Thousands of Americans backed by rightwing donors gear up for protests. Thousands of people are preparing to attend protests across the US in the coming days, as a rightwing movement against stay-at-home orders, backed by wealthy conservative groups and promoted by Donald Trump, continues to take hold.
Washington Post Live. A grocery store owner’s account of serving desperate clients in New Orleans amid coronavirus. How Coronavirus Could Affect Donald Trump's Re-Election. Coronavirus: Gun sales are surging across U.S. David Stone snagged a cardboard box of .223-caliber ammunition from the shelf and slid it across the glass countertop, offering his go-to sales pitch: “Welcome to the biggest selection of ammunition in all of Oklahoma.”
“I’m not sure I can keep on saying that,” Stone said, explaining that the supply of goods at Dong’s Guns, Ammo and Reloading has been seriously depleted over the last few days. Boxes of ammo sit on shelves at Dong’s Guns, Ammo and Reloading in Tulsa, Okla. (Ian Maule / For The Times) “When I say sales have been booming,” he said, “it’s an understatement.” Gun sales are surging in many U.S. states, especially in those hit hardest by the coronavirus — California, New York and Washington. Stone’s packed store shares a small strip of road with a church, a cemetery and another gun shop, and in recent days he has sold several firearms to truckers traveling along Interstate 44 here in Oklahoma. Older people would rather die than let Covid-19 harm US economy – Texas official.
As Donald Trump pushed to re-open the US economy in weeks, rather than months, the lieutenant governor of Texas went on Fox News to argue that he would rather die than see public health measures damage the US economy, and that he believed “lots of grandparents” across the country would agree with him.
“My message: let’s get back to work, let’s get back to living, let’s be smart about it, and those of us who are 70-plus, we’ll take care of ourselves,” Lt Gov Dan Patrick, a 69-year-old Republican, told Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Monday night. “Don’t sacrifice the country,” Patrick said. “Don’t do that.” Patrick said he feared that public health restrictions to prevent coronavirus could end American life as he knows it, and that he is willing to risk death to protect the economy for his grandchildren. Farmhands needed - When borders close, who will pick the crops?
Editor’s note: The Economist is making some of its most important coverage of the covid-19 pandemic freely available to readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter.
To receive it, register here. For our coronavirus tracker and more coverage, see our hub NO SONG CAPTURES the mood of Germany in spring quite like the 1930 hit “Veronika, the spring is here”: “The girls are singing tra-la-la, the whole world is enchanted. Veronika, the asparagus is sprouting!” April in Germany is Spargelzeit, or “asparagus time”. Put the contest in context Election offer: 50% off your first year with The Economist Digital subscription: 1 year. View pricing Limited time only. The worst president. Ever. : Queen tells UK 'we will succeed' in fight. Media playback is unsupported on your device The Queen has said the UK "will succeed" in its fight against the coronavirus pandemic, in a rallying message to the nation.
In a rare speech, the monarch thanked people for following government rules to stay at home and praised those "coming together to help others". She also thanked key workers, saying "every hour" of work "brings us closer to a return to more normal times". The covid-19 crisis is going to get much worse when it hits rural areas. Arundhati Roy: ‘The pandemic is a portal’ Who can use the term “gone viral” now without shuddering a little?
Who can look at anything any more — a door handle, a cardboard carton, a bag of vegetables — without imagining it swarming with those unseeable, undead, unliving blobs dotted with suction pads waiting to fasten themselves on to our lungs? Who can think of kissing a stranger, jumping on to a bus or sending their child to school without feeling real fear? /society/2020/mar/25/release-prisoners-or-face-jail-pandemic-says-chief. Prisoners should be released in order to prevent UK jails being overwhelmed by the coronavirus pandemic, the head of the Prison Governors Association has told the Guardian.
Andrea Albutt said prisons were facing “unprecedented risk” and the release of some prisoners would help prevent disorder and slow the spread of the virus. On Tuesday the Ministry of Justice announced that all visits to prisons would be suspended and inmates would be confined to their cells in an effort to prevent the spread of Covid-19. Albutt warned that a combination of prison overcrowding, prisoner lockdown and staff shortages as a result of prison workers needing to isolate themselves meant that the system was facing unprecedented pressure.
“Overcrowding, poor regime, reduced contact with family because we’re not having visits anymore – these are all things that can introduce instability,” she said. Albutt said jails were already severely overcrowded, with prisoners sharing cells designed for a single person. What the 1918 flu pandemic can teach us about coronavirus drug trials. Sometimes the parallels between this pandemic and previous ones are uncanny.
Take hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malarial drug that regulatory agencies all over the world are now hastily authorising for the treatment of hospitalised Covid-19 patients. Outside hospitals, Donald Trump and the Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, have expressed enthusiasm for the drug, people are breaking social distancing rules to get it, and there have been cases of poisoning due to inappropriate self-medication. The run on hydroxychloroquine is the result of a small trial being conducted at a hospital in Marseille that, though promising, has not yet provided the required standard of proof that the medicine works for Covid-19 – let alone information about when it works, or in what doses. Larger trials of this and other treatments are under way, but won’t report even preliminary findings for another week.
Plus ça change. To date, they have published results on 80 patients. It may do. The Coronavirus Inflicts Its Own Kind of Terror. Coronavirus response. Bill Gates: Here’s how to make up for lost time on covid-19. Bill Gates on Fighting Coronavirus.