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ATUL LOKE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Coronavirus infection is overwhelming Mumbai, India, especially in a teeming slum where social distancing is impossible. Page A14.Nowhere to Hide

Scattershot reopenings of retailstores, nail salons and restaurantsaround the country have nothalted the flood of layoffs, with thegovernment reporting Thursdaythat nearly three million peoplefiled unemployment claims lastweek, bringing the two-monthtally to more than 36 million.

The weekly count of new claimshas been declining since lateMarch, but that hopeful flickerbarely stands out in an otherwisegrim and chaotic economic land-scape.

“This is a very protracted,painful situation for the labor mar-ket,” said Rubeela Farooqi, chiefU.S. economist at High FrequencyEconomics, “and I just don’t seeanything positive.”

In places where the fitful re-opening has started, workerscalled back to their jobs often facereduced hours and paychecks aswell as a heightened risk of infec-tion. Declining to return, however,is likely to put an end to any job-less benefits.

“It’s a very tough choice forthose in the service industry andthose at the lower end of the pay

scale,” Ms. Farooqi said. “Do yougo back and risk getting sick, orhave no money coming in?”

Lags in data make it hard to cal-culate just how many workersmay have been rehired after themost recent shelter-in-place re-strictions were lifted. And Con-necticut cited an error in the gov-ernment’s report that appeared tohave inflated the state’s latestclaims by more than 200,000.

But Michelle Meyer, head ofU.S. economics at Bank of Amer-ica, said she doubted that call-backs to work outnumbered addi-tional layoffs from other sectors.The slowdown has been ripplingbeyond the early shutdowns in re-tail and hospitality to professionalbusiness services, manufacturingand health care.

“In a sense, it’s a rolling shock,”she said.

Georgia, one of the first statesto reopen, is an example. “The re-opening is bringing people back towork, reducing the total amount ofpeople receiving unemploymentinsurance,” Ms. Meyer noted.“But the number of initial jobless

JOB LOSSES MOUNTEVEN AS U.S. BEGINSTO LIFT LOCKDOWN

‘Protracted, Painful Situation’ Continuesto Rock a Staggering Economy

By PATRICIA COHEN and TIFFANY HSU

Continued on Page A11

THE STATES Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — which helpedelect President Trump — are deeply split on reopening. PAGE A10

One Minnesota hog farmersealed the cracks in his barn andpiped carbon dioxide through theventilation system. Anotherfarmer has considered gassing hisanimals after loading them into atruck. And a third shot his pigs inthe head with a gun. It took him allday.

These are dark days on manyAmerican pig farms. Coronavirusoutbreaks at meatpacking plantsacross the Midwest have createda backlog of pigs that are ready forslaughter but have nowhere to go.Hundreds of thousands of pigshave grown too large to be slaugh-tered commercially, forcing farm-ers to kill them and dispose oftheir carcasses without process-ing them into food.

And yet, around the United

States, scores of people are strug-gling to find enough to eat, liningup at food banks after losing theirjobs in the economic fallout of thepandemic. Distribution issueshave caused grocery stores and

fast-food restaurants to run low onmeat. Kroger, the largest super-market chain in the United States,is limiting the amount of groundbeef and pork that customers canbuy at some stores. Costco hasplaced a three-product cap on pur-chases of fresh beef, poultry andpork. Wendy’s has run out of ham-burgers at hundreds of locations.

The waste of viable pigs at atime of great need is causing both

With Closure of Meat Plants, Pig Farmers Face a Wrenching TaskBy MICHAEL CORKERY

and DAVID YAFFE-BELLANYAmid Hunger, Animals

Must Be Euthanized

Continued on Page A8

CHANG W. LEE/THE NEW YORK TIMES

With only family allowed at the cemetery because of lockdown orders, Glen Ridge, N.J., found away to say goodbye to Officer Charles Roberts, 45, who succumbed to the coronavirus. Page A13.

Mourning a Beloved Officer

MOSCOW — Dr. Rimma Ka-malova says her hospital’s leader-ship ignored her warnings aboutan unexplained pneumonia out-break back in March. She keptworking.

