U.S. Navy Test Shows 60% Of Carrier Crew Have Coronavirus Antibodies

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U.S. Navy Test Shows 60% Of Carrier Crew Have Coronavirus Antibodies

WASHINGTON (Reuters) — A U.S. Navy investigation into the spread of the coronavirus aboard the Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier has found that about 60 percent of sailors tested had antibodies for the virus, two U.S. officials told Reuters on Monday, suggesting a far higher infection rate than previously known.

In April, the Navy and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) started conducting serology tests to look for the presence of specific antibodies that are created by the immune system’s attack response to the presence of the virus and remain in the blood for a period of time.

More than 1,100 aboard tested positive for the virus as of April, less than 25 percent of the crew.

The spread of the virus on the ship put into motion a series of events that led to the captain of the ship being relieved of his command after the leak of a letter he wrote calling on the Navy for stronger measures to protect the crew.

One sailor from the ship died from the coronavirus and several others were hospitalized. But broadly, sailors, who are generally healthier and younger, faired better than the general population and most showed no symptoms whatsoever.

The officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that about 400 volunteers participated in the serology tests, lower than the 1,000 volunteers that were sought, but enough to provide statistically relevant data about how the virus spread aboard one of world’s largest warships.

The Roosevelt has about 4,800 personnel on the ship.

The officials said a formal announcement was expected as early as Tuesday.

The Navy declined to comment.

The serology test results appear to track closely with data from the Roosevelt in early April, which showed that 60 percent of the sailors who were testing positive for the virus itself — not antibodies — were in fact symptom-free.

Medical groups, such as the American Medical Association, have warned that serology tests can lead to false positives.

The CDC has said that definitive data is lacking on whether individuals with antibodies are protected against reinfection from the coronavirus.

In addition to the serology tests, volunteers were also swabbed again for COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the virus, as well as asked to answer a short survey.

Captain Brett Crozier was fired by the Navy’s top civilian, then-acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly, against the recommendations of uniformed leaders.

Modly resigned after a series of events, including his going aboard the carrier and questioning Crozier’s character in a speech to the Roosevelt’s crew, which was leaked to the media.

The Navy has completed a broader review into the events leading to Crozier’s firing and is expected to release the results of that investigation in the coming weeks.

(Reporting by Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart; editing by Grant McCool)

A HuffPost Guide To Coronavirus



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Netflix’s Ugly Delicious: A must-watch for foodies and cinephiles

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Netflix’s Ugly Delicious: A must-watch for foodies and cinephiles

Written by Anvita Singh
| New Delhi |

Published: June 9, 2020 2:50:49 pm





Popular chef and food writer David Chang in a still from his show Ugly Delicious.

A critical appreciation of food, a social commentary, a travel documentary – Netflix’s Ugly Delicious is all these things rolled into one visual treat. Featuring the renowned chef David Chang, the series consists of two seasons. The first season had eight episodes and the second one, which premiered in March this year, has only four. These episodes have a runtime of around an hour each.

David Chang

I had always been a foodie and would frequently watch anything featuring Gordon Ramsay. At one point, I was quite taken with the English food writer and chef Nigella Lawson. Jamie Oliver was another chef I was fond of watching on TV. And while growing up, my mother would often sit and watch multiple episodes of The Tarla Dalal Show. But David Chang is young (he’s only 42) and while I would sometimes see his name in several articles, I never bothered to look him up. Not until I binge-watched his Netflix series, Ugly Delicious.

At a fairly young age, he has become one of the most renowned names of the culinary world. He has numerous awards to his credit and owns a path-breaking two-Michelin star restaurant by the name of Momofuku Ko in New York. Chang has several other fine dining restaurants spread across Australia, America and Canada. Not only this, the man is a food writer and a curious, inquisitive, knowledge-hungry individual, which only makes him that much more attractive. A Korean-American, Chang demonstrates, through the several hours of Ugly Delicious, how open he is to new ideas and cultures, and I don’t mean that only in terms of food.

Hilarious and soft-spoken (but loud and firm when he needs to be), Chang comes across as a grounded, humble man who is aware of and takes pride in his traditions. And this very traditionalism takes a backseat when he is talking to someone whose rich history and past he knows nothing of. And when that happens, he becomes this liberal, questioning figure of the food world. It is this dichotomy of his personality that the show brings out wonderfully.

