A6 eZ re K THE WASHINGTON POST.FRIDAy, MARCH 27 , 2020
the coronavirus pandemic
BY CAROL MORELLOAfter a slow start to a rapidly
spreading pandemic, U.S. embas-
sies and consulates around the
world are diverting most of their
resources to the task of evacuating
U.S. citizens.
In E cuador, the U.S. consul gener-
al and ambassador have gone to the
airport in the middle of the night to
smooth hitches for jittery Ameri-
cans departing on chartered flights.
The U.S. Embassy staff in Morocco
has handled baggage check-ins for
airlifts of American tourists.
Consular officers in Peru are con-
verting a hangar used by U.S. nar-
cotics control o fficers into a process-
ing center for evacuation flights.
And in Brazil, where 9 in 10 embassy
employees are teleworking, consul-
ar officers in the port city of Recife
got more than 100 vacationing
Americans off a “sick” cruise ship
with two infected passengers and
put them on a bus to the airport.
Similar scenes are underway at
many other diplomatic missions,
with the entire world under a State
Department do-not-travel advisory.
The suddenness with which
some countries sealed their borders
and suspended international flights
amplified an unprecedented chal-
lenge for the State Department. Its
routine crisis-response exercises for
natural disasters and civil unrest
typically envisioned getting Ameri-
cans and diplomats to safety in
nearby countries. In a world swept
by the coronavirus, nowhere is en-
tirely safe.
As lawmakers and maroonedtravelers complained that the State
Department wasn’t doing enough
to get people home quickly, diplo-
mats were enlisted for tasks nor-
mally handled by commercial air-
lines. Bilateral negotiations focus
on ways to maneuver around local
rules and regulations to allow emp-
ty a ircraft to fly rescue missions into
countries and depart with stressed-
out travelers.
“It’s never been on a global scale
like this,” a diplomat in Ecuador, a
veteran of 17 years in the Foreign
Service, said after apologizing for
sounding groggy a fter sleeping only
four hours the previous night. “This
requires a lot of creativity, talking
with the department, outreach to
American citizens.”
The State Department is scram-
bling to catch up. In January, it took
several days to arrange the evacua-
tion of 800 Americans. Every day
now, thousands of Americans board
chartered aircraft arranged by U.S.
diplomats. Since January, more
than 10,000 Americans have been
evacuated. At least 66 more flights
are scheduled in coming days.
Another 50,000 Americans have
notified U.S. embassies they need
help. Ian G. Brownlee, the principal
deputy chief of consular affairs, con-
ceded that the State Department’s
capacity is “strained.”
In some countries, large num-
bers of Americans are clamoring for
assistance. Honduras, Ecuador and
Peru, for example, each has thou-
sands of U.S. citizens seeking to get
on flights.
Though more than 1,000 Ameri-
cans have left Peru, the chargé d’af-faires, Denison K. Offutt, took to
Twitter this week pleading for pa-
tience.
“We are in this together, and to-
gether we will all get through this,”
he said in a video posted as the State
Department dispatched a team of
consular officers and a senior offi-
cial from the Bureau of Western
Hemisphere Affairs to oversee the
evacuation in Lima.
In Ecuador alone, 8,000 U.S. citi-
zens have expressed an interest in
being evacuated. About 120,
Americans are in the country, the
vast majority retirees residing
there.
The logistics can be complex.
Diplomats must line up approvals
from airports, the airlines and po-
lice. But passengers have to get to
the airport on their own before cur-
few falls, passing through as many
as 15 checkpoints.
A diplomat posted in Ecuador
said in a telephone interview that
the consular officials from the em-
bassy in Quito and the consulate in
Guayaquil have seen off every flight
since the first one March 19. The
staffers wear crisis-response vests
emblazoned w ith the American flag
and the words “U.S. Embassy.”
“I can’t guarantee we will see
every outbound flight, but we’ll try
to do so,” said the official, speaking
on the condition of anonymity be-
cause he, like others, wasn’t autho-
rized to speak publicly about logis-
tics. “My concern is, as the pandem-
ic spreads, more people will want
assistance. But we’re here for every
single person who wants us.”
[email protected]U.S. diplomats race to get thousands
of Americans home while they can
BY ISAAC STANLEY-BECKERA cadre of right-wing news sites
pulled from the fringes in recent
years through repeated mention
by President Trump is now taking
aim at Anthony S. Fauci, the
n ation’s top infectious diseases
e xpert, who has given interviews
in which he has tempered praise
for the president with doubts
about h is pronouncements.
