves to lift restrictions on businesses — or at least open up outdoor spaces like beaches and state parks — reflect the immense political and societal pressures weighing on the nation’s governors, even as epidemiologists remain cautious and warn of a second wave of cases.

With millions of people out of work and many Americans entering their third month isolated at home, the push to take action rivals what states faced at the beginning of the crisis, when governors were urged to shut down.

“You have 50 different governors doing 50 different things,” said Andrew Noymer, an associate professor of public health at the University of California, Irvine. “There will be states that open too soon or states that are too conservative. It is hard to thread the needle.”

But if reopening has become a buzz word among politicians — many states have issued sweeping documents with color-coded plans to “rebound” and “bounce back” — life remains far from normal in most places across America. Even in Georgia, which opened many businesses last month ahead of other states, restaurants are seeing only about 15% of normal traffic, according to data published by OpenTable, a restaurant reservation website.

The White House has said that states should have a “downward trajectory” of cases over a 14-day period before reope-

Customers are handed one-time-use menus at a restaurant in West Hartford, Conn. ning, but many states reopened well short of meeting those bench marks. Some epidemiologists see warning signs of a rebound, especially in the South, and because it can take as long as three weeks for a newly infected person to become sick enough to go to the hospital, the impact of reopening is unlikely to be detectable immediately.

“We really are playing with fire here in a very broad sense,” said Charles Courtemanche, an economist at the University of Kentucky. In a recent paper for the journal Health Affairs, he estimated that the number of confirmed cases in the United States, which reached 1 million at the end of April, would have been closer to 35 million without the restaurant closures and stay-athome orders that began in mid-March. “Just because it hasn’t been a catastrophe yet in your state, doesn’t mean it doesn’t have the potential to be,” he said.

Ipakoi Grigoriadis was left to navigate the complexities while fielding breakfast orders at her family’s diner, Pop’s Family Restaurant, in Milford, Connecticut, which reopened to outdoor dining on Wednesday as Connecticut lifted its stay-at-home order and allowed some businesses to reopen.

“It is still a little scary considering we don’t exactly know what this is,” said Grigoriadis, who said the restaurant was taking a numbr of precautions. Employees were instructed to wear masks and gloves at all

times, she said, and patrons were expected to wear masks while at the restaurant as well — “except when they are eating and drinking.”

Connecticut was among the last states to take the plunge toward reopening, representing the more cautious approach that has defined much of the Northeast. New York, which has seen by far the most cases and deaths in the nation, is proceeding with a regional reopening that excludes hard-hit New York City. In Washington, D.C., a stayat-home order is in effect until June and the surrounding region remains closed.

Several states on the West Coast and certain Democratic-led states in the Midwest have also moved slowly, taking a regional or step-by-step approach.

By contrast, a number of states in the South opened earlier and more fully.

Businesses have been open with social distancing requirements for nearly a month in Georgia, where the number of new cases has remained more or less the same. Mississippi saw its largest single-day increase in reported cases and deaths only after the state began to reopen.

The variation illustrates the political and regional differences that have come to define the state-by-state response to the coronavirus, as governors navigate a pandemic that comes with no political playbook.

Texas, the nation’s second-largest state,

with 29 million residents, had among the shortest stay-at-home orders in the country when it reopened many businesses on May 1, in a move that appealed to the state’s pro-business spirit. But weeks later, officials reported the highest one-day total of new cases, and some fear many businesses will still not survive.

Of the more than 50,000 restaurants in Texas, 12% have gone out of business because of the pandemic, said Emily Williams Knight, chief executive of the Texas Restaurant Association. She said she expected that up to 30% would “not make it through the crisis.” The state’s restaurant industry has already lost 700,000 jobs, she said, and would most likely lose more.

“I think you see customers now having an emotional impact of driving up and having a restaurant they’ve spent years at simply closed, with a note saying, ‘Thank you for your patronage over the years,’” she said.

While scores of restaurants flounder or even collapse, El Arroyo, a popular Mexican restaurant at the western edge of downtown Austin, found a ticket to survival with a savvy marketing move — the sale of to-go margaritas. The restaurant has since begun serving customers on its patio and will return to indoor dining when Texas allows restaurants to expand to 50% capacity for indoor sales from 25%, starting Friday.

“We’re full,” said Shane Thompson, the manager. “People are happy to be out and about.”

Many are still hesitant. A new poll

by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that most Americans were somewhat concerned that lifting restrictions in their area would lead to new infections, and at least half were very or extremely concerned. About six in 10 people were in favor of people remaining in their homes except for essential needs.

Mary Lou Giles, a 73-year-old resident of El Dorado County, California, said that she and her husband planned to shelter in place for another several weeks, though businesses in her remote mountain county between Sacramento and Lake Tahoe were allowed to reopen sooner than in other parts of the state.

“I sincerely hope there will not be a surge in COVID cases as a result of what I believe is a premature rush to reopen,” she said. “But I’m not willing to gamble.”

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The San Juan Daily Star

May 22-24, 2020

As the nation begins virus tracing, it could learn from this N.J. city

By SHARON OTTERMAN

T

he Uber driver had lost his sense of smell and taste but otherwise felt fine. He kept driving passengers in this small, industrial city until last week, when he took a test for COVID-19.

By Friday, Jean Mugulusi of the Paterson Health Department was on the phone with him, breaking the news that he had tested positive and asking for a list of his recent passengers.

He gave her eight phone numbers.

“You came into contact with somebody who tested positive for COVID-19, so I need you to self-isolate,” Mugulusi told one of those passengers, a young man who worked in a factory.

“Can you tell me who?” the man responded. Because of privacy laws, she could not, she told him, but he needed to self-isolate.

Mugulusi was doing contact tracing, a once obscure public health measure that has suddenly taken center stage in the fight against the coronavirus and the push to reopen regions for business.

States and cities around the country have begun with varying degrees of success to ramp up efforts to put contact tracing in place on a large scale. Last week, Gov. Philip Murphy of New Jersey said that his state would hire up to several thousand contact tracers to assist the 800 now working for local and county health departments.

In New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo has announced that the state will build an army of up to 17,000 contact tracers. A political tangle between agencies has complicated efforts to expand tracing in New York City, the epicenter of the pandemic in the United States, but Mayor Bill de Blasio said Sunday that he hoped to

have 1,000 tracers in place by June.

Twenty miles to the west of New York City, Paterson, a poor, largely nonwhite city of about 150,000, has been tracing the virus at a level that could be the envy of larger cities. The team has been able to successfully investigate and trace about 90% of the more than 5,900 positive COVID-19 cases in Paterson, said the city’s top health officer, Dr. Paul Persaud.

As of Saturday, 306 Paterson residents have died, giving the city a COVID-19 death rate of 5.1% among those who have tested positive for the disease, compared to 7% statewide.

Perry N. Halkitis, dean of the Rutgers School of Public Health, said that it was impossible to know how much contact tracing has helped control the spread of the virus. But contact tracing, he noted, “is one of the few tools that we actually have in the absence of a vaccine.”

When the first cases began to appear in Paterson in mid-March, the Board of Health added two dozen employees who had been trained in communicable disease investigation last year to join their regular team of two disease detectives.

Since then, the full team, which the board calls its COVID-19 strike force, has grown to nearly 50 of the 60 board employees. Joining a dozen public health nurses are clerical staff, translators and health inspectors. The board’s accountant, Bob Ardis, tallies total cases and deaths and asks police to drop by homes where COVID-positive cases don’t pick up the phone.

“We are almost like an extra arm of the Board of Health here,” said Lt. Detective Louis Spagnola, the group’s police liaison.

Many of the residents whom Lenore Bertolero, a head public health nurse in Paterson, calls to tell that they have been exposed

Dr. Paul Persaud, Paterson’s top health official, holds weekly meetings with the city’s contact tracers. to COVID-19 also already know they’ve been exposed.

The contact-tracing team mostly works from their homes, making calls and entering their interview results into the state’s communicable disease reporting system. Once a week, they put on their masks and come to the city’s small public health headquarters to confer about the crush of cases.

During last week’s meeting, Andre Sayegh, the city’s mayor, handed out a sheet showing a line curve that tracked the city’s progress: From a high of about 260 daily positives on April 15, the city is now at about 50 to 70 cases per day, a level not seen since March.

“This is a testament to what you have been doing,” the mayor, who had COVID himself, told the team. “You kept me and many others alive.”

Last week, Ata Rahman, a new tracer, dropped by the office of Kate Horn, the department’s lead nurse, to ask what he should do about a patient who told him that she had experienced symptoms since January, months before she tested positive.

Horn reassigned the case to a senior

infectious disease nurse, who re-interviewed the woman and found out that she wasn’t quite sure when the symptoms began. They tracked back through her calendars and memories to see whom they should call to warn of possible exposure, even if it was months ago.

Because of the statewide stay-at-home order, most new virus patients in Paterson have only been in close contact with family, extended family and sometimes co-workers.

That will change once restrictions are eased, making contact tracing even harder.

After gathering the list of contacts, the case investigator then hands most cases off to a support staff of 20 other workers, who call each contact, tell them they have been exposed and ask them to self-quarantine for two weeks from the date of exposure.

The monitors do daily check-ins with all the contacts and the original patient during quarantine to see how they are feeling and monitor their compliance.

Paterson’s tracing efforts have been aided

by New Jersey’s electronic communicable disease tracking system, which has been serving as the master database for all cases and contacts.

That system pings Horn’s phone throughout the day with new cases.

Statewide, Halkitis said, coronavirus contact tracing has been haphazard and inconsistent.

“You have places like Paterson that have really revved up; Newark, which has begun training; and local health departments that haven’t really begun,” he said. In the absence of a coordinated federal response, he said, the state’s new Community Contact Tracing Corps will attempt to standardize training and protocols so fewer cases fall through the cracks.

The San Juan Daily Star

May 22-24, 2020

9

Lockdown delays cost at least 36,000 lives, data show

By JAMES GLANZ and CAMPBELL ROBERTSON

I

f the United States had begun imposing social distancing measures one week earlier than it did in March, about 36,000 fewer people would have died in the coronavirus outbreak, according to new estimates from Columbia University disease modelers.

And if the country had begun locking down cities and limiting social contact on March 1, two weeks earlier than most people started staying home, the vast majority of the nation’s deaths — about 83% — would have been avoided, the researchers estimated.

Under that scenario, about 54,000 fewer people would have died by early May. The enormous cost of waiting to take action reflects the unforgiving dynamics of the outbreak that swept through American cities in early March. Even small differences in timing would have prevented the worst exponential growth, which by April had subsumed New York City, New Orleans and other major cities, the researchers found.

“It’s a big, big difference. That small moment in time, catching it in that growth phase, is incredibly critical in reducing the number of deaths,” said Jeffrey Shaman, an epidemiologist at Columbia and the leader of the research team.

The findings are based on infectious disease modeling that gauges how reduced contact between people starting in mid-March slowed transmission of the virus. Shaman’s team modeled what would have happened if those same changes had taken place one or two weeks earlier and estimated the spread of infections and deaths until May 3.

The results show that as states reopen, outbreaks can easily get out of control unless officials closely monitor infections and immediately clamp down on new flare-ups. And they show that each day that officials waited to impose restrictions in early March came at a great cost.

After Italy and South Korea had started aggressively responding to the virus, President Donald Trump resisted

If the United States had begun imposing social distancing measures one week earlier than it did in March, about 36,000 fewer people would have died in the coronavirus outbreak, according to new estimates from Columbia University disease modelers. canceling campaign rallies or telling people to stay home or avoid crowds.

The risk of the virus to most Americans was very low, he said.

“Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on,” Trump tweeted on March 9, suggesting that the flu was worse than the coronavirus. “At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!”

In fact, tens of thousands of people had already been infected by that point, researchers later estimated. But a lack of widespread testing allowed those infections to go undetected, hiding the urgency of an outbreak that most Americans still identified as a foreign threat.

In a statement released late Wednesday night in response to the new estimates, the White House reiterated Trump’s assertion that restrictions on travel from China in January and Europe in mid-March slowed the spread of the virus.

On March 16, Trump urged Americans to limit travel, avoid groups and stay home from school. Mayor Bill de Blasio closed New York City’s schools on March 15, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo issued a stay-at-home order that took effect on March 22. Changes to personal behavior across the country in mid-March slowed the epidemic, a number of disease researchers have found.

But in cities where the virus arrived early and spread quickly, those actions

were too late to avoid a calamity. In the New York metro area alone, 21,800 people had died by May 3. Fewer than 4,300 would have died by then if control measures had been put in place and adopted nationwide just a week earlier, on March 8, the researchers estimated.

All models are only estimates, and it is impossible to know for certain the exact number of people who would have died. But Lauren Ancel Meyers, a University of Texas at Austin epidemiologist who was not involved in the research, said that it “makes a compelling case that even slightly earlier action in New York could have been game changing.”

“This implies that if interventions had occurred two weeks earlier, many COVID-19 deaths and cases would have been prevented by early May, not just in New York City but throughout the U.S.,” Meyers said.

The fates of specific people cannot be captured by a computer model. But there is a name, a story and a town for every person who was infected and later showed symptoms and died in March and early April. Around the country, people separate from this study have wondered what might have been.

It was a Friday night in mid-March when Devin Taquino began feeling sick.

Neither he nor his wife was thinking at all about the coronavirus. There were already more than 200 cases in the state by that time, but most of those cases were in the eastern part of the state, not in the small city of Donora, south of Pittsburgh.

Plus, Taquino did not fit the profile: he was only 47 years old with no underlying conditions and his main symptom — diarrhea — was not something broadly associated with the disease. He was planning to work a Saturday morning overtime shift at a call center half an hour away, but he called in sick. Offices all over the area were asking people not to come in, but Taquino’s had not taken that step.

He worked on Monday, but on Tuesday he returned home sick from work, passed out in bed and didn’t wake up for 16 hours. The next morning, his wife, Rebecca Taquino, 42, woke him up and told him they needed to get tested.

She didn’t think he had the virus, but she thought it was the smart thing to do.

Without primary care doctors, they went to a nearby urgent care clinic, where they learned that his blood oxygen level was very low. The people at the clinic offered to call an ambulance, but fearing the cost, and still skeptical that this was that serious, the Taquinos chose to drive to an emergency room.

At the hospital, he was given an Xray and diagnosed with pneumonia. He stayed, kept in an isolation unit just in case, and she returned home. The next evening, March 26, he called her with two developments. One: his work had emailed with the news that someone at the call center, where the work stations sat about 1 foot apart, had tested positive for the virus. The other bit of news was that he had tested positive.

