Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of fifty-one.  Sunrise is 6:37 AM and sunset 7:19 PM, for 12h 42m 14s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 30.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater Unified School District’s board meets tonight at 6:30 PM briefly in open session, then entering closed session until returning in open session at 7:30 PM. The 7:30 open session portion of the meeting will be available via Zoom Online @ URL: https://zoom.us/j/887312491 and Meeting ID: 887-312-491.

On this day in 1867, the U.S. Sec. of State William Seward makes final the terms of the Alaska Purchase from Czarist Russia for $7.2 million, or about two cents per acre.

Recommended for reading in full —

Mike Baker reports Coronavirus Slowdown in Seattle Suggests Restrictions Are Working:

…seeing evidence that strict containment strategies, imposed in the earliest days of the outbreak, are beginning to pay off — at least for now.

Deaths are not rising as fast as they are in other states. Dramatic declines in street traffic show that people are staying home. Hospitals have so far not been overwhelmed. And preliminary statistical models provided to public officials in Washington State suggest that the spread of the virus has slowed in the Seattle area in recent days.

While each infected person was spreading the virus to an average of 2.7 other people earlier in March, that number appears to have dropped, with one projection suggesting that it was now down to 1.4.

The researchers who are preparing the latest projections, led by the Institute for Disease Modeling, a private research group in Bellevue, Wash., have been watching a variety of data points since the onset of the outbreak. They include tens of thousands of coronavirus test results, deaths, and mobility information — including traffic patterns and the movements of anonymous Facebook users — to estimate the rate at which coronavirus patients are spreading the disease to others.

The progress is precarious, and the data, which was still being analyzed and has yet to be published, is uncertain. Officials said that expansive social distancing policies will remain a key part of daily life for weeks to come.

(Emphasis added.)

Marc Fisher, Paul Schwartzman, and Ben Weissenbach report The Great American Migration of 2020: On the move to escape the coronavirus:

Back home in Oakland, Calif., Lisa Pezzino and Kit Center built a life that revolved around music and the people who make it — the musicians who recorded on Pezzino’s small label and performed in places where Center rigged the lights and sound equipment.

Where they are now, deep in the redwood forest near Big Sur, 140 miles south along the California coast, there is mostly the towering silence of isolation. A tiny cabin, an outdoor kitchen, just one neighbor. This is life in the flight from the virus.

They left town with four days of clothing and every intention of coming right home. And then the new rules kicked in, and state officials urged people to stay inside. There would be no concerts, no musicians wandering by to plan a recording session. Pezzino, a civil engineer who can work remotely, and Center, whose rigging work definitely cannot be done from home, decided to stay put in the woods, indefinitely. They joined the impromptu Great American Migration of 2020.

International Space Station has small pharmacy, well equipped to handle illness:

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will see rain with a high of forty-four.  Sunrise is 6:39 AM and sunset 7:18 PM, for 12h 39m 20s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 22.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1865, the Appomattox Campaign begins.

Recommended for reading in full —

Ben Berwick, John Langford, Erica Newland,  and Kristy Parker write Trump Can’t Reopen the Country Over State Objections: 

In 2007, researchers published findings in the scientific journal PNAS showing how local governments mitigated outbreaks of the 1918 flu pandemic by aggressively limiting public gatherings. Cities such as San Francisco and St. Louis, which introduced restrictions early in one of the “waves” of the disease, fared much better than Philadelphia, which held a World War I victory parade that attracted tens of thousands of people to its famous Broad Street. Philadelphia was soon hit hard by the flu, while San Francisco and St. Louis were relatively spared.

“When multiple interventions were introduced early, they were very effective in 1918,” one of the researchers, Richard Hatchett, told the New York Times. “And that certainly offers hope that they would be similarly useful in an epidemic today if we didn’t have an effective vaccine.”

….

What happens if Trump tries to order or coerce states to relax their restrictions and put their residents at risk? Earlier this week in Lawfare, Robert Chesney described some limitations on the president’s power to “force changes if state and local officials won’t follow his lead.” He’s right. And if the president tries to force states to ease restrictions, they should resist. They have the Constitution on their side, and they will almost certainly win in court.

