POLITICO NIGHTLY: Where’s the surgeon general?

By Renuka Rayasam

Presented by

THE DOCTOR IS OUT — The cast of officials that briefs the press and covers the airwaves has been down a notable figure of late: Surgeon General Jerome Adams. The Trump administration took Adams off television last week after he made controversial remarks on Covid-19's threat to minorities. The move silenced the White House's loudest voice on racial disparities as concerns mount about risks to communities of color, POLITICO Pulse co-author Dan Diamond reports. BOSTON'S MARATHON — Boston saw its first coronavirus case a month before New York City's. And Boston is only now starting to see its death toll peak. Paradoxically, that's a success story for the city. Here's why: Flattening the curve works — Counterintuitively, Boston's outbreak is a prime example of how curve flattening works. Republican Gov. Charlie Baker issued a stay at home advisory on March 23, and the peak is occurring about a month later. That's not a surprise, said Samuel Scarpino at Northeastern University's Network Science Institute. Social distancing measures push the peaks out to a later time. It doesn't mean that an area won't see a surge of cases. Boston hospitals transformed general-care hospital beds into intensive care facilities. State leaders stocked up on ventilators and built field hospitals in Boston, Worcester and other sites. One sign of the state's success: One University of Texas model , Scarpino said, shows Massachusetts, which has 7 million people, will have between 3,000 and 5,000 deaths in the pandemic's first wave. New York, with 19 million people, already has more than 14,000 Covid deaths and counting. The virus spreads quietly at first — The first detected Covid case in Boston on Feb. 1 was a university student who had returned from China and developed symptoms in late January. Researchers say that the case was quickly caught and isolated. Then, a group of Biogen executives gathered in late February in Boston. At the time of the Biogen conference, there were only about 30 confirmed cases across the country. The event helped spread the virus across the country and world, but was also well-tracked. In New York, by contrast, by the time the first case was detected on March 1, the disease had likely been spreading for weeks. The pandemic is highly localized — The virus won't hit every part of the country or even a whole state at the same time or in the same way. But like elsewhere, nursing homes have been devastated in Massachusetts. Nearly 900 of the state's 1,700 deaths have occurred in long term care facilities. And like elsewhere, poor people are getting the worst of the state's pandemic. One study showed that a third of residents in Chelsea, a primarily working class, Latino neighborhood, were infected with Covid. At Boston Medical Center, the share of black and Hispanic Covid patients has jumped to 82 percent, from 60 percent of all illnesses last year, said Jon Santiago, an emergency room doctor and Democratic state representative from Boston's South End. "There will be other Chelseas, no doubt, all over the state," Santiago said.

A view of the Boston Marathon starting line in Hopkinton, Mass. The race was rescheduled from today to Sept. 14. | Maddie Meyer/Getty Images

Welcome to POLITICO Nightly: Coronavirus Special Edition, a nightly intelligence brief from our global newsroom on the effect of the coronavirus on politics and policy, the economy and global health. Check out this behind the scenes story of how Houston officials decided against canceling the rodeo. Reach out with tips: rrayasam@politico.com and on Twitter at @renurayasam.

A message from PhRMA: In these unprecedented times, America's biopharmaceutical companies are coming together to achieve one shared goal: beating COVID-19. We are rapidly screening our vast global libraries to identify potential treatments and have 284 clinical trials underway. Explore our efforts.