There has been a lot for Rebecca Taquino to think about in the weeks since that phone call, including the long days during which she never left the house and her husband’s situation got more horrifyingly worse.

Should the call center have sent the employees home earlier? When she called the center on Friday to report his condition, it was already empty: the workers had been sent home. Did they act too late?

“I kind of tossed that one back and forth myself,” she said. “I really want to blame it on them, I really do.”

Could she know definitively where he got it? It was hard to say for sure. Still, given that email the day of his diagnosis, it seemed by far the most likely possibility that he got it at work.

After three weeks of agony, Devin Taquino died on April 10. Whether he was one of the thousands of people who might be alive if social distancing measures had been put in place a week earlier can never be known.

Rebecca Taquino said officials should have known.

“If it’s spreading that fast you have to know it would have come here,” she said.

“They should have been implementing programs. I think it was a giant lapse in our country. There was no way to think that we were going to be spared from this.”

10

The San Juan Daily Star

May 22-24, 2020

Biden criticizes Republican response to Trump firing inspectors general

By KATIE GLUECK and ASTEAD W. HERDONR

F

ormer Vice President Joe Biden on Wednesday blasted the Republican response to President Donald Trump’s firings of a string of inspectors general in recent weeks, suggesting that in another era there would have been louder bipartisan criticism for ousting watchdogs.

His remarks, part of a virtual roundtable aimed at a Wisconsin audience, came several days after the president ousted Steve A. Linick, who led the office of the inspector general at the State Department — the latest inspector general Trump has removed.

The White House has said Trump fired Linick at the urging of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Democrats have opened an investigation. Biden spoke in forceful terms about his disappointment in some of his former Republican colleagues.

“That used to be a hobbyhorse for Republican senators,” said Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee and previously a longtime Delaware senator. “Republican senators joined Democrats, they were strongly, strongly, strongly supportive of these independent inspector generals.”

That applied to Republicans “starting with” Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, Biden said.

“Where are they?” he continued. “Why aren’t they speaking up about this? It really bothers me. It bothers me a lot.”

Michael Zona, a spokesman for Grassley, responded in a tweet Wednesday with a swipe at Biden’s mental acuity — a favorite messaging tactic of Trump that is picking up among his Republican allies — writing that Biden “may have forgotten and missed a lot of what goes on around him, but @ChuckGrassley has demanded answers and been among the most outspoken members of Congress.”

He provided links to several recent instances in which Grassley defended the importance of inspectors general and pressed for more information.

Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, has sharply criticized Trump’s firing of inspectors general.Other Senate Republicans have expressed concerns with the Trump administration’s move, and some have accepted it.

Biden’s remarks were part of a virtual Wisconsin-focused campaign event, his latest effort to connect with voters in battleground states even as he campaigns virtually from his home near Wilmington, Delaware.

Throughout the roundtable, Biden talked about the challenges facing rural America, slammed Trump’s handling of the coronavirus crisis and struck several populist notes as he described how he would lead the nation’s economic recovery.

He also said he was looking at “new ideas to help bring small business out from under the shadow of this high-interest debt and these debt collection agencies.”

Biden promised once again that he would appoint his own inspector general “on Day 1” to make sure stimulus funds are “spent fairly and transparently.” And, he said, “not one more penny should go to a Fortune 500 company, period.

Former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, at a campaign event in Burlington, Iowa.

Period. Not a single penny.”

He also held a virtual rally aimed at Milwaukee later Wednesday.

The Democratic National Convention is slated to be held in the city in August, but in an interview with WISN 12 News, an ABC affiliate, Biden acknowledged the uncertainty about what shape the convention will take months after the pandemic hit the United States.

Asked whether it was “realistic” that he will accept the nomination in person, he replied that it depended on “what the scientists tell us, what the experts tell us at the time. I think it is possible. But it remains to be seen.”

Biden emphasized that he would campaign in Milwaukee.

“I hope that there is a convention in Milwaukee,” he said. “It may not be as robust a convention, with the number of people. There may be a social distancing thing, it may be smaller. I don’t know. But I can’t ordain what that’s going to be, but I plan on campaigning in Milwaukee.”

Biden also gave a virtual commencement speech for Columbia University Law School, addressing graduates including his own granddaughter. In the short speech, Biden said that it was up to leaders to create a more equitable world after the virus, continuing his efforts of recent weeks to promote a message of more ambitious change, abandoning the return-to-

normalcy message that was a feature of his campaign during the Democratic primary.

“From this pandemic you can remake the world as it should be,” Biden said. “To see COVID-19 as the force majeure that compels us to rewrite the social contract that’s been scrambled by nature’s fury and human failures.”

Biden did not mention Trump by name. However, in another section of the speech, the former vice president said the graduates must be leaders in protecting the “very foundations of democracy,” which he said were under attack.

“Trust in self-governance, because right now it’s under attack,” Biden said. “The very people tasked with enforcing the rule of law are abusing their powers, protecting their friends, weakening the very principles that make our country work.”

Biden repeatedly mentioned his granddaughter Naomi, who was part of Columbia’s graduating class. He lamented not being able to attend an in-person ceremony and told the audience that she was named after his infant daughter, who died in a car accident, weeks after Biden was first elected to the U.S. Senate, at age 29.

“When I think about Naomi graduating today, I think about the bonds that are passed through generations,” he said.

“I think about the gift of time we have on this Earth. Where we carry our burdens and our dreams not alone, but together.”

The San Juan Daily Star

May 22-24, 2020

11

A wave of small business closures is on the way. Can Washington stop it?

By NEIL IRWIN

O

ne of the great threats to the post-pandemic economy is becoming clear: Vast numbers of small and midsize businesses will close permanently during the crisis, causing millions of jobs to be lost.

The federal government moved with uncharacteristic speed to help those businesses — enacting the Paycheck Protection Program, with $669 billion allocated so far.

But there is a problem. The structure of the program is not particularly well suited to the type of crisis that millions of businesses face. The program may have bought businesses some time, but in its current shape it will not enable many of them to remain solvent long enough to emerge from the other side of the pandemic in some viable form.

Rather, it is more tailored to what the crisis looked liked when shutdowns first took place in the olden times of March 2020, when it seemed that business closures would be a short-term blip and everyone might be able to get back to normal by summer.

It was intended to cover eight weeks’ worth of expenses, of which 75% must apply to payroll, for firms with under 500 employees. Now it is looking likely that many businesses will face revenue shortfalls for many months.

For loans made under the program to be fully forgiven, an employer must maintain pre-crisis employment levels. Now it’s clear many businesses will permanently shift to smaller staffing levels to remain viable, such as restaurants operating at partial capacity.

The program is technically available to companies that make a good-faith assertion that they need help to support operations. But it doesn’t distinguish between firms with mild and temporary disruptions and those facing threat of permanent closure.

Moreover, the structure of the program, which provides a recipient with a Small Business Administrationbacked loan that is then forgiven if certain conditions are met, could make some business owners reluctant to take advantage. They might fear that if they run afoul of the government’s rules, they will have even more debt heaped on top of a failing enterprise.

“The risk is that they’ve spent more money on this program than anyone has ever spent on a small-business program in world history, but haven’t changed the trajectory of permanent small-business closures,” said John Lettieri, president of the Economic Innovation Group, a think tank that advocates business dynamism. “If the patient has a gaping chest wound and you give him a bandage, it’s better than nothing but probably isn’t going to keep the patient alive.”

When Congress enacted the Paycheck Protection Program as part of a $2 trillion aid package in March, it

Checking a to-go order at Farley’s East in Oakland, Calif. The cafe closed and then reopened with the help of the Paycheck Protection Program. still seemed plausible that the disruption to the economy would be temporary. And the PPP was devised to ensure that employers kept as many people on their payrolls as possible. But that has often acted at cross-purposes with the goal of having businesses ultimately emerge as viable enterprises.

“The PPP makes sense in that incentivizing employers to keep people on payroll and compensating them for doing that is valuable, especially given the overwhelming of the unemployment insurance system that was happening,” said Adam Ozimek, chief economist of Upwork, a website for freelancers. “Conceptually that makes sense, but the issue is trying to do that and at the same time address the issue of massive small business insolvency that we are increasingly facing.”

Ozimek is dealing with the tension firsthand. In addition to his job as an economist studying labor markets, he is co-owner of Decades, a bowling alley, restaurant and bar in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Before the pandemic, it employed the equivalent of 35 full-time employees, but it now needs fewer workers while takeout food is its only business. It has taken a PPP loan.

Leading economists have identified the mass closure of service-oriented businesses as a particular risk for

the medium-term future of the economy. One survey of 5,800 small businesses conducted in late March found that only 47% expected to still be in business at the end of the year if the crisis lasted four months.

Sens. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., and Todd Young, R-Ind., plan to introduce a bill text Thursday on what they call the “Restart Act.” Businesses would receive loans to finance six months’ worth of fixed operating costs and payroll, offered at a low interest rate — no payments due for 12 months — and with a seven-year term.

In their bill, the government would forgive the share of the loan devoted to payroll, rent and other fixed expenses based on the company’s revenue decline. So it would act as a loan for companies that are able to weather the downturn, and act as a grant for those more severely affected.

Another group of senators, including the Mitt Romney, R-Utah, and Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., have proposed legislation that would build on the Paycheck Protection Program, in part by expanding the period for loan forgiveness from 8 to 16 weeks.

In the House, Reps. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., and Chip Roy, R-Texas, have offered legislation that would, among other steps, extend the duration of PPP loans.

12

The San Juan Daily Star

May 22-24, 2020

Stocks

Wall Street finishes down as U.S.-China tensions heighten trade deal worries

W

Wall Street ended lower on Thursday, a day after hitting two-month highs, on a fresh wave of China-U.S. tensions that raised doubts about the trade deal reached early this year between the world’s two largest economies.Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a 1.20-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.03-to-1 ratio favored decliners.

President Donald Trump said the United States would react strongly if China imposes national security laws for Hong Kong in response to last year’s often violent pro-democracy protests. [nL4N2D32O6][nW1N2BH00Q] Earlier, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo criticized Beijing’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak, while a Chinese official said the country will not flinch from any escalation in tensions. [nL1N2D21SJ] [nL4N2D33D3] “It seems like China is going to be used as a punching bag for the upcoming elections,” said Bob Shea, CEO and co-chief investment officer at TrimTabs Asset Management in New York.

“The White House has resolved to itself that it is more effective to swing at China than to salvage what was going to already be a watered-down Phase 1 trade deal. You don’t score any points for that,” Shea said.

The S&P 500 has surged over 30% from its March low, but it remains down about 13% from its Feb. 19 record high.

Almost half of S&P 500 stocks are down 20% or more since Feb. 19, underscoring how uneven the recovery has been.

The Nasdaq is about 5% below its February record high, fueled in recent weeks by gains in Microsoft (MSFT.O), Amazon.com (AMZN.O) and other technology heavyweights that many investors expect to emerge from the crisis stronger than smaller rivals.

Amazon fell 2.05% on Thursday after touching a record intraday high earlier in the day.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI fell 0.41% to end at 24,474.12 points, while the S&P 500 .SPX lost 0.78% to 2,948.51. The Nasdaq Composite .IXIC dropped 0.97%, to 9,284.88.

The majority of the 11 S&P sector indexes declined, with energy .SPNY, utilities .SPLRCU, materials .SPLRCM consumer staples .SPLRCS, and technology .SPLRCT each down 1% or more.

Best Buy Co Inc (BBY.N) fell 4.4% after the electronics retailer reported a 5.3% drop in quarterly same-store sales due to the virus. L Brands Inc (LB.N) surged 18% despite posting worse-than-expected quarterly results but said it will scale down its struggling Victoria’s Secret unit [nL4N2D32OI] [nL4N2D23WF][nL4N2D33C0] Discount chain owner TJX (TJX.N) jumped nearly 7% to a more than two-month high after it flagged strong sales at its stores that have reopened after lockdowns. [nL4N2D32XI] Volume on U.S. exchanges was 10.1 billion shares, compared to the 11.3 billion average for the last 20 trading days.

Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by a 1.00-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.40-to-1 ratio favored decliners.

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The San Juan Daily Star

May 22-24, 2020

13

After new Coronavirus outbreaks, China imposes Wuhan-style lockdown

By JAVIER C. HERNÁNDEZ

I

n Shulan, a city in China’s northeast, the streets are eerily quiet, devoid of taxis and buses. Apartment complexes have been sealed off, confining residents inside. Teams of government workers go door to door rounding up sick people as part of what they call a “wartime” campaign.

As Chinese authorities confront scattered outbreaks of the coronavirus in the country’s northeast, they are turning to many of the same strict lockdown measures that were a hallmark of the effort four months ago to stamp out the epidemic in the central city of Wuhan.

Residents described the atmosphere as tense. Li Ping, who works at a real estate company in Shulan, population 600,000, stocked up on meat, eggs and noodles as she prepared for the lockdown.

“The government’s controls now are very strict,” she said. “As long as we obey and not go out, it will be all right.”

The forceful response reflects fears among China’s leaders about the potential for a fresh wave of infections as factories, schools and restaurants reopen across much of the country and the government touts its success in fighting the virus on the global stage. It also offers a preview of what governments around the world will likely face in the coming months as they work to restart their economies.

The latest outbreak is concentrated in Jilin, a northeastern province of 27 million people that sits near China’s borders with Russia and North Korea. Jilin has reported a small outbreak of about 130 cases and two deaths, but experts there have warned of the threat of a “big explosion.”

Officials have already mobilized police and Communist Party groups to make sure residents comply with the lockdown. Tens of thousands of people are being tested for the virus and thousands rounded up into hospitals for quarantine. The central government has signaled its displeasure about the outbreak, dismissing five local officials and send-

Covid-19 testing in the northeastern Chinese city of Shulan, in a photo released this week by state media. ing top leaders to the province to conduct inspections.

Authorities have also imposed a lockdown on parts of Jilin city, a manufacturing base, bringing factories to a standstill and quieting streets. In some areas, residents are allowed to leave their homes only once every two days, and for a maximum of two hours, to shop for groceries. The strictest measures are probably affecting more than 200,000 people in the city.

“We are doing what is necessary to control and prevent the disease, and to isolate those who need to be isolated,” said Song Jing, a government worker in Shulan who is helping to organize widespread testing for residents.

