A20 eZ re THE WASHINGTON POST.SATURDAy, MARCH 21 , 2020
bitschek said, “be around people
but not be around people at the
same time.”
“ You just have to find a way to
calm yourself down,” she said, re-
citing a list of her own activities
that included meditation, sleep-
ing and eating h ealthily.
The worries creep in, neverthe-
less.
Both women work at National
Geographic and wonder whether
the e conomy w ill ever recover, a nd
whether they will be able to return
to the projects they were working
on before t hey were sent home.
“It’s just a big change,” Ku-
bitschek said.
A few miles n orth, on a ballfield
in friendship Heights, John
Springer, 57, an editor at a think
tank, hit balls to his 10-year-old
son, Alex, who stood by himself on
an otherwise deserted field.
It was a needed break in a week
in which Springer found himself
forced to work at home while also
trying to be a decent parent.
“A t the end of the day, you end
up feeling like you didn’t do very
well at either,” he said. “A nd to-
morrow it will feel the same. This
is not sustainable.”
He turned and hit another pop
fly to his son, and then another, as
dusk settled and s oon t hey headed
back home.
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]National Airport, seagulls cours-
ing through the air and ducks
making slow circles in the water
below.
“frankly, I just had to get out of
the house for a little while,” she
said.
Everywhere, it seems, time is a
constant topic of conversation. As
in: How l ong w ill i t be b efore every-
one can go back to their office?
Before their kids return to school?
Before r estaurants reopen?
Before a semblance of familiar
life returns?
Bob Guidos, 54, a corporate di-
rector of regulatory affairs, said he
focuses on questions that he can
answer, such as when to work,
where to buy toilet paper and
where h e can exercise now that his
apartment building h as closed the
gym.
“Everything else, you have no
control over,” he said, as he lifted
eight-pound weights in his new
workout location — a grass patch
in Logan C ircle — w hile h is t rainer
kept a watchful eye from 15 feet
away.
A few yards a way, a man sat on a
bench reading a book. Another
man on another bench ate soup
from a takeout container. A few
yards from him, another man
stared a t his phone.
Beatrice Becette, 25, and Cathe-
rine Kubitschek, 24, were doing
“stiletto squats,” happy to escape
their apartments and, as Ku-borhood of marshall Heights, re-
lies on what health experts would
consider wishful thinking when
he claims that he and his circle do
not feel especially vulnerable to
infection. The virus, he tells him-
self, only attacks those with
enough m oney to travel.
“rich people get it,” h e said. “We
don’t go anywhere other than our
own n eighborhoods.”no end in sight
on Day 3 of “WfH” — the new
shorthand for “working from
home” — mary Beth Corrigan
sensed that her two cats seemed
unsettled by a change in routine
that meant she and her husband
were not leaving their house in
old Town.
“one of them keeps moving
around and won’t stay still,” said
Corrigan, 58, who works for a not-
for-profit. “He’s like, ‘I’m happy
you’re here. But why are you
here?’ ”
By early afternoon, she decided
she’d had enough. She walked
over to old To wn’s waterfront, sat
on some rocks and found a mea-
sure of solace in a view that includ-
ed a plane taking off from reaganbeen put on h old.
“Nobody can come in and no-
body can go out unless it’s neces-
sary,” said Washington, 50, as she
stood outside a Safeway on Ala-
bama Avenue SE. Her kids, she
said, were still in their beds as of
1:30 that afternoon when she left
to buy g roceries.
“This is a time for family and
unity, time for home-cooked meals
and being together,” said Wash-
ington, the letters on her black
baseball cap spelling “J-E-S-U-S.”
“When you’re family, at least you
know where your germs came
from.”
A c ouple of miles north on D ivi-
sion Avenue N E, raymond Coates,
60, a contractor, said maintaining
distance f rom people was his most
taxing challenge. Earlier that day,
he saw a woman struggling to
carry an empty oversized carton
down her stoop to a trash can.
When he offered to help, she gave
him a look and said, “No thanks.”
The woman relented when he told
her the box was long enough that
they would be s afe if each t ook t he
opposite e nd.