Although both men are seeking
to tamp down the appearance of
tension — “ Great job,” Trump com-
mended the doctor during the
White House’s b riefing on Tuesday
— the president is increasingly
chafing against medical consen-
sus. He has found support from a
chorus of conservative commenta-
tors who h ave cheered his promise
to get the U. S. economy going
again as w ell as his decision to tout
possible coronavirus treatments
not yet approved by the U.S. Food
and Drug Administration.
“The president was right, and
frankly Fauci was wrong,” Lou
Dobbs s aid Monday on his show o n
the Fox Business Network, refer-
ring to the use of experimental
medicine.
Beyond prime-time television,
however, the disregard for expert
guidance being pushed by some
conservative and libertarian voic-
es goes further — a imed not simply
at proving Fauci wrong but at
painting him as an agent of the
“deep state” t hat Trump has vowed
to dismantle. The smear campaign
taking root online, and laying the
groundwork for Trump to cast
aside the experts on his own coro-
navirus task force, relies centrally
on the idea that there is no exper-
tise that rises above partisanship,
and that everyone has a n agenda.
Fauci, an immunologist who
graduated first in his class from
Cornell’s medical school, has been
the director of the National Insti-
tute of Allergy and Infectious Dis-
eases since 1984. Between 1983
and 2002, he was the 13th most-cit-
ed scientist among the 2.5 million
to 3 million authors worldwide
and across all disciplines publish-
ing in scientific journals, accord-
ing to the Institute for Scientific
Information.
Peter Barry Chowka, whose
Twitter bio boasts that he has been
retweeted by the president, r ecent-
ly referred to Fauci, who has ad-
vised multiple presidents of both
parties, as a “Deep-State H illary
Clinton-loving stooge.” Trump has
not brought these attacks to his
own Twitter feed, but he has sur-
faced previous pieces by Chowka,
including praise for Sean Hannity
of Fox News.
And the false caricature of Fauci
has been embraced in some of the
most avowedly p ro-Trump corners
of the Internet — places that seem
remote from mainstream dis-
course until they wind up in presi-
dential tweets or in a monologue
on Fox.
“Cross-pollination” between
fringe sites and m ore credible con-servative outlets occurs on news
aggregators such as the Drudge
Report, said Carl Cameron, who
spent more than two decades as a
reporter for Fox News before leav-
ing in 2017.
“These attacks do seem to get
attention from the h osts at Fox,” h e
said.
Already the Pew Research Cen-
ter has documented a remarkable
divergence of views about the cor-
onavirus outbreak based on news
consumption. N early two-thirds of
Republicans who turn to sources
that cater to right-leaning audi-
ences said that news outlets have
greatly exaggerated the pandemic,
while 42 percent of Republicans
who don’t f ollow such sources said
the same.
The attempt to discredit Fauci
draws on a resource for which
Trump has professed his “love” —
WikiLeaks. Among the emails
hacked by Russian agents and re-
leased by the anti-secrecy organi-
zation in 2016 was a message Fauci
sent in 2013 to one of Clinton’s top
aides, Cheryl Mills. He praised the
secretary of state’s “stamina and
capability” during her testimony
before the congressional commit-
tee investigating the 2012 attacks
in Benghazi, Libya.
At the end of last week, the
right-wing website Gateway Pun-
dit cited the email, saying it came
as “no s urprise” b ecause the doctor
was also encouraging states to
adopt restrictive measures that
were “crashing their economies”
and playing down hopes for possi-
ble coronavirus treatments. Jim
Hoft, the site’s editor, published
additional articles questioning
Fauci’s approach to past health
emergencies and chiding him for
his “disrespectful interview under-
mining President Trump.”
In an email, Hoft said, “I don’t
have a problem with more infor-
mation being shared about the
doctor.”
The appearance of tension be-
tween the president a nd the doctor
caused Fauci, in a radio interview
on Tuesday, t o say that “pitting one
against the other is just not help-
ful.” Trump also took steps to pres-
ent a united front, saying their
relationship has been “very good.”
Followers of the American
Thinker have not r eceived the m es-
sage. Chowka’s piece has generat-
ed nearly 20,000 interactions on
Facebook alone — more than the
typical well-performing story in
the mainstream media. It has
gained particular traction in
F acebook groups devoted to Fox
News personalities, suggesting an
overlapping a udience, as well a s in
state-specific groups, such as
Maine for Trump 2020 and New
York for Trump.