The outbreak points to the persistence of the virus in China despite the punishing restrictions imposed to contain it, including a 76-day lockdown in Wuhan, the central city where the virus first emerged in December. The coronavirus has killed at least 4,600 people in China, although that official count is considered an underestimate.

“The possibility of a second wave is clearly there,” said David Hui, director of the Stanley Ho Center for Emerging

Infectious Diseases at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

“China doesn’t want to take any chances.”

In China, the ruling Communist Party’s swift use of heavy-handed lockdown measures in Jilin also shows its resolve to declare victory in what China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, has described as a “people’s war” against the virus.

Officials are also working to contain small outbreaks elsewhere, including in Wuhan, where the government is leading a campaign to test all of the city’s 11 million residents after a smattering of new cases.

A meeting of China’s national legislature begins in Beijing on Friday, and Xi appears eager to project strength in the face of the uncertainty posed by the pandemic.

The coronavirus outbreak in Jilin has unnerved the public in part because authorities have struggled to trace its origins.

Officials have tied many cases in the northeast to Chinese nationals who had recently returned from Russia. But many of the recent cases involve people who had not traveled outside the country.

One of the first reported clusters in Jilin was traced to a 45-year-old woman in Shulan who washed clothes at a police bureau and had not been abroad recently. Around a dozen other cases were later linked to the woman. Elsewhere, officials found that a man in Jilin city infected with the coronavirus had attended a large wedding in early May, raising fears of a bigger outbreak.

Adding to the difficulties, Chinese medical experts say the virus is displaying slightly different characteristics in Jilin, as well as in other northeastern provinces where cases have recently appeared, including Heilongjiang.

Patients are taking longer than the typical one to two weeks to show symptoms of the illness after being infected, an expert with the National Health Commission, Qiu Haibo, told the state-run broadcaster this week, and they are carrying the virus for a longer period of time.

14

May 22-24, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

As Paris tiptoes toward normalcy, infections are sharply down

Shoppers at the Place d’Aligre market in Paris.

By ADAM NOSSITER

C

oronavirus infections have dropped sharply in Paris following a strict two-month lockdown and a growing contact tracing effort, health officials say, and they have remained in check since the city began a halting return to life nearly two weeks ago.

“The drop is pretty spectacular,” said Renaud Piarroux, head of parasitology at one of the main Paris hospitals and organizer of the city’s mobile contact tracing teams. The decline has been sharpest in what were the city’s viral hot spots, in the less affluent northern neighborhoods. “For right now there are very, very few cases,” he said. “It’s just a small number that are testing positive.”

But if the initial signs are hopeful, the reopening of Paris has been muted, in keeping with the national mood: fearful of what lies ahead, and angry at the government.

On the streets of Paris, shops have reopened, though many still lack customers. The police no longer check selfsigned permits to leave home, yet streets in normally crowded neighborhoods like the Marais remain quiet. Table service at cafes and restaurants remains forbidden, a source of despair for chefs and cafe owners.

Even the ceaseless infighting of French politics is reclaiming its central spot, an unmistakable harbinger of normality. This week President Emmanuel Macron lost his absolute majority in Parliament as seven of his party’s representatives joined a new parliamentary group, along with others, some of

them previous defectors.

It was a blow to Macron, symbolizing the erosion of his political standing after three years in office. Still, allies predicted that he would have no trouble passing his bills as affiliated parties continue to back him. But the signs of disenchantment are unmistakable.

A pensive-looking Macron was on the cover of the weekly Le Point under the headline, “Will He Really Pull Us Out of This?”

New polls suggest that for most French, unreasonably or not, top officials have not met their expectations in the crisis.

Sixty-two percent of respondents in a recent poll conducted for BFM television said they were not confident that Macron was up to the challenge.

The French, more critical of their government than other Europeans, mostly disapprove of his handling of the crisis, though it has been no worse, and somewhat better, than that of most other Western leaders.

Indeed there are signs that the confinement ordered by Macron on March 16 was bearing fruit.

At the height of the epidemic at the end of March, the Paris public hospital system was encountering more than 1,000 infections a day. On Sunday it found a mere 22, and often over the last two weeks the number has been under 100.

The dense 18th, 19th, 20th and 13th arrondissements have gone from being large dark blobs on the hospital system’s outbreak map to small light-colored circles.

“We have virtually reached a total halt to the circulation” of the virus, said François Bricaire, an infectious diseases specialist at the National Academy of Medecine.

Two factors have contributed, Piarroux said: the wellobserved and enforced lockdown, and the contact tracing effort, where teams have been going to the homes of those infected or suspected of being infected, to help organize confinement and to trace possible chains of transmission.

Still, all urged caution, saying it was too early to measure the real effects of the end of the lockdown.

“We’re not seeing any new growth in the circulation of the virus,” France’s health minister, Olivier Veran, told reporters on Wednesday. “But that doesn’t mean the virus isn’t circulating,” he said. “We’ll see in a few days the impact of deconfinement on the epidemic.”

Bricaire suggested that perhaps just as important as the active measures France has taken is what he characterized as a natural decline in the intensity of the epidemic. “Maybe we are simply seeing a natural drop. It is the intermingling of a natural phenomenon, and the lockdown,” he said.

Still, the poll conducted for BFM television by the ELABE polling firm found 62% proclaiming “unease” with the end of confinement. The country both yearned for it and was afraid the government had moved too quickly.

Here and there, glimmerings of exuberance have been quickly tamped down by the authorities. To celebrate their liberation, young people congregated joyously on the banks of the Seine and the Canal Saint-Martin with six-packs of beer.

In response, officials, worried about crowds, moved to ban alcohol at these gatherings.

Just to make sure Parisians didn’t enjoy their new freedom too much, Macron’s government kept the city’s parks closed, to the fury of the Paris mayor, Anne Hidalgo. “It can be all too tempting, with the sun out,” Véran, the health minister, explained.

Hidalgo insisted that cooped-up Parisians desperately needed the outdoors. “We’ve got to loosen the vise,” she said, pointing out that Paris is one of the world’s densest cities. A doctor’s group agreed with her, to no avail.

Elsewhere, pessimism was the order of the day, with the restaurant industry, vital to both Paris life and the tourism business, warning of widespread bankruptcies.

Aimé Cougoureux was slumped in a corner of his cafe’s terrace on the Place des Vosges, lamenting the lost revenue and missing Americans. Normally packed with tourists and Parisians, it was so quiet recently in the iconic early 17th-century square in the Marais you could hear the birds singing in the newly leafed-out trees.

In the half-light inside the closed Ma Bourgogne, Cougoureux’s tables and chairs were stacked up, gathering dust.

“It’s only now that people are realizing how important conviviality is,” Cougoureux said sadly. “We didn’t even realize how good we had it, before,” he said. “Now, the Frenchman, he’s out there in the street, and he’s looking around like a lost cat. And I’m looking around, and I’m saying, ‘Good God, what the hell is going on?’ ”

The San Juan Daily Star

May 22-24, 2020

15

In Istanbul under lockdown, baklava makers are essential workers

By CARLOTTA GALL

E

very weekend, for over a month now, Istanbul has been under a strict curfew because of the coronavirus. No one is allowed out, not for exercise or groceries, and the police impose fines. Sometimes, like last weekend and next, the street-emptying lockdown stretches for four days to take in public holidays.

That has dampened one of the great joys of living in Istanbul: watching the perpetual commotion of this waterbound city, where the Bosporus and the Golden Horn open onto the Sea of Marmara.

From many vantage points, you can see the tiny fishing boats bobbing and glinting, the passenger ferries crisscrossing incessantly, and the giant container ships and long oil tankers that glide right through everything.

But the curfew has offered new moments of breathtaking beauty.

A reverent hush falls over the city. The timeless skyline of mosques and minarets seems to grow in stature in the silence. The sapphire waters are as still as a pond.

Nature lovers have been thrilled. Dolphins have ventured closer, even dipping and diving by the Galata bridge that crosses the Golden Horn. Migratory birds are bolder, storks have returned to an old haunt, and the pollution has lifted, giving the city its first glimpse in 20 years of the snow-covered mass of Mount Uludag, 100 miles to the south.

The clanging of the construction sites and the thick hubbub of traffic has eased. The only movement is of the sea gulls wheeling over the rooftops. I can even hear a cock crowing in someone’s garden.

Of course, Istanbul’s curfew could never be a total shutdown. Its residents have lived through multiple military coups, sieges, earthquakes, pestilence and other calamities, and know well that life must go on.

So bakers are exempt from the curfew because fresh bread is so important for the Turkish table. They shout their wares on the empty street and sell bread from the back of their vans.

When Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, began last month, pastry shops also got an exemption. Turks it seems cannot do without their baklava, that heavenly, multilayered, flaky pastry, bound up with nuts and syrup, that is the nation’s favorite sweet.

Journalists were allowed out too, so I went to visit Karakoy Gulluoglu, the most famous house of baklava, down near a ferry dock.

Murat Gullu, the general manager, whose great-grandfather founded the company in the 19th century, said he asked the government to allow baklava makers to stay open.

“We eat baklava on all occasions,” he said, “especially in Ramadan, at celebrations, and at funerals.”

We slide past that sad thought. Over 4,000 people have died in Turkey from the coronavirus and 150,000 have been infected. His master pastry chefs are working throughout the lockdown, hand-rolling sheets of pastry until, as tradition demands, each one is so fine you can read the newspaper through it.

A mostly empty Taksim Square in Istanbul last month.

The chefs bake thousands of trays, drench them in syrup and box them up for hand delivery to customers’ homes.

Ramadan drummers are also allowed out during curfew and prowl the streets at night, banging a warning to people to get up and eat before the dawn call to prayer begins the day’s fast. The drummers are an old tradition that refuses to die even if the more secular neighborhoods have asked them not to disturb their sleep.

With some pleasure and pride, Turks are rediscovering their old traditions — like the one where a householder will lower a basket from a window and shout to a shopkeeper to place an order in the basket to save the trek down flights of stairs.

In my neighborhood of Beyoglu, with its narrow town houses and overhanging windows, you see that more often these days. There are baskets outside grocery stores too, or just on the street, where people place an extra item for anyone in need to take.

Betul Ozkan in Fatih, one of the oldest neighborhoods, posted a photo of her family’s basket, with a line from the poet Rumi: “There is much hope after despair and many suns after darkness.”

Another custom is for people to pay for two loaves of bread at the bakery, leaving one for the baker to give to someone more needy. Opposition mayors, thwarted by the central government from direct fundraising, have run hugely successful campaigns in the last couple of weeks asking people to pick up the tab for those struggling to pay their utility bills.

On many a street corner there are carved marble Ottoman-era fountains, although sadly few have running water anymore. These days, hygiene officials in colored Tshirts stand on the main shopping street with plastic bottles

of antiseptic gel on a table.

When the weekend curfew ends, people burst out their doors with relief, some even ducking out to the corner shop on the stroke of midnight.

The lifeblood of the city, the small stores and businesses, remain mostly closed. Restaurants offer takeout only, with the cafes, bars and tea shops still barred from opening.

But as the weather turns warm, the city is yearning to sit outside again.

Shopkeepers have started spring cleaning, in anticipation of a return of commercial life. The antique shops have begun placing furniture back out on the sidewalk. A furniture shop has placed brochures on the windowsill. Maybe business will move outside.

No sign of any customers yet though.

Small businesses have been struggling already for some years, rocked by a series of economic hits — the violent breakup of the Taksim Square protests in 2013, the terrorist attacks in 2016, which scared away the foreign tourists, then a failed coup and a currency crash.

The artisans — potters, woodcarvers and goldsmiths — who work out of tiny studio workshops in the steep side streets of my neighborhood seemed already to be a dying breed.

But the pandemic is hurting everyone. The barrow men, who move furniture or heavy purchases for customers on pushcarts and survive on daily wages, ask for charity now from passersby.

Still, when turning a corner one day, my heart lifted at the sight of the first cafe table set out on a tiny terrace.

The owner was enjoying his Turkish coffee and view of the Bosporus, but we smiled and nodded. Life, it seems, is on the way back.

16

May 22-24, 2020

Burundi turns out to replace president of 15 years, pandemic or no

By ABDI LATIF DAHIR

S

tanding shoulder to shoulder without masks or gloves, throngs of voters in Burundi waited in long lines on Wednesday to mark their ballots to replace the country’s long-reigning, autocratic president.

President Pierre Nkurunziza, a former rebel leader, has ruled the country with impunity for the last 15 years, evading international efforts to call him to account for human rights abuses. More recently, he has downplayed the threat posed by the coronavirus.

The competitive race to elect his successor — the front-runners are a member of the president’s party and a longtime critic — has been marked by arrests and the killings of political opponents.

Burundi, a small, landlocked nation in Central Africa and one of the world’s poorest countries, has suffered through decades of violence and instability since gaining independence from Belgium in 1962.

It now finds itself caught in the grip of a political system focused more on preserving power than on protecting the public’s health, as the campaign season has shown. Last week, the government expelled four representatives of the World Health Organization who were in the country to help coordinate Burundi’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.

“The lives of Burundian people are being sacrificed by their government, risking an imminent explosion of the pandemic in the coming days,” said Anschaire Nikoyagize, the head of Ligue Iteka, a Burundian human rights organization, who lives in exile.

On Wednesday, social media applications including Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter were cut off — a measure that digital rights groups had expressed concern about before the election.

Human rights groups said they had received reports of harassment of opposition members and incidents of voter fraud, but with social media blocked, they were unable to confirm them.

Willy Nyamitwe, a senior adviser to Nkurunziza, said on Twitter that contrary to “rumors,” the internet was still working in Burundi. He did not specifically address whether the government had restricted access to social media.

More than 5 million Burundians wereexpected to vote at about 1,500 polling stations to choose not just a new president, but also lawmakers and local officials.

There are seven candidates running for president, but two top contenders: Evariste Ndayishimiye, the secretary-general of the ruling party, who is endorsed by the current president, and Agathon Rwasa, an ex-rebel leader and longtime opposition figure.

Experts say that this election could be the first competitive vote since a civil war that began in 1993 and ended in 2005. The official election results are expected to be released on June 4.

But the campaign has been marred by

violence. Between January and March, Ligue Iteka, the local human rights group, documented 67 killings, in addition to 14 extrajudicial executions, 15 cases of gender-based violence, 23 cases of torture, 204 arbitrary arrests and six abductions. Journalists have also been threatened and arrested, according to Human Rights Watch and the Committee to Protect Journalists.

The violence reflects the reign of Nkurunziza, who came to power in 2005 and whose authoritarian rule has been shaped by human rights violations and mass displacement.