First In Nightly

FOOD FOR THOUGHT — Restaurants say their industry, which accounts for the majority of layoffs nationwide because of the pandemic, needs its own targeted recovery fund . That's because the bailout package Congress passed last month makes it more attractive for their staff to draw unemployment benefits than to continue working, Ian Kullgren reports. Unemployment benefits vary by state, but before the coronavirus crisis, the average weekly benefit nationwide was $370. A $600 sweetener temporarily added by the stimulus bill to weekly unemployment checks raises the average weekly benefit to $970 — nearly double average weekly pay within the food industry. "They're not going to come back to work because unemployment is too attractive," said Tom Colicchio, the restaurateur and "Top Chef" judge, who has been an advocate for small restaurants during the pandemic. Some of the restaurants that have benefited from the small-business rescue are major chains, including Potbelly, Ruth's Hospitality Group, Taco Cabana and J. Alexander's. Shake Shack said today it plans to return a $10 million loan it received under the emergency program. Close, again — The Senate has yet to broker a deal to replenish the small business fund, even as it runs dry, Burgess Everett, Heather Caygle and Marianne Levine report. Lawmakers said that they were on "the cusp of an agreement," one that includes $60 billion in loans for economic disaster aid, $75 billion for hospitals and $25 billion for coronavirus testing. Democrats are optimistic Congress could pass the nearly $500 billion package as soon as Wednesday, even as lawmakers from both parties register complaints and could create procedural hurdles that would complicate the bill's passage. And banks warn the $300 billion in new funding for small businesses could evaporate in two days.

JOIN TOMORROW — DESANTIS, UNEMPLOYMENT CLAIMS, AND FLORIDA'S STRUGGLE WITH COVID-19: Florida can't keep up with unemployment claims in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Join Florida Playbook co-authors Matt Dixon and Gary Fineout tomorrow at 9 a.m. EDT to learn how Gov. Ron DeSantis is juggling the meltdown of the unemployment website with efforts to reopen the state despite an increase in deaths. Have questions? They'll answer as many as they can. REGISTER HERE TO PARTICIPATE.

From the Health Desk

WHERE'S THE DATA? Gross underreporting of tests, hospitalizations and deaths related to Covid-19 has plagued racial and ethnic data at both the state and federal level, Maya King reports. Nearly half of all states have not included any data on the race or ethnicity of those affected by the coronavirus. Distrust disaster — The coronavirus pandemic already is hitting black and brown people disproportionately. In the latest episode of POLITICO Dispatch, national political reporter Laura Barrón-López explains why decades of distrust and a lack of public health messaging in those communities is making things worse.

Listen to the latest POLITICO Dispatch podcast

From The Energy Desk

THE CRUDE TRUTH — The oil industry is in dire straits because of the pandemic, energy editor Matt Daily writes, and its biggest problem is that there are few places left to store the unused oil that would normally be turned into jet fuel, gasoline or diesel. For the first time in the 37-year history of the oil futures market, prices went into negative territory today : -$37 a barrel. Under the terms of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange's WTI crude contract, anyone left holding a contract at its expiration has to take delivery of the product — in this case, 1,000 barrels of light, sweet crude. Normally, few people in the futures market take delivery, because they roll their positions from one month into the next. The problem today arose when many speculators bought May contracts in recent weeks expecting oil prices to rebound. They didn't, and because the May contract expires Tuesday, they scrambled today to sell those contracts either to companies that had some oil storage space, or, more likely, to savvier traders who held short positions in expectation of a further fall in prices. That led to the drop into negative territory, with contract owners literally paying counterparties to take the futures off their hands. Oil prices started the year near $60 a barrel, and the sector has already slashed spending by nearly $30 billion for this year. U.S. output, which hit a record at the end of last year above 13 million barrels a day — the highest level in the world — is dropping fast. Production is down more than 300,000 barrels per day over the past two months, and is expected to decline by 3 million barrels in the coming months. Bankruptcies, too, are expected to hit many in the industry, as their cash flows dry up and debts go unpaid. A downturn is likely to last 1 to 2 years simply based on the oil that's accumulated in the past several weeks. The Trump administration's plans to allow oil companies to lease up to 77 million barrels of storage capacity in its Strategic Petroleum Reserve will help a bit, but not enough to stabilize the market. That will only happen when supply and demand come back into balance, either from output cuts or when people feel safe enough from the coronavirus to leave their homes.

