The New York Times - USA (2020-07-28)

VOL. CLXIX.... No. 58,768 © 2020 The New York Times Company TUESDAY, JULY 28, 2020

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The return of Major League

Baseball took a troubling turn on

Monday when a looming threat

became reality: an outbreak of

positive coronavirus tests within

a team.

While league officials said there

were no plans to suspend or can-

cel the season — which began just

last Thursday — two games were

postponed on Monday after the

Miami Marlins learned that at

least 14 members of their trav-

eling party, including 12 players,

had tested positive for the virus.

The Marlins’ games against the

Baltimore Orioles on Monday and

Tuesday were postponed, as was

the Yankees’ game on Monday in

Philadelphia, where the Marlins

spent the weekend.

“The health of our players and

staff has been and will continue to

be our primary focus as we navi-

gate through these uncharted wa-

ters,” Derek Jeter, the Marlins’

chief executive, said in a state-

ment, adding that the team

needed to “take a collective pause

and try to properly grasp the total-

Baseball’s Nightmare: One Team, 14 Infections

By TYLER KEPNER Casting a Pall on the

Quest for Normalcy

Members of the Miami Marlins on Sunday. An outbreak forced Monday’s game to be postponed.

JAMES LANG/USA TODAY SPORTS, VIA REUTERS

Continued on Page A

CHICAGO — The latest count of

new coronavirus cases was jar-

ring: Some 1,500 virus cases were

identified three consecutive days

last week in Illinois, and fears of a

resurgence in the state even led

the mayor of Chicago to shut down

bars all over town on Friday.

But at the same moment, there

were other, hopeful data points

that seemed to tell a different

story entirely. Deaths from the vi-

rus statewide are one-tenth what

they were at their peak in May.

And the positivity rate of new co-

ronavirus tests in Illinois is about

half that of neighboring states.

“There are so many numbers

flying around,” said Dr. Allison Ar-

wady, the commissioner of the

Chicago health department. “It’s

hard for people to know what’s the

most important thing to follow.”

This is a pandemic that has

been told in harrowing stories

from hospitals, factories, nursing

homes and meatpacking plants.

But as the crisis stretches on, it is

also unfolding in an increasingly

complex spread of numbers.

Six months since the first cases

were detected in the United

Dizzying View

Atop Mountain

Of Virus Data

By JULIE BOSMAN

Continued on Page A

On an autumn Friday not long
before the 2018 elections, Susan E.
Rice was traveling through the
Phoenix airport and watching
from afar as Justice Brett M. Kav-
anaugh moved steadily toward
confirmation. The convulsive Sen-
ate battle had reached a climax,
and for Ms. Rice’s party an unhap-
py one: Senator Susan Collins, the
Maine Republican, had just an-
nounced her support for Justice
Kavanaugh, effectively sealing
his victory.
When a former White House
colleague tweeted plaintively, ask-
ing who might take down Ms.
Collins in the 2020 election, Ms.
Rice fired off a two-letter reply:
“Me.”
The message excited Ms. Rice’s
followers, startled her friends and
puzzled Democratic Party lead-
ers, most of whom were surprised
to learn the former national secu-
rity adviser had any interest in
electoral politics. Party strat-
egists were already in the process
of recruiting a challenger for Ms.
Collins, and Ms. Rice had not been
on their radar as an option.
Though she had family roots in
Maine, she did not even live in the
state.
In public, Ms. Rice did little to

clarify her intentions, and she

made no overtures to the Demo-

cratic Senatorial Campaign Com-

mittee. When Ms. Rice announced

several months later that she had

decided against running for fam-

ily reasons, most Democrats con-

cluded she had never given it real

consideration.

They were wrong: Before rul-

ing out the race, Ms. Rice had qui-

etly explored the idea of battling

Ms. Collins for weeks, seeking ad-

vice from seasoned politicians in

Maine, friendly operatives in

As Rice Tiptoes Into Politics,

Her First Race Could Be for V.P.