The hospital admitted morethan 50 people for planned pro-cedures the day that the stafflearned a deceased patient hadtested positive for the coro-navirus, records show. She keptworking.

The hospital was ordered quar-antined, with Dr. Kamalova andmore than 1,200 other staff mem-bers and patients trapped inside.Days later, she grew feverish, butshe kept working, relying on herown intravenous line for relief.

“Give yourself a drip, get up,treat, lie down, give yourself an-other drip, get up, treat,” Dr. Ka-malova, head of the rheumatologydepartment at Kuvatova Republi-can Clinical Hospital in the south-central Russian city of Ufa, said ina telephone interview. “You hadno choice.”

Russia is hailing its medicalworkers as heroes, their photo-graphs plastered on billboardsand their stories glamorized onstate TV. But as the country devel-

ops into one of the global epicen-ters of the disease, those workersare suffering astonishing levels ofinfection and death in their ranks.

And as the number of reportedcoronavirus cases in Russiagrows, many fear the worst is yetto come.

A website memorializing healthcare workers who have died dur-ing the pandemic lists more than180 doctors, nurses, paramedicsand others.

At one top Moscow hospital, adepartment head said that 75 per-cent of the department’s staff wassick. In St. Petersburg, 1,465health care workers have caughtthe virus, the governor said onWednesday, accounting for morethan one in six of the city’s totalcases.

Front-Line Toll Swells as Cases Overrun RussiaBy ANTON TROIANOVSKI Hospital Outbreaks Put

Staff at the Mercy of a Chaotic System

Continued on Page A5

As Mayor Bill de Blasio was re-sisting calls in March to cancellarge gatherings and slow thespread of the coronavirus in NewYork City, he found behind-the-scenes support from a trustedvoice: the head of his public hospi-tal system, Dr. Mitchell Katz.

There was “no proof that clo-sures will help stop the spread,”Dr. Katz wrote in an email to themayor’s closest aides. He believedthat banning large events wouldhurt the economy and sow fear. “Ifit is not safe to go to a conference,why is it safe to go to the hospitalor ride in the subway?” he wrote.And, he said, many New Yorkerswere going to get infected anyway.

“We have to accept that unless avaccine is rapidly developed,large numbers of people will getinfected,” he wrote. “The goodthing is greater than 99 percentwill recover without harm. Oncepeople recover they will have im-munity. The immunity will protectthe herd.”

For Mr. de Blasio, the argu-ments in Dr. Katz’s March 10email, obtained by The New YorkTimes, appeared to hold swayover the calls for greater restric-tions on daily life from top HealthDepartment officials, who werealarmed by public health surveil-lance data pointing toward alooming outbreak.

The mayor did not order majorclosures, including of schools andrestaurants, until almost a weekafter the email — a delay that epi-demiologists say allowed the vi-rus to spread.

Now, as the crisis in New YorkCity enters the next stage, Mr. de

De Blasio GivesKey Virus Role

To Ex-Skeptic

This article is by William K. Rash-baum, J. David Goodman, Jeffery C.Mays and Joseph Goldstein.

Continued on Page A16

WASHINGTON — PresidentTrump has embarked on an ag-gressive new drive to rewrite thenarrative of the Russia investiga-tion by making dark and unsub-stantiated accusations that for-mer President Barack Obamamasterminded a sinister plot tobring him down.

On Twitter, on television, in theRose Garden and even on an offi-cial White House social mediapage, Mr. Trump in recent dayshas taken aim at his predecessorin a way that no sitting presidenthas in modern times, accusing Mr.Obama of undefined and unspeci-fied crimes under the vague butpolitically charged catchphrase“Obamagate.”

The president went even fur-ther on Thursday by demandingthat Mr. Obama be hauled beforethe Senate “to testify about thebiggest political crime and scan-dal in the history of the USA,” ascenario that itself has no preciseprecedent in American history.Within hours, Mr. Trump’s mostfaithful Republican ally in the Sen-ate, Lindsey Graham of SouthCarolina, promptly announcedthat he would indeed investigate,although he would probably notsummon Mr. Obama.