Ask The Audience

Our question for our readers this week: What permanent changes will the pandemic cause in your behavior, either at work or at home? Use the form to send us your responses, and we plan to feature several later this week.

Talking to the Experts

How should the U.S. address cybersecurity risks exposed by the broader move to telework? "In the Armed Services Committee we use a term, 'attack surface.' This has massively expanded the attack surface, the target areas for malevolent actors. Particularly in the private sector, it opens up new avenues for penetrating private networks. I'm talking about businesses all the way from retail to national defense. Our commission found something like 90 percent of private sector cyberattacks can be prevented by simple cyber hygiene. It's a serious problem that just got a lot more serious." — Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), co-chair of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, as told to cybersecurity reporter Tim Starks "One of the many things we've learned from this crisis is that the federal government was unprepared for a massive and sudden shift to work remotely. That can't happen again." — Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), also co-chair of that commission

Matt Wuerker/POLITICO

The Global Fight

THE LIBERATORS — Trump's British ally Nigel Farage is agitating for more lockdowns because Britain's borders remain open. Even so, anti-lockdown protests are spreading outside the U.S., but with few patterns, reports Ryan Heath. President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil joined anti-lockdown protests Sunday after calling lockdowns "dictatorial." Protests erupted in Russia today against the Putin-friendly regional governor in North Ossetia, calling for his resignation and for the end of lockdown. The next protest hotspot could be Lebanon, which had been rocked by months of anti-corruption protests until a total lockdown began on March 16. Lebanon's economy may shrink 12 percent in 2020, and a taxi driver recently set his car on fire in protest of pandemic measures.

WAS A "PANDEMIC PLAYBOOK" IGNORED? — TOMORROW: The Obama White House left a "pandemic playbook" for the Trump administration that hasn't been utilized during the Covid-19 outbreak. Join POLITICO health care reporter Dan Diamond tomorrow at 4 p.m. EDT for a virtual discussion with Beth Cameron, former member of the National Security Council's pandemic response team. What steps should be taken to prepare for the possibility of a second wave or an outbreak in the fall? What impact will the Trump administration's decision to cut funding to the WHO have? Cameron shares her thoughts and answers your questions. Submit yours by tweeting it to @POLITICOLive using #AskPOLITICO. REGISTER HERE TO PARTICIPATE.

Nightly Number

$6 million — The amount of emergency aid the Education Department says has reached campuses so far, out of a total $6.28 billion. Officials are trading accusations with college leaders over the slow pace of the aid rollout from the March 27 rescue package, intended to directly assist students with needs like housing or food. (h/t education reporter Michael Stratford)

Parting Words

THE QUARANTEENS — Covid-19's message for Generation Z: You're grounded. Photographers Jean-Marc Caimi and Valentina Piccinni spoke with teens around the world , and took portraits of them using Zoom videoconferencing. Jules, a 13 year-old from Belgium, said he keeps up with the news, but doesn't "want to get too depressed ... so I don't watch it every day." Yasser, 18 from Morocco, had advice for those in quarantine: "There's no way to know what could happen a few months from now, let alone a year, so stop being lazy, enjoy your life and learn how to be content alone."   A message from PhRMA: In these unprecedented times, America's biopharmaceutical companies are coming together to achieve one shared goal: beating COVID-19. The investments we've made have prepared us to act swiftly: · Rapidly screening our vast global libraries to identify potential treatments and have 284 clinical trials underway · Dedicating our top scientists and using our investments in new technologies to speed the development of safe and effective vaccines · Sharing learnings from clinical trials in real time with governments and other companies to advance the development of additional therapies · Expanding our unique manufacturing capabilities and sharing available capacity to ramp up production once a successful medicine or vaccine is developed Explore our efforts.   Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here.   Follow us on Twitter Renuka Rayasam @renurayasam   Follow us POLITICO, LLC 1000 Wilson Blvd. Arlington, VA, 22209, USA