COVID-19 LowLights

WaPo:

Navy reports first death of a sailor associated with aircraft carrier crippled by the coronavirus

NYT:

3 Vans, 6 Coolers, a Plane, a Storm and 2 Labs:

A Nasal Swab’s Journey

The backlog for Covid-19 testing in New Jersey and other parts of the country is getting worse, not better. From the nose of a patient on a mile-long line to a phone call days later, bottlenecks thwart its progress.

The Week:

Stop declaring premature victory against coronavirus

Over the past week or so, the direst possible futures for the novel coronavirus pandemic have seemingly receded. Though the U.S. has by far the greatest number of confirmed cases of any country (at time of writing about 558,000 cases and 22,000 deaths, which are almost certainly drastic underestimates), a recent analysis from the University of Washington revised its estimate of the predicted total American death count down to "only" about 60,400.

This has led many to question the necessity of all the social-distancing and lockdown measures that are wreaking economic havoc. But while a possibly lower death count is certainly good news, it would be wildly premature to declare victory now. America is not even close to finished with the first wave of infection, and we have done almost nothing to prevent a second.

Let's deal with the idiots first. Fox News conservatives and pudding-brained contrarians like former New York Times reporter Alex Berensonhave seized on the revised estimates to conclude the experts were wrong all along, and coronavirus is not as bad as they claimed. This is like a firefighter in a burning building saying that because his flesh has not been scorched off his bones, he can safely ditch all his fireproof gear. The researchers are clear that the estimated death toll has declined because all the lockdown measures have drastically cut the infection rate. The appalling failure of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio shows what happens to places that don't get on top of an outbreak quickly — they end up digging mass graves.