Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with late afternoon rain and a high of sixty-seven.  Sunrise is 5:51 AM and sunset 7:53 PM, for 14h 02m 15s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 25.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Finance Committee meets at 4:30 PM.

 On this day in 1986, high levels of radiation resulting from the Chernobyl disaster (having occurred on 4.26.1986) are detected at a nuclear power plant in Sweden, leading Soviet authorities to publicly announce the accident.

Recommended for reading in full —

Greg Miller and Ellen Nakashima report President’s intelligence briefing book repeatedly cited virus threat:

U.S. intelligence agencies issued warnings about the novel coronavirus in more than a dozen classified briefings prepared for President Trump in January and February, months during which he continued to play down the threat, according to current and former U.S. officials.

The repeated warnings were conveyed in issues of the President’s Daily Brief, a sensitive report that is produced before dawn each day and designed to call the president’s attention to the most significant global developments and security threats.

For weeks, the PDB — as the report is known — traced the virus’s spread around the globe, made clear that China was suppressing information about the contagion’s transmissibility and lethal toll, and raised the prospect of dire political and economic consequences.

But the alarms appear to have failed to register with the president, who routinely skips reading the PDB and has at times shown little patience for even the oral summary he takes two or three times per week, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified material.

Erin Griffith and David McCabe report April Start-Ups Pursue ‘Free Money’ With Relief Funds, Prompting Backlash:

Domio, a start-up that offers short-term rentals, has its headquarters in a New York City loft that features beer on tap, a game room and a wall of house slippers for visitors. The fast-growing and unprofitable company has raised $117 million in venture capital, including $100 million in August.

When the coronavirus pandemic caused Domio’s bookings to dry up last month, it laid off staff but did not ask its investors for more funding. Jay Roberts, Domio’s chief executive, said it had no immediate need to raise more money and most likely had enough cash to last until 2021.

Instead, Domio applied for a federal loan under the Paycheck Protection Program, the $349 billion plan to save jobs at small businesses during the outbreak. It received a loan on April 13. Three days later, the program’s funding ran out, even as hundreds of hard-hit restaurants, hair salons and shops around the country missed out on the relief.

Questions about whether the funds were disbursed fairly and whether some applicants deserved them have drawn scrutiny to the aid program. Several companies that got millions of dollars in loans, such as the Shake Shackand Kura Sushi restaurant chains, faced criticism and eventually gave the money back. On Friday, President Trump signed legislation approving a fresh $320 billion to replenish the program, which the Small Business Administration is directing.

Hubble at 30. New and favorites images explained by astrophysicist:

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with an afternoon thunderstorm and a high of sixty.  Sunrise is 5:52 AM and sunset 7:52 PM, for 13h 59m 42s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 17.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater Unified School District’s board meets via audiovisual conference in open session at 6 PM, entering closed session shortly thereafter, and resuming an open season at 7 PM.

 On this day in 1945, Benito Mussolini is arrested by Italian partisans while attempting escape disguised as a German soldier.

Recommended for reading in full —

Jeremy W. Peters, Elaina Plott, and Maggie Haberman report 260,000 Words, Full of Self-Praise, From Trump on the Virus:

The New York Times analyzed every word Mr. Trump spoke at his White House briefings and other presidential remarks on the virus — more than 260,000 words — from March 9, when the outbreak began leading to widespread disruptions in daily life, through mid-April. The transcripts show striking patterns and repetitions in the messages he has conveyed, revealing a display of presidential hubris and self-pity unlike anything historians say they have seen before.

By far the most recurring utterances from Mr. Trump in the briefings are self-congratulations, roughly 600 of them, which are often predicated on exaggerations and falsehoods. He does credit others (more than 360 times) for their work, but he also blames others (more than 110 times) for inadequacies in the state and federal response.

Mr. Trump’s attempts to display empathy or appeal to national unity (about 160 instances) amount to only a quarter of the number of times he complimented himself or a top member of his team.

