A conspiracy alleged T he U.S. indicted

embattled Venezuelan President Nicolás

Maduro on narcoterrorism charges. A

weeKend

still on the streets

as our dining-out options

shrink during the

pandemic, we still have

good food trucks.

In the News

tHe world

opposition leader Ben-

ny Gantz will be Israel’s

parliament speaker. A

tHe regIon

d.c. police staffing has

largely come back from

a retirement surge. B

CONTENT © 2020

The Washington Post

Year 143, No. 113

BusIness news.........................A

ComICs ........................................ C

lotterIes....................................B

oBItuArIes..................................B

opInIon pAges..........................A

sports ........................................ C

teleVIsIon .................................. C

weAtHer ..................................... B

world news.............................A

sports

more pain for

arena workers

many hourly workers

employed by vendors are

not getting paid. C

BY CHICO HARLAN

AND STEFANO PITRELLI

ROME — Italy’s nationwide lockdown is

showing the first small signs of payoff. The

number of coronavirus cases is still rising,

but at the lowest day-on-day pace since the

outbreak began. The World Health organi-

zation calls the slowdown encouraging. The

health chief in the hardest-hit region says

there’s “ light at the end of the tunnel.”

The temptation, for a cooped-up and

stressed-out country, is to embrace the first

sign that the crisis may at last be easing.

But while President Trump has talked

about revving up the U.s. economy by easter,

Italy has set no such timetable — a nd experts

say the nation is still at risk of the virus

resuming its extraordinary, deadly trajecto-

ry.

Italy was the first Western country to

contend with a mass outbreak and order a

see ItAly on A

For Italy, a delicate

calculation: When to

ease the strictures

BY ABIGAIL HAUSLOHNER,

REIS THEBAULT

AND JACQUELINE DUPREE

It b egan as a mysterious disease

with frightening potential. now,

just two months after America’s

first confirmed c ase, the c ountry is

grappling with a lethal reality:

The novel coronavirus has killed

more than 1,000 people in the

United s tates, a toll t hat is i ncreas-

ing at a n alarming rate.

As the highly contagious virus

has created clusters of illness,

from seattle to new York City,

death has followed in turn. on

Wednesday night, the country’s

largest city reported 88 new

deaths from covid-19, the disease

caused by the virus. As of Thurs-

day afternoon, Americans had

died in 42 states and territories

and the District, with punishing

increases in Louisiana and Michi-

gan. experts fear the worst is still

to come, pointing to a rapid accel-

eration of cases in communities

across t he country.

The Washington Post is track-

ing every known U. s. death, ana-

lyzing data from health agencies

and gathering details from family

and friends of the victims. In the

first 1,000 fatalities, some patterns

have begun to emerge in the out-

break’s epidemiology and its pain-

ful human impact. About 65 per-

cent of the dead whose ages are

known were older than 70, and

nearly 40 percent were over 80,

demonstrating that risk rises

along with age. About 5 percent

whose ages are known were in

see deAtHs on A

U.S. death toll,

sixth globally,

surpasses 1,

BY MICHAEL E. RUANE

A

fter her performance end-

ed, and the strains of

Bach, Randy newman and

an old klezmer song faded from

34th street, Jodi Beder sat on

her front porch with her cello

and blew a kiss to her fans on the

sidewalk.

People clapped and yelled

“Thank you Jodi!” from across

the street. They s aid they needed

it. she said she needed it too.

Beder normally plays her cello

for people in hospice care.

Many are in need of care, she

said.

“I think we need it enormous-

ly,” Beder said. “I’m administer-

ing treatment.”

Beder’s daily 30-minute cello

concert in Mount Rainier, Md.,

is one of hundreds of kind ges-

tures being made by people

across the nation to combat the

dislocation and isolation

brought on by the novel corona-

virus.

Te achers have been staging

car parades in communities

across the country where their

homebound students live.

In one Maryland neighbor-

hood, teachers from a neighbor-

hood school staged a 25-vehicle

parade.

“They sent us the route and

Across the U.S., crisis gives way to kindness

Small and varied acts of compassion connect neighbors in time of fear and isolation

BY CHRISTOPHER ROWLAND,

JON SWAINE

AND JOSH DAWSEY

new York is moving at u nprece-
dented speed and scale in a hu-
man experiment t o distribute t ens
of thousands of doses of anti-ma-
larial drugs to seriously ill pa-
tients, s purred b y political leaders
including P resident Trump to try a
treatment that is not proved to be
effective against the coronavirus.
With no proven treatment for
the coronavirus, and infections in
new York topping 37,000, health
experts say the Food and Drug
Administration has moved with
uncommon speed to authorize
new York’s sweeping plan to dis-
tribute the d rugs through hospital
networks.
Planning for such a complex
initiative would ordinarily take u p
to nine months, those experts say.
In new York, the U.s. epicenter of
the covid-19 pandemic, that time-
line has been compressed into
three days.
The effort has raised concerns
among health e xperts about safety
risks — including the danger of
fatal heart arrhythmia and vision
loss associated with the drugs —
and of raising false hopes in the
American public. But Trump’s di-
rect intervention into complex
medical issues, as well as new
York Gov. A ndrew M. C uomo’s em-
brace of the strategy, has generat-
ed popular excitement about the
drugs.
see drugs on A

Spurred by

Trump, unproven

drug regimen

is f ast-tracked

similar scenes have played

out in Te xas, Indiana, Illinois,

Pennsylvania and many other

places.

Restaurants have given away

food to employees and passers-

see KIndness on A

Batchelor said in an email. “It

had us... a little choked up too

to see how happy our children

were.”

