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KLMNO Weekly

The coronavirus pandemic

The virus continues to surprise

BY L ENNY B ERNSTEIN AND A RIANA E UNJUNG

C HA

D

eborah Coughlin was neither short of breath nor coughing. In those first days after she became infected by the novel coronavirus, her fever never spiked above 100 degrees. It was vomiting and diarrhea that brought her to a Hartford, Conn., emergency room on May 1.

“You would have thought it was a stomach virus,” said her daughter, Catherina Coleman.

“She was talking and walking and completely coherent.”

But even as Coughlin, 67, chatted with her daughters on her cellphone, the oxygen level in her blood dropped so low that most patients would be near death.

She is on a ventilator and in critical condition at St. Francis Hospital, one more patient with a strange constellation of symptoms that physicians are racing to recognize, explain and treat.

“At the beginning, we didn’t know what we were dealing with,” said Valentin Fuster, physician-in-chief at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, the epicenter of the U.S. outbreak. “We were seeing patients dying in front of us. It was all of a sudden, you’re in a different ballgame, and you don’t know why.”

Today, there is widespread recognition the novel coronavirus is far more unpredictable than a simple respiratory virus. Often it attacks the lungs, but it can also strike anywhere from the brain to the toes. Many doctors are focused on treating the inflammatory reactions it triggers and its capacity to cause blood clots, even as they struggle to help patients breathe.

Learning about a new disease on the fly, with tens of thousands of U.S. deaths attributed to the pandemic, they have little solid research to guide them. The World Health Organization’s database already lists more than 14,600 papers on covid-19. Even the world’s premier public health agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Preven-

John Moore/Getty Images

Doctors keep discovering new ways the disease attacks the body, hampering treatment efforts tion, have constantly altered their advice to keep pace with new developments.

“We don’t know why there are so many disease presentations,” said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. “Bottom line, this is just so new that there’s a lot we don’t know.”

More than four months of clinical experience across Asia, Europe and North America has shown the pathogen does much more than invade the lungs. “No one was expecting a disease that would not fit the pattern of pneumonia and respiratory illness,” said David Reich, a cardiac anesthesiologist and president of Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City.

It attacks the heart, weakening its muscles and disrupting its critical rhythm. It savages kidneys so badly some hospitals have run short of dialysis equipment. It crawls along the nervous

system, destroying taste and smell and occasionally reaching the brain. It creates blood clots that can kill with sudden efficiency and inflames blood vessels throughout the body.

It can begin with a few symptoms or none at all, then days later, squeeze the air out of the lungs without warning. It picks on the elderly, people weakened by previous disease, and, disproportionately, the obese. It harms men more than women, but there are also signs it complicates pregnancies.

It mostly spares the young.

Until it doesn’t: Doctors recently warned of a rare inflammatory reaction with cardiac complications among children that may be connected to the virus. A few weeks ago, New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) announced 73 children had fallen severely ill in the state and a 5-year-old boy in New York City had become the first child to die of the syndrome.

Two more children had succumbed as of last weekend.

Nurses tend to a covid-19 patient in the intensive care unit of Stamford Hospital in Stamford, Conn., on April 24.

Experts now realize the coronavirus is far more unpredictable than a simple respiratory virus.

That news has shaken many doctors, who felt they were finally grasping the full dimensions of the disease in adults. “We were all thinking this is a disease that kills old people, not kids,” Reich said.

Mount Sinai has treated five children with the condition. Reich said each started with gastrointestinal symptoms, which turned into inflammatory complications that caused very low blood pressure and expanded their blood vessels. This led to heart failure in the case of the first child who died.

“The pattern of disease was different than anything else with covid,” he said.

Of the millions, perhaps billions, of coronaviruses, six were previously known to infect humans.

Four cause colds that spread easily each winter, barely noticed. Another was responsible for the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome that killed 774 people in 2003. Yet another sparked the outbreak of Middle East respiratory syndrome in 2012, which kills 34 percent of the people who contract it. But few do.

SARS-CoV-2, the bad seed of the coronavirus family, is the seventh. It has managed to combine the infectiousness of its cold-causing cousins with some of the lethality of SARS and MERS. It can spread before people show symptoms of disease, making it difficult to control, especially without widespread and accurate testing. At the moment, social distancing is the only effective countermeasure.

It has infected 4 million people around the globe, killing more than 280,000. In the United States, 1.3 million have been infected and more than 78,000 have died.

Had SARS or MERS spread as widely as this virus, Rasmussen said, they might have shown the same capacity to attack beyond the lungs. But they were snuffed out quickly, leaving only a small sample of disease and death.

Trying to define a pathogen in

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The coronavirus pandemic the midst of an ever-spreading epidemic is fraught with difficulties. Experts say it will be years until it is understood how the disease damages organs and how medications, genetics, diets, lifestyles and distancing impact its course.

“This is a virus that literally did not exist in humans six months ago,” said Geoffrey Barnes, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan who works in cardiovascular medicine. “We had to rapidly learn how this virus impacts the human body and identify ways to treat it literally in a time-scale of weeks. With many other diseases, we have had decades.”

In the initial days of the outbreak, most efforts focused on the lungs. SARS-CoV-2 infects both the upper and lower respiratory tracts, eventually working its way deep into the lungs, filling tiny air sacs with cells and fluid that choke off the flow of oxygen.

But many scientists have come to believe that much of the disease’s devastation comes from two intertwined causes.

The first is the harm the virus wreaks on blood vessels, leading to clots that can range from microscopic to sizable. Patients have suffered strokes and pulmonary emboli as clots break loose and travel to the brain and lungs.

A study in the Lancet, a British medical journal, showed this may be because the virus directly targets the endothelial cells that line blood vessels.

The second is an exaggerated response from the body’s own immune system, a storm of killer “cytokines” that attack the body’s own cells along with the virus as it seeks to defend the body from an invader.

Research and therapies are focused on these phenomena.

Blood thinners are being more widely used in some hospitals. A review of records for 2,733 patients, published a few weeks ago in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, indicates they may help the most seriously ill.

“Things change in science all the time. Theories are made and thrown out. Hypotheses are tweaked. It doesn’t mean we don’t know what we are doing. It means we are learning,” said Deepak Bhatt, executive director

Symptoms of covid-19 appear to include:

Brain: Strokes from blood clots, neurological issues

Eyes: Pinkeye

Nose: Loss of smell and taste (anosmia)

Blood: Unexpected blood clotting; attacks on lining of blood vessels

Gastrointestinal system: Vomiting and diarrhea in some people

Lungs: Clogged and inflamed alveoli (air sacs), which hamper breathing; pulmonary embolism from breakaway blood clots and microclots

Heart: Weakened heart muscle; dangerous arrhythmias and heart attacks due to small clots

Kidneys: Damage to structures that filter waste from blood, such that patients often require dialysis

Skin: “Covid toes,” or fingers, a purple rash from the attack on blood vessels

Immune system: Widespread impact, including overactive immune response that attacks healthy tissue

of interventional cardiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

Inflammation of those endothelial cells lining blood vessels may help explain why the virus harms so many parts of the body, said Mandeep Mehra, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and one of the authors of the Lancet study on how covid-19 attacks blood vessels.

That means defeating covid-19 will require more than antiviral therapy, he said.