How it works

Every episode focuses on one dish or cuisine from a specific culture. From thereon, experts and other writers, including a few well-known artistes, discuss and dissect the possibilities of a potential food revolution. The result is an immersive, one-of-a-kind visual experience.

The filmmaking

By now, it must have become clear that Ugly Delicious is not your average food show. Because experiencing the delicacies through film and still making it seem so stunning is a difficult act to balance. However, the makers did an excellent job of hiring a talented cinematographer and editor. Each episode tells its own story with compelling graphics and lovely visuals of cities across the world — China, Japan, India, Italy. The list is endless.

Ugly Delicious is currently streaming on Netflix.

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Stock Markets in Europe Fall. Wall Street May Follow.

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Stock Markets in Europe Fall. Wall Street May Follow.

Wall Street is set to fall, one day after its big surge.

European markets fell in early Tuesday trading, setting the stage for a rough opening on Wall Street one day after its big bounce.

Stocks in Britain, Germany and France were about 1 percent lower in morning trading, after a mostly positive day in Asia. Prices for U.S. Treasury bonds rose, further signaling investor skepticism.

Futures markets were suggesting that Wall Street would open more than 1 percent lower.

Just a day ago, the S&P 500 erased its losses for this year, as if the coronavirus had never happened. Investors have taken heart in signs that the global economy is on the mend, particularly in China, Europe and the United States. They have also been cheered by government and central bank efforts to use money to fight the global freeze-up.

Tuesday brought reminders that the global situation remained tenuous. Tensions on the Korean Peninsula rose, while prospects for a quick batch of new stimulus spending in the United States looked uncertain.

Faced with a crisis unlike any other in memory, central bankers have gone beyond what the monetary authorities did even in the darkest days of the 2008 global financial crisis.

Central bankers entered the crisis with low interest rates, leaving them less room to goose growth using their tried-and-true tools. Because they went into the crisis with limited ammunition to stoke growth, experimentation may prove even more crucial in the months and years ahead as the world embarks on what could be a long slog back to prosperity.

Germany, France, the United States and many other countries have poured trillions of dollars into their economies through tax cuts, cheap credit and cash handouts. Monetary policy and fiscal policy can act as complements during a crisis to get economies back on track.

But appetite for further fiscal action is eroding in some places, including the United States. And the next stage — the recovery — could pose a fresh test for the world’s central banks, forcing them to get more creative as they try to keep pandemic aftershocks from permanently scarring growth potential. The Fed and its global counterparts are shifting from crisis-fighting mode, when they worked to keep credit markets open, to a period when they must stoke lending and spending to get economies churning again.

“It will be a potential concern as the economy turns around, if that turnaround is less than ideal,” said Donald Kohn, a former Fed vice chairman now at the Brookings Institution. “Central banks will have to work hard at supplying the extra push, the extra zip that they’d want to achieve.”

The Hong Kong government is bailing out Cathay Pacific Airways, its beleaguered flag carrier, by injecting nearly $4 billion and taking a direct stake in its operations.

Like airlines around the world, Cathay Pacific was shaken to its core as its passenger traffic shrank to near zero amid the coronavirus pandemic. The airline said last month that its year-to-date losses totaled $580 million. So far this year, it has asked its employees to take unpaid leave, announced cuts to executive pay and grounded half of its fleet.

Cathay has also been hit by a year of anti-China protests, in which citizens have expressed fear over China’s encroaching grip over the semiautonomous territory, and the airline’s shares lost 20 percent of their value.

In a filing to Hong Kong’s stock exchange on Tuesday, Cathay said the Hong Kong government would inject nearly $4 billion into it through loans and other means. As part of the terms of the bailout, the government will take an undisclosed stake in the carrier, a move that gives it a direct say in its operations through two “observer” boardroom seats.

Cathay’s announcement came on the same day that hundreds of protesters gathered in Hong Kong shopping malls to commemorate the one-year anniversary of a protest march that became the start of the city’s biggest political crisis in decades.

Ahead of the announcement, rumors had swirled around a possible takeover by Air China, a Chinese state-owned enterprise. That stoked fears about China’s encroachment not only in the city’s politics but its finance sector.

Even before the contagion spread, Cathay Pacific’s fate looked increasingly uncertain.

Last year, it fell under withering criticism from China’s state-run propaganda machine after several of its employees participated in protests or spoke out in support of them on social media. The airline shuffled its leadership in an effort to deflect the fray, but Chinese customers avoided Cathay anyway, sending its traffic plummeting.