In flinging incendiary chargesat his predecessor, Mr. Trump hasoffered no evidence and has noteven specified what “crime” hewas accusing the former presi-dent of committing. Instead, Mr.Trump seemed to be tying the in-vestigation by the special counselRobert S. Mueller III, which hasenraged him for years, back to Mr.Obama while hinting ominously atforthcoming revelations that willbolster his claims.

The new focus on the formerpresident comes as Mr. Trump ap-peared eager to change the sub-ject amid the deadliest publichealth crisis to confront theUnited States in a half-century. Ona day when the death toll in the

President TurnsTo an Old Ploy:

Blame ObamaBy PETER BAKER

Continued on Page A23

WASHINGTON — After an-nouncing that the Justice Depart-ment was dropping the criminalcase against Michael T. Flynn, theformer national security adviser,Attorney General William P. Barrwas presented with a crucial ques-tion: Was Mr. Flynn guilty of lyingto the F.B.I. about the nature ofphone calls he had with the Rus-sian ambassador to the UnitedStates?

After all, Mr. Flynn had twicepleaded guilty to lying aboutthem.

“Well, you know, people some-times plead to things that turn outnot to be crimes,” Mr. Barr saidlast week in an interview withCBS News. Then he went evenfurther and described the infa-mous calls during the Trump pres-idential transition as “laudable.”

Mr. Trump and his allies now ac-cuse the F.B.I. of framing Mr.Flynn, which is part of the presi-dent’s broader campaign to tar-nish the Russia investigation andsettle scores against perceivedenemies ahead of the Novemberelection.

There was more whipsawing inthe case this week as a federaljudge appointed a hard-chargingformer prosecutor and judge to

How Phone CallSet Flynn’s Path Toward Trouble

By ADAM GOLDMANand MARK MAZZETTI

The White House pushed outMichael T. Flynn for lying.

SAM HODGSON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Continued on Page A21

President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is jailingrelatives of exiled dissidents in an effortto silence all opposition. PAGE A17

INTERNATIONAL A17-18

Muting Egypt’s Critics Abroad

A commercial extolling Chinese youthshas set off a debate over their national-ism and their prospects. PAGE A18

China’s Generational Discord

The ousted leader of a federal medicalresearch agency testified that theTrump administration ignored his warn-ings and retaliated against him. PAGE A9

TRACKING AN OUTBREAK A4-16

Delay Cost Lives, Official Says

Senator Richard Burr took a leave asintelligence committee chairman afterthe F.B.I. seized his phone. PAGE A22

NATIONAL A19-23

Burr Steps Back From Panel

Strokes in younger patients appear to beyet another manifestation of Covid-19:excessive blood-clotting. PAGE A12

A Risk for Younger Adults

Plunging sales could force factories toclose and lead to takeovers, but alsobolster sales of electric cars. PAGE B1

BUSINESS B1-7

A Revamped Auto Industry

When J. Crew and Neiman Marcusshould have been spending money one-commerce, they were instead strug-gling with enormous debt. PAGE B1

Why Retail Titans Toppled

A famous child genius on the radio inthe 1940s, Joel Kupperman was scarredby the experience. He was 83. PAGE A24

OBITUARIES A24-25

Hailed and Hated as ‘Quiz Kid’

The cartoonist Tom Gauld is a pioneerof sorts in “science cartoons,” but theyare anything but ponderous. PAGE C14

WEEKEND ARTS C1-16

He Makes Physics Funny

We have a list of city sites where youcan practice proper physical distancingfrom everything but nature. PAGE C1

Outside Possibilities

Two Slovene rock climbers, best friendsand Olympic hopefuls, competed forone slot in Tokyo. PAGE B10

SPORTSFRIDAY B8-11

A Test of Friendship

At 89, Willie Mays is missing visits to thepark. “My thing is keep talking and keepmoving,” he said. On Baseball. PAGE B9

A Baseball Giant Feels a Void

Paul Krugman PAGE A26

EDITORIAL, OP-ED A26-27

Late Edition

VOL. CLXIX . . . No. 58,694 © 2020 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, FRIDAY, MAY 15, 2020

Today, Breezy, warmer, sunshinethen clouds, thunderstorms, high84. Tonight, thunderstorms early,low 62. Tomorrow, partly sunny,high 76. Weather map, Page B12.

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