“What this virus does is it starts as a viral infection and becomes a more global disturbance to the immune system and blood vessels — and what kills is exactly that,” Mehra said. “Our hypothesis is that covid-19 begins as a respiratory virus and kills as a cardiovascular virus.”

The thinking of kidney specialists has evolved along similar lines. Initially, they attributed widespread and severe kidney disease to the damage caused by ventilators and certain medications given to intensive-care patients, said Daniel Batlle, a professor of medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

Then they noticed damage to the waste-filtering kidney cells of patients even before they needed intensive care. And studies out of Wuhan found the pathogen in the kidneys themselves, leading to speculation the virus is harming the organ.

“There was nothing unique at first,” Batlle said. But the new information “shows this is beyond the regular bread-and-butter acute kidney injury that we normally see.”

Like other coronaviruses, SARS-Cov-2 infiltrates the body by attaching to a receptor, ACE2, found on some cells. But the makeup of the spikes that protrude from this virus is somewhat different, allowing the virus to bind more tightly.

As a result, fewer virus particles are required to infect the host.

This also may help explain why this virus is so much more infectious than SARS, Rasmussen said.

Other factors can’t be ruled out in transmission, she said, including the amount of virus people shed and how strictly they observe social distancing rules.

KLMNO Weekly

Once inside a cell, the virus replicates, causing chaos. ACE2 receptors, which help regulate blood pressure, are plentiful in the lungs, kidneys and intestines — organs hit hard by the pathogen in many patients. That also may be why high blood pressure has emerged as one of the most common preexisting conditions in people who become severely ill with covid-19.

The receptors differ from person to person, leading to speculation that genetics may explain some of the variability in symptoms and how sick some people become.

Those cells “are almost everywhere, so it makes sense that the virus would cause damage throughout the body,” said Mitchell Elkind, a professor of neurology at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons and president-elect of the American Heart Association.

Inflammation spurs clotting as white blood cells fight off infection. They interact with platelets and activate them in a way that increases the likelihood of clotting, Elkind said.

Such reactions have been seen in severe infections, such as sepsis. But for covid-19, he said, “we are seeing this in a large number of people in a very short time, so it really stands out.”

“The virus can attack a lot of different parts of the body, and we don’t understand why it causes some problems for some people, different problems for others — and no problems at all for a large proportion,” Elkind said.

Coughlin, in critical condition at a hospital in Connecticut, deteriorated quickly after she reached the emergency room.

Her fever shot up to 105 and pneumonia developed in her lungs.

On May 6, she called her six daughters on FaceTime, telling them doctors advised she go on a ventilator.

“If something happens to me, and I don’t make it, I’m at peace with it,” she told them.

The conversation broke daughter Coleman’s heart.

“I am deciding to help her go on a ventilator, and she may never come off,” she said. “That could have been my last phone conversation with her.” n

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KLMNO Weekly

The coronavirus pandemic

Voices of the Pandemic

‘How long can a heart last like this?’

Darlene Krawetz, on what life becomes when covid-19 won’t go away

AS TOLD TO

E LI S ASLOW

I’

ve hardly moved from this couch in weeks, but right now my heart rate monitor says I’m at 132.

That’s double my normal. That’s like if I’m climbing a mountain.

How come? Nobody knows. Nobody ever knows. And why has my fever been spiking again?

Do I need to go back to the ER? I’m on week six of this crap, and I still don’t know if I’m getting better or worse, but people want to act like the threat is behind us?

Wait, no, that’s not right.

This is actually week eight for me. I started getting symptoms right before New York shut down. I mix up my dates. My mind is all foggy. I’ve been a nurse for 30 years, and now I can’t even remember if my last Tylenol was five minutes or five hours ago. It feels like electricity is burning through my spine, and nobody can tell me why. It’s like I’m sucking air through a straw. When I stand up, my ears start ringing until dizziness forces me back down. Every symptom is a whole new mystery. This virus is unpredictable and so, so violent.

I’m up to 140 now. See? It’s relentless. How long can a heart last like this? The palpitations come a few times every hour and go on for a minute or more. It’s just banging, banging, banging, banging.

It hurts too much to talk. I’ll try again later. I have to lie down and breathe through it. That’s what they tell me to do. *** The next morning, Wednesday, May 6

Darlene Krawetz has been beset by debilitating symptoms of the coronavirus disease for weeks.

My heart rate is back down now to 105. That’s nothing to celebrate. That’s still considered abnormal, but it’s typical now for me.

I didn’t use to be like this. I’m healthy. I’m a vegetarian. I’m only 52. I’ve got grown kids in

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the military and a teenager at home, and we hike and kayak.

I’m a positive, hard-charging person. Maybe I got it at the VA hospital where I work, but we didn’t have any confirmed cases yet. Or my son might have had an exposure and given it to me.

Who knows? It’s one more mystery. I didn’t even notice I was sick until another nurse asked why I was coughing. I figured it was allergies. Take some Zyrtec and get on with it. Hardly anybody here in Syracuse had

covid at that point. What were the odds?

Then, after I tested positive, I thought I’d get a mild case. I told my husband: “Relax. I’m fine.” I don’t have diabetes. I don’t have hypertension, COPD or anything like that. I thought I could stay home, take care of myself and be back at work in a few weeks.

Right away I started running a temperature of 103, and the Tylenol couldn’t control it. I was shaking and cursing all day

in bed, and the symptoms spread from there. I was headto-toe exhausted. I wanted the whole world to let me alone. I had equipment at home from my nursing work, and I started checking my vitals and saw my blood pressure shooting up.

I’ve never had that. I’d get up to shower and start gasping for air. My son was also covid-positive, and he ran a high fever and recovered within a week while I kept on getting worse.

Maybe because I’m older? Or

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The coronavirus pandemic because I used to be a smoker?

You can’t get a definitive answer on anything with this. I started coughing to the point of throwing up. I coughed until I was incontinent. My lips were chapped from dehydration. I had headaches. Migraines.

Heartburn. Rashes. I lost 16 pounds in the first few weeks. I would lie down at night after taking melatonin and Benadryl, soaked in sweat and terrified of what might be coming next. What if I fall asleep and stop breathing? More Benadryl. More melatonin.

Maybe try a Xanax. I’d lie there for hours but it was nonstop insomnia. I’d turn the TV to Lifetime for a distraction, but I couldn’t make sense of what they were saying.

One day, my son needed money to buy groceries. I said I’d give him $80, but I couldn’t count it out. I couldn’t do the math. I handed him $50, then $70. I asked him: “Is this really happening right now or is this a hallucination?” He took the cash and counted it himself. He begged me to get help.

I went to urgent care. The X-rays showed pneumonia, so they told me to go to the ER. I didn’t want to risk a secondary infection at the hospital, and I knew they didn’t have any magic treatment for this virus, but I couldn’t take care of myself.

There wasn’t any choice. I wrote down my end-of-life wishes, and I had my son drop me at the ER. I’m having another palpitation. Hang on. Are these panic attacks? I never had them before. It feels like my heart is trying to jump out of my chest.

