Italian death toll overtakes China’s as virus spreads
ROME — Italy’s death toll from the coronavirus outbreak eclipsed China’s on Thursday as the scourge extended its march across the West, where the United States and other countries increasingly enlisted the military and improvised at every turn to get ready for an onslaught of patients.
In the U.S., the Army prepared mobile military hospitals for deployment in major cities. In Madrid, a four-star hotel was turned into a hospital. Medical centers around the United States set up drive-thru testing sites that drew long lines of motorists waiting for nurses to swab their nostrils.
As the outbreak spread westward, it infected at least one European head of state: Monaco’s 62-year-old Prince Albert II, who continued to work from his office. And it appeared to be opening an alarming new front in Africa, where health care in many countries is already in sorry shape.
At the United Nations in New York, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the world is “at war with a virus” and warned that “a global recession, perhaps of record dimensions, is a near certainty.”
“If we let the virus spread like wildfire — especially in the most vulnerable regions of the world — it would kill millions of people,” he said.
Celebrities get virus tests, raising concerns of inequality
WASHINGTON — Celebrities, politicians and professional athletes faced a backlash this week as many revealed that they had been tested for the coronavirus, even when they didn’t have a fever or other tell-tale symptoms.
That’s fueling a perception that the wealthy and famous have been able to jump to the head of the line to get tested while others have been turned away or met with long delays.
The concerns over preferential treatment underscore a fundamental truth about inequalities baked into the American health care system — those with the financial means can often receive a different level of service.
Asked about the issue Wednesday, President Donald Trump said the well-to-do and well-connected shouldn’t get priority for coronavirus tests. But the wealthy former reality star conceded that the rich and famous sometimes get perks.
“Perhaps that’s been the story of life,” Trump said during a briefing at the White House. “That does happen on occasion. And I’ve noticed where some people have been tested fairly quickly.”
Joe Biden, nominee-in-waiting. And waiting. And waiting.
WASHINGTON — In the three weeks since his blowout win in the South Carolina primary, Joe Biden has emerged as the Democratic presidential nominee-in-waiting. But, amid the uncertainty of the coronavirus pandemic, put the emphasis on waiting.
Biden holds an essentially insurmountable delegate lead over his last remaining rival, Bernie Sanders, yet the Vermont senator remains in the race. And with several states delaying their primaries to avoid the spread of the COVID-19 virus, Biden can’t reach the required majority of pledged convention delegates until May or June.
Yet the former vice president, who proudly calls himself a “tactile politician,” can’t chase those votes in public because he’s essentially confined to his Delaware home like any other American in a quasi-national quarantine. His new campaign manager and her staff are working from home, too.
For now, Biden’s campaign has little choice but to embrace an unprecedented political purgatory.
“Three weeks ago, we were on the verge of collapse as a campaign, so this is a very recent phenomenon,” said Biden senior adviser Anita Dunn, insisting that the 77-year-old candidate remains focused on playing a productive role in the coronavirus response and sewing up a nominating fight that he doesn’t see as finished.