More broadly, the protests drove Chinese tourists to avoid Hong Kong, hitting travel-related businesses hard. Police officers and protesters even clashed last summer in Hong Kong’s slick airport, where Cathay is headquartered.

Stock in Chesapeake Energy, the troubled oil and gas company, made moves on Monday that were astonishing even in a period in which the stock market has been rocked with volatility.

The company’s shares soared 182 percent during regular trading but then plunged more than 30 percent in after-hours trading. The free fall was most likely caused in part by a Bloomberg News report that Chesapeake was preparing to file for bankruptcy.

The company has a heavy debt load that it will struggle to repay at a time when oil prices, even after a recent rally, are well below levels reached in recent years. Chesapeake warned in a securities filing last month that it may reorganize under bankruptcy protection. At its after-hours trading price, Chesapeake has a stock market value just above $400 million.

Typically, shareholders get wiped out in bankruptcy, but in some cases, like that of Pacific Gas & Electric, the California utility, the shares retain much of their value. But this is unlikely to be the outcome for Chesapeake, judging by the price of its bonds, which are trading below 10 percent of their full value.

Bondholders come before shareholders when claiming assets of a bankrupt company, so the fact that the bonds are trading at very low prices is a strong signal that shareholders will get nothing.

Chesapeake was a pioneer of hydraulic fracturing, the drilling method that enabled drillers to get at vast reserves of oil and gas in the United States. Its former chief executive, Aubrey McClendon, died in a car crash in 2016.

3M sues third-party sellers on Amazon over masks.

The industrial conglomerate 3M filed a trademark infringement lawsuit in federal court in California on Monday, alleging price-gouging and bait-and-switch sales of 3M respirators from third-party Amazon sellers.

The complaint claims that three third-party sellers — all believed to be owned and operated by a California resident named Mao Yu — began in late February to sell what were advertised to be 3M-branded N95 masks on Amazon. The sellers charged for roughly 18 times 3M’s $1.27 list price for the respirators. Buyers spent more than $350,000 for such masks, and sometimes received fewer masks than promised or masks that were damaged or tampered with, according to the suit, which was filed in the United States District Court for the Central District of California.

“By selling and delivering to customers counterfeit, damaged, deficient, or otherwise altered respirators and engaging in price-gouging, Defendants caused irreparable damage to 3M’s reputation,” the suit states.

The defendants in the case could not be reached for comment.

3M, based in a suburb of Saint Paul, Minn., has filed 12 other such suits as part of an effort to combat fraud, price-gouging and counterfeiting tied its respirators and other high-demand health products as a result of the coronavirus outbreak.

The travel business is picking up as Americans look for escape.

The nation’s largest airlines are preparing for a limited rebound next month as more Americans book vacations in places like Florida and the mountains and national parks in the West.

That resurgence would offer some hope to the travel industry, which racked up billions of dollars in losses as tourists and businesspeople canceled trips in the last three months because of the coronavirus epidemic.

After cratering in April, the number of travelers and airline and airport employees filtering through the Transportation Security Administration’s airport checkpoints has steadily climbed in recent weeks. The low point was April 14, when the agency screened fewer than 90,000 people, just 4 percent of those screened the same date last year. On Sunday, the agency screened more than 440,000 people, about 17 percent of last year’s number and the best day since March.

Investors appear to have noticed those numbers, and airline stock prices have surged. American Airlines is up nearly 90 percent since Monday morning last week, United Airlines is more than 70 percent higher, and Delta Air Lines is up more than 45 percent.

Movie theaters in California could reopen as soon as Friday if they limit auditorium capacity to 25 percent, according to guidelines released on Monday by the California Department of Public Health. County public health officials must still give their approval.

Many states have allowed theaters to reopen. But California theaters are especially important to the film business. Los Angeles and its suburbs make up the nation’s No. 1 moviegoing market by ticket sales. (The New York area, where no reopening date has been announced, is second.) The Bay Area is also a major market. To justify a national release — Christopher Nolan’s “Tenet,” for instance, is scheduled for July 17 — studios need theaters in most top markets to be operating.

In clearing the way for theaters to relight their marquees, California health officials asked for face masks to be worn for all patrons, except when eating or drinking, and for groups to be seated at least six feet apart in a “checkerboard” style. They also suggested that theaters provide ticket holders with designated arrival times so that they could enter “in staggered groups.”