A triad of bedrock constitutional principles gives the states the upper hand. First, the Constitution and cases dating back to the founding era make clear that the power to make decisions about public health and welfare—for example, whether to close businesses and schools—lies primarily with the states, not the federal government. Second, to the extent that the federal government does have power in these areas, that power lies with Congress, not the president. Third, federal powers, even when wielded by Congress, are limited. And, as a practical matter, Congress is extremely unlikely to use its power to force states to roll back public health measures, even if it could do so as a formal legal matter. Under these principles, Trump lacks the legal authority to override orders from governors and other state and local officials that are designed to protect the public health and welfare of their citizens.

Julie Bosman reports Coronavirus Cases, Concentrated on the Coasts, Now Threaten America’s Middle

This week, cities and states that had no known cases of coronavirus not long ago have seen the infection’s sudden, intense arrival. In Detroit, more than 850 cases have been identified and at least 15 people have died. In New Orleans, public health workers have identified more than 1,100 cases, including 57 people who have died. Eight deaths and nearly 400 cases have been reported in Milwaukee County, Wis. And in Chicago and its inner-ring suburbs, there have been nearly 2,000 cases, as of Friday morning.

This Rare ‘Caviar’ Comes From Lemons:

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will see thunderstorms with a high of fifty-two.  Sunrise is 6:41 AM and sunset 7:17 PM, for 12h 36m 26s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 14.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1862, in the Battle of Glorieta Pass, Union forces stop the Confederate invasion of the New Mexico Territory.

Recommended for reading in full —

Conservative Jonathan V. Last writes COVID-19 Is Not a Black Swan. Trump Is the Black Swan (‘The problem isn’t that America couldn’t plan for a pandemic. It’s that we couldn’t plan for a president so incompetent that he failed to follow the most basic protocols for fighting a pandemic’): 

See this section from the Atlantic’s big piece on what the COVID-19 endgame is going to look like:

As my colleagues Alexis Madrigal and Robinson Meyer have reported, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention developed and distributed a faulty test in February. Independent labs created alternatives, but were mired in bureaucracy from the FDA. In a crucial month when the American caseload shot into the tens of thousands, only hundreds of people were tested. That a biomedical powerhouse like the U.S. should so thoroughly fail to create a very simple diagnostic test was, quite literally, unimaginable. “I’m not aware of any simulations that I or others have run where we [considered] a failure of testing,” says Alexandra Phelan of Georgetown University, who works on legal and policy issues related to infectious diseases.

The testing fiasco was the original sin of America’s pandemic failure, the single flaw that undermined every other countermeasure. If the country could have accurately tracked the spread of the virus, hospitals could have executed their pandemic plans, girding themselves by allocating treatment rooms, ordering extra supplies, tagging in personnel, or assigning specific facilities to deal with COVID-19 cases. None of that happened.

Let me read the key part to you again:

“I’m not aware of any simulations that I or others have run where we [considered] a failure of testing,” says Alexandra Phelan.

People have been saying that you can’t plan for a once-in-a-century pandemic—there is no playbook for that kind of disaster.

This is not true. There is literally a playbook for pandemics.

What you can’t plan for is the possibility of a government seeing the pandemic coming and refusing to follow basic protocols for managing the crisis.

The black swan here isn’t COVID-19.

It’s Trump.

(Emphasis in original.)

Hannah Natansan reports After uproar, USDA says parents can pick up school meals without kids present:

The federal government is waiving a policy that required students to come in-person to pick up free meals during school closures, after legislators and advocates said the rule was imperiling the health and safety of children with compromised immune systems.

New guidance from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, issued this week, allows school districts to distribute meals “to a parent or guardian to take home to their children,” according to a copy of the guidance obtained by The Washington Post.

Therapy Dog Visits Quarantined Senior Citizens Through Safety of Windows:

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of fifty-three with occasional afternoon showers.  Sunrise is 6:42 AM and sunset 7:16 PM, for 12h 33m 32s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 8.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1886, Apache warrior Geronimo surrenders to the U.S. Army, ending the main phase of the Apache Wars.

