Weekly initial claims for unemployment insurance, 1967 - 28 March 2020. More than 6.6 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week — a record — as political and public health leaders put the economy in a deep freeze, keeping people at home and trying to slow the spread of the deadly coronavirus. In two weeks, nearly all the jobs created in the past five years have been erased. Data: Labor Department / FRED. Graphic: The Washington Post

More than 10 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits in March 2020 – 20 million Americans predicted to be out of work by July in “best case” scenario – “We’ve never seen anything like this”

By Heather Long 2 April 2020 (The Washington Post) – More than 6.6 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week — a record — as political and public health leaders put the economy in a deep freeze, keeping people at home and trying to slow the spread of the deadly coronavirus. The past two […]

Map showing secondary locations of anonymized mobile devices that were active at a single Ft. Lauderdale beach during Spring break 2020, tracked as they went across the U.S. Graphic: Tectonix

Tracking mobile phone location data of Florida beachgoers during Spring break shows potential coronavirus spread

By Jason Murdock 27 March 2020 (Newsweek) – Heat maps created using data from citizens’ mobile devices are demonstrating just how quickly potential novel coronavirus cases can spread throughout the U.S. Location data from U.S. mobile technology company X-Mode is being fed into a mapping platform called Tectonix to analyze human movements during the COVID-19 […]

Locusts swarm in East Africa, 13 February 2020. Video: Channel 4 News / YouTube

East Africa faces dual shock from coronavirus and locust swarms – “My entire life in the world, I haven’t seen something like this before”

By Elliot Smith 23 March 2020 (CNBC) – Already being ravaged by the worst infestation of desert locusts in 70 years, East African economies are now staring down the barrel of the coronavirus pandemic. The region was the standout performer for economic growth in the subcontinent prior to the locust outbreak, which threatens the food security […]

Confirmed COVID-19 cases on 26 March 2020 in China, Italy, France, the U.S., South Korea, and Japan. Graphic: Mark Handley / UCL

Coronavirus pandemic could have caused 40 million deaths globally if left unchecked – “Health systems in all countries will be quickly overwhelmed”

By Ryan O’Hare 26 March 2020 (Imperial College London) – The outbreak of COVID-19 would likely have caused 40 million deaths this year in the absence of any preventative measures. This is one of the findings of a new analysis by researchers at Imperial College London, which estimated the potential scale of the coronavirus pandemic […]

Coronavirus COVID-19 global cases, 26 Mar 2020. Graphic: Center for Systems Science and Engineering CSSE at Johns Hopkins University

World passes 500,000 coronavirus cases – U.S. overtakes Italy and China with most cases globally

26 March 2020 (Desdemona Despair) – The world reached an unhappy milestone today, as the number of confirmed cases of SARS-CoV-2, aka novel coronavirus, exceeded a half-million. More than 23,000 deaths have been reported globally. As Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization, observed three days ago, “It took 67 days from the […]

Aerial view of the eastern expressway in Mumbai after Prime Minister Narendra Modi imposed a nationwide lockdown on 24 March 2020 in an attempt to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Photo: Atul Loke / The New York Times

More than 1 billion people in “total lockdown” in India after coronavirus cases spike – “To save India, to save its every citizen, you, your family, every street, every neighborhood is being put under lockdown”

25 March 2020 (BBC News) – India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has imposed a nationwide lockdown in an attempt to slow the spread of the coronavirus. The restrictions came into force at midnight local time (18:30 GMT) and will be enforced for 21 days. “There will be a total ban on venturing out of your […]

A woman and a man stand in a cemetery in Colombia. Three people have died and there are 277 cases in Colombia on 23 March 2020, as the local authorities impose restrictions. Death squads in Colombia are taking advantage of coronavirus lockdowns to murder rural activists, local NGOs have warned. Photo: Luis Robayo / AFP / Getty Images

Colombian death squads exploiting coronavirus lockdown to kill activists – “We are being killed, like always”

By Joe Parkin Daniels 23 March 2020 BOGOTÁ (The Guardian) – Death squads in Colombia are taking advantage of coronavirus lockdowns to murder rural activists, local NGOs have warned. When cities across the country introduced local quarantine measures last week, three social leaders were killed, and as the country prepares to impose a national lockdown […]

Satellite view of airborne nitrogen dioxide pollution over Washington State in March 2020, compared with March 2019. Pollution is visibly reduced by the cessation of economic activity caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Data: Descartes Labs / Sentinel-5P satellite. Graphic: CNN

Satellite images show less pollution over the U.S. as coronavirus shuts down public places

By Madeline Holcombe and Sean O’Key 23 March 2020 (CNN) – As millions of Americans are kept from work, school and most public places as coronavirus is on the rise, satellite images show pollution on the decline.Images taken over the first three weeks of March show less nitrogen dioxide over parts of the United States than […]

Trump (left) and Vice President Mike Pence (right) at a FEMA meeting on Thursday, 19 March 2020. Photo: Evan Vucci / AP Photo

Coronavirus, climate change could stretch FEMA past its limit – “All the other hazards we have in the U.S. will not go away and will only complicate the task of responding to the coronavirus”

By Leslie Kaufman and Brian K. Sullivan 22 March 2020 (Bloomberg) – It wasn’t until Wednesday, five days after President Donald Trump declared a national emergency, that the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced it was “leading the federal coordination” to the Covid-19 pandemic in the U.S. While the disaster-response agency is better known for its work in the aftermath […]

Workers pick apples in a Wapato, Washington, orchard in October 2019. U.S. farms employ hundreds of thousands of seasonal workers, mostly from Mexico, who enter the country on H-2A visas. The potential impact of the coronavirus on seasonal workers has the food industry on edge. Photo: Elaine Thompson / AP

COVID-19 threatens food supply chain as farms worry about workers falling ill – “We’ve got enough disruption. We don’t need to disrupt our food supply, that would be really catastrophic.”

By Dan Charles 18 March 2020 (NPR) – As Americans scattered to the privacy of their homes this week to avoid spreading the coronavirus, the opposite scene was playing out in the Mexican city of Monterrey. A thousand or more young men arrived in the city, as they do most weeks of the year, filling […]

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