Current Affairs Of Pakistan & World: Coronavirus Briefing: 'Shecession'

Coronavirus Briefing: 'Shecession'

June 3, 2020

An informed guide to the global outbreak, with the latest developments and expert advice about prevention and treatment.

(Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here.)

The New York Times

By Jonathan Wolfe and Lara Takenaga

The White House selected five companies as the most likely candidates to produce a vaccine for the coronavirus.
The number of confirmed cases is rising in 16 U.S. states, partly a consequence of expanded testing.
The Trump administration plans to block Chinese airlines from flying into or out of the U.S.
Get the latest updates here, plus maps and a tracker for U.S. metro areas.

Career setbacks for working mothers

The last time the United States went through an economic downturn, some economists called it a “mancession,” as most of the job losses — in manufacturing, construction and finance — were shouldered by men.

This time around, though, the economic fallout from the pandemic is threatening to derail the careers of an entire generation of working women, in what some are calling a “shecession.”

The pandemic has dramatically altered the way Americans work and care for children, and women are carrying an unequal share of the burden, our colleagues Patricia Cohen and Tiffany Hsu write. Women are more likely to have lost a job and are more likely to care for children at home. Even among married couples, women currently provide 70 percent of the child care during work hours, according to a recent report (although men believe they do more).

Reopening the economy isn’t helping. As child care and babysitting options have evaporated, women say they have little choice but to give up jobs, or work part-time, to manage their responsibilities at home. And returning to the work force — already a challenge for women who left to care for children — will be especially hard in the recession, as more out-of-work people compete for a reduced pool of jobs.

The impact on working mothers could last a lifetime, reducing their earning potential and robbing them of future work opportunities.

How the C.D.C. fumbled its response

When the coronavirus began to spread in the United States, it presented the most urgent threat ever faced by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — and an opportunity for the agency to lead the world’s fight against the outbreak.

Instead, a Times investigation has found, the C.D.C. made missteps that undermined America’s response and hampered local health officials’ efforts. Among them:

Using antiquated data collection methods — including faxes and thousands of email attachments — that prevented the agency from keeping track of how many people had been tested, or even died.
Imposing restrictive testing standards early on, in part because of a shortage of tests. And the agency did not recommend testing people without symptoms even though Chinese doctors were already reporting asymptomatic cases.
When the C.D.C. did finally manufacture test kits to send to states, the agency contaminated many of them through sloppy lab practices.

“Here is an agency that has been waiting its entire existence for this moment,” a former official at the Food and Drug Administration told The Times. “And then they flub it. It is very sad. That is what they were set up to do.”

Reopenings

Italy has reopened its borders to European tourists and lifted domestic travel restrictions, prompting Italians to visit museums and tourist sites before crowds return.
Germany will lift its travel ban on 29 European countries on June 15 and replace it with travel advisories.
Most professions in the Netherlands will be able to resume by July, but sex workers must wait until September, sending hundreds into poverty — or secretly back to work.
Sweden should have imposed stricter measures to control the virus, Anders Tegnell, the nation’s state epidemiologist and architect of its no-lockdown policy, said in a radio interview.

Here’s a roundup of restrictions in all 50 states.

What else we’re following

In the first controlled clinical trial of hydroxychloroquine in the U.S., the drug did not prevent Covid-19 in 821 people who had been exposed to a patient infected with the virus.
Visits to U.S. emergency rooms over four weeks in April were down 42 percent compared to the same period last year, according to a C.D.C. analysis.
A danger for demonstrators: In addition to inciting coughing, tear gas may also damage people’s lungs and make them more susceptible to getting a respiratory illness.
Many countries have rolled out new technologies to aid contact tracing, but in the U.S., privacy concerns and the lack of a national policy have slowed efforts.
A critical component used to check vaccines for toxins — the blood of horseshoe crabs — has been the subject of a yearslong debate among scientists and conservationists. But an alternative has yet to be approved in the U.S.
After 75 days at a Buddhist monastic community in Vermont, Daniel Thorsten, a modern-day Rip Van Winkle, emerged from his isolation to a very different world.