“It was such a bright spot in

an otherwise difficult time,” she

said.

info in advance,” said stephanie

Batchelor, whose two children

attend Wayside elementary

school in Potomac, Md.

“The local families stood out-

side waving and cheering greet-

ings to their favorite teachers,”

mIchael s. WIllIamson/the WashIngton Post

Jodi Beder, a resident of mount rainier, md., plays the cello from her front porch on Wednesday.

Amid the coronavirus pandemic, Beder’s been playing 30 -minute concerts daily for her neighbors.

500K

1M

1.5M

2M

3M

Sources: Labor Department via FRED

Note: Seasonally adjusted

1967 2020

0

Weekly jobless claims

Oct. 1982

695,

March 2020

3,283,

March 2009

665,

More coverage

washington state: a ‘glimmer of hope’

where U.s. outbreak started. A

pregnancy: expectant mothers face

prospect of giving birth alone. A

global prisons: growing threat prompts

riots, crackdowns and releases. A

making wills: medical workers plan for

worst-case scenarios if they get ill. A

preparedness: Recommendation for

cohesive U.s. plan went unheeded. A

new job: closed by the virus, maryland

firm pivots to make masks, gowns. B

pumped for purell: a brief history of our

go-to hand sanitizer in a crisis. C

BY LIZ SLY, MICHAEL BIRNBAUM

AND KAREN DEYOUNG

BEIRUT — A s America’s rivals make gestures

of support for other nations stricken by the

coronavirus, the United states is losing its

traditional leadership role abroad at the

same moment that it’s struggling to contain

the virus at home, analysts say.

At a time of crisis when the world would

typically look to the richest and most power-

ful nation, the United states has instead

retreated into its own form of self-isolation,

with its president downplaying the severity

of the threat and top American officials

squabbling among themselves.

Instead, the United states’ rivals, notably

China and to a lesser extent Russia, have

been stepping up to offer aid to other

stricken nations, a role long fulfilled by the

United states in crises stretching back to

World War II.

see leAdersHIP on A

Self-isolation leaves

U.S. out of customary

leadership position

ABCDE

Prices may vary in areas outside metropolitan Washington. sU V1 V2 V3 V

Mostly cloudy 71/53 • Tomorrow: Rain 60/54 B8 Democracy Dies in Darkness FRIDAy, MARCH 27 , 2020. $

BY HEATHER LONG

A record 3.3 million Americans

applied for unemployment bene-

fits last week, the government

reported Thursday, as restau-

rants, hotels, barber shops, gyms

and other businesses shut down

in a nationwide effort to slow the

spread of the deadly coronavirus.

This surge in jobless claims

was the worst in the nation’s

history and nearly five times the

previous record, set in 1982.

economists say this is just the

beginning of a massive spike in

unemployment that could result

in more than 40 million Ameri-

cans losing their jobs by mid-

April.

There are echoes of the Great

Depression in the way the corona-

virus has devastated so many

businesses and consumers, trig-

gering mass layoffs and threaten-

ing to set off a chain reaction of

bankruptcies and financial losses

for companies large and small.

But what sets this downturn

apart is how rapidly the virus —

and the economic pain — have

spread, and it remains a wide-

open question whether this will

become a long-lasting slump or a

short-lived flash recession.

see economy on A

Jobless claims skyrocket to r ecord 3.3 million

ecONOmiStS wARN

mORe PAiN cOmiNG

Stocks continue to rally

o n stimulus optimism

BY ROBERT COSTA,

LAURA VOZZELLA,

JOSH DAWSEY

AND DAVID NAKAMURA

Te nsions between President
Trump and governors from states
hit hardest by the coronavirus
pandemic are rising at a time
when the White House is pushing
to loosen restrictions on social
distancing in parts of the country
due to concerns that they are hurt-
ing the economy.
Trump insisted Thursday that
Americans are eager to “go back to
work” and advised the governors
in a letter that his administration
is developing new guidelines that
will categorize the risk level for
each county in the nation — po-
tentially laying the groundwork
for less-affected areas to relax
some of the strictest measures.
But the president’s upbeat as-
sessment conflicts with warnings
from public health experts that
abandoning current restrictions
too soon could be potentially cata-
strophic. And his posture has dis-
tressed the l eaders in states where
the virus is spreading exponen-
tially — overwhelming hospitals,
exhausting medical supply stock-
piles and ravaging communities.
on Thursday, Washington Gov.
Jay Inslee (D) pleaded with Trump
during a conference call with the
governors to take more dramatic
federal action to secure medical
supplies for his state, one of the
hardest hit, according t o four peo-
ple familiar with the call.
After Trump told t he group that
his administration was ready to
be the “backup” f or states in crisis,
Inslee interjected: “We don’t need
a backup. We n eed a To m Brady,” a
reference to the super Bowl-win-
ning quarterback who has been
friendly with the president, said
those familiar with the exchange,
who like others spoke on the con-
dition of anonymity to describe
the private conference call.
Inslee called on Trump to use
see trumP on A

Governors

frustrated

with o≠er

of ‘backup’

antonIo masIello/agence FRance-PResse/getty Images

Covid-19 patients are treated i n an intensive care unit at the Casal Palocco Clinical Institute in Rome. Italy has been

hit hard by the coronavirus, with more than 8,000 deaths reported in 4^1 / 2 weeks. But the rate of spread looks to be

slowing: Cases were growing day-on-day this week at about 8 percent, compared with 20 percent two weeks ago.

9 in 10

americans s ay they think the

coronavirus outbreak is likely to cause

an economic recession. A