Breathe. Stay calm. What is there to be calm about? It’s up over 150 now. Something is really wrong with me. I need to go rest. I need to figure this out. *** A few hours later Okay. I’m a little better. It’s hour by hour. I’m not sure I can handle it again if I have to go back to the hospital. That first stay lasted 10 days, or at least that’s what they told me. I couldn’t tell days apart. I had a little glass isolation room with a curtain they kept closed. There was nothing to see out the

Family Photo

window except a parking garage across the street. I couldn’t have visitors, and most of the doctors and nurses were afraid to stay in the room. It was okay.

I was too sick to talk and too scared to feel lonely. I appreciate what they did. They were honest about what they didn’t know, and they tried. They kept throwing stuff at the wall to see what might stick.

They gave me a malaria drug, but it did absolutely nothing.

They gave me an antibiotic for pneumonia, but I still couldn’t breathe without 15 liters of oxygen. They tried vitamin C, magnesium, shots of blood

thinner, baby aspirin, Tums, multivitamins, Xanax, cough syrup with codeine. It was like fixing a car when you don’t know what’s broken. They gave me inhalers and breathing exercises to do every hour, but my oxygen level kept dropping.

They wanted to put me on life support, but I was afraid I’d never come off. The doctor came in and said: “We have a team ready to revive you in case you start to code. We’re going to watch you closely.” Watching was all anybody could do. Then, one morning, my fever started to go down. Nobody knew why that happened either. But it

“I’m not sure I can handle it again if I have to go back to the hospital.”

Darlene Krawetz in a Syracuse, N.Y., hospital in April.

KLMNO Weekly

stayed down for 36 hours, and they said I could go home.

Now I’ve got my oxygen on a long extension cord. I can make it to the kitchen or the bathroom if I’m feeling good, but usually I stay here in the den. My husband never caught it, so we’re staying apart. He works as a manager at Wegmans, and if he got sick, we might be out on the street. The $1,200 stimulus went to rent and hospital co-pays, and now we’re burning through our savings. I try not to think about it.

I watch the news and check my vitals, but they’re always bad.

My family stands in the doorway to visit sometimes, and other people text or call. “Are you feeling better yet?” It’s like they’re becoming impatient.

They want to feel safe going out. We managed to buckle down for a while, but now it’s getting nice outside, and people need to work. The deniers and the protesters are coming out. One of my relatives went on Facebook and wrote that this whole virus is overblown, or maybe even a hoax. People want to minimize.

“Are you better yet? Why aren’t you better yet?”

I don’t know. I don’t know anything. My brain keeps racing with unanswered questions. Are my lungs scarred? Is my heart damaged? Can I get sick again? Will I be hiking the Adirondacks this summer or lugging this oxygen tank from the den to the bathroom for the rest of my life?

I hate this virus. It’s been two months of uncertainty and I don’t think I can take any more.

Why are my legs burning? Why is my skin so hot? I need answers. I need help. *** The next morning, Thursday, May 7 I’m back at the hospital.

My fever won’t come down.

The doctors say I have blood clots on my lungs and a mass on one of my organs. They’re trying to figure it out. There’s no timeline and no prognosis.

All I know is they’re admitting me. I’ve been crying my eyes out. The morphine is making me in a fog. When will this damn thing let me alone? n

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KLMNO Weekly

The coronavirus pandemic | perspective

Weighing a return to the theater BY

A NN H ORNADAY

‘I

swear, Christopher Nolan could film a jar of mayonnaise for two hours and I would watch it.”

That’s a snippet of a conversation I overheard while a trailer for “Tenet” played at a preview of “Birds of Prey” in February, which turned out to be one of the last screenings I would attend before theaters closed several weeks later. As was typical of my schedule then, I was in a sardinepacked multiplex on a weekday night, having hastily consumed reheated leftovers before driving to the suburbs, hoping that the movie I was about to see was worth missing dinner with my family. (Still annoyed at 2016’s unwatchable “Suicide Squad,” which introduced “Birds of Prey” protagonist Harley Quinn, I wasn’t optimistic.)

It turned out that the sequel was better than its predecessor, even if Mr. Mayonnaise seemed to enjoy the movie far more than I did. But if I were in that multiplex today, I would be making a far different mental calculation: Forget whether “Birds of Prey” was worth my time and inconvenience. Was it worth my physical health and well-being?

The question has become uncomfortably concrete. With movie theaters opening in Georgia and Texas, and venues such as the Alamo Drafthouse and the Venice Film Festival surveying their patrons to ascertain what it will take to get them back, critics and film fans alike are wondering when we’ll feel okay about returning to the sticky-floored, dimly lit rooms that we have long considered our natural habitat.

I miss the collective ritual of moviegoing: the anticipatory bustle of the theater lobby, the smell of the popcorn, the trailers and pre-screening chitchat, the laughs and jump-scares that are no fun at all unless they’re experienced with a bunch of strangers in the dark.

But I’m unable to visualize marching into a multiplex and happily forgetting the outside

Dustin Chambers/Bloomberg News

Going to the movies used to be a time of escape, but now the film has to be worth the risk world for a couple of hours — having donned a mask and gloves, had my temperature taken along with my ticket, been duly informed of the theater’s sanitation policies and taken an assigned seat well within the six-foot social-distancing protocols. Cue the classic Loews jingle: Sit back and relax, enjoy the show!

I will, one day — especially when testing, tracing, therapeutics and a vaccine are widely available. In the meantime, I and my fellow cinephiles are in a quandary: missing the medium we love in its fullest expression, but still able to enjoy it in relative comfort and safety on our home screens (and, let’s be honest, not missing the irritations that often ruin the filmgoing experience, including pre-screening chitchat that continues once the movie starts).

Unlike theater, ballet and live music, cinema isn’t fatally diminished when it migrates to smaller exhibition platforms. If the de-

velopment of “virtual cinema” has taught us anything, it’s that there are fabulous films to be discovered online. One of the most unexpected pleasures of quarantine-era movie-watching is being able to introduce readers to such revelatory gems as “Blow the Man Down,” “Selah and the Spades,” “The Half of It” and “Driveways” — streaming and VOD titles that in a pre-corona world I likely would have overlooked amid the glut of big-studio theatrical releases. The unexpected hiatus has also opened up delightful rabbit holes on such classic-movie sites as the Criterion Channel, Kino Now and Kanopy.

So far this spring, the trade-off hasn’t been entirely painful. But with summer looming, followed by awards season, the compromises will become more difficult.

Spike Lee announced that his new movie, “Da 5 Bloods,” will drop on Netflix in June. Presumably, Lee wanted his film, which stars Chadwick Boseman as a

"Now Showing" frames hold no movie posters outside the AMC Classic Cartersville 12 theater in Georgia, which has moved to reopen theaters.

Vietnam veteran determined to find the remains of his fallen squad leader, to be seen sooner rather than later, rather than await the uncertainties of theater reopenings and release-schedule bottlenecks. Thanks to a recent rule-change at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, “Da 5 Bloods” will still qualify for an Oscar regardless of not opening in theaters first.

It remains to be seen whether “Da 5 Bloods” suffers for not being shown on the big screen.

But I know I’ll never forget watching Lee’s 2019 film “BlacKkKlansman” in a crowded theater, Terence Blanchard’s gorgeous music swelling during the breathtaking final sequence whose cathartic power resided not just in sound and image, but the deep emotional current the audience shared in that moment.

