POLITICO NIGHTLY: Don’t call it a second wave

By Renuka Rayasam

DON’T YOU FORGET ABOUT ME — It’s too early to talk about the pandemic’s second wave: The United States has yet to emerge from its first wave of coronavirus. Covid-19 has now spread to every state — and almost every county — in the country. About 5,000 to 6,000 Americans are expected to die every week from Covid from now until July 4, said Nicholas Reich, a professor of biostatistics and epidemiology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, who has been aggregating Covid forecasts. Because the virus has been on the decline in New York, total Covid case counts and deaths in the U.S. don’t seem to be steeply rising. But in many places they are: New hotspots are continuously emerging across the country. Eighteen states are seeing an increase in Covid case counts, including sharp increases in Arizona, Florida and Texas, according to Covid Exit Strategy. Hospitalizations have been rising rapidly in at least nine states since Memorial Day. The country is rapidly approaching 2 million cases.

In many ways the U.S is uniquely vulnerable to Covid, with its large health disparities, high number of uninsured, decentralized response and widespread skepticism over public health guidance like mask wearing. The country accounts for more than a quarter of global deaths from Covid, but only 4.3 percent of the global population. Here’s a look at major Covid hotspots, based on the U.S. Covid Atlas, a county-level data visualization of Covid clusters from University of Chicago researchers, and what they tell us about the pandemic right now. The infection rate in the Navajo Nation, home to about 174,000 people across Arizona, Utah and New Mexico, is higher than in New York. The U.S. Covid Atlas also shows a sea of hotspots in black communities, stretching from Mississippi through Alabama to Georgia. These are communities that have long suffered from lack of access to health care, and resulting chronic conditions make them particularly prone to complications from Covid. About 14.4 percent of black Americans lacked health coverage in 2018, compared with 8.6 percent of whites. There’s been a line of hotspots popping up from Southern Arizona to Southern California. Marynia Kolak, health geographer at the University of Chicago, thinks some of that activity could be due to Californians, who were under a more extreme lockdown, traveling to Arizona to do things — like visit a hair stylist — that they may not have been allowed to do in their own state. Crowded workplaces and residences are still getting hammered: Meatpacking plants, which President Donald Trump has ordered to remain open, have been driving many of the Covid clusters around the country including one in Utah. That’s also been true in Brazil, Germany, Canada and other countries around the world. Jails and prisons have also been a persistent Covid incubator, including in Arkansas. It’s not clear how much reopening is to blame for the spikes. Texas and Florida have been seeing rising case counts as restrictions lift, but Colorado, which has also loosened its pandemic restrictions, has not. Georgia, which lifted all pandemic restrictions, is seeing case counts increase, but not as steeply as in California, which has moved more slowly to lift measures, according to Covid Exit Strategy. And there are differences within states too: Northern California is faring better than Southern California, even as both live under the same statewide restrictions. Some of the rising case counts and subsequent deaths are random, perhaps linked to a superspreader who went to a party or religious service in one area, said Eric Toner, senior scholar with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. But some relate to how well people adhere to mask wearing, hand washing, social distancing and other behaviors that can slow the virus spread, he said. Colorado’s Democratic Gov. Jared Polis, who wears masks to news conferences, is allowing businesses to refuse service to maskless customers . In Texas, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has recommended masks, but not required it. “Every place, as we lift restrictions, will see an increase in cases,” Toner said. “That’s to be expected. The question is how big.” Welcome to POLITICO Nightly: Coronavirus Special Edition. NASCAR banned the Confederate flag at races today. Reach out with tips: rrayasam@politico.com or on Twitter at @renurayasam.   HAPPENING TOMORROW 12:30 p.m. EDT - PLANNING FOR FUTURE HEALTH CRISES: As the U.S. confronts the worst public health crisis in modern history, lawmakers race to shape the next phase of health care modernization to prepare the country for future emergencies. Join POLITICO Live and POLITICO’s newest division, AgencyIQ, for a live virtual interview with Reps. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Diana DeGette (D-Colo.). Hear about possible updates to the landmark 21st Century Cures Act and about the concept paper co-authored by Upton and DeGette that creates a framework for sweeping changes to medical product development and health care access in the U.S. REGISTER HERE.     First In Nightly STILL OPEN — Intensive care beds are filling again in many states, but several governors have no plans to reimpose shutdown measures or pause reopenings, a sign that the political will to take drastic measures has dissipated even if the virus is still raging, health care reporters Alice Miranda Ollstein and Dan Goldberg write. In Texas, where total cases have shot up by one third in the last two weeks, Abbott is moving ahead with plans to let virtually all businesses keep expanding capacity by the end of this week. In North Carolina, which is reporting its highest-ever levels of new infections and hospitalizations, Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper said reimposing restrictions would be a last resort. Just one state, Utah, has paused the next phase in its reopening plan amid a two-week spike in new cases. The virus is still infecting more than 20,000 people in the U.S every day. Election workers in North Las Vegas, Nev., count and verify mail ballots at the Clark County Election Department, which is serving as both a primary election ballot drop-off point and an in-person voting center. | Getty Images Around the Nation APP CRASH — The global rush to halt the coronavirus led countries like Australia and South Korea to launch smartphone apps to track its spread — using the technology as a key part of their push to tamp down the pandemic and restart their economies, technology reporter Steven Overly and eHealth reporter Mohana Ravindranath write. But in the U.S., with varying opinions on what data these apps should record, the federal government has so far failed to institute concrete privacy standards. Apple and