Mixed messages on masks from the VA, Wuhan cautiously reopens, and the Cold War inside Apple
THE BIG STORY
Public life returns to China
It was a holiday weekend in China, and with restrictions lifted in cities across the country, people flocked to tourist attractions and had a taste of how life used to be — albeit one tasted through ubiquitous surgical masks.
The city of Wuhan, where the coronavirus outbreak began, reopened today, although schools are still closed and officials are still advising people to remain home as much as possible. Some neighborhoods of the city have tightened their restrictions on who can enter and leave, the New York Times reported, and it will be a long time before life returns to normal there.
But around the country, people are returning to the streets in numbers — something that will happen across the world in the coming months. Here's what that looks like in Beijing, via our photo gallery of the scene across China this weekend.
Kevin Frayer / Getty Images STAYING ON TOP OF THIS Mixed messages on masks
On Friday, a top official at the Department of Veterans Affairs emailed the agency's almost 400,000 staff saying it had enough safety gear to supply its sprawling network of 170 medical centers across the country, which serve armed forces veterans and act as a backstop for the US healthcare system during emergencies.
Officials "remain confident that our current supply levels are adequate," said Lawrence B. Connell, the department's chief of staff.
Less than 30 minutes later, staff at the department's hospital system in Los Angeles were told that they would need to begin rationing equipment, according to emails obtained by BuzzFeed News. Staffers caring for coronavirus patients would not be given the N95 masks typically used in such settings; instead they'd be allocated one surgical mask to use each day.
"What's concerning is that this is happening to the wealthiest institution in the world — the United States government," said one VA staffer.
SNAPSHOTS Hundreds of people being held in immigration detention centers could be released to ease overcrowding. Officials have identified 600 detainees deemed "vulnerable" to the coronavirus and have already released 160 of them.
The wife of an Illinois mayor was caught defying the lockdown order he'd placed on the town. Mayor Brant Walker said he was embarrassed by his wife's "stunning lack of judgement."
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have a new name for their charitable foundation, but they won't be using it anytime soon. It will be called Archewell, but the couple said they won't be focusing on it until the coronavirus crisis passes.
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is in "good spirits" and breathing without assistance, UK foreign secretary Dominic Raab, said yesterday. Raab, who is deputizing for Johnson while the PM is in intensive care, later said Johnson's condition was "stable."
Detainees are shown in a residential pod at an ICE detention center on Dec. 16, 2019. (AP) HELP US KEEP QUALITY NEWS FREE FOR ALL
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THE COLD WAR INSIDE APPLE Apple may look shiny on the outside — literally so in the case of its gleaming new headquarters — but it can be very messy inside. One Apple division, called IS&T, is in an all-out war against itself, reports Alex Kantrowitz. The division builds much of Apple's internal technology tools — from servers and data infrastructure to retail and corporate sales software — and its workers think it's a special version of hell.
"There's a Cold War going on every single day," one ex-contractor told BuzzFeed News reporter Alex Kantrowitz. "That whole organization is a Game of Thrones nightmare," said another former Apple employee. "Trust me, when I say — this department is worse than most IT sweatshops in India that you have heard of that are a bad place to work for Engineers," another person posted online.
So what's going on inside IS&T? And Apple at large? We just published an exclusive excerpt from Kantrowitz's new book, Always Day One, where he tells the story. And for more where that came from, you can get his book here.
NATURE IS HEALING Maybe humans are the real virus
The coronavirus has changed the way we live and work, so it's not surprising that it's also led to one of the best new memes of 2020. It all began with people posting photos — some real, some bullshit — of nature and animals suddenly flourishing in places abandoned by humans: the canals of Venice sparkling clear and teeming with fish, elephants taking over empty farms, you know the deal. Well, there was only one place this was going to end. London is finally back to its natural state. Let yourself heal like a Venetian canal today,
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