If Netflix executives view the Academy’s one-time rule-change as an opening for streaming-only movies, they might want to heed the lessons of “Roma,” a movie that I and many others loved when we saw it in big-screen splendor, and just as many found disappointing and overrated when they saw it shrunk down to fit their TVs. Film as an art form may be able to adapt when it migrates to the home screen. But as a collective experience, it is in the process of morphing, if not disappearing entirely. The recent boomlet in drive-in theaters represents a bracing expression of esprit de corps, nostalgia and creative ways to be alone-together. But it also points to a future when cinema has become as bubble-fied as the rest of American life, whether we’re watching them in our cars, via online viewing parties or in completely contact-free theaters like the ones currently being tried in South Korea. At their best, movies demand a form of psychological surrender. The question is how will we enter that vulnerable state while girding ourselves with individualized armamentaria and hypervigilant spatial awareness?

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The coronavirus pandemic

KLMNO Weekly

A resurgence of big-brand snacks BY

T HOMAS H EATH

A

Allyson Riggs/A24 Films

Prudent safety measures and sound medical guidance will get me back into the theater, but unreservedly entering the world on screen will depend on what it’s always depended on: the movies themselves.

Like my “Birds of Prey” seatmate, Warner Bros. is bullish on Christopher Nolan and his obsessively loyal fan base of Imax purists and “Dark Knight” lifers.

The company is expected to announce soon whether it will stick with the July 17 release date for Nolan’s time-travel thriller “Tenet” in theaters.

Disney is similarly hoping that the generation of girls, young women and their moms who grew up with the animated action-adventure “Mulan” will turn out in July, when the live-action version is scheduled to open in brick-and-mortar venues. Then there’s “Wonder Woman 1984” which, if it arrives as planned in August, will no doubt leverage the deep emotional connection that propelled “Wonder Woman” into a global phenomenon and Hollywood game-changer.

Some viewers are surely saving their first foray back into theaters for the scheduled early September release of “A Quiet Place Part II” (a better-with-others movie if ever there was one).

Some are holding out for “The French Dispatch,” a bespoke Wes Anderson jewel box that is due to arrive in theaters in October.

As momentous as those movies promise to be, when I consider my next film to watch in a theater I think about the last film I watched in a theater: “First

Cow,” a superbly crafted period drama, opened on the very day in March that most Washington-area venues were forced to close (Friday the 13th, as it happens).

Directed with characteristic care and sensitivity by Kelly Reichardt, “First Cow” is every bit as monumental as a Nolan-esque extravaganza or lavishly hyped franchise installment — if only because Reichardt’s auteurism takes such a small-canvas, diligently understated form.

Indeed, “First Cow” is such an important cinematic event that the film’s distributor, A24, declined to make it available as a streaming title, preferring to relaunch the film when audiences can fully appreciate the exquisitely detailed world that Reichardt devotes so much time, detailed imagination and single-minded intelligence to create.

In other words, Reichardt wasn’t making another disposable piece of product or extending a corporate brand — the movies Hollywood has been obsessively making to avoid risk, but that now feel unworthy of what we might be risking to sit through them.

When “First Cow” opens again, I’ll be first in line to see it — mask, gloves, alcohol wipes and all. Just a few short months ago, Reichardt’s film exemplified movies as a life-or-death proposition — or at least a life-affirming declaration — for the people who make them. From now on, it will always remind me that the emotional stakes should feel just as high for the people who watch them. n

John Magaro stars as Cookie in director Kelly Reichardt’s “First Cow.” The film’s distributor declined to make it available as a streaming title.

dd food habits to a list of societal and economic changes wrought by the coronavirus lockdowns.

Packaged grocery brands that had run up against Americans’ growing preference for fresh and private-label foods are seeing a resurgence as iconic brands like Goldfish, Oreos, Campbell Soup and Doritos fill the pantries of homebound consumers in search of small pleasures.

Major processed food companies such as General Mills, Conagra, Kellogg and Campbell’s are among suppliers whose snacks, canned goods and frozen foods have taken off, often sending their stock prices along for the ride.

“We are seeing significant market share gains for the most dominant brands,” said analyst Chris Growe at Stifel. “The consumers have come back to those brands.”

After the global outbreak shut down much of the nation’s business and social activity earlier in the year, consumers famously began stocking up on hand sanitizer, household cleaners and toilet paper in anticipation of long stretches of home confinement. While they were at it, they snapped up soda, chips, cookies and other snacks that would make it bearable.

“You had pantry-loading by half of the people preparing for Armageddon,” Growe said. “The other half decided, ‘I am going to eat at home now for almost every meal.’”

Americans had been steadily migrating toward private label brands — from ice cream to salad dressing to cheese and dairy — that were made locally in small batches and promoted freshness and natural ingredients. That cut into sales for the processed and preservative-laden offerings made by the giant food brands typically found in grocery stores’ less-visited “center aisles.”

With the lockdowns sharply curtailing dining-out options,

many consumers shifted to making most or all of their meals at home. The research firm NPD Group, for example, noted that nearly 80 percent of the kitchen electric categories it tracks showed year-over-year growth in March as the pandemic took hold, and that more than two-thirds grew by double digits for such gadgets as hot plates, waffle irons and sandwich makers.

“There is a lot of out-of-home consumption that has now shifted to in-home,” said Dirk Van de Put, the chairman of Mondelez International, in a recent earnings call.

“And in-home, there is more grazing, more continuous eating, and snacking takes up a much bigger role,” particularly with cookies.

De Put, whose company makes Oreos, Triscuits, Ritz and Chips Ahoy, said snacking is a natural outlet. “Sharing a snack with your kids, as everybody sort of cooped up in the house, brings back a feeling of normalcy, of togetherness, calming everybody down,” he said, according to a transcript of the call.

Sales also are up for breakfast foods. General Mills says Cheerios and Lucky Charms are selling at several times their normal rates; Kellogg and PepsiCo’s Quaker Oats have also seen bumps.

General Mills on Monday upgraded its financial guidance for the fiscal year due to higher demand from the coronavirus lockdown. It has stepped up production of its Gold Medal flour and Betty Crocker and Pillsbury baking mixes, for example, in the view that demand will remain elevated for some time.

The Frito Lay division — maker of Lays potato chips, Fritos and Doritos — has helped offset the plunge in beverage sales at PepsiCo Inc. The soda giant and rival Coca-Cola are feeling the loss of restaurants, stadiums, theme parks, movie theaters and other shuttered entertainment venues.

Pepsi shares have dipped 1 percent this year while Coke’s have plummeted 16 percent. n

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A broken system Millions are entering retirement with little financial support

BY WILL ENGLUND

T

hey went to work every day and built a life for themselves, put money away in a savings plan and paid their taxes. And then they got divorced or hurt on the job or sick or widowed or just plain unlucky — and found themselves in the same boat as millions of Americans who are now approaching retirement with most of the financial props knocked out from under them.

As the big bulge of baby boomers head into old age, as many as half are coming face-to-face with a new American economic reality: Retirement means a descent into relative hard times, because the systems put in place when this generation was just entering its peak earning years have failed.

We talked to six Americans who have come to the end of their work lives with no financial cushion, no nest egg. The oldest is 74, the youngest 57: just about the exact span of the baby-boom generation. They are liberal and conservative, rural and urban, blue collar and white.

