Coronavirus Briefing: 'I Felt So Beat Up'

May 6, 2020

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

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The New York Times

By Patrick J. Lyons

Shutdowns to fight the pandemic have plunged the European Union into its worst economic slump since it was founded after World War II.
President Trump said the coronavirus task force would continue "indefinitely," reversing what he said Tuesday about shutting it down.
Nearly one in five young children in the United States are not getting enough to eat, according to their mothers.
Get the latest updates here, as well as maps, a tracker for U.S. metro areas and full coverage.

What it feels like to have Covid-19

Thoka Maer

The official list of Covid-19 symptoms is familiar — fever, dry cough, shortness of breath and, in some cases, headache, chills, and loss of taste or smell.

But then there's how people actually experience it:

"I felt like there was an anvil sitting on my chest."

"Like someone inside my head was trying to push my eyes out."

"Just the simple act of getting up and having a shower was tiring."

"I felt so beat up, like I had been in a boxing ring with Mike Tyson."

"You keep wondering the whole time, 'Is this it?'"

A dozen people who were sickened — in many cases, severely — by the coronavirus and have since recovered described to us in vivid terms what it feels like to endure this scary and disorienting illness.

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Women are carrying more of the load

Even when both parents are stuck at home, women are doing a disproportionately large share of the extra work created by the pandemic — both the housework and the home schooling of children. That's according to a survey conducted for The Times, one of the first national efforts to examine the housework gap issue.

But there's also a perception gap: Nearly half of the men in the survey said they spend more time on home schooling than their spouse did, but only 3 percent of women agreed.

Alisha Haridasani Gupta, who writes our newsletter In Her Words, chalked that up to the "mental load": men relying on women to tell them what to do at home.

"They are sort of designating the woman as the manager, so there's this added step in the woman's life," Alisha told us. "And a lot of women end up saying, 'All right, I'll do it myself.'"

While the coronavirus crisis hasn't erased traditional gender roles, it may have helped erode them a bit: In many families, the survey found, men have taken on more household labor than before the pandemic, particularly those who have been laid off or are able to work from home while their spouse cannot.

Help might be on the way from llamas — yes, llamas

Scientists have found that antibodies from Winter, a 4-year-old chocolate-colored llama with great eyelashes, neutralized the virus that causes Covid-19 in lab experiments.

It wasn't a random idea. Llama antibodies have been used in virus research for many years because they are smaller and more nimble than human antibodies, and are easily manipulated. And previous tests had shown Winter's antibodies worked well in the lab against the viruses that cause SARS and MERS.

The researchers in Belgium who conducted the study hope that injections of llama antibodies could protect people on the front lines, like health care workers, from becoming infected.

The catch: The treatment's protection would wear off in a month or two without additional injections.

Research is still needed on whether such injections will be safe in humans and will have the same effect in the body that they do in the lab.

Is the coronavirus mutating? Yes. All viruses mutate to some degree as they spread. But so far, there is no compelling evidence that the coronavirus is becoming more contagious or more deadly, despite a preliminary study suggesting otherwise.

The real toll in each U.S. state

How many Americans have died because of the coronavirus? While no one can say yet what the true total is, the current official tally is surely an undercount. There are gaps in testing, many states are weeks or months behind in reporting, and the process of counting is complicated and time-consuming.

To get a more complete look at the virus's effect in the U.S., The Times analyzed C.D.C. data and calculated the number of "excess deaths" — or how many more people have died than usual — for each state. Here's what we found.

Reopenings

Germany will begin its second phase of reopening this week, allowing schools, day care centers, stores and restaurants to resume business. The country has also begun ambitious antibody studies to test broad sectors of the population.
As India begins to lift lockdown restrictions, people in urban areas are gathering on streets where social distancing is impossible. The country's death rate has risen to more than 100 a day, from several dozen in mid-April.
In the border-straddling town of Baarle-Hertog-Nassau, residents have had to navigate the tight restrictions in Belgium, which is starting to reopen, and the more relaxed approach of the Netherlands, from block to block and even from one side of a room to the other.

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

What you can do

Clean slowly. Many household disinfectants promise to kill 99.9 percent of germs, but not if you wipe the product off too quickly. Some cleaners need several minutes of contact time to do their jobs. Check the label for recommended contact time.

Get grandma online. Here are five ways to stay in touch with your less tech-savvy friends and relatives, with tools from Amazon's Echo Show to Facebook Portal to Jitsi Meet. (You could always write a letter.)

Help children create new rituals. The flexibility of not going to school can let them get more sleep and try new activities.

What else we're following

The Supreme Court refused to intervene to overturn Pennsylvania's order that most businesses close down to fight the spread of the coronavirus.
Wholesale prices for Grade A large eggs tripled in March, prompting lawsuits accusing egg producers and supermarkets of price-gouging and profiteering.

There is still one part of the U.S. without a single coronavirus case: American Samoa, a cluster of islands in Polynesia that has sealed itself off from the outside world for nearly two months.
Which is safer to visit, a restaurant or a gym? The Times Opinion section analyzed anonymized cellphone location data to measure how crowded different types of businesses get.
A British government scientist who had lectured the public about the need for strict social distancing resigned after he was caught breaking the rules to visit his married lover, The Telegraph reported.
At least 2,000 prison employees and nearly 5,000 prisoners in the U.S. have contracted the coronavirus, the C.D.C. reported.

What you're doing

My husband and I bought scissors and a good trimmer, and cut each other's hair. We tried to emulate a barber shop/hairstyling place. It was fun and brought us closer together. My husband did a great job on my hair. I had no idea of his hidden talent.

— Diane M. Norberg, Sarasota, Fla.

Let us know how you're dealing with the outbreak. Send us a response here, and we may feature it in an upcoming newsletter.

Lara Takenaga and Jonathan Wolfe contributed to today's newsletter.

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