Matthew Miller writes It’s not just the bleach. Trump is a catalog of bad ideas that tax resources (‘Whether it’s nuked hurricanes or alligator-stocked moats, the most persistent of the president’s whims waste time and court danger’):

Consider, for example, some presidential guidance in 2017: Trump — who has no nautical, military or engineering experience — decided the electromagnetic catapults the Navy planned to install on aircraft carriers to launch airplanes into the sky were technically inferior to the steam catapults used in older-generation ships. “Digital. They have digital. What is digital? And it’s very complicated, you have to be Albert Einstein to figure it out,” the president said in announcing he would order the Navy to replace the new catapults. Though experts say the move would cost billions of dollars and degrade the carriers’ capabilities, Trump has repeatedly returned to the topic in the years since, forcing Navy officials to put on their best game face in public pronouncements about the president’s off-the-wall comments.

A favorite object of Trump’s expertise remains the wall he is attempting to build along the southern border. His outlandish suggestions include proposals to paint it black so it would be too hot to climb, electrify it and cap it with spikes. The New York Times reported that he considered adding a water-filled moat that would be stocked with snakes and alligators, a farcical idea for which aides nonetheless felt compelled to seek a cost estimate. Officials at the Department of Homeland Security and the Army Corps of Engineers have spent months constructing prototypes and convincing the commander in chief to abandon impractical, expensive and constantly changing demands.

Disease Experts Warn Against Reopening the Country Too Soon:

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of sixty-three.  Sunrise is 5:53 AM and sunset 7:50 PM, for 13h 57m 08s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 10.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1865, Union soldiers corner and shoot dead John Wilkes Booth.

Recommended for reading in full —

Beth McMurtrie writes The Next Casualty of the Coronavirus Crisis May Be the Academic Calendar:

As the novel coronavirus rolled across the country in early March, Beloit College scrambled to keep up. Like virtually every other campus in the United States, it sent students home and moved instruction online. But what about the future?

“All we were doing was triage,” says Eric Boynton, provost of the small liberal-arts college in Wisconsin, remembering the days after Covid-19 hit. “I had this sinking feeling that this wasn’t enough.”

So Boynton brought an idea to a committee at Beloit that had spent nearly eight months crafting a new academic plan to differentiate itself from its peers: What if, come fall, Beloit broke the semester into 3.5-week increments, so students and professors could focus on one course at a time? That, he argued, would allow for greater flexibility to respond to what many public-health experts anticipate will be a flare-up in infections in the coming months if social-distancing orders are lifted too soon. And it would, he said, give “solidity” to the fall calendar.

The committee rejected that idea but two days later suggested another: a later start date and two seven-week modules instead of a full semester. That way, if the college needed to move everyone online either early or late in the fall, it could do so with fewer disruptions. The deal was ratified and publicly rolled out within two weeks, giving Beloit a leg up at a time when families are struggling to make sense of what the next academic year will look like.

 Douglas N. Harris asks How will COVID-19 change our schools in the long run?:

Use of online tools? It should be clear from my arguments above that schools will make much greater use of online tools. Most students in the country will soon have laptops and some type of internet access (though the digital divide will remain a significant concern). Teachers are going to like many of the tools out there, and they will have an easier time using them now that students have some experience with them. As Dave Deming recently pointed out, online tools can be helpful complements to in-person instruction—instead of a replacement for it—allowing teachers to focus more on engaging students and mentoring them.

A shift to homeschooling and fully virtual instruction? There may be some shift in this direction. Families will get more accustomed to online learning. However, this approach has the significant disadvantage that families have to play the role of hall monitor and teacher. Few families want or can afford that, given their work schedules and other responsibilities. Moreover, research consistently suggests that students learn less in fully virtual environments. In-person, teacher-led instruction simply has too many advantages.

(Note: Harris’s perspective rests primarily on his study of K-12 education in New Orleans after Katrina.)

Why These Grandmas Swim With Venomous Sea Snakes:

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of fifty-five.  Sunrise is 5:55 AM and sunset 7:49 PM, for 13h 54m 32s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 5.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1898, Congress declares that a state of war between the U.S. and Spain had de facto existed since April 21, the day an American blockade of Cuba had begun.

Recommended for reading in full —

Daphne Chen and Rory Linnane report As residents at two Milwaukee nursing homes contracted and died of coronavirus, administrators and local officials kept it to themselves:

On April 9, as paramedics rushed to a nursing home in West Allis to assist a 79-year-old COVID-positive resident found without a pulse, police did not join them.