The coronavirus pandemic has scrambled the lives of these six boomers just as it has everyone else’s, though with no savings to worry about, it hasn’t directly hurt them financially. Some have hunkered down, as best they can in sometimes tight spaces. For others, the pandemic has brought a surprising twist to their lives.

None of these stories is an outlier. Half of American families in the 56-to-61 age bracket had less than $21,000 in retirement savings in 2016, according to a longitudinal study by the Economic Policy Institute that used the most recent available figures. A less formal survey last year found that little had changed. Forty percent of Americans over the age of 60 who are no longer working full-time rely solely on Social Security for their income — the median annual benefit is about $17,000.

Every day, 10,000 Americans reach the age of 65. (In 2024, that number will crest at about 12,000 a day.) And every year, fewer and fewer of them have traditional employer-sponsored pensions to support them. The system that was supposed to provide for them is shot through with holes.

‘We were so stupid’ By some comparisons, Nancy Koch, a 70-year-old retired psychiatric nurse, counts herself lucky. She had some good jobs over the years.

She’s married — for the third time, after two divorces, each of which involved lawyers, the need to set up new households, and a general drain on savings. Her husband, Terry Koch, 69, was a technical writer who worked most recently for a company that makes labels, though his real love is the piano. He’s the improviser; she’s the organizer. She has recovered better than expected from a health scare a decade ago, when back surgery led to unexpected complications. They have an apartment in West Allis, Wis., in a senior living complex that is subsidized through the federal Low Income Housing Tax Credit.

What they don’t have is any money.

“We were completely not prepared,” she said, for the life they are now living.

A sizable minority of Americans have struggled all their lives with low incomes. But now, millions more who were solidly middle class — like the Kochs — are looking at a financial fall. Half of Americans are at risk of not being able to maintain their standard of living in retirement, according to a Boston College study that was completed before the pandemic hit and potentially made the prospects even worse.

Dozens of factors have contributed to this, most having to do with lack of access to retirement savings plans, unexpected large financial hits, layoffs and declines in health. A study at Stanford University found the baby boomers have, in real terms, about 20 percent less in savings, 20 percent lower household wealth and 100 percent more debt than the generation born during World War II. Terry and Nancy Koch (pronounced “Cook”) are part of that 40 percent of retired Americans who have Social Security as their only income. Between them, it comes to about $2,500 a month. Rent for their subsidized two-bedroom apartment, across the street from an abandoned bowling alley, is $975, plus a $20 pet fee for their cat Sam. The rent is about to go up by $30. Premiums for Medicare and supplemental insurance policies cost about $450 a month for the two of them. Beyond Social Security, their retirement savings plans are totally tapped out. They have no cushion, no nest egg.

Although they are above the official poverty line, their monthly income falls $750 short of the amount that “constitutes adequacy as

photos by Darren Hauck

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Nancy and Terry Koch outside of their apartment complex in West Allis, Wis. Nancy, a retired psychiatric nurse, and Terry, a technical writer, are struggling to make ends meet in their retirement.

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opposed to destitution” for Milwaukee county, said Mutchler, whose team at the Center for Social and Demographic Research on Aging has calculated an “Elder Index” for every county in the nation.

West Allis, just outside Milwaukee, was once the headquarters of the Allis-Chalmers Co., which manufactured industrial machinery, employed 31,000 unionized workers in Wisconsin and elsewhere, supported a solid standard of living for its workers for nearly eight decades, and paid them pensions when they retired. That’s gone.

The Kochs moved there from the leafy suburb of Bay View because of the affordable rent. They have no friends there. Nancy’s adult son lives alone north of Milwaukee.

In Terry Koch’s view, part of the reason they have no money is rooted in the changes that have swept the country, starting with the culture of their own generation, a legacy of the 1960s.

“We were a people who said we kind of like to have job satisfaction up front,” he said. “And so we didn’t think about the long run of things.

To not be thinking about the future, to be more of a Zen thing, you know we live today. And it wasn’t pure hedonism. There was some purity. And we’re still very much that way. I would rather be happy today than miserable 25 years from now. And so I made choices based on that rather than on the economics, which, you know, one could argue fairly successfully that I made some pretty stupid decisions.”

His wife Nancy said, laughing, “Yeah, we were so stupid.”

Music is what makes him happy, Terry Koch said. “It’s a heck of a lot more important than making good labels for potato chip bags for 40 years.”

Nancy Koch’s second husband was a law student. They couldn’t save any money while he was paying tuition. As soon as he graduated they split.

The Kochs met when they both worked at a bank — one of those small local banks that formerly kept the economy going in cities and towns across America. In 1983, Nancy and Terry married. By the end of that decade the bank had gone south, so both these 40-something college dropouts decided to go back and get their degrees. Student loans made it possible. Nancy studied nursing. Terry studied English and history but soon drifted into computer work.

After college he got a job at Blue Cross, she landed an entry-level position at a Milwaukee hospital. She was 47. Three years later, he got a well-paying position as a writer for a defense subcontractor in Providence, R.I. For the next seven years, Nancy worked as a nurse at a series of community health centers around Rhode Island. She loved the work, unconditionally. The pay wasn’t bad — about $50,000 — but the benefits were scanty. Terry wasn’t so happy: The Pentagon contract was canceled, and then the bursting of the tech bubble made it impossible to find similar full-time work.

“All my contacts were saying, you know, just ride it out, just ride it out, just ride it out. And eventually I stopped riding,” Terry Koch said.

“And then all the people that I had as contacts lost their jobs.”

He took one temporary job after another. By 2007, Nancy Koch had

“We never saved a lot of money because there wasn’t any to save.”

Nancy Koch

Nancy and Terry Koch take a walk outside their apartment complex.

wrecked her back: nursing is a physical profession. They felt they couldn’t afford to stay in New England, so they moved back to Wisconsin, where Nancy had a series of operations on her hip, back and neck.

Terry and Nancy Koch once had a retirement account, though today they can’t agree as to whether it had $10,000 or $20,000 in it. No matter; they cashed it in, paying taxes and the early-withdrawal penalty, and now it’s about gone.

He found a temp job in customer service for a company that made labels. Five years later he was still working there, still a temp.

“We never saved a lot of money,” Nancy Koch said, “because there wasn’t any to save.”

Terry Koch managed to get his student loans suspended; Nancy Koch’s were forgiven, because she went into nursing, but she had to count the outstanding balance as income, and pay taxes on it.

As early as he could — when he turned 62 in 2012 — Terry Koch began taking Social Security. There’s a cost to that: his benefit is just under $1,000 a month.

If he could have waited he’d be getting considerably more, because the benefit increases 6.75 percent for every year that it is deferred, up to age 70. Most Americans do not wait that long. The average Social Security benefit is about $1,461 a month.

Nancy Koch has tried to go back to work. “I’m looking, but nobody wants a 70-year-old,” she said. Last year she had a temporary, part-time job at the local public television station arranging its annual auction, and when it ended she was able to collect some unemployment insurance, but that’s over now.

The risk of living too long More and more people in their 60s are, like Nancy, staying at work or trying to return to the workforce.

Economists argue over the impact this has on younger workers — whether it suppresses wages for all, or blocks chances for advancement, or strengthens the economy. But only about one-quarter of employed Americans work continuously through their 50s and their early 60s in jobs with benefits, according to a study by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.

