The Evening: Task Force Wind Down, Meat Shortage, Helplessly Hoping and More

May 5, 2020

Task Force Winding Down

Vice President Pence told reporters today that the coronavirus task force created to manage the federal government’s response to the pandemic could be disbanded within a month because “of the tremendous progress we’ve made as a country,” as the Washington Post reports.

Meat Shortage

Hundreds of Wendy’s restaurants have run out of hamburgers. Kroger, the largest supermarket chain in the United States, is limiting the amount of ground beef and pork that customers can buy at some stores. And Costco, where shoppers typically buy in bulk, has placed a three-product cap on purchases of fresh beef, poultry, and pork, as the NYT reports.

Source Still Unknown

Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said today it was still unknown whether the coronavirus emerged from a wet market in China, a laboratory, or some other location, but reaffirmed the U.S. view that it was probably not man-made, as Reuters reports.

On the Horizon

The Covid-19 crisis will change the Europe we have known for the past 70 years. What is on the short- and long-term horizon once the dust has settled? CSIS's Europe Program director Heather Conley outlines how the pandemic might impact the European Union.

CSIS’s “On the Horizon” series offers insights into the more fundamental changes we might anticipate for our future social and economic world as a consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic.

CSIS Executive Education

We invite you to apply to Unpacking the Defense Enterprise, a a three-day live, online course exploring defense strategy, budgetary and technical issues, and future challenges and opportunities in the U.S. defense enterprise.

Video Shorts

Check out CSIS’s new series of video shorts: “Testify,” "What's Happening," "Preview," and “High Resolution.” And don’t forget to subscribe to the CSIS YouTube Channel!

In That Number

1,000

More than a month has passed since there was a day with fewer than 1,000 deaths from the virus. Almost every day, at least 25,000 new cases are identified, meaning that the total in the United States—which has the highest number of known cases in the world with more than a million—is expanding by 2 to 4 percent daily.

Source: NYT

Critical Quote

“How many deaths and how much suffering are you willing to accept to get back to what you want to be some form of normality sooner rather than later?”

— Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

iDeas Lab

New analysis from Beyond Parallel surveys satellite imagery of a previously undisclosed facility near Pyongyang International Airport in North Korea likely related to its expanding ballistic missile development program.

The Andreas C. Dracopoulos iDeas Lab at CSIS enhances our research with the latest in cutting-edge web technologies, design, and video.

Optics

(Photo credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images). Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in the Capitol today.

Recommended Reading

Check out recent analysis on U.S.-China relations from CSIS’s Trustee Chair in China Business & Economics, including a report on China’s overseas talent programs and a new blog.

Online Events

Tomorrow, at 9:00 a.m., CSIS’s Global Health Policy Center will host a conversation with Winnie Byanyima, executive director of UNAIDS, to discuss the future of the global HIV response in light of the ongoing pandemic.

Earlier, at 7:00 a.m., the International Institute for Strategic Studies will convene a panel of experts to consider the impact of new missile systems and technologies on strategic stability.

Later, at 1:00 p.m., the Women’s Foreign Policy Group will host a virtual panel discussion assessing the impact of Covid-19 on U.S. national security.

Video

Deputy Assistant Secretary for Korea and Japan Marc Knapper discussed recent events on the Korean peninsula with CSIS experts Victor Cha, Sue Mi Terry, and Mark Lippert this morning. Watch the full video here.

Podcasts

In the latest episode of Babel, host Jon Alterman speaks with Nabih Bulos, the Middle East bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times, about disinformation efforts in the region during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Listen on Apple Podcast & Spotify.

Smiles

Obviously, there aren’t many new sounds in rock and roll that are breaking through to the mainstream these days. That hasn’t happened in rock since the 90s with grunge. But I’m fascinated by the way today’s musicians are transmitting classic rock into something that contemporary audiences can embrace and take forward into the future.

Content generators are flooding the internet with great material from their archives, and Howard Stern is putting some of the best music out there. The other day he released this clip of Brandi Carlile covering CSN’s “Helplessly Hoping” in 2018. It transmits well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OodNAJCOaos .