Google sought to fill the void by asserting their own standards, flexing the power they hold over the software on almost all smartphones. The result is a nationwide hodgepodge that has U.S. states struggling to take advantage of what sounded like promising digital tools to determine who has been exposed to the coronavirus. Some Americans will have multiple apps to choose from. Others will have none at all. And the level of adoption experts say is needed for these apps to make a meaningful difference — about 60 percent of the population — is looking all but impossible to hit. On The Economy PUBLIC SECTOR’S PUBLIC MELTDOWN — Governors and local officials are struggling to meet payrolls amid a pandemic that has dramatically hiked government costs and sapped tax revenues. The U.S. shed 585,000 government jobs in May almost entirely at the state and local level, even as the rest of the economy began to show signs of recovery, Megan Cassella and Eleanor Mueller report. The job losses in government — which totaled more than 1.5 million in two months, according to Labor Department data — could get worse without a federal backstop in the next round of economic aid, state officials and some members of Congress say. The public sector employs a higher proportion of black workers than other U.S. industries do, and its decline explains in part Friday’s jobs report, which showed that while the unemployment rate declined overall, it continued to tick upward for black workers. The Backstory 52 YEARS LATER — In the debut episode of POLITICO’s new video series The Backstory, deputy magazine editor Elizabeth Ralph dives into the similarities and differences between this year and 1968. She emails us: Pundits have been trumpeting the comparison between 2020 and 1968 as anti-racist protests sweep American cities, clashes with police make the nightly news and the president revives Richard Nixon’s “law and order” rhetoric. I interviewed two historians to find out whether history is repeating itself. Clayborne Carson, director of Stanford’s Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute, remembers being in Los Angeles after King was shot and says he can see the resemblance. Michael Fortner, a political science professor at the CUNY Graduate Center, says he doesn’t think the two years are similar at all. Check it out! Covid-2020 ON THE ROAD AGAIN — Trump announced today that his reelection campaign would be holding a rally in Tulsa, Okla., on June 19 , ending a three-month pause. The president made the announcement at a roundtable with African American leaders at the White House. The Tulsa rally next week will be held on Juneteenth, a national commemoration of the end of slavery in the U.S. Tulsa is the site of a 1921 massacre, considered by many the worst incidence of racial violence in U.S. history. Ask The Audience This week’s question: If there's a second wave, which pandemic restriction do you hope doesn't come back? Please write us and we’ll include some answers in our Friday edition. The Global Fight A TESTING BRIGHT SPOT — Seven weeks after the Rockefeller Foundation published its National Covid-19 Testing Action Plan — which seeks to coordinate and underwrite the testing market — the U.S. this week hit the foundation’s summer target of 3 million tests per week, Raj Shah, the foundation’s president, told Ryan Heath today. A total of 22.5 million tests have been administered in the U.S. since February, and the goal is considerably larger: 30 million tests per week in the fall. Shah said the federal government needs to spend another $75 billion (on top of a previous $25 billion) to reach the target. Shah rated the overall U.S. federal Covid-19 response as the worst of any industrialized country other than the U.K. But he praised mayors, including Republican Francis Suarez in Miami, and Democrats Eric Garcetti in Los Angeles and Mike Duggan in Detroit, for their efforts to roll out testing to low-income and minority communities. Coronavirus “spreads five times as fast in lower income and minority-majority ZIP codes than in upper income ZIP codes,” Shah said. Shah said he is extremely worried by the lack of U.S. global leadership on Covid-19. “We’re going to need 4 billion to 5 billion inoculations to achieve herd immunity. That's an extraordinary challenge logistically.” With the disproportionate impact of Covid-19 on African-American communities, Shah called for a “restructured American safety net.” He said that only tax policy, not philanthropy, could successfully address a problem as deep as America’s race-based wealth and social divides. Nightly Number 6.5 percent The rate of U.S. economic contraction in 2020, the Federal Reserve projected today . The central bank expects the economy to rebound next year, and intends to keep an extraordinary level of support in place for years, estimating that interest rates will stay near zero at least through the end of 2022. (h/t financial services reporter Victoria Guida) Parting Words TRUMP’S EUROPEAN BIRDIE — Trump's golf courses in Scotland are in line to get a more than £1 million tax rebate thanks to a government bailout fund for tourism businesses hit by the coronavirus. According to the Guardian, the two golf resorts will get emergency funding from the Scottish government's £2.3 billion business support package, which includes waiving property taxes due this year. The news site said Trump Turnberry had been due to pay £850,766 in property tax this year and Trump Aberdeenshire £121,170. The local councils that cover the resorts are expected to tell the businesses this week they will no longer have to pay that money. Both the Scottish and U.K. governments have set up emergency funds that cover the furlough of any staff not able to work because their businesses have closed down because of the virus. A spokesperson for the Trump Organization, which runs the golf courses and is overseen by the president's sons Eric and Donald Jr., told the Guardian that the resorts had used coronavirus emergency funding but did not provide details on how much money had been claimed or how many staff were furloughed. The organization also asked for state support from the Irish government for its resort in Doonbeg.   Protect Yourself and Others From Coronavirus: Even if you don’t have symptoms, you could spread the coronavirus. Practice these physical distancing and hygiene tips to keep yourself and your loved ones safe: Stay 6 feet away from others in public; wash your hands often for 20+ seconds; disinfect frequently touched surfaces like cellphones and light switches; and wear a cloth face covering when out in public. Together, we can slow the spread. Visit coronavirus.gov to learn more.     Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here.    POLITICO, LLC 1000 Wilson Blvd. Arlington, VA, 22209, USA