The officers had a reason: “Due to the high volume of COVID positive cases, police are no longer physically responding to the facility,” read a Milwaukee County medical examiner’s report about the man’s death.

West Allis police had long known about the severity of the coronavirus outbreak among residents and staff at Allis Care Center, a 152-bed skilled nursing facility in West Allis.

But many members of the public — and family members of residents — did not.

All told, in a span of less than three weeks this month, at least eight residents of Allis Care Center died from coronavirus complications, according to medical examiner reports.

Meanwhile, eight residents of BRIA of Trinity Village, a nursing home on the northwest side of Milwaukee, died of coronavirus complications in the same period.

Family members of residents at both homes said administrators have not been open about the number of cases or deaths, even as the fatalities mounted.

  Jin Wu, Allison McCann, Josh Katz, and Elian Peltier report 36,000 Missing Deaths: Tracking the True Toll of the Coronavirus Crisis:

At least 36,000 more people have died during the coronavirus pandemic over the last month than the official Covid-19 death counts report, a review of mortality data in 12 countries shows — providing a clearer, if still incomplete, picture of the toll of the crisis.

In the last month, far more people died in these countries than in previous years, The New York Times found. The totals include deaths from Covid-19 as well as those from other causes, likely including people who could not be treated as hospitals became overwhelmed.

These numbers undermine the notion that many people who have died from the virus may soon have died anyway. In Paris, more than twice the usual number of people have died each day, far more than the peak of a bad flu season. In New York City, the number is now four times the normal amount.

  Brenna Houck reports For Restaurants, Masks Could Be the New Normal:

A few months ago, at the beginning of cold and flu season, Erica Pietrzyk decided to have employees wear face masks while working at her Polish food stand Pietrzyk Pierogi in Detroit. In her mind, the masks were the best way to protect customers and her employees from getting sick. The patrons, however, were put off by the practice. “We determined that we would just stop it for the time being, because people are very uncomfortable with it,” Pietrzyk says.

Now, amid the novel coronavirus epidemic, when employees don a mask, it barely gets a second glance.

United While in Isolation:

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of fifty-three.  Sunrise is 5:56 AM and sunset 7:48 PM, for 13h 51m 56s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 1.7% of its visible disk illuminated.

 On this day in 1977, the Morris Pratt Institute moves from Whitewater to Waukesha.

Recommended for reading in full —

Allyson Chiu and Katie Shepherd report Trump asked if disinfectants could be injected to kill coronavirus inside the body. Doctors answered: ‘People will die’:

After a presentation Thursday that touched on the disinfectants that can kill the novel coronaviruson surfaces and in the air, President Trump pondered whether those chemicals could be used to fight the virus inside the human body.

“I see the disinfectant that knocks it out in a minute, one minute,” Trump said during Thursday’s coronavirus press briefing. “And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning? Because you see it gets inside the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it would be interesting to check that.”

The question, which Trump offered unprompted, immediately spurred doctors to respond with incredulity and warnings against injecting or otherwise ingesting disinfectants, which are highly toxic.

“My concern is that people will die. People will think this is a good idea,” Craig Spencer, director of global health in emergency medicine at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center, told The Washington Post. “This is not willy-nilly, off-the-cuff, maybe-this-will-work advice. This is dangerous.”

Cara Giaimo reports 5 Rules for Rooming With Lab Animals During Coronavirus:

Last month, the coronavirus pandemic prompted universities and museums around the world to dial down their operations, leaving scientists to make difficult decisions about the animals they work with. While some released or culled their specimens — or set up a visitation schedule — others decided to take theirs home, embarking on a different sort of relationship. We checked in with half a dozen scientists about how they’re making it work with their new roommates in this time of social distancing.

Rule #1: No cockroaches in the common area

As a postdoctoral fellow in a University of California, San Diego, lab that studies small-scale locomotion, Glenna Clifton is used to observing insects quite closely. But since the lab moved to remote work in March, she has forged a new intimacy with some of her research subjects: nine cockroaches that now live about two feet from her bed.

Dr. Clifton wanted to take the roaches home so she could continue working with them. (Plus, her supervisor has a cat with a taste for bugs.) But like many young academics, she shares housing, and her housemates were “a little hesitant,” she said. So she promised she would keep them in her bedroom.

SpaceX previews Demo-2 and Crew-1 launches: