The New York Times - USA (2020-08-09)

SIX TO EIGHT WEEKS. That’s how long some of the nation’s

leading public health experts say it would take to finally get

the United States’ coronavirus epidemic under control. If

the country were to take the right steps, many thousands of
people could be spared from the ravages of Covid-19. The

economy could finally begin to repair itself, and Americans

could start to enjoy something more like normal life.
Six to eight weeks. For proof, look at Germany. Or Thai-

land. Or France. Or nearly any other country in the world.

In the United States, after a brief period of multistate

curve-flattening, case counts and death tolls are rising in so
many places that Dr. Deborah Birx, the Trump administra-

tion’s coronavirus response coordinator, described the col-

lective uptick as a sprawling “new phase” of the pandemic.
Rural communities are as troubled as urban ones, and even

clear victories over the virus, in places like New York and

Massachusetts, feel imperiled.
At the same time, Americans are fatigued from spend-

ing months under semi-lockdown. Bars and restaurants are

reopening in some places, for indoor service — and debates
are underway over if and when and how to do the same for

schools — even as the virus continues to spread unchecked.

Long delays in testing have become an accepted norm: It
can still take up to two weeks to get results in some places.

As the national death toll climbs above 160,000, mask wear-

ing is still not universal.

It’s no mystery how America got here. The Trump ad-
ministration’s response has been disjointed and often con-

tradictory, indifferent to science, suffused with politics and

eager to hand off responsibility to state leaders. Among the
states, the response has also been wildly uneven.

It’s also no surprise where the country is headed. Un-

less something changes quickly, millions

more people will be sickened by the
virus, and well over a million

may ultimately die from

it. The economy will

contract further as new

surges of viral spread over-
whelm hospitals and force fur-

ther shutdowns and compound suffer-

ing, especially in low-income communities and
communities of color.

The path to avoiding those outcomes is as clear as the

failures of the past several months.

Scientists have learned a lot about this coronavirus

since the first cases were reported in the United States earli-
er this year. For instance, they know now that airborne

transmission is a far greater risk than contaminated sur-

faces, that the virus spreads through singing and shouting
as much as through coughing, and that while any infected

person is a potential vector, superspreading events — as in

nursing homes, meatpacking plants, churches and bars —
are major drivers of the pandemic. By most estimates, just

10 to 20 percent of coronavirus infections account for 80 per-

cent of transmissions.

Experts have also learned a lot about what it takes to
get a coronavirus outbreak under control. Most of the neces-

sary steps are the same ones public health experts have

been urging for months.
Just because America has largely bungled these steps

so far doesn’t mean it can’t turn things around. The nation

can do better. It must.

CLEAR, CONSISTENT MESSAGING

President Trump and his closest advisers have repeatedly

contradicted the scientific evidence, and even themselves,
on the severity of the pandemic and the best ways to re-

spond to it. They’ve sown confusion on the importance of

mask wearing, the dangers of large gatherings, the potential
of untested treatments, the availability of testing and the ba-

sic matter of who is in charge of what in the pandemic re-

sponse.

That confusion seems to have bred a national apathy —
and a dangerous partisanship over public health measures

— that will be difficult to undo. But leaders at every level

can improve the situation by coordinating their messaging: Masks are essential and will be required in all public places. Social distancing is a civic responsibility. The virus is not go- ing away anytime soon, but we can get it under control quickly if we work together. Such messaging works best when it comes from the very top, but state and local leaders don’t have to wait for federal leaders to step up.

BETTER USE OF DATA As Dr. Tom Frieden, the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has noted: The United States has a glut of data and a dearth of information.

Data on who is getting sick and where is not being used to guide interventions, and crucial figures like test result times and the portion of new cases that were found through contact tracing are not consistently or routinely reported. If scientists had better access to such figures, they could use it to forecast Covid-19 conditions the same way they forecast the weather: warning when a given outbreak is spreading and advising people to adjust their plans accordingly. State and local leaders can make all their data public, and the C.D.C. ought to help them get that data into a usable form.

