Weekly Review

After the conservative-leaning Wisconsin Supreme Court overruled the state’s Democratic governor, Wisconsin held presidential primaries despite a statewide stay-at-home order. In Milwaukee, where 4 in 10 residents are black and the death toll from COVID-19 jumped 44 percent the weekend before the vote, the planned 180 polling places were consolidated into just five.^{1 2 3} The Secret Service cited an “emergency order” and signed a $45,000 contract to rent a fleet of golf carts in Sterling, Virginia, home to one of President Trump’s golf clubs, where, despite a statewide lockdown, golfing is still allowed as long as golfers stay six feet apart.⁴ The acting U.S. secretary of the Navy stepped down after calling a ship captain who had sounded the alarm about a COVID-19 outbreak on his ship “too stupid to be a commanding officer”; a coastal patrol boat in the Venezuelan Navy sank after it collided with a cruise ship; and Saudi Arabia bought an 8 percent stake in the American cruise company Carnival.^{5 6 7} The CEO of SeaWorld resigned.⁸ Citing “an urgent need for blood,” the FDA eased restrictions implemented in 1983 on blood donation from men who have sex with men; the regulation now requires that they abstain for 90 days before donating.⁹ In California, a man intentionally crashed a freight train near a hospital ship designated to treat COVID-19 patients, citing a conspiracy theory, and the director of emergency management for Sonoma County posted pictures on Facebook of his family’s trip to the beach after he had helped close it to the public: “Road tripping up the coast. Beautiful drive and nice views. Family beach time together,” he wrote. “Grateful for fresh air and the ocean.”^{10 11}

U.K. prime minister Boris Johnson shared screenshots of a virtual cabinet meeting on Twitter and thereby revealed the Zoom meeting access code and usernames of several cabinet members; he was later admitted to the ICU and provisionally replaced by the country’s foreign secretary.^{12 13} Matt Hancock, the U.K. health secretary who once spoke in support of a journalist who claimed that Johnson had grabbed her thigh at a lunch, announced that millions of coronavirus tests that the government had purchased from China were unreliable.^{14 15} The United States sent 200 ventilators to London.¹⁶ Paris banned outdoor exercise during daylight hours, and France entered its worst recession since 1945.^{17 18} Swedish hospitals stopped treating coronavirus patients with chloroquine after it was discovered that the drug causes blindness; swine flu broke out in Poland; and the head of the European Research Council announced that he had “lost faith in the system” and resigned. Turkmenistan banned use of the word “coronavirus,” and the government of Malaysia instructed women not to be sarcastic with their husbands during the lockdown.^{19 20 21 22} Hundreds of people signed an online petition to name Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the sexiest man alive.²³ Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte told the police and military to strictly enforce a lockdown and “shoot them dead” if citizens defied it.²⁴ Two robbers, one wielding a sword, stormed a market in Pittsburgh but were fought off when the store’s clerk produced a scimitar of his own and riposted.²⁵ 

It was reported that American Airlines confined all 11 passengers on a flight to the last three rows of the airplane, explaining that they had only bought basic economy tickets and that spreading them out “would be an upgrade”; attendants on the flight later countenanced a roomier seating plan.²⁶ Amid stockpiling, the price of rice hit a seven-year high.²⁷ A Category 5 cyclone hit Vanuatu and Fiji, a radioactive forest in the Chernobyl exclusion zone caught fire, and a gender-reveal party in Florida sparked a 10-acre fire.^{28 29 30} Researchers in the Gulf of Mexico discovered the remains of a 60,000-year-old forest that had been preserved under sludge and was exposed by Hurricane Ivan in 2004; scientists began sequencing the DNA of previously unknown shipworms found in the preserved wood in hopes of finding new ingredients for pharmaceuticals.^{31 32} A team of archaeologists was arrested in Peru for flouting a lockdown and excavating a pre-Columbian tomb, and a London man was apprehended for pretending to be a ghost in a local cemetery.^{33 34} A medieval manuscript was discovered with the earliest known usage of the word “fuck.”³⁵—Joe Kloc and Cameron French