Coates, who lives in the pre-
dominantly working-class neigh-the coronavirus outbreak
for workers helping with high-
risk procedures such as intuba-
tions of infected patients, which
sends sprays of droplets into the
air, power air-purifying respira-
tors or PAPrs are recommended.
But as the number of patients
increases, many hospitals have
put i n to place protocols that a llow
for the use of N95 masks in these
situations.
The American medical Associa-
tion said in a statement friday
that this situation of workers
wearing a single mask for a full d ay
and c leaning them o r sewing their
own p rotective g ear is not s ustain-
able, and it called on the Trump
administration to “pull every le-
ver” t o secure supplies.
“A nything less is unacceptable
at this critical juncture,” AmA
President Patrice A. Harris said.
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[email protected]supply i n the i nterim.”
Amid the shortages, doctors
across the country are scrambling
to secure their own masks. The
New York City d octor said a physi-
cian friend in Seattle had mailed
her h alf a dozen N95 masks. When
another doctor with a relative in
Ta iwan said s he had a l ine on some
N95 masks, other physicians ea-
gerly a sked f or 50 o r 100.
“She said, ‘I got a guy selling
them for $3 a piece, who’s i n?’ ” t he
New York City doctor said with a
laugh. “It sounds like a drug d eal.”
Standards set by medical asso-
ciations say that health-care staff
conducting testing for covid-
should have gloves, gown, g oggles,
disposable face shields, and N
masks — which are fitted and can
filter extraordinarily small parti-
cles such as viruses. But at many
testing sites, they are given only
looser-fitting surgical m asks.cal m asks m ay b e running low.
“There is huge concern that
we’ll run out of everything soon,”
she said, noting that the number
of confirmed covid-19 cases in
New York h ad doubled o vernight.
Some health-care systems have
gone further to conserve supplies.
At Beth Israel Lahey Health in
the B oston area, w orkers were told
this week of “extreme shortages”
and asked to wear only single-use
protective equipment “for as long
as they can tolerate during their
shift.” They were also asked not to
discard any surgical masks, N
respirators or eye protection but
to place the used ones in special
bins to be saved.
“BILH is investigating p otential
options for mask sterilization and
future repurposing,” according to
a copy of the memo obtained by
The Washington Post. “This is not
currently active b ut we are storingperiods of time. As a last resort, the
CDC suggested, bandannas could
be used in place o f masks.
Health-care workers say those
guidelines are insufficient to pro-
tect them a gainst a virus a s deadly
as covid-19. In addition, they say,
more test kits need to be made
available to catch infections
among doctors a nd nurses earlier.
one doctor in N ew York C ity, a n
internist in her 30s who spoke on
the condition of anonymity be-
cause s he did n ot have permission
from her workplace to speak pub-
licly, said her facility was now fol-
lowing those guidelines and that
surgical masks, rather than the
more protective N95 masks, were
being used in most cases. She said
she was reprimanded for wearing
a leftover N95 mask because it
might make o thers feel their surgi-
cal masks were inadequate. She
added that now even those surgi-“If I sound angry,” she said, “I
am.”
President Trump has an-
nounced steps in recent days to
address the nation’s dwindling
supplies of protective equipment
for health-care workers — autho-
rizing the release of emergency
stockpiles a nd w orking with man-
ufacturers to ramp up production
in a wartime-like effort. But
health-care workers on the front
lines are voicing f rustration — a nd
panic — that such help may arrive
too late. If they can’t stay healthy,
they say, t he w hole system will fall
apart.
The Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention earlier this week
loosened its minimum require-
ments for how personal protective
equipment should be used in times
of shortages, suggesting that cer-
tain items be used only in risky
procedures or for more extendedBY ARIANA EUNJUNG CHA
AND MICHAEL E. MILLERmedical associations and
unions pushed back friday
against new federal guidelines for
conserving and reusing masks,
saying t hey will leave them unpro-
tected against a dangerous infec-
tion carried by waves of patients
already a t their doors.
