Tony's Diary Package — page 216

last 7. "It "There are plenty of people, on cable TV and elsewhere, who exploited that the virus was primarily in New York and other places to say that it's a blue state problem," said Harvard's Jha. "They'd ask, 'Why are we shutting down Montana when the problem is Manhattan?'" Democrats, meanwhile, didn't condemn hundreds of thousands of people for violating restrictions on mass gatherings to protest police brutality this month. Instead, governors like New Jersey's Phil Murphy and Michigan's Gretchen Whitmer broke the lockdown orders that they had extended just days before to join the protests themselves -- moves that confused many Americans about the need for social distancing and fueled charges of hypocrisy from conservatives. Even basic protections have been politicized in the United States. Trump has eschewed a mask in public and has sometimes mocked others for wearing face coverings -- despite requirements that people wear masks in certain states and ample science that they work to prevent the virus' spread. The president also swiped at mask-wearers in a Wall Street Journal interview last Wednesday, suggesting that some Americans are wearing coverings to signal their disapproval with him. He has repeatedly voiced his hesitation about the widespread coronavirus testing urged by public health experts, including controversial remarks at his rally on Saturday. "When you do testing to that extent, you're going to find more people," Trump said during his rally in Tulsa, Okla. "You're going to find more cases. So I said to my people, slow the testing down please." White House officials claimed Trump was joking. But in Italy, there's been much less disagreement over scientists' recommendations -- including lockdowns that were more restrictive than those applied in the United States -- particularly after the virus swiftly tore through the nation in early March, peaking at 6,557 new cases announced on March 21. (Adjusted for population, that would be equivalent to about 35,400 new cases in the United States.) While some protested, residents largely went along with restrictions that effectively banned jogging, instituted one-at-a-time entry policies for grocery stores and saw the Pope livestream his Easter Mass from an empty St. Peter's Basilica. That still wasn't enough to spare Italy from horrific consequences in the early spring: Doctors had to make decisions on the fly about who would get life-saving care when there weren't enough beds to go around. Dead bodies had to be stored in sealed-off rooms until funeral services were available in the worst-hit regions. "The Italian crisis provoked by Covid-19 is the most serious event in Italian history after World War II," Italian doctors Ciro Indolfi and Carmen Spaccarotella wrote in April's Journal of the American College of Cardiology. "It is a national human, health, and economic tragedy."