“It was surprising bad news,” said Munnell, who conducted the study.

Many older workers are being pushed out of old jobs, with benefits,

and taking whatever they can find.

With covid-19, the Kochs’ lives have contracted even further. Terry has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, so he has barely left the apartment. They watched incredulously as protesters demonstrated against Wisconsin’s shutdown orders.

Yet they are remarkably good-humored about their predicament.

They are, after all, children of the post-war generation, raised in an era of growing prosperity and everhigher expectations. And some of the irreverence that marked the 1960s refuses to be stamped out.

“You know, frankly, neither of us thought we’d be alive at this age,” said Nancy Koch, her face lighting up in delight.

Actuaries have a term for that: longevity risk. In other words, there’s a risk that you’ll live too long.

That’s what befell Gregory Bates — and he’s only 61.

Bates went to work for the local utility company in Milwaukee — now called WE Energies — when he was 18, as a file clerk, and, after four years in the Air Force, eventually worked his way up to budget analyst. He was the only black man in his office, and he never felt comfortable there. He had to take a medical leave when he developed stomach cancer. After he recovered and returned to work, he came down with non-Hodgkins lymphoma. He figured he didn’t have long to live and was fed up anyway with life in “corporate America.” So at the age of 52, he retired.

He sold his house and cashed in his 401(k), which had about $100,000 in it. The company that handled it for him neglected to withhold the early-withdrawal penalty, and by the time the IRS caught up with him several years later, he owed $46,000 in back taxes, interest and penalties.

By that time the money had all been spent. He bought a new car, gave some money to family members who needed it and, yes, went on a cruise because he thought he’d soon die.

“I went through a lot of money very quickly,” he said.

Bates, who is single and has moved in with his elderly mother, went back to college after he recovered his health for a second time, with the help of a student loan. He got a master’s degree and then worked for two years as a special-education teacher in the Milwaukee public schools, making about

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COVER STORY $40,000 a year. In October he had to go on leave because of a herniated disc in his back, but even as the pandemic was building this spring he was able to take a part-time job, paying $12 an hour, as a personal care provider with the nonprofit Volunteers of America. He still owes about $30,000 on the student loans.

He’s regretful and optimistic at the same time.

At first, he said, “I just took menial jobs because I didn’t feel like I could do those other jobs. I didn’t feel like I was qualified, or they were meant for me. So I think around 45, I found out that if I set my mind to it, I could do anything I want to do.”

He is determined to get a PhD before he dies.

“But I wish I had been more prepared for retirement,” he said.

“When you’re not prepared for it, when you’re young, you feel like you’re never going to be sick. You’re never going to be on disability. It’s a lack of preparation, education.

You’re never invincible. You never know. So just be prepared.”

The flaws of a 401(k) At one time, especially in a manufacturing state like Wisconsin, millions of retirees could count on pensions from their employers, to be added to Social Security benefits and personal savings. But pensions have been dwindling for 40 years, long since surpassed by individual retirement accounts. Such accounts are voluntary, which is a problem, and not accessible to everyone, which is a bigger problem.

Just 40 percent of working Americans aged 55-64 participate in a job-related retirement plan, according to a Stanford University study. Since the pandemic struck, as many as half of those workplaces have at least temporarily stopped making employer contributions — including Amtrak, Marriott and major universities, Ghilarducci said. She expects to see more and more people tapping into their 401(k)s early, putting themselves on the path to downward mobility in retirement.

The National Institute on Retirement Security argues that retirement accounts in the best of times are half as “efficient” as pensions.

The strength of a pension system is that pensions stop when the recipient dies. Thus those who die earlier help indirectly subsidize those who live longer.

With 401(k)s and other individual savings accounts, which collec-

tively are more expensive to manage than a pension plan, each worker has to provide for an unknowable number of years in retirement.

“Systems that depend on people making hundreds of decisions and getting them all right — they’re not going to succeed,” said Dan Doonan, head of the institute.

Julie Wegener is a 74-year-old retired physician and former college music director. She and her 84-yearold husband have a one-bedroom apartment in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan. She calls herself a social justice activist, a dedicated campaigner for single-payer health insurance.

Her first husband was an artist, and when he died of cancer he left no money behind. For years, she had a practice in Piermont, N.Y., where, she said, she was the go-to doctor for Medicaid patients. The payments she collected from Medicaid were so low that she never made much money: In New York in those years, before the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid fees were less than 60 percent of Medicare fees.

Eventually she gave up and followed her first love — music — and got a part-time job directing the music program at Dutchess Community College. She made about $40,000 a year. She and her current husband, a retired arborist, lived in New Paltz, N.Y. In 2013, they sold their house and bought the apartment in Manhattan, where they can live without owning a car. She retired the next year.

They pay $1,000 a month in condo fees and about the same amount for medical insurance and co-pays.

“It’s a crazy amount of money,” she said, and it eats up a large part of their Social Security, even though she waited until she was 70 to begin taking hers. They never eat out, never go to a movie, never take a cab.

In retirement she has been giving private piano lessons, to students who range in age from 8 to 88, and she made about $32,000 last year.

“I really have to work for the rest of my life,” Wegener said. “Because you’re not allowed to jump off the George Washington Bridge legally.”

As the coronavirus spread in New York, even just going to the laundry room in the apartment house began to seem too risky.

On March 21 they decided to move in with her son and his family in Portland, Ore. The next day, they left, with only carry-on luggage to cut down on waiting time in the airport.

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Gregory Bates, seen here outside his Milwaukee home, cashed in his retirement plan early after a cancer diagnosis, but that money has run out.

He now lives with his mother and still owes about $30,000 in student loans.

“I wish I had been more prepared for retirement,” he said.

for some, silver linings David Longabaugh, 62, retired in January from his job as a truck driver for a gravel firm in upstate Brooktondale, N.Y. He has about $10,000 in his 401(k). He has a $12,000 judgment against him for unpaid medical bills.

“I decided to retire now because my body’s been beat up so bad after 40 years of driving,” he said.

“The hardest part,” said his wife Tammy, 57, who is unable to work full-time because of a back injury she sustained while working in a dry cleaner’s, “has been when you’re fighting the big medical bills, even though you have insurance — okay? — and it’s hard to find money for anything else. And now that he’s retired it’s going to be even harder.”

They pay $1,000 a month in rent. David Longabaugh said he plans to go back to driving part-time in the summer, assuming the pandemic has abated, so he can make some money and keep his medical insurance. Tammy cleans house for an elderly man in their neighborhood.

David Longabaugh has COPD, so with the coronavirus at large he has been sticking to the house. “We keep him away from everybody,” Tammy said. She has been doing the grocery shopping for half a dozen of their older neighbors.

David plans to take Social Security this year, the earliest he can.

He’ll receive $1,136 a month. He counts himself as a conservative and thinks Congress should just get out of President Trump’s way.

Covid-19 has had a silver lining for him — under a provision of the Cares Act that some Republicans tried unsuccessfully to kill, he will receive an extra $600 a week in unemployment insurance through at least the end of July.

Unlike Gregory Bates, who lives with his mother, or Julie Wegener, who moved in with her son’s family, the Longabaughs have been able to stay in their own home. Their two grown daughters live several hours away in Pennsylvania. But Tammy was denied when she tried to make a disability claim because of her back, and she’s at least five years away from getting Social Security. David’s desire to keep working part-time is tempered by the nature of his work.