“Needless t o say, t his is f righten-
ing for our staff,” Katie oppen-
heim, chair of the union for Uni-
versity of m ichigan nurses, said on
a conference c all with r eporters.
randi Weingarten, president of
the A merican federation o f Te ach-
ers, which represents 112,
health professionals, described
the delays in procuring additional
equipment — when officials knew
from the experience of other coun-
tries this would b e a problem — a s
unethical.
Front-line health workers push back against the CDC’s new mask guidelines
indoors.
Worst of all, perhaps, no one
knows when it will end.
Beyond a near-universal fear of
catching the virus, anxieties can
take varying forms depending on
the neighborhood. In affluent Zip
codes such as old To wn Alexan-
dria and friendship Heights, a
recurring source of agita is how to
not go insane while getting work
done and parenting children.
“our stir-crazy prevention plan
is to get outside for a long walk or
hike every day,” s aid Amina Sarraf,
45, a creative content manager
who has b een housebound in falls
Church since last friday.
She and her husband, Darius,
take turns keeping their 8-year-
old son occupied, entertained and
educated.
The lessons have included how
to strip and remake a bed.
“Landscaping class” is their
new term for yard w ork.
The boy has been poring over
ranger rick magazine, she said,
and can now “go toe to toe with
anyone on o rangutan knowledge.”
Lost jobs and growing worry
In more modest neighbor-
hoods, the prevailing fear is about
the a vailability of work — w hether
jobs that have been lost will be
recovered anytime soon, and how
to pay bills in t he meantime.
Until this week, Ana Velasquez,
47, was a cook and server at El Sol,
a mexican restaurant in Silver
Spring. But with the restaurant
now open only for to-go orders,
there’s n o work for h er.
on Wednesday, Velasquez set
up a table near her apartment
building in Langley Park, selling
peeled mangos and tacos from the
restaurant.
Sales were slow.
“People don’t have money,” Ve-
lasquez said of her neighborhood,
which includes many Latino im-
migrants who have lost jobs as
restaurants and other businesses
across the region have closed.
“They can’t w ork.”
A mile away, a t a playground o n
the g rounds o f an a partment com-
plex, seven middle school kids as-
sembled at the top of a yellow
slide.
“Look who’s coming!” said one,
as five more j oined t hem.
As a blue-gloved maintenance
man sprayed disinfectant nearby,
two boys squared o ff f or a round of
slap-boxing, apparently uncon-
cerned about s kin-to-skin contact.
Another kid offered an extended
elbow as a greeting to a friend,
who grabbed his h and anyway.
“A hh, coronavirus!” the boy
shouted i n mock horror.
When an ice cream t ruck pulled
up, a 13-year-old boy bought a bag
of m&m’s and shared them one at
a time with his friends. from in-
side the truck, George mensa said
the warming weather usually
means m ore sales. Not now.
“They don’t want to be in con-
tact,” he said of his customers,
fretting over how he will pay his
bills a nd feed his kids. fortunately,
he said, his wife works at a liquor
store, w here sales are steady.
T anya Washington has b een un-
employed f or six months and does
not expect her job prospects to
brighten any time soon. Now she
must also contend with the chal-
lenge of sharing her Southeast
Washington apartment with two
teenage boys and a daughter
whose beauty school classes have
regIon from A
Region
struggles
to find
a r hythm
JAHI CHIKweNdIU/THe wAsHINgToN posT
People gather for conversation at the Lake Anne Plaza Coffee House and Wine Bar in reston, Va., which is open for walk-up window and patio service.MArVIN JosepH/THe wAsHINgToN posTToNI L. sANdys/THe wAsHINgToN posT
officiant Cina Dabestani prepares to marry Leonardo Taylor and
Ziyah Smith in Fairfax, Va., earlier than their planned ceremony.“People don’t have
money. They can’t
work.”
Ana Velasquez, a restaurant cook
and server until this weekMiddle schoolers p lay outdoors
at the University gardens
Apartments in Langley Park,
Md., on Wednesday. As a
maintenance worker sprayed
disinfectant nearby, the kids
joked about coronavirus.