By ALEXANDER BURNS

Susan E. Rice is a contender for

Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s ticket.

WIN MCNAMEE/GETTY IMAGES

Continued on Page A

WASHINGTON — Senate Re-

publicans and the White House on

Monday threw their support be-

hind a substantial cut in jobless

aid for tens of millions of Ameri-

cans laid off amid the pandemic,

proposing a weekly reduction of

$400 to a benefit that has cush-

ioned the nation’s economy even

as coronavirus cases continue to

rise across the country.

The proposal was part of a $

trillion opening bid that would

have to be reconciled with Demo-

crats, who are pushing a recovery

package that would spend three

times as much and extend the

$600 per week in extra unemploy-

ment aid through the end of the

year.

Economists say the money,

slated to expire this week, has pro-

vided a crucial economic buffer

for the unemployed, and that low-

ering the payments could have a

cascade of damaging effects

across the economy. But Republi-

cans contend that it is too gener-

ous, discouraging Americans

from returning to work and ham-

pering a recovery.

The Senate Republicans’ deci-

sion to embrace the decrease re-

flects the predicament in which

they find themselves amid a wors-

ening pandemic and continued

economic recession, little more

than three months before Election

Day. With a small but vital bloc of

conservative senators opposed to

providing any more federal coro-

navirus aid, the party has strug-

gled to agree on how to stabilize

the battered economy, leaving

Democrats with crucial leverage

for an intense set of negotiations

over the relief package.

Even as Republicans rolled out

their proposal on Monday

evening, Mark Meadows, the

White House chief of staff, and

Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury

secretary, were huddled in

G.O.P. RELIEF PLAN

SLICES EXTRA PAY

FOR UNEMPLOYED

PART OF $1 TRILLION BILL

Democrats Balk at a Bid

to Lower a Weekly

Benefit by $

By EMILY COCHRANE

and JIM TANKERSLEY

Continued on Page A

POOL PHOTO BY JONATHAN ERNST

CAPITOL FAREWELLRepresentative John Lewis’s coffin in the Rotunda on Monday. Speaker Nancy Pelosi said it was fitting he join “this pantheon of patriots.” Page A17.

A college degree at 19. A medi-

cal school graduate with a Ph.D. at

27.

By the time he completed train-

ing in vascular surgery in 2014, Dr.

Sapan Desai had cast himself as

an ambitious physician, an entre-

preneur with an M.B.A. and a pro-

lific researcher published in medi-

cal journals.

Then the novel coronavirus hit

and Dr. Desai seized the moment.

With a Harvard professor, he

produced two studies in May that

almost instantly disrupted multi-

ple clinical trials amid the pan-

demic.

One study’s findings were par-

ticularly dramatic, reporting that

anti-malaria drugs like hydroxy-

chloroquine, which President

Trump promoted, were linked to

increased deaths of Covid-19 pa-

tients. But that study and another

were retracted in June by the re-

nowned journals that had pub-

lished them, weeks after re-

searchers around the world sug-

gested the data was dubious. Dr.

Desai, who declined to share the

raw information even with his co-

authors, claimed it was culled

from a massive trove acquired by

Surgisphere, a business he

started during his residency.

The now-tainted studies helped

sow confusion and erode public

confidence in scientific guidance

when the nation was already

deeply divided over how to re-

spond to the pandemic. And the

anti-malaria drugs cited in the pa-

pers have continued to generate

controversy, as new research

prompted some scientists to peti-

tion for expanding their use

against the coronavirus, despite

Food and Drug Administration

warnings against them.

While the journal debacle has

shaken the broader scientific

community, many people who

have known Dr. Desai, 41, de-

scribed him as a man in a hurry, a

former whiz kid willing to cut cor-

ners, misrepresent information or

embellish his credentials as he

pursued his ambitions.