The elections were the first since 2015, when Nkurunziza’s decision to run for a third term led to widespread protests. After a thwarted coup attempt, unrest across the country triggered a crackdown by security forces, which killed hundreds and caused more than 400,000 people to flee to neighboring countries.

A United Nations inquiry into the crisis documented extrajudicial killings, torture and rape committed by intelligence officers, the

Lining up in Giheta, Burundi, on Wednesday. More than five million Burundians are expected to vote at about 1,500 polling stations.

police and the youth league of the ruling party, known as the Imbonerakure. After the U.N. urged the International Criminal Court to begin a prosecution, Burundi withdrew its membership from the court altogether in 2017.

Amid allegations of political repression, voters in 2018 overwhelmingly passed a referendum that extended presidential terms from five to seven years and gave more powers to the president. But last year, Nkurunziza, 55, surprised his country by announcing that he would not run for another term.

The general election faces the prospect of limited external scrutiny, experts say, leaving open the possibility of manipulation of the results. After downplaying the threat of the coronavirus, the government in early May said it would quarantine election observers from the East African Community for 14 days upon arrival to ensure they didn’t have COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. So the observers stayed home.

Domitile Mugisha, a 28-year-old teacher in the port city of Bujumbura, said of the election, “It is a process that has never been transparent; therefore, its results are always criticized.”

In recent years, the authorities have tried to avoid international scrutiny by blocking independent monitors, including by closing the U.N. Human Rights Office in Burundi last year.

The country is also self-financing its polls after donors, including the European Union, cut off funding after the 2015 political crisis.

Voters, in interviews, pleaded with the parties to leave behind violence and come up with solutions that would improve their lives.

André Nahimana, 29, an activist for tax justice, said that “no candidate was able to objectively show how he would mobilize reliable resources to finance his program without bleeding an ordinary citizen who is becoming poorer.”

“Everyone promises wonders,” said Ernest Ndikumana, 36, a shopkeeper in the capital, Gitega. “But attaining that is impossible.”

The San Juan Daily Star

May 22-24, 2020

17

We’ve got way too many Trumps

By GAIL COLLINS

H

ey, what do you think the Trump kids are up to? Been a long time since we checked.

Not that they’re keeping low profiles.

Eric, for instance, made news recently when he seemed to claim Democrats created the coronavirus to hobble the Trump campaign.

“They think they’re taking away Donald Trump’s greatest tool, which is being able to go into an arena and fill it with 50,000 people every single time,” he said on Fox News. “You watch — They’ll milk it every single day between now and Nov. 3, and guess what — after Nov. 3 coronavirus will magically all of a sudden go away and disappear.”

Eric’s defenders said he was simply claiming Democrats were using a national health crisis for political reasons. But the Second Son seemed to be talking about something more dire and well organized.

“Make no mistake ... This is a very cognizant strategy that they’re trying to employ,” he told interviewer Jeanine Pirro. In fact, he said “cognizant strategy” twice.

Maybe that could become a campaign slogan: “Make America Cognizant Again.” About time.

At the same time, Donald Jr. was calling Joe Biden a child molester. Ivanka was helping head up a food program, and that would certainly be no cause for complaint if her husband hadn’t been busy casting doubt on whether there’d be a presidential election this fall.

The president and his three oldest kids shared some quality time in the headlines this week when a fraud suit against the four of them moved ahead one step in the courts. Aggrieved investors claim they were lured into what turned out to be a pyramid scheme that did little but pile up cash and pay Donald $450,000 speaking fees.

In the vast universe of litigation against various Trumps, this is pretty much par for the course. Just remember: A family that gets sued together stays glued together.

Average citizens are probably familiar with Eric through TV comics’ jokes, in which he’s portrayed as a sort of dim bulb. Meanwhile Donald Jr. — the one whose semi-automatic rifle has a cartoon of Hillary Clinton behind bars — has a more colorful public image, thanks to all his social messaging and a much bigger role in the reelection effort, where he’s a regular stand-in for his father at political events.

Last weekend Junior got a lot of attention when

It’s just an optical illusion that suggests Eric Trump was forced to sit far away from his siblings at a U.N. event last year. he suggested Biden molested children. All in fun, of course. That was on his Instagram account (2.8 million followers). “See you later, alligator,” said the post next to Biden’s picture. “In a while, pedophile,” returned an alligator in an adjoining picture.

This attracted the spotlight. Junior responded by simultaneously declaring himself shocked that people couldn’t take a joke (it had a laugh emoji!) and posting pictures of Biden affectionately greeting children at public events.

A few years ago I read a book by Junior’s mother, Ivana, who became headline fodder back in the day when Trump was having an affair with another woman and wanted the entire city of New York to know that he was committing adultery. Donald Jr. was around 12 at the time. Before that, he had broken his leg due to a babysitter’s inattention. And Ivana reported that once, when she was out of town, he and Eric called hysterically to report they’d found their nanny dying in the basement.

After I read the book I swore I would never write anything bad about the guy again. And in general, the national rule should be to keep politicians’ children out of the headlines. Really, they have enough to live with. But Junior’s pedophile post wiped out any guilt I had about criticizing a man whose only claim to fame is being the son of one of the most awful people in American history.

Trump has five children, and we are all in agreement that Barron, 14, is to be left alone. Tiffany, 26, is the love child whose birth — accompanied by her father’s wild penchant for publicizing his affair — broke up Trump’s marriage with Ivana. She just graduated from law school and so far, she’s avoided

controversy — or even much attention of any kind.

Back in 2016, when Trump got elected president, he boasted about his kids to Fox News thusly: “I’m very proud, because Don and Eric and Ivanka and — you know, to a lesser extent ’cause she just got out of school, out of college — but, uh, Tiffany, who has also been so terrific.”

Definitely leave this woman alone.

But what about Ivanka? She’s been the administration’s cheerleader for social distancing, then took off with her family on a drive to Dad’s golf course in New Jersey. But her unforgivable sin was bringing in Jared Kushner as a top Trump adviser.

Fresh from his performance in bringing peace to the Middle East, Jared is now floundering around as a coordinator of the White House coronavirus response. His most memorable moment recently came when Time asked him if America could be confident the election would still take place in November.

“I’m not sure I can commit one way or the other, but right now that’s the plan,” he responded.

Remember, if the president gets reelected they’ll all be back for four more years.

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18

May 22-24, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL

The worst is yet to come

Normally, downtown Salt Lake City wouldn’t look like this during morning rush hour.

By FAHAD MANJOO

F

or as long as I can remember, I have identified as an optimist. Like a seedling reaching toward the golden sun, I’m innately tuned to seek out the bright side.

Of course, in recent years this confidence has grown tougher to maintain. The industry I’ve long covered, technology, has lost its rebel edge, and grown monopolistic and power hungry. The economy at large echoed these trends, leaving all but the wealthiest out in the cold. All the while the entire planet veered toward uninhabitability.

And yet, for much of the last year, I remained an optimist. A re-energized Democratic Party looked poised to push for grand solutions to big problems, from health care to education to climate change. There was finally some talk about reining in monopolies and creating a fairer economy. Things weren’t looking good, exactly, but if you squinted hard, you could just make out a sunnier future.

Now all that seems lost. The coronavirus and our disastrous national response to it has smashed optimists like me in the head. If there is a silver lining, we’ll have to work hard to find it.

To do that, we should spend more time considering the real possibility that every problem we face will get much worse than we ever imagined. The coronavirus is like a heatseeking missile designed to frustrate progress in almost every

corner of society, from politics to the economy to the environment.

The only way to avoid the worst fate might be to dwell on it. To forestall doom, it’s time to go full doomer.

Why so glum? It is not just that nearly 92,000 Americans are dead and tens of millions are unemployed. It’s not just that our federal government has been asleep, with Congress unable or unwilling to push a disaster-response bill on anything like the scale this crisis demands, and an inept president unable to muster much greater sympathy than, “It’s too bad.” It’s not only that global cooperation is in tatters when we need it most.

It is all these things and something more fundamental: a startling lack of leadership on identifying the worst consequences of this crisis and marshaling a united front against them. Indeed, division and chaos might now be the permanent order of the day.

In a book published more than a decade ago, I argued that the internet might lead to a choose-your-own-facts world in which different segments of society believe in different versions of reality. The Trump era, and now the coronavirus, has confirmed this grim prediction.

That’s because the pandemic actually has created different political realities. The coronavirus has hit dense, racially diverse Democratic urban strongholds like New York much harder than sparsely populated rural areas, which lean stron-

gly to the GOP. That divergent impact — with help from the president and his acolytes — is feeding a dangerous partisan split about the nature of the virus itself.

Consider the emerging culture war about wearing masks or about whether to take certain unproven therapies.

Look at the protests over whether it’s safe to reopen. Now play these divisions forward. As The New York Times’ Kevin Roose wrote last week, when a vaccine does emerge, what if many Americans, fed on anti-vax rumors, simply refuse to take it?

The virus’s economic effects will only create further inequality and division. Google, Facebook, Amazon and other behemoths will not only survive, they look poised to emerge stronger than ever. Most of their competition — not just small businesses but many of America’s physical retailers and their millions of employees — could be decimated.

Worst of all, it’s possible that the pain of this crisis might not fully register in broad economic indicators, especially if, as happened after the 2008 recession, we see a long, slow recovery that benefits mainly the wealthy. There are already signs that this is happening: Thousands died, millions lost their jobs, but stock indexes are rebounding.

The economic impacts feed into the political ones: The virus-induced recession could further destroy the news industry and dramatically reduce the number of working journalists in the country, our last defense against misinformation.

Even worse, the virus is making a hash of emerging solutions to entrenched problems. As The Times’ Conor Dougherty chronicled in “Golden Gates,” his recent book on America’s housing crisis, activists have lately been finding success in pushing to build more housing in restrictive regions like the San Francisco Bay Area. The virus may put such reforms on ice. And consider the grim future of public transportation after the pandemic: Will people just get back in their cars, driving everywhere they go?

I called a few economists, activists and historians to discuss my growing alarm about the future. Many were less pessimistic than I am; some suggested that the virus could prompt much-needed action. The most instructive example is the Great Depression. In the 1930s, after years of inaction, reformers who came into office with Franklin D. Roosevelt were able to push through laws that improved American life for good.

Matt Stoller, an anti-monopoly scholar at the American Economic Liberties Project, a think tank, agreed that this crisis could be the jolt we need to fix U.S. institutions. But he also noted that the United States has failed to make the best of our most recent national calamities. The 9/11 attacks pushed us into needless quagmires in the Middle East. The 2008 recession deepened inequality.

Let us not squander another crisis. We need to take a long, hard look at all the ways the pandemic can push this little planet of ours to further ruin — and then work like crazy, together, to stave off the coming hell.

The San Juan Daily Star

May 22-24, 2020

19

Anuncian desembolso de beneficios del Programa PUA a 55 mil solicitantes Por THE STAR

L

a secretaria del Departamento del Trabajo y Recursos Humanos (DTRH), Briseida Torres Reyes, anunció el jueves que, luego de la integración del registro digital del Programa PUA y el sistema SABEN de beneficios de desempleo, se pudieron desembolsar más de $165 millones en pagos para 55 mil solicitantes de este nuevo beneficio de desempleo federal.

“Tal y como habíamos anticipado, una vez se atendieron los problemas tecnológicos que impedían la integración de ambas plataformas, los pagos comenzaron a salir de forma rápida y recurrente para todas aquellas personas elegibles. Hace apenas tres días estábamos procesando las solicitudes de forma manual, al no contar con la herramienta tecnológica.

Hoy podemos anunciar que se emitieron los pagos para sobre 47 mil personas, lo que evidencia la importancia del elemento de programación adecuado para el funcionamiento óptimo de nuestros servicios” expresó Torres Reyes en comunicación escrita.

Explicó que el miércoles se pudo automatizar el

pago de beneficios a 55 mil solicitantes del programa PUA y se emitieron beneficios por $165 millones.

47,510 de esas reclamaciones fueron pagadas bajo el programa PUA y el resto fueron procesadas bajo el programa de Seguro por Desempleo regular.

“Hemos trabajado sin descanso para cumplir con nuestros trabajadores, aun cuando tuvimos que recurrir a métodos no convencionales de procesamiento ante la falta de recursos tecnológicos adecuados.

Hoy logramos una de las metas y seguiremos hasta que cada trabajador haya recibido la compensación que le corresponde”, enfatizó la secretaria Los beneficiarios que reciban sus pagos en los próximos días estarán recibiendo la compensación mínima de $66 semanales, más la ayuda suplementaria federal de $600, de forma retroactiva. “De forma inicial estamos emitiendo los beneficios con la compensación mínima para acelerar el proceso de evaluación y que las personas puedan recibir sus pagos lo antes posible. Continuaremos evaluando los casos de forma individual y a aquellos que les corresponda una compensación monetaria semanal mayor, se les

hará el ajuste correspondiente”, explicó.

Mencionó que el pago retroactivo de los beneficios del programa PUA será desde el día en que el reclamante quedó desempleado por situaciones relacionadas al COVID-19, hasta la fecha de reclamación al programa PUA. Las reclamaciones de semanas subsiguientes, posteriores a ese periodo, deberán ser realizadas por las personas una vez reciban por correo la determinación oficial y su número de identificación personal de tres dígitos (NIP). Los pagos retroactivos de la ayuda suplementaria de $600 semanales comienzan desde el 4 de abril.

AMPR reclama a Educación cese a la declaración de recursos disponibles Por THE STAR a presidenta de la Asociación de Maestros de Lel jueves, Puerto Rico (AMPR), Elba Aponte Santos, hizo un reclamo al secretario de Educación,

Eligio Hernández, para que se detenga la declaración de maestros como recursos disponibles en las escuelas del país.

“Entendemos que el primer paso es discutir el plan de inicio del curso escolar 2020-2021. Además, ante la emergencia que vive el país, hemos advenido en conocimiento que el DE esta eliminando plazas de maestros”, dijo Aponte Santos en comunicación escrita.

Aponte Santos también indicó que “es inaceptable que saquen de la lista de las escuelas a los maestros que se encuentran en el trámite de jubilación, cuando estos tienen el derecho de dejar sin efecto el mismo”.

Por su parte, Grichelle Toledo, secretaria general de la Local Sindical, hizo un llamado al secretario de Educación para que detenga esta práctica hasta que se discuta el plan de inicio escolar.

