The New York Times - USA (2020-08-07)

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LAUREN LEATHERBY AND GUILBERT GATES/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Source: New York Times database.

Note: Europe figures do not include Russia or Turkey.

Over the past month, about 1.9 million Americans

have tested positive for the virus. That’s more

than five times as many as in all of Europe,

Canada, Japan, South Korea and Australia

combined, areas that have more than

twice America’s population.

An Outsize Epidemic

NUMBER OF NEW CASES

IN THE PAST MONTH

Australia

10,

South Korea

1,

Japan

21,

Canada

12,

United States

1.9 million

United States

1.9 million

Europe

294,

Europe

294,

On the morning of Aug. 6, 1945,

Setsuko Thurlow, then just 13, re-

ported for her first full day of duty

in Japan’s increasingly desperate

war effort. Together with 30 other

girls, she had been recruited to as-

sist with code breaking at a mili-

tary office in Hiroshima.

The major in charge of the unit

was exhorting the teenagers to

demonstrate their patriotism

when, at 8:15 a.m., a blast deto-

nated over the city. Out the win-

dow, Ms. Thurlow saw a burst of

bluish white light.

She was thrown into the air, los-

ing consciousness. When she

came to, it was dark and silent,

and she was pinned under parts of

the wooden building.

“I’m going to die here,” she

thought to herself.

More than 150,000 people are

thought to have perished in the

atomic bombing of Hiroshima 75

years ago this month. Ms. Thur-

low survived, but the attack would

shape the rest of a life spent fight-

ing for the abolition of nuclear

weapons — work for which she

jointly accepted a Nobel Peace

Prize in 2017.

Nine years after the leveling of

Hiroshima — followed by Naga-

saki’s destruction three days later

— Ms. Thurlow arrived in Virginia

from Japan to study sociology. Lo-

cal reporters asked what she

thought of an American hydrogen

bomb test in the Pacific that year

that had killed a Japanese fisher-

man.

Ms. Thurlow — then named

After ‘Hell on Earth,’ Decades Working for Peace

By MOTOKO RICH Survivor of Hiroshima

Strives to Rid World

of Nuclear Arms

Setsuko Thurlow, second from right, was 13 in 1945 when the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.

VIA ICAN

Continued on Page A

In early April, three weeks after

Connecticut issued shutdown or-

ders, Ken Bodenstein borrowed

$148,000 from the federal govern-

ment to help cover payroll ex-

penses at the day care center in

Westport he runs with his wife,

Kristen.

The small-business loan, along

with the Bodensteins’ own cash

reserves, allowed the couple to

continue to pay their 21 workers

for nearly three months. But by

June 5, the day the money ran out,

only 11 of the 75 children who at-

tended the day care before the

pandemic had returned, forcing

the Bodensteins to furlough or lay

off all but nine employees.

“We were just about to hit

break-even, and then everything

collapsed,” Mr. Bodenstein said.

The Goddard School of Westport

had been open less than a year

when the pandemic hit.

The federal government’s Pay-

check Protection Program was a

hastily created and chaotically ex-

ecuted effort to preserve jobs

through what lawmakers initially

believed would be a sharp but

short disruption. Since April, it

has injected $523 billion into the

economy, allowing small-business

owners to stay afloat and keep

employees on payrolls.

But with the program set to end

Saturday and an economic re-

bound nowhere in sight, the loom-

ing question is: What happens to

the millions of workers who have

For Employers,

A Lifeline Runs

Short on Rope

By STACY COWLEY

Continued on Page A

SEDALIA, Mo. — Seven weeks
had passed, and still there were no
answers. So once again, a small
cluster of friends and family gath-
ered in the leafy courthouse
square and marched for Hannah
Fizer, an unarmed woman shot
and killed by a rural Missouri
sheriff’s deputy during a traffic
stop.
“Say her name! Hannah!”
“Prosecute the police!”
Their chants echoed protests
over police killings in Minneapo-
lis, Louisville, Atlanta and be-
yond. But this was no George
Floyd moment for rural America.
Though people in rural areas
are killed in police shootings at
about the same rate as in cities,
victims’ families and activists say
they have struggled to get justice
or even make themselves heard.
They say extracting changes can
be especially tough in small, con-
servative towns where residents
and officials have abiding support
for law enforcement and are leery
of new calls to defund the police.
“It’s like pulling teeth,” Ms. Fiz-
er’s mother, Amy, said.
The deputy who shot Ms. Fizer
has not been charged or disci-
plined, and Ms. Fizer’s parents
say they have not received any
updates about the investigation
into her June 13 death. They said
that investigators never inter-
viewed them, and that the sheriff
declined to tell them the name of
the deputy who shot her.

In Rural Towns,

Similar Chants

To Find Justice

By JACK HEALY

Continued on Page A

TOLLHOUSE, Calif. — In Feb-

ruary, the child abuse hotline for

Tollhouse, a small community in

the Central Valley, received the

first of several tips raising urgent

concerns about the well-being of

twin infant boys.

Child welfare workers quickly

concluded that the infants, just 2

days old, were at grave risk. When

they visited the mother, Kristina

Braden, she readily admitted that

her methamphetamine addiction

had continued far into her preg-

nancy, case records show. This

same addiction had contributed to

a well-documented history of ne-

glect that had already caused Ms.

Braden to lose custody of her

three older children.

The warning signs should have

prompted an immediate interven-

tion to protect the babies. Yet for

the next month, as the coro-

navirus took off and California de-

clared a stay-at-home order state-

wide in mid-March, the child wel-

fare agency did almost nothing

other than asking Ms. Braden to

take a drug test, which she failed

to do, records show.

The agency intervened only af-

ter an employee noticed that Ms.

Braden had posted on Facebook

that one child, Aiden, had died.

The posting came 38 days after

the initial call to the hotline.

Autopsy results are pending,

but child welfare officials have de-

Children at Risk

As Caseworkers

Shelter at Home

This article is by Garrett Therolf,

Daniel Lempres and Aksaule

Alzhan.

Continued on Page A

Nearly every country has

struggled to contain the coro-

navirus and made mistakes along

the way.

China committed the first major

failure, silencing doctors who

tried to raise alarms about the vi-

rus and allowing it to escape from

Wuhan. Much of Europe went

next, failing to avoid enormous

outbreaks. Today, many countries

— Japan, Canada, France, Aus-

tralia and more — are coping with

new increases in cases after re-

opening parts of society.

Yet even with all of these prob-

lems, one country stands alone, as

the only affluent nation to have

suffered a severe, sustained out-

break for more than four months:

the United States.

Over the past month, about 1.

million Americans have tested

positive for the virus. That is more

than five times as many as in all of

Europe, Canada, Japan, South Ko-

rea and Australia combined.

Even though some of these

countries saw worrying new out-

breaks over the past month, in-

cluding 50,000 new cases in Spain,

the outbreaks still pale in compar-

ison to those in the United States.

Florida, with a population less

than half of Spain, has reported

nearly 300,000 cases in the same

period.

When it comes to the virus, the

United States has come to resem-

ble not the wealthy and powerful

countries to which it is often com-

pared but instead far poorer coun-

tries, like Brazil, Peru and South

Africa, or those with large migrant

populations, like Bahrain and

Oman.

As in several of those other

countries, the toll of the virus in

the United States has fallen dis-

proportionately on poorer people

and groups that have long suf-

fered discrimination. Black and

Latino residents of the United

States have contracted the virus

at roughly three times as high of a

rate as white residents.

How did this happen? The New

York Times set out to reconstruct

the unique failure of the United

States, through numerous inter-

views with scientists and public

health experts around the world.

The reporting points to two cen-

tral themes.

First, the United States faced

longstanding challenges in con-

fronting a major pandemic. It is a

large country at the nexus of the

global economy, with a tradition of

prioritizing individualism over

government restrictions. That

tradition is one reason the United

States suffers from an unequal

health care system that has long

produced worse medical out-

comes — including higher infant

mortality and diabetes rates and

lower life expectancy — than in

most other rich countries.

“As an American, I think there

is a lot of good to be said about our

libertarian tradition,” Dr. Jared

Baeten, an epidemiologist and

vice dean at the University of

Washington School of Public

Health, said. “But this is the con-

sequence — we don’t succeed as

well as a collective.”

The second major theme is one

that public health experts often

find uncomfortable to discuss be-

U.S. Is Alone Among Peers

In Failing to Contain Virus

2 Major Causes: Individualist Tradition and

Trump Administration Missteps

By DAVID LEON

A socially distant spot for a

respite in a Chicago park.

DANIEL ACKER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Continued on Page A

New York’s attorney general is-
sued an existential challenge to
the National Rifle Association on
Thursday, arguing in a lawsuit
that years of runaway corruption
and misspending demanded the
dissolution of the nation’s most
powerful gun rights lobby.
While the legal confrontation
could take years to play out, it con-
stitutes yet another deep blow to
an organization whose legendary
political clout has been dimin-
ished by infighting and financial
distress.
The suit was swiftly followed by
two others: The N.R.A. struck
back with a federal lawsuit
against the office of the attorney
general, Letitia James, claiming
her action was politically motivat-
ed and violated the organization’s
First Amendment rights. And the
attorney general of Washington,
D.C., filed suit against the N.R.A.
and its charitable foundation, al-
leging that the N.R.A. misused
millions of dollars of the founda-
tion’s funds.
Ms. James — who has special
jurisdiction over the N.R.A. be-
cause it was chartered as a non-
profit in New York 148 years ago
— also sued four current or for-
mer N.R.A. leaders, seeking tens
of millions of dollars in restitution.
In addition to Wayne LaPierre,
the longtime chief executive, they
are John Frazer, the organiza-
tion’s general counsel; Josh Pow-
ell, a former top lieutenant of Mr.
LaPierre; and Wilson Phillips, a
former chief financial officer.
While allegations of misman-
agement and lavish spending by
Mr. LaPierre and others have
emerged from the N.R.A.’s in-
ternecine warfare over the last
year, the New York suit lays out a
broad litany of new allegations of
corruption and greed from execu-
tives who Ms. James said “looted”
the N.R.A.

New York Sues

N.R.A. in Bid

To Dissolve It

Group Says Suit Over

Finances Is Political

By DANNY HAKIM

Continued on Page A

A statue of three suffragists is soon to

be unveiled in New York. Above, the

sculptor, Meredith Bergmann. PAGE C

WEEKEND ARTS C1-

Breaking the Bronze Ceiling

Evidence that Lebanese government
negligence played a role in the explo-
sion aroused public anger. PAGE A

INTERNATIONAL A11-

Funerals and Fury in Beirut

As usual, Brooks Koepka likes his

chances, and he is close to the lead at

the P.G.A. Championship. PAGE B

SPORTSFRIDAY B10-

Brash, and Backing It Up

The president has reinstated a tariff on

Canadian aluminum, saying the country

broke a commitment not to “flood our

country with exports.” PAGE B

BUSINESS B1-

Trump Again Targets Canada

A memo telling experts to find ways to

tally undocumented residents has many

worried about a White House push to

gain Republican House seats. PAGE A

NATIONAL A16-

Fear of Census Tailored to Party

A critic deciphers the signs and sym-

bols of the street art adorning boarded-

up storefronts in New York. PAGE C

The Sidewalk Prophets

After a lull during lockdowns, the num-
ber of migrants arrested near the Mexi-
can border has surged. PAGE A

Flood of Migrants Resumes

Jennifer Senior PAGE A

EDITORIAL, OP-ED A26-

The Commission on Presidential De-

bates rejected the Trump campaign’s

claim that the schedule comes too late

for many who vote by mail. PAGE A

Sticking to Plan for 3 Debates

A federal monitor found the jail com-

plex houses a culture of violence di-

rected at inmates, and a systemic depri-

vation of their civil rights. PAGE A

Violence at Rikers Doubles

Unemployment in some census tracts

exceeds 30 percent, a sign of the un-

even spread of economic pain. PAGE B

Where Work Has Vanished

Experts are revising their views on the

best methods to detect infections, set-

ting aside long-held standards. PAGE A

TRACKING AN OUTBREAK A4-

Quick Tests May Do the Trick

Major League Baseball has tightened

its health protocols in an effort to safely

navigate the rest of its season. PAGE B

Trying to Catch Up to Covid

Late Edition

VOL. CLXIX.... No. 58,778 © 2020 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, FRIDAY, AUGUST 7, 2020

Today, cloudy, thunderstorms,

watch for flooding, high 76. Tonight,

showers, thunderstorms, low 70. To -

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high 81. Weather map, Page A22.

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