In interviews, more than a doz-

en doctors who worked with him

during training and residency

said they had often found him to

be an unreliable physician, who

seemed less interested in patient

care than in the medical journal he

founded and his company,

branded early on as a medical

Behind 2 Covid Studies, Big Talk and Big Plans

By ELLEN GABLER

and RONI CARYN RABIN

Retracted Papers Lead

to Questions About a

Doctor’s Rise

Continued on Page A

JEFFERSON, Ga. — When Jen-
nifer Fogle and her family moved
from Indiana to Georgia 13 years
ago, they settled in Jefferson, a
small, handsome city an hour’s
drive from Atlanta, because they
had heard about the excellent
schools. And until recently, they
had little to complain about. The
teachers are passionate and com-
mitted, and the facilities rival
those found at some private
schools.
But in recent days Ms. Fogle
found herself uncharacteristically
anxious, after learning that Jeffer-
son City Schools planned to offer
face-to-face instruction in the
midst of a resurgent coronavirus
pandemic that has seen thou-
sands of new cases reported daily
in Georgia.

As other districts around the

state delayed their back-to-school

days or moved to all-remote learn-

ing, Jefferson school officials an-

nounced they were sticking with

their Friday start date, one of the

earliest in the nation. And while

school officials said they would

“strongly encourage” masks for

students and teachers, they

stopped short of making masks

mandatory.

Ms. Fogle, 46, a stay-at-home

mother, thinks these decisions are

unwise. But after weighing her op-

tions, including online education

promoted by the district but

taught by a private company or

the state, she decided it best to let

her two teenage children embrace

the risks and physically attend

Disputes Over Return to Schools

Peak Early in Small Georgia City

By RICHARD FAUSSET

Continued on Page A

Winemakers in France are — sadly —
sending their surplus product off to
another life as hand sanitizer. PAGE A

INTERNATIONAL A11-

The Fate of Excessive Drink

The Compañía Nacional de Danza’s

program looked like business as usual

when the dancers went onstage, but it

came after months of limited activity

and strict safety measures. PAGE C

ARTS C1-

It Took a Lot of Care to Dance

Jeff Bezos, the C.E.O. of Amazon, who

testifies before Congress for the first

time on Wednesday, had taken a hands-

off approach with lawmakers. PAGE B

BUSINESS B1-

Hot Seat for Bezos

The pandemic has wiped out anchors of

New York neighborhoods that had

endured for decades. PAGE A

TRACKING AN OUTBREAK A4-

No Longer in Business

A pact to reduce domestic violence has
been targeted by populist leaders as a
threat to “traditional families.” PAGE A

Poland to Quit European Treaty

He has survived H.I.V. and a heart

attack, and while the influential gay

novelist acknowledges that he is “hy-

per-vulnerable,” he intends to make it

through this pandemic as well. PAGE C

Living With Edmund White

An airline executive explains its distanc-

ing practices at a time when its rivals sell

all the seats they can. PAGE B

Delta’s Empty Seats

Democrats see an opportunity to pick

up a Senate seat in conservative-lean-

ing Montana, where ticket splitting is a

common practice. PAGE A

NATIONAL A14-

An Opening in Trump Country

Kansai Yamamoto, a fashion designer

who made eye-popping jumpsuits for

David Bowie, was 76. PAGE A

OBITUARIES A20-

Dressing Ziggy Stardust

William P. Barr will face questions from

lawmakers on Capitol Hill for the first

time in more than a year. PAGE A

Attorney General to Testify

Bret Stephens PAGE A

EDITORIAL, OP-ED A22-

As NASA prepares to launch its latest

rover, Perseverance, on a seven-month

trip to the red planet, our writers look

at the journey, and much more. PAGE D

SCIENCE TIMES D1-

Mars Has So Many Mysteries

Printed in Chicago $3.

Mostly sunny. Less humid, after-

noon thunderstorms in the north.

Highs in 80s. Partly cloudy tonight.

Showers or thunderstorms in spots.

Weather map appears on Page B8.

National Edition