“Se debe hacer un análisis sobre la realidad de las escuelas y que se tomen en consideración los ofrecimientos de cada plantel. Hacemos un llamado a los maestros a utilizar como recurso el proceso de quejas y agravios ante cualquier violación al convenio colectivo y reglamentación vigente”, finalizó Toledo.

20

May 22-24, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

‘Justice League,’ recut by Zack Snyder, will come to HBO Max

By KYLE BUCHANAN

S

ometimes, even superheroes need saving.

After a yearslong fan campaign on social media to #ReleaseTheSnyderCut, Warner Bros. announced Wednesday that the studio would allow Zack Snyder to recut the 2017 comic-book film “Justice League” for a planned debut on HBO Max in 2021.

“Since I got here 14 months ago, the chant to #ReleaseTheSnyderCut has been a daily drumbeat in our offices and inboxes,” said Robert Greenblatt, the chairman of Warner Media Entertainment. “We are thrilled to finally deliver.”

The move will return Snyder to a cinematic comic-book universe where he once served as the primary architect. In the early 2010s, as Warner Bros. searched for a way to compete with Marvel Studios and its lucrative stable of big-screen superheroes, the com-

pany tapped Snyder, the “300” director, to reinvigorate several well-known DC Comics characters, beginning with Superman (played by Henry Cavill) in the 2013 blockbuster “Man of Steel.”

Snyder added Batman (Ben Affleck) and Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) to the crew for the 2016 “Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice,” but the film’s dark tone and dismal reviews spooked Warner Bros. executives, who pushed Snyder to lighten up as he began shooting an even bigger sequel, “Justice League.” After a troubled production, Warner Bros. announced in May 2017 that Snyder would be stepping down from “Justice League” in the wake of his daughter’s suicide, and the studio tapped “The Avengers” director Joss Whedon for extensive reshoots.

Whedon scripted 80 additional pages for the endeavor, but his quippy tone and more colorful aesthetic proved to be at odds with Snyder’s grim, c h i a r -

oscuro take on the crime fighters, and the reshoots presented a significant scheduling problem: Cavill had already moved on to “Mission: Impossible — Fallout,” and the mustache he grew for that film had to be inelegantly erased from his new Superman scenes. Whedon’s patchedtogether “Justice League” was released in November 2017 to scathing notices, earning significantly less than Gadot’s solo film, “Wonder Woman,” which had debuted just a few months earlier.

Though that seemed to spell the end of “Justice League” as a franchise, Snyder’s fans continued to clamor for his director’s cut, and last November, Affleck and Gadot added their online voices to the #ReleaseTheSnyderCut movement.

Warner Bros. Pictures chairman Toby Emmerich then contacted Snyder to gauge his interest in remaking the film for the soon-to-launch stream-

ing service HBO Max, and the director assented.

Since the Snyder cut of “Justice League” was never completed, the studio will probably pour $20 million to $30 million into an extensive, effects-heavy postproduction process to bring it up to snuff. It may also prove to be significantly longer than Whedon’s two-hour version: In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Snyder said that he was mulling a four-hour director’s cut of “Justice League,” or even a six-part episodic series that could restore several trimmed subplots, including separate storylines for the Flash (Ezra Miller) and Cyborg (Ray Fisher).

Though this is an unprecedented about-face for Warner Bros., the move makes sense as studios reel from a pandemic-forced shutdown: Snyder’s “Justice League” guarantees HBO Max a high-profile project that can be fashioned out of already-shot footage, and it provides a visibility bump for its stand-alone superheroes. Gadot’s sequel “Wonder Woman 1984” was moved to a latesummer berth after movie theaters closed for the season, while new films starring Jason Momoa’s Aquaman and Miller’s Flash may not be able to go into production for a long time.

There’s even a chance that Snyder’s revised take on “Justice League” could preempt the studio’s fresh look on Batman: Matt Reeves was in the middle of filming a Batman reboot with Robert Pattinson when Hollywood shut down, and its summer 2021 release has been delayed as the studio scrambles to figure out how to resume production. Would Warner Bros. really give us two completely different takes on the Caped Crusader in such short succession? Better add some new bulbs to the Bat signal.

The San Juan Daily Star

May 22-24, 2020

21

Steve Coogan reaches the end of ‘The Trip’

By KATHRYN SHATTUCK

A

s fans of “The Trip” movies know well by now, Steve Coogan has a shelf full of BAFTAs, the British equivalent of the Oscars. It’s a feat turned running gag throughout the films as he flaunts it at virtually every opportunity.

So when Rob Brydon, his traveling companion and comic foil, asks Coogan what he’s proudest of in “The Trip to Greece,” the answer is perhaps not surprising.

“My seven BAFTAs,” Coogan says.

“For me, it would be my children,” Brydon says.

“Well, because you haven’t got any BAFTAs,” Coogan replies.

“You have got children,” Brydon retorts.

In “The Trip to Greece,” opening Friday on video on demand and in some theaters, the preening Coogan and laissez-faire Brydon, playing slightly exaggerated versions of themselves, come to the end of their decadelong series of gastronomic excursions.

The structure is familiar: They drive through breathtaking scenery on their way to multistar restaurants and hotels, peppering their conversations with bon mots, celebrity impersonations and insults.

Only this time, director Michael Winterbottom has given the men six days to retrace Odysseus’ 10-year journey from Troy to Ithaca, while finding their own ways back home.

In a Zoom session from his house in Sussex, England, a mustachioed Coogan, 54 — who in real life received two Oscar nominations for “Philomena” (2013) along with those seven BAFTAs — spoke about staying relevant in middle age, imagining where his character winds up, and quarantining with his 23-yearold daughter, Clare, and her boyfriend.

“I’m just this kind of slightly annoying dad that comes in and goes, ‘What are you guys doing?’” he said, with a flash of goofy laughter. There wasn’t a BAFTA in sight.

These are edited excepts from our conversation.

Q: How have you been coping during quarantine?

A: I’m lucky that I’m in lockdown with my daughter, who’s just a fantastic cook. Each night I go, “Oh my God, this is the best thing I’ve ever tasted in my life.” And I’ve been writing a lot, because that’s one thing that we are still able to do. We already isolated ourselves.

Q: What have you been churning out?

A: I’m a bigamist writer; I’ve got various partners. I’m writing a post-woke comedy-

The actor Steve Coogan at his home in England. drama — a sort of romance, really — with a female writer in L.A. We’re navigating the rocks of the new sexual political landscape, shall we say. I’ve also written a drama about a hippie commune in Wales in 1969. And Jeff Pope and I wrote about the woman who found the body of Richard III in a car park.

This is the third screenplay we’ve written since “Philomena,” and it’s quite odd that two middle-age men write stories about female empowerment. [Laughs] We’re desperately trying to hang on by writing things that are proper, modern.

I’ll write another Alan Partridge, too [a reference to his vain talk-show host character]. It’s nice to do stuff that’s pure comedy because then when you write it, you laugh a lot.

And when you laugh, it releases endorphins — or is it serotonin? Pleasure chemicals, I get them confused. [It’s endorphins.] But anyway, it makes you feel good.

Q: With “The Trip” movies, you’ve eaten and written your way through northern England, Italy and Spain. How did you, Rob and Michael decide that Greece would be your last adventure?

A: Four felt right. And Greece, it was a classic. The Greek philosophy and mythology lent themselves to this huge, contemplative quality, and having me returning home and mimicking Homer’s “Odyssey” to this sort of conclusiveness. We also felt on a level, “Let’s quit while they’re still good.” That’s not saying we’d never do another one, but it feels like we should wait. Right now our thing is middle-

age angst, but pretty soon it will just be oldman angst.

(Q: These movies are a showcase for Steve’s attempts at erudition. Do you actually have all that knowledge rattling around in your head?

A: I do prep work, but I’m naturally curious. I had a quite good education, I would say.

I went to a Catholic school, which in this country was a bit like a free private education. The curse is, if you’re from very humble origins and you haven’t had a good education, you don’t know what you don’t know. Then if you’re half well educated, the curse is that you’re aware of the knowledge you don’t have. That’s what I felt I was. In answer to that, I love to learn.

So yes, I do my homework. Rob doesn’t do his homework, but that’s almost deliberate, because he can trivialize my quest for the truth, as it were.

Q: This time around, Steve’s father is seriously ill. You lost your own father two years ago. What was it like tapping into such personal memories?

A: Funnily enough, I did a version where I was very emotional. I wept as I would when I reemulated some of those scenes. Then Michael wanted me to do it again and just hold it all back. I think it’s probably better for that, because audiences don’t like completely candid displays of emotion, whether happiness or sadness. Audiences like to look for stuff.

And painful stuff is where you find good art,

I suppose. Otherwise you end up with some vanilla-flavored mediocrity.

Q: What misconception might viewers of “The Trip” have about you?

A: I’m not quite as precious as I come across. But there’s certainly a lot of truth in it as well.

Q: On screen, Steve grapples with relevancy in middle age. And off screen?

A: Right now I’m probably the happiest I’ve been — with the proviso that there’s no such thing as a state of big happiness. I’d like to work a bit less, to be honest. But I’m grateful that I’m able to make creative choices based purely on whether I believe in the thing I’m doing. Also, weirdly, this lockdown meant that I discovered a parallel universe in my daughter that I hadn’t really been aware of before, because I’ve not spent this long with her since she was a child. That’s a kind of strange blessing.

Q: What life do you imagine for Steve now that his journey has ended?

A: When I shot that scene of going home, it felt strangely poignant — almost as if, I said to Rob afterward, I got dementia in my old age, I might imagine that that was my life. It felt real. And in my head I suppose it plays out that he does come home, he does return to the stability of those people that love him. Craving the stability more than the excitement of being rootless, of being nomadic.

Yeah, it’s a funny little thing, playing a version

He plays a version of himself in “The Trip” movie series, which is ending with “The Trip to Greece.” “I’m not quite as precious as I come across.

22

The San Juan Daily Star

May 22-24, 2020

You don’t need whiskey for an old-fashioned, or vodka for a cosmo 3 to 4 dashes Angostura or orange bitters Citrus twist (orange or lemon or whatever you have), or a maraschino cherry and a dash of its juice (optional) 1. Prepare the simple syrup: In a small saucepan, combine sugar with 1/4 cup water. Heat over low, stirring frequently, just until sugar dissolves, about 3 minutes. Refrigerate if not using immediately. (Remaining syrup will keep in the fridge for up to 1 month.)

2. Prepare the cocktail: In an ice-filled mixing glass, combine the whiskey, prepared syrup and bitters. Stir until well-chilled, about 15 seconds. (If using a sugar cube, muddle it with a dash of water and the 3 to 4 dashes bitters before stirring it with the whiskey over ice.) Strain through a fine-mesh sieve into an ice-filled rocks glass and finish with the citrus twist.

An Adaptable Cosmopolitan

The classic formulas for cocktails work just as well with many things you may already have in your bar.

By REBEKAH PEPPLER

C

omfort is often sought in the familiar: sitcom reruns, well-worn books, family recipes, even an old relationship. Just as something from our past can act as a balm when the future feels uncertain, so, too, can a classic cocktail.

Reaching into the drink archives doesn’t have to be solely rooted in nostalgia, it can also open the door to simple, adaptable, established recipes, ideal at a time when stocking up on new bottles isn’t always easy.

One such recipe is the Old-Fashioned, one of the oldest drinks in the cocktail canon. Correctly composed, it’s strong and sweet without being too much of either. And, perhaps most important for the time we are in, it’s impressively malleable.

For example, don’t have bourbon or rye? Allison Kave, a founder of Butter & Scotch in Brooklyn, New York, swaps in brandy. “It’s not quite as aggressive as whiskey in an OldFashioned,” she said. “There’s something a lot lighter about it in flavor and in mouthfeel.”

No brandy? Reach for an aged rum or even gin. Or add a mix of tequila and mezcal. And use whichever bitters you have: angostura, orange or otherwise. Needless to say, a rye Old-Fashioned and a rum Old-Fashioned taste quite different, but both work. The beauty of the Old-Fashioned is to use and appreciate what you have; let the rest go.

Another drink that reaches back just decades rather

than centuries, but is still vastly adaptable is the Cosmopolitan. Created by Toby Cecchini in New York City in the late 1980s, the lightly pink, vodka-based cocktail enjoyed brief, regional popularity before it became inextricably tied to “Sex and the City.” Don’t let that undermine its potential for current-day glory. As Ina Garten recently reminded us, when a video of her, clad in her signature navy buttondown and mixing up a pitcher, went viral, the sweet-tart Cosmopolitan has its place, whether in a martini glass the size of your head, as in Ina’s case, or whatever is still clean in the cupboard. If your bar — or freezer — is lacking in vodka, put gin or tequila to work. No cranberry juice? Kave uses a tiny bit of pomegranate molasses or dilutes a bit of raspberry jam with water to make a syrup.

One thing holds in these trying times, if it’s nearing cocktail hour and you’re drinking, go simple and go easy — mostly on yourself.

Yield: 1 drink 1 1/2 ounces vodka (citrus or regular), gin or tequila 3/4 ounce cranberry juice cocktail, or use a dash of pomegranate molasses or a bit of raspberry jam diluted with water 1/2 ounce orange liqueur (such as Pierre Ferrand Dry Curaçao, Cointreau or triple sec) 1/2 ounce fresh lime juice Ice, as needed Lime wedge or lemon twist (optional) 1. Set coupe glass or other cocktail glass in the freezer to chill for 10 minutes.

2. In a shaker, combine the vodka, cranberry juice cocktail, orange liqueur and lime juice. Add ice and shake until very well-chilled.

3. Strain the cocktail into the chilled glass. Garnish with a lime wedge or lemon twist, if desired.

An Adaptable Old-Fashioned Cocktail Yield: 1 drink For the 2-to-1 simple syrup: 1/2 cup granulated or turbinado sugar For the cocktail: Ice, as needed 2 ounces whiskey (such as bourbon or rye), brandy, rum or gin (or even 1 1/2 ounces tequila plus 1/2 ouncemezcal) 1/2 ounce 2-to-1 simple syrup (or to taste) or 1 sugar cube

Raspberry jam diluted with water can step in if you don’t have cranberry juice for your Cosmopolitan.

22

The San Juan Daily Star

May 22-24, 2020

You don’t need whiskey for an Old-Fashioned, or vodka for a Cosmo 3 to 4 dashes Angostura or orange bitters Citrus twist (orange or lemon or whatever you have), or a maraschino cherry and a dash of its juice (optional) 1. Prepare the simple syrup: In a small saucepan, combine sugar with 1/4 cup water. Heat over low, stirring frequently, just until sugar dissolves, about 3 minutes. Refrigerate if not using immediately. (Remaining syrup will keep in the fridge for up to 1 month.)

