Desperate for medical equipment, states find a beleaguered national stockpile
States seeking masks, drugs, ventilators and other items from the stockpile are encountering a system beset by years of underfunding, changing lines of authority, confusion over the allocation of supplies and a lack of transparency from the administration, said state and federal officials and public health experts.
Trump sows confusion with efforts to invoke presidential powers to fight coronavirus
As the virus spreads across the country, there are growing questions about how far his authority extends, and how much he plans to use it.
Urban centers gird for catastrophic outbreak
Still unable to do widespread testing, and fearful as the federal government fails to marshal critical supplies, officials in Boston, Detroit, Chicago, Atlanta and Los Angeles are watching caseloads climb and trying to prepare.
Lisa Pezzino and Kit Center of Oakland, Calif., gaze out at a rainbow in Big Sur, Calif., after they left the Bay Area during the coronavirus outbreak. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
Lisa Pezzino brushes her teeth at her retreat in Big Sur, Calif., 140 miles from her city home in Oakland. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
A rainbow appears along the Pacific Coast in Big Sur, Calif., during the coronavirus outbreak. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
Empty streets are seen in downtown Seattle as viewed from the roof of the Space Needle on Thursday during a statewide stay-at-home order in Washington. (AP)
The Great American Migration of 2020: On the move to escape the coronavirus
Even as most people stay close to home, millions of others have been on the move, a mass migration that looks urgent and temporary but might contain the seeds of a wholesale shift in where and how Americans live. But virus fugitives often are running into fierce opposition on their routes.
Guide to the pandemic
There have been more than 610,000 confirmed cases of covid-19. The virus has killed more than 28,000. Access to the following stories is free:
Critics say the federal stimulus package’s expansion of jobless benefits means the gig-economy workers of Uber, Lyft and Airbnb get help from social safety-net programs even though their companies don’t pay taxes that fund it.
Demand for some kinds of freight has surged, but finding places to get clean and rest has become harder for drivers.
John Sears
1940–2020 Sears helped guide Richard M. Nixon to the White House and became a key architect of Ronald Reagan’s rising political fortunes, only to be fired by both men.
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(Associated Press)
“People in bars and in restaurants and on the streets hugging each other, in crowds, it just completely frustrates me to see that.”
