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By March 14, London Breed, the mayor of San Francisco, had seen enough. For weeks, she and her health officials had looked at data showing the evolving threat of COVID-19. In response, she’d issued a series of orders limiting the size of public gatherings, each one feeling more arbitrary than the last. She’d been persuaded that her city’s considerable and highly regarded health care system might be insufficient for the looming onslaught of infection and death. “We need to shut this shit down,” Breed remembered thinking. Three days later in New York, Mayor Bill de Blasio was thinking much the same thing. (Sexton and Sapien, 5/16)

The United States is heading toward more than 100,000 coronavirus deaths by June 1, with leading mortality forecasts still trending upward, CDC Director Robert Redfield tweeted on Friday. His assessment cited 12 different models tracked by his agency and marked the first time Redfield has explicitly addressed the grim milestone of 100,000 deaths, even as the Trump administration turns its strategy toward reopening the economy. The CDC director has been mostly sidelined in the government’s public-facing response to the Covid-19 pandemic. (Luthi, 5/15)

Months after the virus began spreading, only about 3 percent of the population has been tested for it, leaving its true scale and path unknown even as it continues to sicken and kill people at alarming rates. More than 20,000 new cases are identified on most days. And almost every day this past week, more than 1,000 Americans died from the virus. (Bosman, Harmon and Smith, 5/16)