Separately, a meme has been
spreading in pro-Trump groups
that shows an image of Fauci with
his arm around House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), and the
question, “Look trustworthy to
you?”
The attacks have spread to otherright-wing sites, where Fauci
stands accused of trying to turn
the United States into “a police
state like China in order to stop
coronavirus.”
Some of the most prominent
conservative influencers, includ-
ing To m Fitton of Judicial Watch
and Bill Mitchell of “YourVoice
America,” have been amplifying
the conspiracy theories to their
hundreds of thousands of follow-
ers on Twitter. Both figures have
been retweeted by the president,
Fitton as many as 100 times.
Meanwhile, at least two con-
gressional candidates have partici-
pated in the s mear campaign. Also
spreading specious claims about
Fauci is a highly active account on
Twitter that has been featured by
the One America News Network
(OANN), a right-wing channel fa-
vored by the president that gained
a seat in the White House briefing
room in 2017. The account, which
uses the name Greg Rubini, dis-
torted 2017 comments from Fauci
warning that the Trump adminis-
tration would confront challenges
from infectious diseases to claim
that the doctor “made” and “fund-
ed” t he novel virus.
Last week, in spreading unsub-
stantiated claims a bout the origins
of the virus, Chanel Rion, an
OANN reporter and former politi-
cal illustrator for “anti-left c aucus-
es” w ho accused the news media of
spreading “Chinese Communist
Party narratives,” c ited “Greg Rubi-
ni, a citizen investigator and a
monitored source amongst a cer-
tain set in the D.C. intelligence
community.”
The same account was involved
in circulating the purported name
of the whistleblower in the
Ukraine s candal last fall.
The claims don’t have buy-in
from the Republican mainstream.
But attempts to parry them have
only illustrated their reach.
Over the weekend, Matt Whit-
lock, a senior a dviser t o the Nation-
al Republican Senatorial Commit-
tee, wrote on Twitter, “Shouldn’t
need to be said, but I personally
couldn’t care less if Dr. Fauci said
nice things to say about Hillary
Clinton.”
The “politicization of public
health” means it very much does
need to be said, according to Rob-
ert Faris, the research director at
Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center
for Internet & Society.
“Having Trump and Fauci on
the same public stage at the same
time is an untenable position for
right-wing m edia,” h e said. “Some-
thing’s g ot to give, a nd I don’t k now
what it is.”
The most reliable avenues these
outlets have for mainstream expo-
sure, Faris said, is to seed their
talking points into Fox News cov-
erage or to get the direct attention
of White House aides.
“They’re both plausible, though,
thankfully, we don’t seem to be
there y et,” h e added.
isaac.stanley-
[email protected]As Trump signals willingness to break
with experts, his base assails Fauci
JusTIn LAne/ePA-eFe/sHuTTersToCKPeople pass through a nearly empty Times Square on Wednesday in New York, where a statewide
shutdown of all nonessential businesses is in place. Most Americans support the U.S. government
providing financial assistance to Americans and small businesses, a poll finds.
to be worse than the Great Reces-
sion. Also, 55 percent of those in
this group say the economic
effects have been severe.
The concerns about the finan-
cial impact of the pandemic span
across the country as well as
across most income and demo-
graphic groups. Ye t the most
acute effect has been on blacks,
Hispanics, younger adults and
people with children at home.
About 4 in 1 0 blacks and
Hispanics alike say an immedi-
ate family member has lost a job,
compared with about 3 in 10
whites. Similarly, 40 percent of
those w ith children younger than
18 at home say their family has
experienced a layoff, compared
with 29 percent of those without
children. The poll finds that
39 percent of Americans younger
than 40 say that an immediate
family member has lost a job.
That compares with 31 percent
among those ages 40 to 64, as
well as 24 percent of seniors.Employment setbacks are
strikingly similar across the
states, regardless of whether res-
idents have been ordered to stay
home as much as possible. In
states without such orders,
31 percent say they or a family
member have been laid off, simi-
lar to 35 percent o f those in s tates
that have ordered people to stay
home. About half of residents in
both groups of states report a
family member who has had
hours or pay cut.
The Post-ABC poll was con-
ducted by t elephone March 22-
among a random national sam-
ple of 1,003 adults, 75 percent of
whom were reached on cell-
phones and 25 percent on land-
lines. Overall results have a mar-
gin of sampling error of plus or
minus 3.5 percentage points.
