The latest
MacArthur Foundation, 4 other groups pledge $1.7 billion to support nonprofits battered by the coronavirus
Five philanthropic organizations, including the Chicago-based John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, say they plan to donate $1.7 billion over the next three years to help nonprofit organizations around the globe that have been crippled by the effects of the coronavirus pandemic.
In the United States alone, nonprofits employ about 10% of the private workforce, and in a recent survey, 73% of those organizations said they expect to see a 20% drop in revenue in the coming year, according to the MacArthur Foundation.
“At this moment of massive disruption, we see opportunity,” MacArthur Foundation President John Palfrey said in a statement. “The pandemic is wreaking tragedy across the world and, in particular, in African American communities. In the face of an extraordinary social and economic crisis, our city, country, and global communities require a transformation. Our response to the pandemic will focus on supporting the reinvention of systems that create a more just, equitable, and resilient world.”
The money is expected to fund efforts that would tackle topics such as racial equity, social justice and climate change.
Read the full story from Stefano Esposito.
News
12:24 p.m. Face masks at the gym: To wear or not to wear?
Here’s a conundrum: The same thing that makes going to a fitness center safer from COVID-19, also makes the exercise experience decidedly worse.
As gyms open across the country, we need to talk about masks.
States including Florida, Texas, Georgia, Tennessee, Arizona, Indiana and Ohio are welcoming gym-goers back. Many fitness studios and gym chains are encouraging patrons to wear masks while they workout.
The face coverings are among a slew of precautions — including temperature checks, smaller class sizes, sanitization stations and socially-distanced machines — aimed at minimizing potential exposure of the novel coronavirus that’s infected nearly 2 million Americans.
But do people need to wear material that covers their nose and mouth, when they want to breathe heavily out of their nose and mouth?
11:00 a.m. Officials worry second wave of COVID-19 infections could cause 100K more deaths by September
There are 2 million confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the United States.
Of those cases, roughly 113,000 of them have been deadly. When America grieved for the 100,000 who died, USA TODAY’s Editorial Board called it an American tragedy.
That was two weeks ago.
On Wednesday, we wrote about the alarming spread of COVID-19 in Arizona and other states, with health officials increasingly worried about the number of cases requiring hospitalizations.
Now health officials are warning of a potential second round of infections. “There is a new wave coming in parts of the country,” said Eric Toner, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told Bloomberg. “It’s small and it’s distant so far, but it’s coming.”
A Harvard researcher told CNN that as many as 100,000 additional U.S. deaths could come by September.
9:24 a.m. Convention planners squint to see an industry rebound
Everything about McCormick Place is designed for crowds. When the people will be back is the question that preoccupies those in the meetings business, which has been at a standstill since March.
An early and sudden victim of attempts to control the spread of COVID-19, the convention shutdown took with it jobs in hotels, restaurants, the construction trades and contractors that make up the economic gears. The effect has been profound in cities around the U.S., but nowhere is it more noticeable than in Chicago, where McCormick Place has the title of largest convention complex in the U.S.
The distinction seems more like a burden now. Under state orders responding to the pandemic, McCormick Place and smaller halls aren’t like a shop that can reopen at limited capacity. They can come back only when the state reaches a full reopening that requires, according to its guidelines, “a vaccine or highly effective treatment widely available or the elimination of any new cases over a sustained period.”
“I think people will be up for going to events again once we get past this, whatever ‘this’ is,” said Peter Eelman, vice president of the Association for Manufacturing Technology, which has pulled the plug on McCormick Place’s biggest event of the year, the International Manufacturing Technology Show. It became the 97th event to withdraw from McCormick Place so far this year.
Scheduled for Sept. 14-19, it was to have filled every corner of McCormick Place’s 2.6 million square feet, even the little-used Lakeside Center. It’s a biennial affair and when another one comes around in 2022, “I’m sure the world will look quite a bit different,” Eelman said.
Read the full story from David Roeder here.
7:49 a.m. Coronavirus survivor in Chicago receives double lung transplant
Surgeons in Chicago have given a new set of lungs to a young woman with severe lung damage from the coronavirus.
Only a few other COVID-19 survivors, in China and Europe, have received lung transplants.
The patient, who is her 20s, was on a ventilator and heart-lung machine for almost two months before her operation last Friday at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.
The 10-hour procedure was challenging because the virus had left her lungs full of holes and almost fused to the chest wall, Dr. Ankit Bharat, who performed the operation, said Wednesday.
Doctors have kept her on both machines while her body heals but say her chances for a normal life are good.
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Analysis & Commentary
7:43 a.m. The NFL can guard against COVID-19 all it wants, but players still have to tackle each other
The NFL really has this pandemic thing figured out, doesn’t it?
The latest science-driven protocols will be in place when players return to team facilities in the coming weeks. Testing for COVID-19 will be a regular occurrence. Proper social distancing will be observed. Masks will be mandatory at team meetings. Locker rooms will be cleansed and disinfected so often you might mistake them for operating rooms.
We expect that from a league that prides itself on military-like precision.
But there’s one little thing that keeps tugging at the sleeve: Eventually, the players are going to have to touch each other. Touching is sort of a necessity when it comes to huddling and blocking and — this is a biggie — hitting, which is the whole point of football.
Touching goes against the concept of keeping 6 feet away from the person closest to you. Tackling sneers at social distancing and, further, would blow it up like a defenseless receiver if it could. And what’s gang tackling but a renunciation of everything we’ve learned about keeping the coronavirus at bay?
A football game is a buffet table of germs. This virus will be on the menu. There are too many people involved in the NFL for it not to be.
Read the full commentary from sports columnist Rick Morrissey here.