2. Prepare the cocktail: In an ice-filled mixing glass, combine the whiskey, prepared syrup and bitters. Stir until well-chilled, about 15 seconds. (If using a sugar cube, muddle it with a dash of water and the 3 to 4 dashes bitters before stirring it with the whiskey over ice.) Strain through a fine-mesh sieve into an ice-filled rocks glass and finish with the citrus twist.

An Adaptable Cosmopolitan

The classic formulas for cocktails work just as well with many things you may already have in your bar.

By REBEKAH PEPPLER

C

omfort is often sought in the familiar: sitcom reruns, well-worn books, family recipes, even an old relationship. Just as something from our past can act as a balm when the future feels uncertain, so, too, can a classic cocktail.

Reaching into the drink archives doesn’t have to be solely rooted in nostalgia, it can also open the door to simple, adaptable, established recipes, ideal at a time when stocking up on new bottles isn’t always easy.

One such recipe is the Old-Fashioned, one of the oldest drinks in the cocktail canon. Correctly composed, it’s strong and sweet without being too much of either. And, perhaps most important for the time we are in, it’s impressively malleable.

For example, don’t have bourbon or rye? Allison Kave, a founder of Butter & Scotch in Brooklyn, New York, swaps in brandy. “It’s not quite as aggressive as whiskey in an OldFashioned,” she said. “There’s something a lot lighter about it in flavor and in mouthfeel.”

No brandy? Reach for an aged rum or even gin. Or add a mix of tequila and mezcal. And use whichever bitters you have: angostura, orange or otherwise. Needless to say, a rye Old-Fashioned and a rum Old-Fashioned taste quite different, but both work. The beauty of the Old-Fashioned is to use and appreciate what you have; let the rest go.

Another drink that reaches back just decades rather

than centuries, but is still vastly adaptable is the Cosmopolitan. Created by Toby Cecchini in New York City in the late 1980s, the lightly pink, vodka-based cocktail enjoyed brief, regional popularity before it became inextricably tied to “Sex and the City.” Don’t let that undermine its potential for current-day glory. As Ina Garten recently reminded us, when a video of her, clad in her signature navy buttondown and mixing up a pitcher, went viral, the sweet-tart Cosmopolitan has its place, whether in a martini glass the size of your head, as in Ina’s case, or whatever is still clean in the cupboard. If your bar — or freezer — is lacking in vodka, put gin or tequila to work. No cranberry juice? Kave uses a tiny bit of pomegranate molasses or dilutes a bit of raspberry jam with water to make a syrup.

One thing holds in these trying times, if it’s nearing cocktail hour and you’re drinking, go simple and go easy — mostly on yourself.

Yield: 1 drink 1 1/2 ounces vodka (citrus or regular), gin or tequila 3/4 ounce cranberry juice cocktail, or use a dash of pomegranate molasses or a bit of raspberry jam diluted with water 1/2 ounce orange liqueur (such as Pierre Ferrand Dry Curaçao, Cointreau or triple sec) 1/2 ounce fresh lime juice Ice, as needed Lime wedge or lemon twist (optional) 1. Set coupe glass or other cocktail glass in the freezer to chill for 10 minutes.

2. In a shaker, combine the vodka, cranberry juice cocktail, orange liqueur and lime juice. Add ice and shake until very well-chilled.

3. Strain the cocktail into the chilled glass. Garnish with a lime wedge or lemon twist, if desired.

An Adaptable Old-Fashioned Cocktail Yield: 1 drink For the 2-to-1 simple syrup: 1/2 cup granulated or turbinado sugar For the cocktail: Ice, as needed 2 ounces whiskey (such as bourbon or rye), brandy, rum or gin (or even 1 1/2 ounces tequila plus 1/2 ouncemezcal) 1/2 ounce 2-to-1 simple syrup (or to taste) or 1 sugar cube

Raspberry jam diluted with water can step in if you don’t have cranberry juice for your Cosmopolitan.

The San Juan Daily Star

May 22-24, 2020

23

A new entry in the race for a Coronavirus vaccine: Hope

By CARL ZIMMER, KNVUL SHEIKH and NOAH WEILAND

I

n a medical research project nearly unrivaled in its ambition and scope, volunteers worldwide are rolling up their sleeves to receive experimental vaccines against the coronavirus — only months after the virus was identified.

Companies like Inovio and Pfizer have begun early tests of candidates in people to determine whether their vaccines are safe.

Researchers at the University of Oxford in England are testing vaccines in human subjects, too, and say they could have one ready for emergency use as soon as September.

Moderna on Monday announced encouraging results of a safety trial of its vaccine in eight volunteers. There were no published data, but the news alone kindled hopes and sent the company’s stock soaring.

Animal studies have raised expectations, too. Researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston on Wednesday published research showing that a prototype vaccine effectively protected monkeys from infection with the virus.

The findings will pave the way to the development of a human vaccine, said the investigators. They have already partnered with Janssen, a division of Johnson & Johnson.

In labs around the world, there is now cautious optimism that a coronavirus vaccine, and perhaps more than one, will be ready sometime next year.

Scientists are exploring not just one approach to creating the vaccine but at least four. So great is the urgency that they are combining trial phases and shortening a process that usually takes years, sometimes more than a decade.

The coronavirus itself has turned out to be clumsy prey, a stable pathogen unlikely to mutate significantly and dodge a vaccine.

“It’s an easier target, which is terrific news,” said Michael Farzan, a virologist at Scripps Research in Jupiter, Florida.

An effective vaccine will be crucial to ending the pandemic, which has sickened at least 4.7 million worldwide and killed at least 324,000. Widespread immunity would reopen the door to lives without social distancing and face masks.

“What people don’t realize is that normally vaccine development takes many years, sometimes decades,” said Dr. Dan Barouch, a virologist at Beth Israel Deaconess

who led the monkey trials. “And so trying to compress the whole vaccine process into 12 to 18 months is really unheard-of. If that happens, it will be the fastest vaccine development program ever in history.”

More than 100 research teams around the world are taking aim at the virus from multiple angles.

Moderna’s vaccine is based on a relatively new mRNA technology that delivers bits of the virus’s genes into human cells. The goal is for cells to begin making a viral protein that the immune system recognizes as foreign. The body builds defenses against that protein, priming itself to attack if the actual coronavirus invades.

Some vaccine-makers, including Inovio, are developing vaccines based on DNA variations of this approach.

But the technology used by both companies has never produced a vaccine approved for clinical use, let alone one that can be made in industrial quantities. Moderna was criticized for making rosy predictions, based on a handful of patients, without providing any scientific data.

Other research teams have turned to more traditional strategies.

Some scientists are using harmless viruses to deliver coronavirus genes into cells, forcing them to produce proteins that may teach the immune system to watch out for the coronavirus. CanSino Biologics, a company in China, has begun human testing of a coronavirus vaccine that relies on this approach, as has the University of Oxford team.

Other traditional approaches rely on fragments of a coronavirus protein to make a vaccine, while some use killed, or inactivated, versions of the whole coronavirus. In China, such vaccines have already entered human trials.

Scaling Up Ensuring that vaccines are safe and effective demands large trials that require careful planning and execution. If successful vaccines emerge from those trials, someone’s going to have to make an awful lot of them.

Almost everyone on the planet is vulnerable to the new coronavirus. Each person may need two doses of a new vaccine to receive protective immunity. That’s 16 billion doses.

“When companies promise of delivering a vaccine in a year or less, I am not sure what stage they are talking about,” said Akiko Iwasaki, an immunobiologist at Yale

Scientists are increasingly optimistic that a vaccine can be produced in record time for the coronavirus.

University. “I doubt they are talking about global distributions in billions of doses.”

Manufacturing vaccines is profoundly more complex than manufacturing, say, shoes or bicycles. Vaccines typically require large vats in which their ingredients are grown, and these have to be maintained in sterile conditions. Also, no factories have ever churned out millions of doses of approved vaccines made with the cutting-edge technology being tested by companies like Inovio and Moderna.

Facilities have sprung up in recent years to make viral-vector vaccines, including a Johnson & Johnson plant in the Netherlands.

But meeting pandemic demand would be an enormous challenge. Manufacturers have the most experience mass-producing inactivated vaccines, made with killed viruses, so this type may be the easiest to produce in large quantities.

But there cannot be just one vaccine.

If that were to happen, the company that made it would have no chance of meeting the world’s demand.

As part of a public-private partnership the White House calls Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration has promised to design a kind of parallel manufacturing track to run alongside the clinical trials, building up capacity well before trials are concluded, in hopes that one or more vaccines could be distributed immediately upon approval.

President Donald Trump said Friday that the goal of the project was to distribute a

vaccine “prior to the end of the year.” To do that, Trump is relying on the Defense Department to manage the manufacturing logistics related to vaccine development.

But in an interview Thursday, Gen. Gustave Perna, who will manage the manufacturing logistics, said discussions about the equipment and facilities needed for production were just beginning.

He described his work as a “math problem”: how to get 300 million doses of a vaccine that doesn’t yet exist to Americans — by January.

Finding the supplies and planning their distribution would occur at the same time, he said. “I need to have syringes,” Perna said.

“I need to have wipes, right? I need to have Band-Aids. I need to have the vaccine.”

A coronavirus vaccine doesn’t yet exist, but already there are questions about who will be able to afford it.

At the World Health Assembly meeting this week, a proposal from the European Union was adopted recommending a voluntary patent pool, which would put pressure on companies to give up their monopolies on vaccines they’ve developed.

Oxfam, an international charity, has published an open letter from 140 world leaders and experts calling for a “people’s vaccine,” which would be “made available for all people, in all countries, free of charge.”

“These vaccines have to be a public good,” said Helen Clark, a former prime minister of New Zealand, who signed the letter. “We’re not safe till everyone is safe.”

24

May 22-24, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star

This one-pan tuna casserole is just what you need right now

By MELISSA CLARK

I

f there’s ever been a time to give in to cravings for retro comfort food, it’s now.

And that’s why I whipped up a tuna casserole. But not the classic, cream-of-something soup kind. I made a fancified version based on a recipe I fell in love with a few years ago when I wrote a profile of London-based food writer Diana Henry.

Henry’s recipe is actually for a Breton tuna and white bean gratin adapted from her excellent cookbook, “Simple” (Mitchell Beazley, 2016). But with the elimination of several steps and the essential addition of a potato chip topping, I think it now falls squarely into tuna casserole territory. You can call it whatever you like.

To make enough for four, in an ovenproof skillet, sauté a chopped onion (or shallots, scallions or leeks) in olive oil over medium-high heat until soft, about 5 minutes. Add a pinch of red-pepper flakes, a pinch of salt and lots of sliced garlic cloves. Henry calls for six, and I happily complied. I also threw in a rosemary sprig, but it’s purely optional.

Adding a couple of anchovy fillets at this point would increase the umami, but I resisted because it felt too far outside the tuna casserole paradigm. I regretted it later.

When the garlic is slightly golden and very fragrant, add two (15-ounce) cans drained, rinsed white beans and about 1/2 cup of white wine. (I didn’t measure, but that’s

what it felt like when I was splashing it in. You just want to moisten things up here.) And you don’t need to open a bottle of wine for this (I had an open one nearby). You can use 1/2

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cup water or broth.

Let it simmer until the liquid evaporates and the beans are soft, about 5 minutes, then mash the beans with a potato masher or a fork. Make them as smooth or lumpy as you like.

You just want to release some of their starch. Turn off the heat.

Now add 1/4 cup milk and 2 (5-ounce-ish) cans of tuna. If you have the oil-packed kind, add the oil. If you have the water-packed kind, drain them, and drizzle in more olive oil. Mash the tuna into the beans, leaving it a little chunky.

Mix in a tablespoon or two of chopped fresh herbs (I used fennel fronds), grated zest from half a lemon and lots of black pepper. Finally, mix in 2 to 4 tablespoons of grated cheese (any kind). (I used Gruyère, according to Henry’s recipe, but cheddar or Parmesan or Jarlsberg would have been great, too.) Taste and add more salt and pepper if needed.

Spread the mixture evenly in the skillet, and top it with about a cup of potato chips that either you or your bored child crushed with a rolling pin. Scatter on more grated cheese, about another 2 tablespoons, and dot the top with, as Henry says, little nuggets of butter. She and I both agree that 1 tablespoon will do it.

Bake at 350 degrees, until the tuna mixture bubbles around the edges, 20 to 25 minutes. If you want the potato chips to get more brown, you could run the whole pan under the broiler.

Then dig in, squeezing some lemon juice over the top if you want to zip it up. My 11-year-old loved this, even after I admitted there was tuna in it, which she thinks she hates.

Maybe it was the potato chips. Or maybe, tuna casserole was just what we all needed, whether we knew it or not.

The San Juan Daily Star LEGAL NOTICE COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS MIDDLESEX, ss. DISTRICT COURT DEPARTMENT MALDEN DIVISION.

the complaint. Unless otherwise provided by Rule 13(a), your answer must state as a counterclaim any claim which you may have against the plaintiff which arises out of the transaction or occurrence that is the subject matter of the plaintiff’s claim or you will be barred from making such claim in any other action.

WITNESS Hon. Emily A. Karstetter at Malden the 11th day of March, 2020.

Friday, May 22, 2020 to Rico TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA Tribunal de Primera Instancia Sala Superior de COMERIO.

ORIENTAL BANK

25

SALON: 0601. Sobre: CAN- SALA SUPERIOR DE SAN CELACION DE PAGARE EX- JUAN. TRAVIADO. NOTIFICACIÓN THERESA PADRÓ DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO Demandante VS ENMENDADA. OSVALDO VÁZQUEZ

Demandante v.

A: JOHN DOE Y Demandado BANCO SANTANDER DE RICHARD ROE, personas CIVIL NUMERO: BOARD OF TRUSTEES PUERTO RICO, JOHN desconocidas que se SJ2020RF00388 (704). SOOF VILLAGE GREEN AT BRE: DIVORCIO, RUPTURA DOE & RICHARD ROE designan con estos MALDEN CONDOMINIUM Demandado(a) nombres ficticios, que IRREPARABLE. EMPLAZAMIENTO POR EDICTO. ESTRUST, Civil: Núm. BQ2019CV00186. puedan ser tenedor o TADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA Plaintiffs vs.