SMARTER SHUTDOWNS

In places like Melbourne, Australia, and Harris County, Texas, health officials have created numerical and color- coded threat assessments that tell officials and citizens ex- actly what to do, based on how extensively the coronavirus is spreading in their communities. The highest alert levels call for full-on shelter in place, while the lowest call for care- ful monitoring of high-risk establishments. It would behoove the C.D.C. to create a similar, evidence-based scale and work with state and local leaders to employ it in individ- ual communities. In

places where the virus is still rampant, that would mean much more aggressive shutdowns than have been carried out in the past. (The United States has not had a true national lockdown, shuttering only about half the country, compared with 90 percent in other countries with more suc- cessful outbreak control.) Smarter shutdowns may also mean closing bars and indoor dining in many places so schools there can reopen more safely; closing meat processing plants until better pro- tections are in place; and tightening state borders in a sensi- ble, as-needed fashion.

TESTING, TRACING, ISOLATION AND QUARANTINE

The most consistent mantra of experts trying to get the coronavirus pandemic under control has been that the nation needs much better testing, tracing, isolation and quarantine protocols. Despite examples across the globe for how to achieve all four, the United States has largely failed on these fronts. Testing delays make contact tracing — not to men- tion isolation and quarantine — impossible to execute. To resolve the crisis, federal officials need to comman- deer the intellectual property of companies that have devel- oped effective rapid diagnostics and utilize the Defense Pro- duction Act to make and distribute as many of those tests as possible. As testing is brought up to speed, officials also need to expand contact tracing and quarantine programs so that once outbreaks are brought under control, states are prepared to keep them in check. The causes of America’s great pandemic failure run deep, exacerbated by innumerable longstanding problems, from a weak public health infrastructure to institutional rac- ism to systemic inequality in health care, housing and em- ployment. If the pandemic forces the nation to meaningfully grapple with any of those issues, then perhaps all this suf- fering will not have been in vain. But that work can’t really begin until Americans solve the problem that’s right in front of them, with the tools that are already at their disposal.

America Could Control the

Pandemic by October

EDITORIAL

NICHOLAS KONRAD/ THE NEW YORK TIMES

8 SR THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, AUGUST 9, 2020

TO THE EDITOR: Re “Make Orchestras More Diverse? End Blind Auditions,” by Anthony Tommasini (Critic’s Notebook, July 19): Mr. Tommasini notes that blind auditions have been transformative — the number of women in major orchestras has come to more accurately reflect life. I am a violist in the Metropolitan Opera, which today is about 50-50 women to men. When I entered the orchestra in 1987, I was about the 25th woman in the orchestra out of about 100 regular full- time players. After my audition, when the committee met me, more than one man on the audition committee said, “But you’re a girl!” Bringing down the screen will allow prejudice in, not remove it. There is no easy answer, and considering that we all have implicit bias, I would argue that we should focus on the pipeline. It takes about a dec- ade to prepare for an audition that you will win. That puts the spotlight on our elementary schools. As a society we need to invest in arts education in our primary public education institutions in every neighbor- hood and in every state.

DÉSIRÉE ELSEVIER, DALLAS

TO THE EDITOR: I applaud your recent articles regarding the profound lack of diversity across the classical music profession. The urgency of addressing this issue goes to a question of survival. Demo- graphics are changing such that growing audiences for the classical performing arts is tied to diversifying those audiences, and that cannot happen without diversifying the performers on our stages. This work begins with the institutions that train artists — the conservatories and their preparatory schools — requir- ing the commitment of every institution like mine. We must change the face of our faculty and students to reflect the diverse world in which our graduates will operate. This past year, the Peabody Institute’s faculty was 14 percent Black and Latinx, matched by a similar percent- age of our student cohort. Greater intentionality in faculty searches brings faculty of color, who in turn help inspire students of color to apply. Potential students can be re- cruited from the many magnet performing arts schools and elsewhere throughout the country. If every conservatory makes a long-term commitment to do this work, we can change the face of our field. But we must hold our collective feet to the fire.

FRED BRONSTEIN, BALTIMORE The writer is dean of the Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University.