The problem is that physical and cognitive decline, which inevitably come with age, tend to arrive earlier for people with fewer economic resources. They are also harder for blue-collar workers to compensate for, or disguise. Sticky notes as reminders, working from home a few days a week, software to make computer screens more readable — these are not options an aging truck driver can turn to.

Still, David and Tammy are remarkably good-humored about their lot in life. What can you do but laugh when events have conspired to reward you at the end of your diligent working career with poor health, no resources and a big tear in the social fabric?

Social Security isn’t much, but David is taking it, even if he’d get more by waiting. “I’m going to get it now, because God only knows what’s going to happen in the next few years.” n

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Politics

GOP fears Senate loss over pandemic

BY S EUNG M IN K IM AND M IKE D E B ONIS

R

epublicans are increasingly nervous they could lose control of the Senate this fall as a potent combination of a cratering economy, President Trump’s handling of the pandemic and rising enthusiasm among Democratic voters dims their electoral prospects.

In recent weeks, GOP senators have been forced into a difficult political dance as polling shifts in favor of Democrats: touting their own response to the coronavirus outbreak without overtly distancing themselves from a president whose management of the crisis is under intense scrutiny but who still holds significant sway with Republican voters.

Republicans have privately become alarmed at the situation in key races where they are counting on GOP incumbents such as Sen. Susan Collins (Maine) and Thom Tillis (N.C.) to hold the line.

Multiple strategists said they believe GOP candidates will recover once the nation — and the presidential campaign — returns to a more normal footing, casting the November elections as a contest between Trump and presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden.

Democratic Senate candidates in the most closely watched races also could be benefiting from a lack of scrutiny and negative ads with the nation’s attention consumed by the pandemic.

But a return to normalcy ahead of the elections is far from a given as the death toll continues to rise, meaning the president’s handling of the pandemic could be the determining factor not only for his reelection but for Republicans’ ability to hold on to the Senate. In short, as goes Trump, so probably goes the Senate majority.

The emerging consensus of several Republican strategists is that GOP incumbents should be able to hang on in states Trump won in 2016 if the president can hang on to those states himself. That list includes North Carolina, Arizona and Iowa, which Democrats are heavily targeting this cycle.

Andrew Harnik/pool/Associated Press

Recent polls in key races have shown a shift toward Democrats The flip side for Republicans is that states Trump lost in 2016 — such as Colorado and Maine — could be out of reach. Many GOP strategists have already written off Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), barring a major shift, and some have doubts that Collins will be able to continue her trend of faring far better in elections than Republican presidential candidates she has shared the ballot with.

Republicans currently hold a 53-to-47 advantage in the Senate.

“The political environment is not as favorable as it was a few months ago,” said a Republican, one of a half-dozen officials working on Senate races who spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly assess the party’s outlook.

Of the 35 Senate seats up for

grabs this fall, Republicans are defending 23 of them. Strategists from both parties said the key battles for Republicans remain races in North Carolina, Arizona, Colorado, Maine and, to a lesser extent, Iowa. Republicans are banking on picking up at least one seat now held by a Democrat — Alabama, where Sen. Doug Jones won a special election in 2017 against a Republican challenger accused of sexual misconduct dating to the 1970s — but acknowledge they are playing defense in the vast majority of the marquee races.

Potentially competitive races looming in the second tier of Senate campaigns — where Republicans are also on the defensive — could pose an even bigger prob-

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), left, speaks with Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) before a hearing on new coronavirus tests on Capitol Hill this month. Some Republicans fear that Collins will be unable to defend her seat this fall.

lem for the GOP if the party is forced to spread resources throughout the country in a difficult political environment.

Both Senate seats are on the ballot in Georgia, a state where changing demographics are trending in favor of Democrats. In Kansas, Republicans fear that GOP candidate Kris Kobach could again emerge victorious from a primary but lose a statewide race, as he did in the 2018 race for governor.

And Senate Democrats’ ability to get popular Montana Gov. Steve Bullock to run against Republican Sen. Steve Daines revived a oncedead race into a closely watched contest, particularly as Bullock benefits from the wave of political goodwill voters have afforded to

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Politics state executives during the pandemic.

“It’s a good time to be a governor,” said Sen. Todd C. Young (RInd.), who heads the Senate Republicans’ campaign committee, though he vowed Daines would win in November.

Another GOP strategist acknowledged that Colorado, Arizona, Maine and North Carolina had become “incredibly competitive” but said there was little sense yet that Democrats would be able to seriously compete in the next tranche of states that Trump won handily in 2016.

Still, Democrats have benefited from two key developments, said Jessica Taylor, the Senate editor for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report: the emergence of Biden, not Bernie Sanders, as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee and emerging evidence that the public does not believe Trump is managing the pandemic effectively.

“We see this as at least a 50-50 chance for the majority to flip,” Taylor said.

The first quarter of 2020 was also a boon in fundraising for Democrats, with 10 challengers outraising GOP opponents in seats currently held by Republicans: Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Montana, North Carolina and South Carolina. The only closely watched race where the Republican incumbent raised more cash than the Democrat was Sen. Joni Ernst in Iowa.

Republicans warned there are clear obstacles — none more so than strong Democratic fundraising, and the fear that small-dollar Democratic donors will be more resilient in the economic downturn than high-dollar GOP donors.

Democrats also plan to attack GOP senators for their opposition to the increasingly popular Affordable Care Act, with 2020 marking the first Senate elections where Democrats can target a large swath of Republicans for votes early in the Trump presidency to repeal the health law.

“Democrats have expanded the Senate map and put Mitch McConnell’s majority at risk with impressive challengers, recordbreaking grass-roots fundraising, and a focus on the issues that matter most to voters like defending coverage protections for preexisting conditions,” said Stewart

Top: Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) is the only Republican in a closely watched race to raise more money than the Democratic opponent.

Below: Many GOP strategists have already written off Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) as he campaigns to win his seat again.

KEVIN DIETSCH/UPI

Susan Walsh/Associated Press

Boss, a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Republican senators are trying to assert the powers of incumbency — contending they are doing their jobs effectively for constituents during the pandemic — as they run public-service-announcement style campaigns.

During private calls with donors, through news coverage and in ads, Senate Republicans are touting the $2 trillion economic rescue package, known as the Cares Act, passed by Congress. It includes a popular small-business lending program that has become a centerpiece of Republican efforts to show how they have responded to the virus outbreak and its impact on the economy.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who is up for reelection in November, launched

a statewide ad campaign that featured constituents who benefited from the Cares Act. One Nation, an affiliated nonprofit linked to the main super PAC dedicated to electing Republicans to the Senate, also ran ads showcasing Collins’s efforts to secure personal protective equipment for her state.

“I think the one issue in this campaign — this particular election — is going to be how did we respond to this crisis? I think all other considerations are going to be secondary,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), who twice ran the Senate GOP’s campaign arm and is on the ballot this fall. “If you’re an incumbent, you can demonstrate how you would react to the crisis by actually doing it.”

Non-officeholders in campaigns this year — including Biden — have struggled to break through the pandemic-saturated news cycle.

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Yet GOP officials acknowledge it’s difficult — if not nearly impossible — for senators to separate themselves from the president, noting the damage done to Republicans Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and Joseph J. Heck of Nevada when they tried to distance themselves from an embattled Trump during the 2016 campaign.