Sobre: CANCELACION DE PAtenedores, o puedan tener EL PRESIDENTE DE LOS EE. ESTATE OF CARLOS M. GARE EXTRAVIADO. NOTIFIalgún interés en el pagaré UU. EL ESTADO LIBRE ASOCACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR GUZMAN LEGAL NOTICE hipotecario a que se hace CIADO DE PUERTO RICO. EDICTO. Defendant Estado Libre Asociado de Puerreferencia más adelante A: OSVALDO VÁZQUEZ and A: JOHN DOE & RICHARD to Rico TRIBUNAL GENERAL en el presente edicto, que POR LA PRESENTE se le CARLOS J. GUZMAN, DE JUSTICIA Tribunal de Pri- ROE P/C LCDO JAVIER se publicará una sola vez. NOTIFICA Y EMPLAZA que HEIRS, DEVISEES mera Instancia Sala Superior MONTALVO CINTRON, PO ante este tribunal se ha radiP/C LCDO. JAVIER de BAYAMON. AND PERSONAL BOX 11750, FERNANDEZ cado una acción en el caso MONTALVO CINTRÓN COOPERATIVA DE REPRESENTATIVES JUNCOS STATION, SAN de epígrafe mediante la cual RUA NÚM. 17682 AHORRO Y CREDITO of the ESTATE OF la demande, Theresa Padró, JUAN PR 00910-1750 (Nombre de las partes a las que se DELGADO & VEGA ALTA solicita el divorcio por la causal CARLOS M. GUZMAN, le notifican la sentencia por edicto) Demandante v. de Ruptura Irreparable. UsFERNÁNDEZ, LLC CITIZENS BANK OF US DEPARTMENT OF EL SECRETARIO(A) que sus- PO Box 11750, Fernández ted tiene treinta (30) días para MASSACHUSETTS, cribe le notifica a usted que contestar la presente demanda Juncos Station ANTHIUM, LLC, MIDLAND HOUSING AND URBAN el 23 de enero de 2020, este DEVELOPMENT Y OTROS Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, San Juan, Puerto Rico contados a partir de la publicaFUNDING LLC and ron del presente edicto. Usted Demandado(a) 00910-1750, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución METROPOLITAN CREDIT deberá presentar su alegación Civil: Núm. TA2019CV00612. en este caso, que ha sido debiTel. (787) 274-1414/Fax responsiva a través del Sistema UNION, Sala: 504. Sobre: PAGARE EX- damente registrada y archivada (787) 764-8241 Defendants/Parties-In-Interest Unificado de Manejo y AdminisTRAVIADO. NOTIFICACIÓN en autos donde podrá usted CIVIL ACTION NO. tración de Casos (SUMAC), al E-mail: jmontalvo@ DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO. enterarse detalladamente de 1950CV0824. ORDER OF NOcual puede acceder utilizando delgadofernandez.com A: FULANO DE TAL Y los términos de la misma. Esta (Nombre de las partes a las que se la siguiente dirección electróniTICE. notificación se publicará una le notifican la sentencia por edicto) ca: https://unired.ramajudicial.

MENGANA DE TAL To the above-named (Nombre de las partes a las que se sola vez en un periódico de EL SECRETARIO(A) que suspr/sumac/, salvo que se repreDefendant/Party-Inle notifican la sentencia por edicto) circulación general en la Isla cribe le notifica a usted que el sente por derecho propio en EL SECRETARIO(A) que sus- de Puerto Rico, dentro de los Interest, Carlos J. 18 de febrero de 2020, este cuyo caso deberá presentar cribe le notifica a usted que 10 días siguientes a su notificaGuzman: Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, su alegación responsiva en la Whereas a civil action has been filed against you in our District Court, within and for the county of Middlesex, by

Board of Trustees of Village Green at Malden Condominium Trust

And whereas it appears from the officer’s return on process issued therein that after diligent search he can find no one upon whom he can lawfully make service, and after hearing it is ORDERED by the Court that the following summons issue for service upon you in The San Juan Daily Star for three consecutive weeks: You are hereby summoned and required to serve upon Pamela M. Jonah, Esquire, Plaintiff’s attorney, whose address is 45 Braintree Hill Office Park, Suite 107, Braintree, MA 02184, a copy of your answer to the complaint which is herewith served upon you, within 20 days after service of this summons, exclusive of the day of service. You are also required to file your answer to the complaint in the Office of the Clerk of this Court either before service upon plaintiff’s attorney, or within 5 days thereafter. If you fail to meet the above requirements, judgment by default may be rendered against you for the relief demanded in

@

el 21 de mayo de 2020, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 15 de abril de 2020. En BAYAMON, Puerto Rico, el 15 de abril de 2020. LCDA. LAURA I SANTA SANCHEZ, Secretaria. f/ VIVIAN J SANABRIA, Secretaria Auxiliar.

LEGAL NOTICE

ción. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 14 de mayo de 2020.En COMERIO, Puerto Rico, el 14 de mayo de 2020. ELIZABETH GONZALEZ RIVERA, Secretaria. f/ MARIELY LOPEZ COLON, Secretaria Auxiliar.

LEGAL NOTICE Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA Tribunal de Primera Instancia Sala Superior de PONCE.

ORIENTAL BANK Demandante v.

FIRST EQUITY MORTGAGE BANKERS; JOHN DOE & RICHARD ROE

Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 14 de mayo de 2020.En COMERIO, Puerto Rico, el 15 de mayo de 2020.

LUZ MAYRA CARABALLO GARCIA, Secretaria. f/ HILDA J. ROSADO RODRIGUEZ, Secretaria Auxiliar.

LEGAL NOTICE

ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO Demandado(a) DE PUERTO RICO TRIBUEstado Libre Asociado de Puer- Civil: Núm. P02019CV003863.

NAL DE PRIMERA INSTANCIA

staredictos1@outlook.com

(787) 743-3346

secretaria del tribunal notificándole con copia a la abogada de la parte demandante Lcda.

Adrin I Perez Garcia, Calderon Mujica #72, Canovanas, Puerto Rico 00729-3226, facsímil (787) 256-5296, adrinperezgarcia@gmail.com. Se le advierte que si no contesta la demanda dentro del termino antes mencionado el tribunal podrá dictar sentencia en rebeldía en su contra y conceder el remedio solicitado en la demanda, o cualquier otro, si el tribunal, en el ejercicio de su sana discreción, lo entiende procedente.

EXTENDIDO BAJO MI FIRMA y sello del Tribunal, hoy día 12 de mayo de 2020. Griselda Rodriguez Collado, Secretaria.

Malliam Collazo Huertas, Sec Auxiliar.

LEGAL NOTICE Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE JUSTICIA Tribunal de Primera Instancia Sala Superior de MANATI.

COOPERATIVA DE AHORRO Y CREDITO DE LA INDUSTRIA BIOFARMACEUTICA Demandante v.

CARMEN QUIÑONES CASTELLANO

Demandado(a) LEGAL NOTICE Civil: Núm. MT2019CV00531.

Sobre: COBRO DE DINERO Estado Libre Asociado de Puer(REGLA 60). NOTIFICACIÓN to Rico TRIBUNAL GENERAL DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO. DE JUSTICIA Tribunal de PriA: CARMEN QUIÑONES mera Instancia Sala Superior de FAJARDO.

CASTELLANO

(Nombre de las partes a las que se le notifican la sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 20 de mayo de 2020, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 20 de mayo de 2020.En Manati, Puerto Rico, el 20 de mayo de 2020.

VIVIAN Y FRESSE GONZALEZ, Secretaria. f/ YADIRA LIZ CUEVAS CORREA, Secretaria Auxiliar.

BANCO POPULAR DE PUERTO RICO Demandante v.

SANA INVESTMENT MORTGAGE BANKERS INC., T/C/C SANA MORTGAGE CORPORATION ET ALS

Demandado(a) Civil: Núm. RG2019CV00633.

Sobre: CANCELACION DE PAGARE EXTRAVIADO. NOTIFICACIÓN DE SENTENCIA POR EDICTO.

A: THE MORTGAGE LOAN CO. INC. A SU ÚLTIMA DIRECCIÓN CONOCIDA: COUNTRY CLUB 915 AVE. ROBERTO SÁNCHEZ VILELLA, SAN JUAN, PR 00924; COUNTRY CLUB 915 AVE. CAMPO RICO, SAN JUAN, PR 0092; MYRA ENED MEDINA HERNÁNDEZ, MARGARITA MEDINA HERNÁNDEZ A SUS ÚLTIMAS DIRECCIONES CONOCIDAS: KM 1.6SR 958 BO. CIENAGA BAJA, RÍO GRANDE, PR 00745, URB. RÍO PIEDRAS HTS, 220 CALLE RUBICON, SAN JUAN, PR 009263218 Y COOP JARDINES

San Juan

DE SAN IGNACIO, APR 1708-B, SAN JUAN, PR 00927; FULANO Y MENGANO DE TAL, POSIBLES TENEDORES DESCONOCIDOS DEL PAGARÉ;

(Nombre de las partes a las que se le notifican la sentencia por edicto) EL SECRETARIO(A) que suscribe le notifica a usted que el 15 abril de 2020, este Tribunal ha dictado Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución en este caso, que ha sido debidamente registrada y archivada en autos donde podrá usted enterarse detalladamente de los términos de la misma. Esta notificación se publicará una sola vez en un periódico de circulación general en la Isla de Puerto Rico, dentro de los 10 días siguientes a su notificación. Y, siendo o representando usted una parte en el procedimiento sujeta a los términos de la Sentencia, Sentencia Parcial o Resolución, de la cual puede establecerse recurso de revisión o apelación dentro del término de 30 días contados a partir de la publicación por edicto de esta notificación, dirijo a usted esta notificación que se considerará hecha en la fecha de la publicación de este edicto. Copia de esta notificación ha sido archivada en los autos de este caso, con fecha de 23 de abril de 2020.

En FAJARDO, Puerto Rico, el 23 de abril de 2020. WANDA I SEGUI REYES, Secretaria. f/ MERLLY OLMO TORRES, Secretaria Auxiliar.

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26

The San Juan Daily Star

May 22-24, 2020

Meeting the Michael Jordan we didn’t know

By MARC STEIN

E

ven with that spotless 6-0 record in the NBA finals and 27 victories in the 29 playoff series he contested in the 1990s, Michael Jordan is unlikely to ever completely shut down the Greatest of All Time debate.

There will always be someone out there who prefers Bill Russell, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar or, yes, even LeBron James.

Yet such rampant winning does engender tremendous privilege. No other luminary in league history could have managed what Jordan just pulled off: His Airness made the NBA stash exclusive behind-the-scenes footage of his Chicago Bulls’ sixth and final title run in 1997-98 for nearly 20 years, then had the 10-part documentary series that he finally blessed attract an audience of 4.9 million to 6.3 million for each serving.

As we got deeper and deeper into “The Last Dance,” criticism about the unparalleled control that Jordan had — with two of his closest business associates, Estee Portnoy and Curtis Polk, operating as executive producers — grew louder and louder. Our own Sopan Deb was on this point from the start, but nothing amplified the noise like the twofisted blast to The Wall Street Journal from noted documentarian Ken Burns, who asserted that Jordan’s influence over the project is “not the way you do good journalism” nor “the way you do good history.”

Those staggering audience figures, though, slammed home this reality: The basketball public was not looking for another Burns-ian documentary.

Viewers just wanted Jordan, in a chair, speaking for the cameras with greater candor than ever before, no matter what had to be sacrificed to put him there.

They wanted to remember how it had felt to bond over a shared basketball experience, in the midst of a global health crisis, knowing it remained unclear how soon the NBA playoff reality show that we counted on every April, May and June could come back to fill that void. Even today’s players were tweeting about it.

We needed it and got swept up in it — even the crusty sports writers like me who, amid the Sunday night doubleheaders and corresponding Twitter fests, were compiling a lengthy list of the docuseries’ shortcomings.

Questions will persist about the glorification of Jordan’s bullying of teammates, even when it so plainly crossed the line with

Michael Jordan, the player, has been introduced to a new generation of basketball fans, who have mostly known him as a meme or the logo on their pricey kicks.

Scott Burrell (and others), and why it went unchallenged for 10 hours of storytelling.

The same holds for the dearth of voices speaking up for the late Bulls general manager Jerry Krause — while Jerry Reinsdorf completely dodged tough questions about why he, as the Bulls’ owner, didn’t assert his authority (or spend more freely) to keep a dynastic team together.

The constantly shifting timeline, back and forth from the 1997-98 season to various chapters in Jordan’s past that built up to his final season in Chicago, was an oftcited source of viewer consternation. The total avoidance of Jordan’s own parenting, given the depths of his bond with his father, James, was another sizable hole, as was Jordan’s refusal to acknowledge his role in keeping Isiah Thomas off the U.S. Olympic team in 1992 — something he had previously acknowledged in Jack McCallum’s

2012 book about the Dream Team.

Yet I can’t co-sign the notion that the production, as some say, is merely an infomercial for No. 23’s legacy. It is not a definitive, balanced retelling from the Burns school, but Jordan’s aforementioned frankness, pouring out of three interviews conducted by director Jason Hehir over roughly eight hours, will give it an everlasting gravitas.

To convince Jordan to grant the requisite sit-downs and ultimately admit that he could be a tyrannical teammate, Michael Tollin of Mandalay Sports Media, an executive producer of “The Last Dance,” made it a big part of his pitch in June 2016 that Jordan needed this documentary now. This would be Jordan’s ideal opportunity, Tollin explained, to properly educate a new generation of consumers — namely, those buying his

sneakers who had never seen him play.

The overwhelming commercial success of the series ensures that the door has been flung wide open for follow-up projects. Brace yourself for documentaries, podcasts and books that promise to take a more exacting look at, say, Jordan’s worrisome gambling habits or his reluctance to speak about political and societal issues — with interview subjects willing to be more critical than the ones we saw.

The trouble with forthcoming entries from what is bound to be billed as “The Real Last Dance” genre is that none of them will have anything close to this level of cooperation from Jordan. Hehir and Co. had to do so much on Jordan’s terms to get that cooperation.

But to deliver His Airness after years of virtual seclusion? Even Krause would have to concede that it was a trade anyone in the NBA would have made.