Recommended for reading in full —

Devi Shastri reports UW System estimates campuses will refund $78 million in housing, dining expenses:

The University of Wisconsin System is estimating its campuses will pay back nearly $80 million to students who left campuses as the coronavirus took hold in the state.

System leaders announced last week they would ensure students received prorated refunds for the spring 2020 semester’s housing and food payments.

Every campus in the school system has moved courses online or to a remote format through the end of the semester, with some going into the summer semester. Many have made the decision to delay or cancel commencement ceremonies as well.

Schools are still calculating the exact costs of the payback, but the UW System estimate as of Thursday was about $78 million.

The Associated Press reports Wisconsin National Guard Col. James V. Locke stripped of command duties:

The Wisconsin National Guard’s new commander has stripped a colonel of his duties.

The Guard announced Thursday that Maj. Gen. Paul Knapp relieved Col. James V. Locke of command of the 128th Air Refueling Wing in Milwaukee.

The Guard said in a statement that Knapp had lost confidence in Locke, based on command climate, poor judgment and alleged misconduct. An investigation is underway.

“A decision like this is never easy to make, but it is the right thing to do and is in the best interest of the organization,” Knapp said.

A spokesman for the Guard declined to comment Thursday, citing the open investigation.

The Guard is still trying to recover after federal investigators last year revealed they had found multiple problems with how the Guard handles sexual harassment and sexual assault complaints. Most notably, the review found commanders had been opening their own internal investigations into complaints rather than referring them to Army or Air Force criminal investigators as required by federal law and Department of Defense policy.

Koalas Return Home After Surviving Australia’s Fires:

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of forty-nine.  Sunrise is 6:44 AM and sunset 7:15 PM, for 12h 30m 37s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 4% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1945, Battle of Iwo Jima ends in an American victory.

Recommended for reading in full —

Jennifer Steinhauer and Zolan Kanno-Youngs report Job Vacancies and Inexperience Mar Federal Response to Coronavirus:

Of the 75 senior positions at the Department of Homeland Security, 20 are either vacant or filled by acting officials, including Chad F. Wolf, the acting secretary who recently was unable to tell a Senate committee how many respirators and protective face masks were available in the United States.

The National Park Service, which like many federal agencies is full of vacancies in key posts, tried this week to fill the job of a director for the national capital region after hordes of visitors flocked to see the cherry blossoms near the National Mall, creating a potential public health hazard as the coronavirus continues to spread.

At the Department of Veterans Affairs, workers are scrambling to order medical supplies on Amazon after its leaders, lacking experience in disaster responses, failed to prepare for the onslaught of patients at its medical centers.

Empty slots and high turnover have left parts of the federal government unprepared and ill equipped for what may be the largest public health crisis in a century, said numerous former and current federal officials and disaster experts.

Corrinne Hess and Alana Watson report Wisconsin Businesses Pivot To Help Health Care Providers During Pandemic:

While many Wisconsin businesses have closed to slow the spread of the new coronavirus, some companies have shifted gears to help hospitals and health care workers.

Health care providers across the country have reported ongoing and dire shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) including hospital gowns, face shields and respiratory N95 face masks.

Last week, the Wisconsin Hospital Association reached out to the construction trades through the state Department of Workforce Development and Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce asking them to donate any unused N95 masks to their local hospital.

Dozens of smaller businesses have stepped up, too.

Family-owned company Canopies, a Milwaukee-based event rental company, would normally be booked with spring weddings and parties. But the COVID-19 pandemic halted business until owner David Hudak contacted Advocate Aurora Health.

The health care provider, which has hospitals in Illinois and throughout eastern Wisconsin, is now contracting with Canopies to provide tents to its hospitals in both states.

The tents are being used as a triage area before patients are taken into emergency rooms, Hudak said.

Educators in Arkansas Provide Meals for Kids in Need During COVID-19:

(The Whitewater Unified School District plans to update its own children’s meal program.)