Catch up: Here’s what else is happening.

  • Dunkin’ Donuts said on Monday that it planned to hire up to 25,000 new workers at its franchises to deal with an influx of customers as states start to reopen. Dunkin’, which has 8,500 restaurants in the United States, said about 90 percent of its locations were now open.

Reporting was contributed by Brooks Barnes, Niraj Chokshi, Peter Eavis, Jack Ewing, Mohammed Hadi, Jeanna Smialek and Carlos Tejada.

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‘The silent road outside my house was the sound of a coming recession’ – The Mail & Guardian

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‘The silent road outside my house was the sound of a coming recession’ – The Mail & Guardian

The world is a strange place at the moment. And by strange, I mean terrifying. The world has (as everyone keeps saying) changed. We all know this, but it is not yet clear exactly how it has changed.

Many things seem the same. The sun is still shining. The birds still sing. And men in 4×4 twin-cabs (decorated with special after-purchase extras and stickers that seem to indicate they belong to an elite special forces unit) still do not stop at stop streets. 

But other things are different.

There seems to be a constant anxiety in the air. And it is because we are afraid for a good reason. Pandemics are scary things. Historically they have a nasty habit of killing large numbers of people for no particular reason, and this can be quite upsetting, because we generally aren’t that keen on dying. 

But while I was shut up in my study during lockdown and worrying about worrisome things, it occurred to me that while I was indeed worried about catching this virus, I was more worried about the fact that the global economy had slowed dramatically. 

Until very recently, complaining about traffic noise in the road that I live on had been one of my favourite pastimes — right up there with complaining about men in twin-cab 4×4’s decorated with special after-purchase extras and stickers that seem to indicate they belong to an elite special forces unit — but now I missed that noise.

Because the silence outside my house was scary. The silence was the sound of a coming recession. 

To distract myself from my worrying, I did a quick Google survey about how scared people were of contracting Covid-19 in comparison to their fear of the economic consequences of the pandemic. 

This simple cost-effective tool gave me a result a day later: South Africans are roughly twice as scared of the economic consequences of Covid-19 than they are of catching it. 

Of the 500 South Africans who responded to my Google survey, 71% said they were more scared of the economic effect of the virus than they were of catching it.

This is remarkable. 

Of course, this could be because the lockdown has been so effective in halting the spread of the virus. This may have created a situation where the virus itself has been experienced by only a tiny percentage of the population, whereas everyone has been affected by the lockdown.

This represents a real danger that South Africans might start to behave in an unsafe manner because of economic fears. The relative success of the lockdown has resulted in the coronavirus spreading in relatively manageable numbers. But failure to continue these measures could very well accelerate the spread.

The reality is that the effectiveness of the lockdown may mean that we are less afraid of the virus than we should be. 

Should the virus spread rapidly, we could well see these numbers changing. But that hasn’t happened yet, and my research is showing people are paralysed by the fear of a corona recession or depression. 

A survey by All Told shows that 80% of South Africans are spending less because they are under financial pressure. On average they are spending about R5 500 less. That represents a huge contraction of consumer spending that will have an enormous effect on gross domestic product. Another question by them showed that more than a quarter of South Africans didn’t think they had the savings to survive a three-month lockdown.

All of which shows that our society is one gripped by fear. On the one hand, fear of a terrifying virus, and on the other hand, fear of the measures taken to combat it. Strange times indeed. 

John Davenport is the chief creative officer at Havas advertising agency in Johannesburg. He writes in his personal capacity



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Can the American-led Black Lives Matter movement trigger an African awakening?

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Can the American-led Black Lives Matter movement trigger an African awakening?

My friend, like any black mother, was alarmed. She couldn’t figure out how her child got to that point in her thinking. After taking a moment, she responded, “Well, if you are going to insist on not having any black people at your party then technically that means you can’t come to your own party, and neither can your other friends, your brother and your dad.” Her daughter paused, weighed up the pros and cons and responded a little reluctantly with; “OK, I guess we can invite everyone then.”

I tell that story not to illustrate the challenges of parenting or that racism comes from unexpected places, but to share some good news; today that same confused child, is now a teenager living in South Africa and has become a huge activist and influential ambassador in her social media circles for the American-led #BlackLivesMatter campaign.

And it’s not just her, many young, digitally savvy armchair activists from across Africa are emerging to champion this compelling movement that’s playing out on social media platforms in their bedrooms.

African teenagers and others should absolutely show solidarity for their black brothers in the US by supporting #BlackLivesMatter. At a deeper level you could argue that because the African American condition is rooted in slavery and ours in colonialism, and the architects for both are white, there is a common understanding that links Africans to this movement.

Either way, this movement clearly has global appeal and not just to teenagers. This is partially inspired by the simplicity of the #BlackLivesMatter message and the dichotomy of its protagonists, the black victim versus the white perpetrator. But what happens when black people are both victim and perpetrator? Do black lives matter as much then?

Despite progress on the continent — our growing economies, legitimate democracies, cultural contributions and increasing significance on the global stage — there are still too many examples of massive injustices perpetrated by black people towards other black people every day, with little attention and almost no outrage. No headlines, few hashtags and no movement to call out the injustice.

Black people in Africa may not be dying as a result of racism, but far too many are dying because of their ethnicity, their political beliefs, their poverty and their gender.

As Africans we have our own George Floyd, Eric Garner and Manuel Ellis. South Africa’s post-apartheid examples include Andries Tatane killed in 2011 during a “service delivery protest”; then there was the Marikana Massacre in 2012 where 34 striking mineworkers were shot dead by police; and more recently Collins Khoza who was allegedly killed during the country’s Covid-19 lockdown. And it’s not just in South Africa. In Nigeria, there’s the recent alleged police shooting of 16-year-old Tina Ezekwe, and in Kenya the case of 13-year-old Yassin Hussein Moyo who was killed on his balcony at home.

The continent that gave us icons like Kwame Nkrumah, Nelson Mandela, Fela Kuti, has also given us thousands of anonymous heroes who have sacrificed their lives with no recognition, no campaigns. The Rwandan Genocide, South Africa’s xenophobic uprisings, Boko Haram’s ongoing reign of terror in Nigeria are stark reminders of these nameless heroes; black Africans who suffered at the hands of black Africans. They remind us that the doling out of injustice is not the preserve of white people nor is it always about race. Africans are equally complicit in ensuring that black lives don’t always matter.

In an ironic move on May 29, the African Union issued a statement condemning Floyd’s killing, asking America to “ensure the total elimination of all forms of discrimination based on race or ethnic origin.” It’s ironic because there isn’t the same level of indignation when examples of the inhuman treatment of black people by black people is exposed in our countries. Why is that? Remember the saying? “When you point a finger at another, there are three fingers pointing back at you?”

Making a case for African lives, that they matter too is not demeaning #BlackLivesMatter, on the contrary it pays homage to the movement. We can learn lessons from it about how to start campaigns that capture the world, create social change for us and elevate the plight of the downtrodden in Africa.

Thank you, George Floyd, and the many who sadly came before you. The impact of your death is already being felt beyond America. Africa’s growing youth population has been described as a potential “ticking time bomb.” Let’s hope the bomb explodes a generation of youth activists like my friend’s daughter who use this opportunity to fight injustice in their own country.

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Todd Snyder on How to Add Patches to Your Jeans

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Todd Snyder on How to Add Patches to Your Jeans

In this installment of our Designer D.I.Y. series, Mr. Snyder stitches print boxers to blown-out denim to produce a whole greater than the holes in its parts.

At a time when everyone is isolated at home, nervous about spending money and without an occasion to dress up, what can we do to help you pass the time?

Styles has started a series of print-and-keep D.I.Y. wardrobe customization ideas, similar to the sewing patterns that glossy magazines used to provide. We want you to remember the joy of fashion and learn (or remember) how to make things at home. Some of fashion’s best-known creative talents will be on hand to guide you through the process.

“Staying at home has given me a lot of time to reflect on all the things I love — my family; my three daughters, Gabi, Cece, and 3-month-old Alexandra; and my fiancée, Shira Suveyke,” said Todd Snyder, a men’s wear designer whose torqued all-American classics only look simple to pull off.

It’s a fact not lost on his heritage-label collaborators like Champion and L.L. Bean, the storied label Mr. Snyder managed to coax out of the Maine woods and onto a runway for the first time in its 108-year history.

With his stores closed and production on hold, Mr. Snyder has focused his unexpected free time on the kind of domestic stuff that is often neglected when you are running a successful brand with your name on its label. “Recently I dusted off my old sewing machine,” he said. “It’s the same one I used in college to make shirts, and I used it to patch some jeans for Shira.”

STEP 1

Pick a bandanna or shirt you are ready to toss and cut a patch slightly larger than the hole you are looking to repair. “Denim pairs well with a lot,” Mr. Snyder said. “I chose a blue paisley bandanna, but you could have fun with old print boxer shorts.” Leave at least an extra inch all around to give you something to stitch onto.

STEP 2

Turn the edges of the patch under to produce an inverted hem and to prevent fraying. Place a matching piece of fabric on the inside of the patched area for reinforcement. Affix the two patches to the jeans with straight pins to hold them in place.

STEP 3

Either by hand, using a whipstitch every ¼ inch, or with a sewing machine, sew around the perimeter of the patch to reinforce it. Don’t worry: the sloppier, the better.

STEP 4

Using the same technique as above, stitch back and forth across the patch in parallel lines to strengthen it. Remember to knot the ends of the thread.

Try on your freshly patched jeans and take a look in the mirror. It’s the only runway we’ve got right now.

Photograph by John Taggart for The New York Times

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How to Contain Your Children’s Clutter

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How to Contain Your Children’s Clutter

Any home can feel claustrophobic during a pandemic. But those with young children may feel especially hemmed in, if their living space is covered with toys, games and school supplies.

If that’s your reality, there is a way to hold back the deluge of clutter, or at least make cleanup easier at the end of the day — with a well-considered combination of cabinets, shelves and containers.

Without a storage plan, you don’t stand much of a chance of maintaining a serene, ordered space.

“Quite often, I go to people’s houses and they haven’t thought through where things are going,” whether it’s toys, sports equipment, art supplies or even children’s clothing, said Lisa Mettis, the founder of the family-focused interior design firm Born & Bred Studio, in London. “They don’t section things off, which leads to chaos.”

For tips on controlling the clutter that inevitably comes with children, we asked interior designers for advice.

Start with an honest assessment of each child’s storage needs. Some children have more toys than others, some play team sports and some might be budding artists or bookworms.

Then consider the approximate volume of goods each activity requires and try to designate a specific area for each cluster of goods, whether it’s a mountain of Legos or a bag of hockey equipment.

“It’s about giving everything its place,” said Kevin Isbell, a Los Angeles designer. “You designate a space for everything, in the hopes that kids will actually follow through” with cleanup at the end of the day.

“Usually, we think about it as three key areas: rest, study and play,” Ms. Mettis said.

Books, for instance, could be placed in a quiet reading corner, while arts and crafts supplies could be organized around a desk or table and various toys stowed in designated drawers.

Children’s interests evolve rapidly, so try to leave some flexibility in the storage plan.

“We usually approach it as, ‘How can they grow into this space?’” said Jay Jeffers, a San Francisco-based interior designer.

Specifically, Mr. Jeffers said, he cautions clients about designing children’s rooms that are too juvenile or cutesy. “New moms might be excited to do a whole nursery in pink for a baby girl,” he said. “But then they’re redoing it in four years,” as the child outgrows the style.

Containers with simple designs and colors — rather than ones that resemble animals or are in pastel shades — more easily make the transition from plush toys to sports equipment when the time comes.

Mr. Jeffers also tries to anticipate future needs. “We always want a desk” — specifically, a desk with drawers — he said, even for young children, as they will eventually need a study space.

Big closets are wonderful for containing clutter, but even without them, some pieces of furniture can help. When renovating homes, many designers try to shoehorn as much storage space into built-in furniture as possible, with integrated drawers and cubbies beneath beds, benches and window seats.

The New York-based design firm Studio DB, for instance, frequently creates custom beds for children’s rooms with big drawers below the mattress and cubbies at the head of the bed.

For a young family in Brooklyn, Studio DB also designed a living room with a toy-concealing window seat, a coffee table with hidden storage under a swiveling top and a long cabinet along one wall. “That cabinet is a good mix of adult and kid storage. It’s a bar as well as toy storage,” said Damian Zunino, a principal of the firm.

The result is a room where children can play (and parents can drink) — and a place that can be cleaned up in a hurry when it’s time for a videoconference.

Purchased furniture pieces can offer just as much storage as custom designs. Furniture brands like Pottery Barn Kids, Lulu and Georgia, and Ikea offer platform or captain’s beds with integrated drawers, storage benches with flip-up tops or cubbies, and free-standing cupboards.

And there’s no rule that says credenzas and chests of drawers can hold only glassware and clothing — they can just as easily be used to store dolls and action figures.

Don’t rely on drawers, cubbies and shelves alone to contain the clutter — adding bins or baskets will make them far more useful. Containers can keep various types of toys separated, while making it easier for children to find their things and put them away later.

“We use baskets all the time. They’re great because you can move them around, they look good, they’re sturdy, and they don’t need to be organized like an open shelf does,” said Shannon Wollack, a partner at the West Hollywood-based interior design firm Studio Life/Style. “They still look clean and organized, but when you’re cleaning up with kids, you can just throw stuff in really quickly and move on.”

Mr. Jeffers said he especially likes stackable bins from RH Baby & Child and Crate & Kids.

Regan Baker, an interior designer in San Francisco, encourages her clients to reserve an extra bin or two for toys and clothing that children have outgrown, so they can be collected for donation to free up space elsewhere. “It’s just a spot so everyone knows where to put the donations,” she said.

If the bins will be concealed in a closet or storage unit, Britt Zunino, a principal at Studio DB, recommended using clear containers, so children can easily see what’s inside. “You can see that it’s the Lego bin, the block bin or the plastic horses bin,” she said.

If your bins are opaque, Ms. Zunino suggested taking pictures of the contents of each one and taping them to the outside, an idea she borrowed from her children’s preschool.

Another advantage of bins is that they can easily be carried from room to room. “In our house, right now, we’ve been using oversized clear shoe bins for the kids’ schoolwork,” she said. “It fits a laptop, all their school paperwork and a cup of crayons and pencils, so the kids can carry it around.”

An empty wall is another opportunity to add storage space, including shelves where a collection of books or toys can double as decoration.

Ms. Mettis often installs shallow wall shelves to hold favorite toys and books with their covers facing out. “A lot of kids’ things are really fun and made for display,” she said. In one project, she also used shallow wall-mounted baskets to hold art supplies above a craft table.

In an arts-and-crafts room for a client, Ms. Baker installed an Ikea pegboard storage system to hold beads, ribbons, paintbrushes, glue and pompoms in separate containers across one wall, and horizontal wires with clips on another wall, so the children could display their artwork.

Storage containers and shelves should be within easy reach of the children who will use them. If your children are very young, shelves close to the floor will be far more useful than those mounted high on the wall.

When you’re fitting out closets, Ms. Baker said, make sure to install adjustable shelves and rods for the same reason. As children grow, they can expand their usable storage space by moving the fixtures higher.

And as their interests change, don’t forget to empty out old bins to make room for new possessions.

In the end, the goal isn’t pick up your children’s clutter every day, Ms. Baker said — it’s to encourage children to do it on their own.

“My kids are proof that it can happen,” she said. “It is possible.”

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She Lost Her Job And Health Insurance And Had To ‘Fight’ To Get A New Plan

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She Lost Her Job And Health Insurance And Had To ‘Fight’ To Get A New Plan

Liz McLemore spent weeks trying to enroll in a health plan after being laid off and losing her job-based coverage. “You just got to fight through,” she says.



Casey Chang


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Casey Chang

Liz McLemore spent weeks trying to enroll in a health plan after being laid off and losing her job-based coverage. “You just got to fight through,” she says.



Casey Chang

Liz McLemore was laid off from her digital marketing job in early March and her health insurance coverage disappeared along with it.

“I’ve always been a saver, so I wasn’t as concerned about the monthly money coming in,” says McLemore, who’s 42 and lives in Inglewood, Calif. “But I really was concerned about the [health] insurance.”

Like millions of others, she’s always had health insurance coverage through her job, so she never had to think about it. Now, she suddenly had to figure out how to find coverage in the middle of a pandemic. Like most people who lost jobs, she had a few options: Medicaid, COBRA, and the insurance exchanges set up by the Affordable Care Act. There was also a deadline — most have 60 days from when they lose coverage to enroll in a new plan.

McLemore opted to enroll in a plan from Covered California, her state’s ACA insurance exchange. It wasn’t easy — she had to call the county at one point, talk to the insurance company, and navigate a difficult application.

The toughest part was computing an annual income for her ACA insurance application. That calculation would have to incorporate earnings from the job she had lost, along with the unemployment that she was collecting from the state, and also $600 a week from the federal government’s enhanced relief jobs lost during the pandemic.

Coronavirus Reset: How To Get Health Insurance Now

McLemore says it took weeks to enroll. But she was determined to get health coverage — not just “because we’re in the middle of a pandemic” but also because she wanted to be able to afford hospital care in case she got into an accident or got injured, like falling down the stairs, while doing daily activities. “You just got to fight through,” she says.

In the end, she got a bronze plan on the exchange. It cost her $340 a month — a lot higher than the $60 she paid for her job-based plan. “My prescription cost is a little bit higher, my copay [for a doctor’s] visit is actually like three times as high, the deductible is different,” she says. “So it’s not quite the same thing, for more money — but it’s better than nothing.”

Tell Your Story: Have You Lost Health Insurance During The Coronavirus Crisis?

She says the extra $600 a week helps with that additional expense for now, but that federal payment will stop at the end of July when the provision ends.

Read more stories in Faces Of The Coronavirus Recession.



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It’s America’s Bluest House Seat. How Is This Man a Top Contender?

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It’s America’s Bluest House Seat. How Is This Man a Top Contender?

The contest features a collision of two ambitious politicians labeled for years as rising stars in New York: Mr. Torres, a 32-year-old who became the first openly gay elected official in the Bronx and the youngest member of the City Council in 2014, and Mr. Blake, 37, a veteran of the Obama administration.

The political arm of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus is backing Mr. Torres, who is both black and Puerto Rican, while the Congressional Black Caucus is behind Mr. Blake.

“On a daily basis, I am being told a black person shouldn’t be running here,” said Mr. Blake, who also has the backing of Tom Perez, the first Latino D.N.C. chairman, who offered a rare personal endorsement.

The primary was the first contested New York congressional race in which Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made an endorsement: She is supporting Samelys López, an insurgent candidate with the backing of the Democratic Socialists of America and the Working Families Party.

The district, which neighbors Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s seat, will be a test both of how wide her sphere of influence is and how her brand of far-left progressivism plays in an area that ranks as among the poorest and the least white in the country. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez declined an interview request.

“If you go to a black church in the South Bronx, you are unlikely to come across an assemblage of Democratic Socialist revolutionaries,” said Mr. Torres, who labels himself a pragmatic progressive. “It’s a fact that the D.S.A. has the most robust membership in wealthier, whiter gentrified neighborhoods.”

Ms. López cast herself as a “grass-roots progressive offering a radical transformative vision.” With the Bronx ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic, all the candidates have been forced to mostly campaign from home, which, for Ms. López, is across the street from the Bronx Lebanon Hospital Center. “All I hear is sirens all day,” she said.

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Testing Nursing Home Workers Can Help Stop Coronavirus. But Who Should Pay?

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Testing Nursing Home Workers Can Help Stop Coronavirus. But Who Should Pay?

“It is essential that strategies that addresses workplace testing be part of an overarching public and occupational health strategy, and that federal guidance clearly articulate the roles of insurance providers, employers and public health officials,” the spokeswoman, Kristine Grow, said in a statement.

Adm. Giroir said last Wednesday that insurers, who are required to cover medically necessary coronavirus tests under the federal CARES act, should not be asked to cover worker screenings. “We would expect that to be borne either by the employer directly or under the state plan,” he said in a call with reporters.

Meanwhile, nursing home operators say that even though they want to test residents and staff, a poorly coordinated plan has made their job difficult.

Dr. David A. Nace, the chief medical officer of UPMC Senior Communities in Pittsburgh, which operates nursing homes and assisted-living facilities, said when he talks to colleagues around the country, many say they still struggle to find enough supplies to do the testing. “It still remains limited, despite what anybody’s going to tell you,” he said.

Carol Silver Elliott, the president and chief executive of Jewish Home Family, a consortium of senior care services that includes a nursing home in northern New Jersey, said she had to scramble to find a lab that could process hundreds of tests. Under an executive order, nursing home workers should be regularly tested, but the lab she had been using could only do a few at a time, and had a turnaround of several days.

“As we were wringing our hands over this, one of my colleagues” — someone who worked at another nursing home — “sent me an email and she said they had heard of a lab out of Colorado that had testing available,” she said. Ms. Silver Elliott said she grabbed the phone and called immediately, and the lab had enough capacity to receive her tests by overnight mail.

Jewish Home Family, a nonprofit, is self-insured, meaning it directly pays for workers’ health costs. She said they are spending about $50,000 on testing, although some of that is reimbursed by insurance.

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