The San Juan Daily Star

May 22-24, 2020

27

Tiger Woods’ return puts his back in the spotlight again

By BILL PENNINGTON

T

he charity golf exhibition with Rory McIlroy and friends was a nice opening act, but the sport’s headliner returns this weekend. On Sunday, Tiger Woods will play for the first time in three months, ending his longest layoff since recovering from spinal fusion surgery in 2017. Woods and Phil Mickelson will reprise their match-play showdown of 2018, this time to benefit coronavirus relief efforts and in pairings with former NFL rivals Peyton Manning and Tom Brady.

The appearance will be a meaningful opportunity to assess the fitness of not just Woods’ golf game but also his back, which after four operations is an anatomical wild card. The competitive golf world’s last glimpse of Woods, 44, was in mid-February, when he was stiff and uncomfortable as he shot an ignominious 11-over par in the final two rounds of the Genesis Invitational to finish last among the golfers who made the cut.

It appeared to be a minor setback at the time. But roughly a month later, citing trouble with his cranky back, Woods withdrew from a series of high-profile March tournaments, including the Arnold Palmer Invitational, which he has won eight times, and the PGA Tour’s signature event, the Players Championship. When the PGA Tour was suspended soon afterward, with the Masters postponed the same day because of the coronavirus pandemic, Woods was idled like thousands of other pro athletes around the globe.

But Woods, unlike most of his brethren, has a shrinking window to add to his celebrated sporting legacy. He is tied with Sam Snead for the most career PGA Tour victories with 82, and his 15 major golf championship titles are three behind the record total won by Jack Nicklaus.

It’s not just Woods’ age that will pose a challenge going forward; there are questions about how long his back can hold out.

“If he were to chase the record books, it would need to occur pretty soon,” Dr. Wellington Hsu, an orthopedic spine surgeon at Chicago’s Northwestern Me-

Competitive golf’s last glimpse of Tiger Woods was in mid-February, when he was stiff and uncomfortable as he shot 11 over par in the final two rounds of the Genesis Invitational. morial Hospital who has studied athletes after spinal fusion operations, said late last week. “It’s more likely he would have success now rather than three, four or five years down the road. At least based on medical science.”

Hsu, however, added that no professional golfer had returned to competition after the kind of fusion surgery performed on Woods.

“He’s proven the experts wrong already,” Hsu said. “Some people have an incredible amount of reserve in every other part of their body, or their muscles

are stronger and can support a significantly degenerated spine to perform at a high level.”

In a video conference call with reporters this month to promote Sunday’s charity event, which will team Woods and Manning against Mickelson and Brady, Woods appeared fit and said he was swinging a golf club freely again.

When Mickelson teased Woods about not winning their previous nationally televised match, Woods leapt from his chair and said, “Hold on, I’m a little chilly.”

With a wide smile, he draped the green jacket he earned with his stunning win at the 2019 Masters across his shoulders and upper body like a blanket.

Last month, in an interview with GolfTV, which has a business relationship with Woods, he insisted that the condition of his back had improved greatly since February, calling the difference “night and day.”

“I feel a lot better than I did then,” Woods said. “I’ve been able to turn a negative into a positive and been able to train a lot and get my body to where I think it should be.”

While Woods will not get to defend his Masters title until November, if then, and while there will be at least one fewer major championship this year because of the cancellation of the British Open, his recent break from tournament play may be beneficial.

“The time off is terrific,” said Hsu, who noted that Woods most likely has significant arthritis in his back. “Time off can only help his symptoms and his pain.”

But if the PGA Tour resumes June 11 in Texas as planned, a compacted schedule with almost weekly tournaments would theoretically follow until almost Thanksgiving. Last season, on average, Woods took about 2 1/2 weeks off between tournament appearances. Five times he waited three or more weeks between competitions.

“I’m going to sit down with my team and figure out what is the best practice schedule, what are the tournaments that I need to play to be ready,” Woods told GolfTV. “How much should I play? How much should I rest? All the things that are kind of up in the air.

“Unfortunately for myself, I’ve been through episodes like this in my career with my back, where seconds seem like months. You have to slow things down and do things at a different pace.”

The first step back is Sunday’s match at the Medalist Golf Club, Woods’ home course in Hobe Sound, Fla. “As golfers, we’ve been playing a lot — guys playing matches down here,” Woods said in the video conference call.

“But it’s still not playing for trophies. It’s just different. We miss competing.”

28

The San Juan Daily Star

May 22-24, 2020

Gymnasts push for lasting change after a coach is suspended for abuse

By JULIET MACUR and DANIELLE ALLENTUCK

T

he suspension of a top coach last month for emotional and verbal abuse has galvanized gymnasts to share similar stories of misconduct, both privately and publicly, in a way that could signal a turning point in a sport desperate for a change in culture after the Larry Nassar molestation scandal.

One former gymnast who trained at a large East Coast gym wrote on Facebook that USA Gymnastics’ eight-year suspension of Maggie Haney, the coach of the Olympic champion Laurie Hernandez, had validated her perspective on abusive experiences with her former coach.

Now that woman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she had not yet filed a formal complaint, is organizing a group of other current and former gymnasts who shared similar stories of abuse involving the coach. The group, the organizer said, is preparing to go public with its accusations.

In interviews, that gymnast and others involved in the sport said they sensed a moment to hold USA Gymnastics, the sport’s national governing body, more accountable for punishing coaches who mistreat athletes and to push for the adjudication of pending cases.

One case involving an elite coach, Qi Han of Everest Gymnastics in North Carolina, remains unresolved three years after USA Gymnastics referred it to investigators at the United States Center for SafeSport, an independent body that handles cases of misconduct in Olympic sports.

The complaint involves accusations that Han emotionally, verbally and physically abused his young athletes. He is not accused of sexual abuse.

Ashton Locklear, an alternate for the 2016 Olympic team, and four other gymnasts from the Everest club made their complaints about Han public in interviews with The New York Times in 2018.

SafeSport has had the case since 2017, a spokeswoman for USA Gymnastics said two years ago.

The gymnasts said that Han’s treatment of them was so cruel that it was nearly unbearable and that he had be-

rated them daily at his gym, which promotes itself as a national team training center. Two of those gymnasts, including Locklear, said they had considered killing themselves so they would not have to face Han at practices and meets.

“I don’t know why Han never got in trouble for treating us the way he did, because what he did, in my mind, was a lot worse than Maggie Haney,” said Locklear, 22, who retired last year because of injuries.

Han, through his lawyer, Melissa Owen, continued to dispute the accusations against him, saying that an army of gymnasts and parents would defend him and that he would cooperate with SafeSport. Owen did not respond to a followup question on whether a SafeSport investigator had contacted Han to arrange an interview.

Li Li Leung, who took over as chief executive and president of USA Gymnastics in early 2019, acknowledged in a telephone interview this month that cases must be reviewed more quickly and that there must be more transparency in the process. She called Haney’s suspension a step in the right direction because it demonstrated the federation’s acknowledgment of a longtime problem in the sport and its willingness to take responsibility.

“Athletes’ voices are being heard, and their perspectives and experiences are being validated and believed,” Leung said, adding that sea change in the sport’s culture cannot happen overnight, though the federation has prioritized it.

“We believe that our athletes can be competitively excellent and compete at a very high level and also be happy and feel safe,” she said. “And those are not mutually exclusive of each other.”

All sexual abuse complaints in Olympic sports are handled by SafeSport, which also investigates some cases involving other kinds of abuse. But USA Gymnastics handles most cases of emotional or physical abuse through an internal department that is, coincidentally, called Safe Sport, though it is separate from the United States Center for SafeSport. The gymnastics federation’s Safe Sport department has grown to eight employees from one in recent years, Leung said.

The Olympic gymnast Laurie Hernandez getting advice from Maggie Haney in 2016, four years before Haney was suspended over accusations of emotionally abusing Hernandez and other gymnasts.

As a former gymnast, Leung said she realizes how difficult it might be for an athlete to report a coach. Jennifer Sey, a former national champion, said apprehension about reporting abuse was typical throughout the sport, in which elite athletes often reach their prime in their early teens and tyrannical training methods have long been common.

“Part of the insidiousness is that you think the abuse is your fault and you carry that for a very long time,” said Sey, who chronicled her anguish in a 2008 book, “Chalked Up: Inside Elite Gymnastics’ Merciless Coaching, Overzealous Parents, Eating Disorders, and Elusive Olympic Dreams.”

Locklear said that she was terrified in 2018 when she publicly accused Han of abuse and that she was disappointed that

there had been no ruling in the case.

She and her mother, Carrie Locklear, said they first told gymnastics federation officials in 2014 that Han had repeatedly called Ashton Locklear fat, lazy and ugly, and that he had often thrown her out of the gym, making her beg him to be allowed back.

Locklear suggested that one way to help keep coaches in check would be for USA Gymnastics to hire compliance officers who would visit gyms and competitions to monitor coaches’ behavior.

“There needs to be someone constantly watching the personal coaches, because they are the main problem,” Locklear said.

“They literally need to be under a microscope so athletes can be kept safe. I think that needs to change before the sport is completely safe for kids, or anyone.”

The San Juan Daily Star

May 22-24, 2020

Sudoku

29

How to Play:

Fill in the empty fields with the numbers from 1 through 9.

Sudoku Rules: Every row must contain the numbers from 1 through 9 Every column must contain the numbers from 1 through 9 Every 3x3 square must contain the numbers from 1 through 9

Crossword

Answers on page 30

Wordsearch

GAMES

HOROSCOPE Aries

30

The San Juan Daily Star

May 22-24, 2020

(Mar 21-April 20)

Obey an impulse to go it alone. Solitary activities like reading, writing and praying will recharge your batteries. Turn off your mobile and stay away from social media. This will allow you to reconnect with soul, discovering what you truly need to thrive. After this period of reflection, you’ll remember how fortunate you truly are. Rather than yearning for shiny gadgets and glamorous status symbols, you’ll take renewed pleasure in possessions that have brought joy for many years.

Libra

(Sep 24-Oct 23)

Landing your dream job is a distinct possibility. Stop listening to people who insist that artists can’t make lots of money. You will be the exception to this rule. Thanks to your ability to create things that are beautiful and unique, you’ll cultivate great wealth. After you put in an enjoyable day of work, you’ll go rediscover your appreciative partner. Let your amour lavish you with affection. A romantic home cooked meal will replenish your deleted creative reserves.

Taurus

(April 21-May 21)

Scorpio

Gemini

(May 22-June 21)

Sagittarius

(Nov 23-Dec 21)

Cancer

(June 22-July 23)

Capricorn

(Dec 22-Jan 20)

Getting involved with a humanitarian effort will be therapeutic. You’re tired of reading grim news stories that depict the world as a hopeless place. Nothing could be further from the truth. By joining forces with fellow philanthropists, you’ll bring relief to vulnerable people. A sincere compliment will make you blush with pleasure.

Rather than brushing off this praise, let it sink into your bones. You truly are wonderful. It’s time to own your magnificence.

A glamorous career makes work seem more like play. Don’t feel guilty about loving your job. You’re not the recipient of dumb luck. Instead, you’ve created this opportunity through relentless optimism and great joy. Somewhere along the line, you’ve mastered the law of attraction. Help from a government official will help push through an important application. When you have questions, ask someone who works for the office in question. They’ll guide you down the right path.

Devoting more time to spiritual pursuits is strongly advised. Although you’re very good at generating wealth, you’ve grown tired of crunching numbers. Take this opportunity to research pilgrimage journeys. Perhaps when travel is back on the agenda you can visit a country that has sacred meaning for you; this trip will revive you.

Friends are very supportive of your feelings. Let your loved ones to help you in every way possible.

Leo

(July 24-Aug 23)

Trust your instincts about a financial situation. Pooling your resources will allow you to purchase a property or buy some expensive equipment. It’s also a good time to apply for a grant, loan or scholarship. An official will be impressed by your drive. Stepping into the spotlight won’t be a problem for you. Making a sales pitch through giving a professional presentation over the internet will be as natural as breathing. You’ve always loved to command an audience. You’ll have people eating out of your hand.

Virgo

(Aug 24-Sep 23)

A romantic or business partnership is the source of great joy. With your best friend at your side, you can accomplish anything. Although you’ve been blessed with tremendous talent, you sometimes lack the confidence to put it on display for the world to see. Eventually you will be able to travel the world. If your boss asks you to head up a project, learn as much as you can about your customer. They will be impressed by your initiative.

(Oct 24-Nov 22)

Are you looking for love? You’ll find it with a dreamy artist who makes you believe in magic. Past disappointments tempt you to become pessimistic. With the help of your amour, you’ll rediscover the beauty in life.

In return, you’ll help them realise cherished dreams. If you already have a partner, they’ll have some wonderful news. A big raise or a better paid position will be awarded to them, which will raise your own standard of living. Splash out on some luxuries.

Home is a place of restful retreat. It has brought you great comfort in this difficult time, spend the day in your pyjamas and prepare some sharing foods. Cuddle your pets and play a board game with your loved ones. Even a social butterfly like you can appreciate resting their wings.

Are you unemployed? Find a way to work out of your own abode. You’ll be much more productive when you can create a beautiful and comfortable office space from which to operate.

Are you tired of doing chores all day? Turn your attention to an art project that fills you with enthusiasm. Making jewellery, throwing pottery or refinishing furniture will make your imagination flow like a mighty river. You’re a lot more creative than you think. The fruits of your labour will attract lots of admirers. Someone who is impressed with your work will develop a crush on you. If you’re single, accept their offer to pencil in a candlelit dinner for two when restaurants re-open.

Aquarius

(Jan 21-Feb 19)

Keep a financial deal under wraps. The last thing you want is to alert a rival to this exciting opportunity. You’ve worked hard to land a job in your desired industry. Getting paid to raise awareness of a good cause will be emotionally rewarding. Have you been longing to own a home?

You could soon save enough for a deposit on a property. If you’re not a gardener already, you will become one. Planting beautiful trees, bushes and flowers appeals to your inner artist.

Pisces

(Feb 20-Mar 20)

YYou know exactly what to say to get what you want. Use your uncanny intuition to understand how to motivate a neighbour, relative or colleague. With a little careful finessing, you can get a raise, grant or creative opportunity.

If you want to be a social media influencer, step up your online presence. Use it to promote things you love, rather than denigrate things you dislike. You’ll attract a loyal following by projecting positive energy. The public is so tired of negativity.

Answers to the Sudoku and Crossword on page 29

May 22-24, 2020

31

CARTOONS

Herman

Speed Bump

Frank & Ernest

BC

Scary Gary

Wizard of Id

For Better or for Worse

The San Juan Daily Star

Ziggy

32

May 22-24, 2020

The San Juan Daily Star