In private, senior GOP officials have also expressed concern that senators weren’t getting credit for the popular federal aid that has been doled out nationwide during the pandemic, as voters have tended to direct praise instead to their own governors.

National Republican Senatorial Committee executive director Kevin McLaughlin stressed to donors on a recent conference call that GOP senators had to “subtly and respectfully” remind voters of the Senate’s accomplishments.

Already, national Republicans have mapped out a strategy to redirect anger about the coronavirus crisis away from the Trump administration and toward the communist regime in China.

In a private 57-page strategy memo distributed to candidates by the NRSC and leaked last month, a Washington-area Republican strategist advised GOP candidates to avoid defending the president and instead pivot to attacking China for the coronavirus.

The NRSC said the memo was simply part of a routine distribution of material to candidates. But GOP strategists said efforts to target China will continue throughout the campaign.

“I would expect Republican candidates to forcefully define China’s role in causing the chaos here that we now have in the United States and also highlight how some Democrats have a little too cozy relationship with China and seem reluctant to criticize the communist government for how they allowed this problem to fester,” said a GOP official familiar with party strategy.

But Republicans also believe the sinking economy will help determine the fate of incumbent GOP senators come November.

Several Senate Republicans have already stressed the need to carefully reopen businesses and other economic activity — warning of the long-term impact to the country if the lockdown continues indefinitely. n

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the fix

The GOP slowly turns on Fauci BY

A ARON B LAKE

A

t the beginning of the novel coronavirus outbreak — and for weeks afterward — there was one thing Americans could seemingly agree upon: Anthony S. Fauci.

Today, that’s considerably less the case.

While Fauci retains the faith of a strong majority of Americans, opposition from Republicans has crept up steadily over the past month or so, as conservative media figures and now President Trump have increasingly called his advice into question.

Two polls this past week reinforce that this skepticism is taking hold: Both a CNN poll and a CBS News poll suggest a significant decline in GOP regard for Fauci’s actions and expertise, when measured against other similar polls of Fauci in recent weeks.

While 84 percent of Republicans said they trusted the information they received from President Trump about the virus in the CNN poll, just 72 percent said the same about the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, while just 61 percent said the same about Fauci.

The newer CBS poll is even starker. While Republicans trust Trump by an 85-15 margin for coronavirus information, they are now evenly split on Fauci — 51-49.

That split in regard for Trump and Fauci is something that simply didn’t exist even a month ago.

A Fox News poll conducted in late March showed very little difference in GOP perceptions between the two. At the time, 85 percent of Republicans approved of Fauci’s handling of the coronavirus, vs. just 8

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The Washington Post

percent who disapproved. His 77-plus rating was about the same as that of Trump, for whom 86 percent approved and 13 percent disapproved (plus 73).

That gap, though, has progressively widened over the past month.

A Quinnipiac University poll in early April showed Republicans approved of Trump 89 to 10 and Fauci 77 to 8 — still sterling numbers for Fauci, but not quite on Trump’s level.

By late April, a Gallup poll showed 91 per-

This publication was prepared by editors at The Washington Post for printing and distribution by our partner publications across the country. All articles and columns have previously appeared in The Post or on washingtonpost.com and have been edited to fit this format. For questions or comments regarding content, please e-mail weekly@washpost.com. If you have a question about printing quality, wish to subscribe, or would like to place a hold on delivery, please contact your local newspaper’s circulation department. © 2020 The Washington Post / Year 6, No. 32

cent of Republicans approved of Trump on the virus, but just 71 percent approved of Fauci.

Early this month, Republicans in a Washington Post-University of Maryland survey said Trump had done and “excellent” or “good” job on the coronavirus by a 79-to-21 margin (plus 58), as compared to 68 to 25 (plus 43) for Fauci.

And now, the CBS poll shows the biggest gap yet — at least on the narrower measure of trust. n

Contents Politics 4 The Coronavirus 6 Books 18 Opinion 20 Five Myths 23

On the cover Illustration by RASHMI TYAGI for The Washington Post

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Opinions

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Tom Toles

Remembering Little Richard Chris Richards is pop music critic for The Washington Post.

Humanity has done plenty of wailing since the industrial revolution, but two screams ring out louder than the rest. The first one came in 1893 when Edvard Munch captured the fundamental loneliness of the human condition in a silent slurry of oil, tempera and crayon. Munch titled his horrific little painting “The Scream,” and we’ve since memorialized it by emblazoning it on our coffee mugs for all eternity.

Then, in 1955, Little Richard came along with something called “Tutti-Frutti.” He was offering a different kind of existential scream: one that funneled physical lust and spiritual transcendence into one scalding shriek. For Little Richard, existence was a ticklish torture. Temporality was a perpetual anticipation.

He had discovered the meaning of life and he spelled it right out for us: “A-wop-bopa-loo-mop-a-wop-bam-boom.”

Throughout the late 1950s, the young maestro remained the most thrilling voice on the planet, teaching his students how to howl into the universe.

He taught Paul McCartney and John Lennon how to scream.

He taught James Brown and Mick Jagger how to look great doing it. He was David Bowie’s idol and Prince’s prototype.

Some even tried to channel his scream without oxygen, including Jimi Hendrix, who once said he wanted to transpose it into electricity: “I want to do with my guitar what Little Richard does with his voice.”

Little Richard — born Richard Wayne Penniman in Macon, Ga., in 1932; and who died of cancer on May 9 at 87 — may not have invented rockand-roll, but “Tutti-Frutti” sure felt like the music’s big bang.

Like many of his peers, Little Richard was funneling gospel and blues into a new black art form that would change the sound of the world, but his voice is what made rock-androll explode. In her hallowed “Rock Encyclopedia,” critic Lilian Roxon begins Little Richard’s entry like this: “His pompadour was high and his

Associated Press

Little Richard, seen in 1966, funneled lust and spiritual transcendence into his voice.

hip action wicked when Elvis was still a pimply kid mowing lawns in Memphis.” She ends it like this: “He did it all first.”

Don’t pay too much attention to that word “first.”

Chuck Berry had already been vrooming up and down the charts when Little Richard first appeared in the greater public consciousness. The more important word is “all” — which, in addition to the vitality of Little Richard’s singing, includes the nuclear radiance of his songwriting, the pummeling tenacity of his piano playing, the playful heat of his lyricism, the

otherworldly flamboyance of his live show and the brilliance required to pull all that delirious charisma into fist-tight focus.

As his legend grew, Little Richard would describe himself as rock-and-roll’s originator, architect, king and queen. Reporters pestered him about his sexuality for decades, but whenever he described himself as an “omnisexual,” he seemed to be describing the music, too. In a Little Richard song, desire gushes in every direction. At first, his impassioned “bama lama bama loo”s make him sound like he’s jumping a censor’s hurdles to get on the radio. But ultimately, Little Richard’s hypersexual nonsense lyrics show us how lust defies language, how our most intense desires can become wild abstractions.

That’s the paradox encoded in Little Richard’s indelible wail, too: Our bodies never stop yearning for out-of-body experiences — except for the final one. Now that this colossus of human song has been released from this rocked-and-rolled world, we can only hope he finally found what he was screaming for. n

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