TO THE EDITOR: I read with interest Anthony Tommasini’s piece on ending blind orchestra auditions to increase diversity. While I believe his heart is in the right place, I strongly disagree with his method for getting there. The way to increase diversity in the classical music world is to provide affordable access to quality music instruction. For all. See Colombia’s extraor- dinary music training program. Classical music instruction is expensive, and this is why whites dominate the classical world. As students improve, they need better teachers — who cost more, often much more. They need to attend summer music programs. These are expensive, the best ones are veryexpensive, and they may be far from the student’s home, entailing trans- portation expenses. The students need better, more expensive instruments. The best college-level music programs are, you guessed it, quite expensive. A musically gifted student without those opportunities will simply not be able to com- pete at upper levels. Ending blind auditions won’t solve this problem. Money and opportu- nity aimed at financially disad- vantaged students will. If music lovers want top- quality musicians playing in a top-quality orchestra, blind auditions are a must. Our challenge is to prepare a larger, more diverse talent pool for the rigors of those auditions.

LYNN LLOYD MOUNT SHASTA, CALIF.

TO THE EDITOR: I imagine that Anthony Tom- masini has received some flak over his proposal to end blind

orchestra auditions in order to promote racial diversity in symphony orchestras. I suggest a simple modifica- tion: Keep the blind audition but, when the competition is close, have it identify the top two (or more) performers. Their names would then be submitted to a special panel charged with making the final decision and possessing back- ground information on the applicants. For the orchestra wishing to diversify, that decision would be based on race. This will guarantee, for both supporters and doubters, that the quality of the orchestra is not being compromised. It will guarantee that Black musicians so chosen are worthy of the position and not under any cloud. And it will avoid risking deleterious blowups on the divisive subject of affirmative action. NICK TINGLEY GREENWICH, CONN.

TO THE EDITOR: There is no question that Black and Latino musicians are un- derrepresented in U.S. orchestras. Yet there are no quick fixes for a complex set of social and economic factors that have blocked the entry of people of color into the classical music profession. Therefore, I don’t believe that simple solutions, such as removing the screen at orchestra auditions, will achieve diversity. A mandate to give race higher priority in auditions may also have unintend- ed consequences. Someone who wins an audition based primarily on race or gender might not get tenure, for exam- ple. The preservation of this beautiful art form is very important. Classical music will change and grow, new musicians and audiences will come to love it, and excellence must remain our guiding principle. We do not want to choose between artistic standards and diversity, but to embrace both. In our rush toward diversity, let us always keep this in mind.

LINDA MARIANIELLO SANTA FE, N.M. The writer is executive director of the New Mexico Performing Arts Society and former assistant principal flute for several orchestras.

TO THE EDITOR: There is a larger crisis underway than the use of blind auditions by a few elite orchestras. If there are so many excep- tional musicians fighting for work, then we clearly need to create more jobs. As any classical-music fan will tell you, U.S. orchestras are disappearing. Remember the Florida Philharmonic? San Jose Symphony? Tulsa Phil- harmonic? Savannah Sym- phony Orchestra? And Broadway’s pit orchestras — once brimming with top-notch musicians — are now mere repositories for synthe- sizers, amps and laptops. Massive investment in classical music, which could put all worthy musicians to work, would render the blind-audition controversy moot.

AARON JOHNSON, MILTON, MASS. The writer is a violist.

TO THE EDITOR: Anthony Tommasini was abso- lutely right in noting that screens played an important role in achieving greater gender equity in American orchestras. The logic of removing them to accomplish fairness in hiring racial-ethnic minorities not only overlooks their dem- onstrated value in encouraging racial fairness in promotion and advancement, and the risk of rolling back what has been accomplished in terms of gender equity, but the many other factors that create racial ineq- uities in hiring. Among these, the single most important is lack of a diverse pool of applicants. Orchestras must aggressively recruit racial-ethnic minorities to apply for positions. Without diverse applicants, it is impossible to succeed at hiring a diverse set of musicians. There is a great deal of social science expertise on the topic of achieving equity in hiring. I hope orchestras turn to experts and the research litera- ture for advice about how best to achieve the diversity and fairness that surely are long overdue.

ABIGAIL J. STEWART ANN ARBOR, MICH. The writer is a professor of psy- chology and women’s studies at the University of Michigan.

LETTERS

How to Diversify Orchestras

Readers respond to Anthony Tommasini’s

suggestion that blind auditions be ended.

The New York Times - USA (2020-08-09)

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