[email protected]
[email protected]emily Guskin and Alauna safarpour
contributed to this report.BY SCOTT CLEMENT
AND DAN BALZAmericans are feeling the eco-
nomic fallout f rom the spreading
coronavirus crisis, with a ma -
jority saying the outbreak has
caused a family member to lose
their job or face a reduction in
pay or hours — and even more
fearing a recession that could be
as bad or worse than the one
caused by the financial collapse
of 2008, according to a Washing-
ton Post-ABC News poll.
The survey finds 1 in 3 saying
they or an immediate family
member has been laid off, while
about half report a cut in work
hours or pay for someone in their
family. Among those who haven’t
suffered such setbacks, at least
half are concerned that they will
occur.
More than 9 in 10 Americans
say they think the coronavirus
outbreak is likely to cause an
economic recession. More than 6
in 10 are predicting that the
downturn will r ival o r eclipse the
Great Recession of a decade ago.
In their own communities,
more than 4 in 10 say, the pan-
demic already has had a “severe”
economic impact. That was the
sentiment of about half of resi-
dents in urban areas.
The nationwide survey con-
ducted Sunday through Wednes-
day illustrates the stark damage
the coronavirus outbreak has
caused in only a few weeks to an
economy in which Americans
had expressed record-high opti-
mism when it came to their
personal finances. The job con-
cerns were echoed Thursday in a
Labor Department report that
showed that 3.3 million people
filed for unemployment benefits
in the past week.
The poll finds strong and bi-
partisan support for two o f three
key parts of a $2 trillion stimulus
bill aimed at blunting the pan-
demic’s economic impact. The
Senate approved the measure on
a 96-to-0 vote late Wednesday.
More than 8 in 10 Americans
— across party lines — support
providing cash payments of
$1,000 or more to Americans
with annual incomes of less than
$100,000, and 9 in 10 support
providing billions in financial
assistance to small businesses.
But the public is split on
providing similar assistance to
large corporations, with 46 per-
cent in favor and 47 percent
opposed. The divide is also seen
between parties, with 54 percent
of Republicans supporting the
idea and 54 percent of Demo-
crats against it.
Partisans also split on their
perception of how badly the
pandemic will damage the U.S.
economy. Although more than 8
in 10 people of all major partisan
groups say a recession is likely,
more than 6 in 10 Democrats and
independents say it is “very like-
ly,” compared with about 4 in 10
Republicans saying so.
If a recession happens, 26 per-
cent overall are optimistic that it
will not be as bad as the Great
Recession that began in 2008,
while 33 percent think it will be
“about the same” and 33 percent
predict it will be worse. Demo-
crats are more than twice as
likely as Republicans to say that
they expect a recession that is
worse than that of 2008-
(43 p ercent vs. 1 8 percent). T hose
in urban areas are twice as likely
as those in rural areas to say the
same (41 percent vs. 20 percent).
Pessimism about the economy
peaks among people whose fami-
lies have already experienced job
loss or a cut in hours or pay.
Among this group, 4 1 percent s ay
they expect a potential d ownturn
Americans’ fears of recession are high
amid layoffs and pay cuts, poll finds
Source: March 22-25, 2020. Washington Post-ABC News poll of 1,003 adults with an error
margin of +/- 3.5 percentage points.Note: “No opinion” not shown.EMILY GUSKIN/THE WASHINGTON POSTOne-third of Americans say outbreak has caused them
or an immediate family member to lose their jobWide support for cash payments to Americans and
assistance to small businesses, but split on assisting
large corporationsMore than 9 in 10 expect pandemic to cause an
economic recession, with most saying this is ‘very
likely’WASHINGTON POST-ABC NEWS POLLQ: Because of the coronavirus outbreak, have you or has anyone in
your immediate family _____?Percentage who support and oppose the federal government doing each to
respond to the coronavirus outbreak (among U.S. adults)Been laid off or lost
their jobHad work hours or pay
cut0 20 40 60 80 100%33%51
53SupportCash payments to Americans with incomes less than $100kFinancial assistance to small businessesOppose0 20 40 60 80 100%86%12
53SupportOppose0 20 40 60 80 100%908
53Financial assistance to large corporationsSupportOppose0 20 40 60 80 100%464753Q: How likely do you think it is that the coronavirus outbreak will cause and
economic recession - do you think this is very likely, somewhat likely, not so
likely or not likely at all?Very likelySomewhat likelyNot so likelyNot likely at allNo opinion0 20 40 60 80 100%59%33324