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SUMMARY: Be kind! People are doing the best they can. Trump's Postal Service attack on Amazon is so wrong. Beware of "pre-print" studies that confirm your biases. Virus droplets can hang in the air for 14 minutes in a stagnant room. Wisconsinites flock to bars — yikes. News, business, life, and The Big 3.
BLODGET & PLOTZ Be kind. We're all doing the best we can. 
It's Friday. Here's good news. Life in a long pandemic will require titrating risk — not eliminating it and not ignoring it, but understanding it and taking it into account. We're getting better at that. As Aylin Woodward reports at Insider, it's becoming clear how to stamp out superspreader events. Superspreading tends to occur when an infected person has significant close contact with a group of people from a variety of households — usually in a midsize or large gathering, almost always indoors, usually in a place with limited air circulation. Superspreader events have included parties, religious services, choir practices, and sporting events. We're starting to see how we can take measures to make ourselves safer — not safe! Americans in vast numbers are doing the right things, even without government orders. We've all but eliminated large gatherings. Many people are wearing masks, especially indoors. We're washing hands. Businesses are figuring out how to improve air circulation, distance employees, and space out customers. We're clearly anticipating — and accepting — moderate changes that will alter life until there's a vaccine: less travel, less mass entertainment, less gathering. And we're recognizing that these changes will savage some parts of the economy, like air travel, and cause massive adaptation in other parts, like dining out. The fundamental conflicts in society — economic, political, racial — haven't been healed by the pandemic, and probably have been exaggerated. Americans are anxious. Their jobs and livelihoods are in danger. So it's not surprising that we're seeing brawls over masking and armed protests about lockdowns. But the vast majority of us seek the same goal. We want to keep our loved ones safe from illness and be able to work and play. Except for a few people on the edges, there are no lockdown zealots who want to keep the country in cold storage forever and no reopen crazies who want to murder your grandmother. We're all in the murky middle, and now that we've been through the initial panic and know what we need to do to prevent death on a vast scale, we're ready for an ambiguous next stage. Our federal government has not really done its part to prepare and equip us, and that's tragic. But as citizens, we are all in the same boat. We're aware of the small and medium measures that will reduce risk — and the overwhelming majority of us are taking them. Michael Brendan Dougherty puts this all beautifully in the National Review. We're not in a culture war, he says. Most of us are just trying to do what's right. So let's thank each other, and be generous: "We are all muddling through, trying to live the best we can while this threat is out there. We are tempted to take out the frustration, anxiety, and anger these months have generated on each other. But what most of us need now is the mercy of basic kindness." —DP Trump's Postal Service attack on Amazon is wrong 
President Trump, who has never hidden his rage at The Washington Post and its owner, Jeff Bezos, who is also the CEO of Amazon, now appears to have taken his campaign to harm Bezos to another, more disturbing level. The US Postal Service, now stacked with Trump-appointed officials, will review what it charges huge package shippers — notably Amazon — perhaps as a prelude to hiking those rates and raising Amazon's costs. The USPS's last-mile contracts with Amazon and others may well be mediocre contracts — there are lots of smart arguments on both sides of the issue — but the salient fact here is that the president has shown zero interest in the US Postal Service except insofar as it's a club to bash Amazon. You may remember that two years ago Trump personally tried to strong-arm the then postmaster general into doubling rates on Amazon. And of course that's not the only example of Trump's malice toward Bezos and Amazon. The Defense Department and Amazon are still fighting over a $10 billion cloud-computing contract that was seemingly yanked from Amazon after Trump made it clear he didn't want Amazon to get it. It's ridiculous to even have to say this, but it's wrong for a president to be picking winners and losers in any market. And it's monumentally wrong for the president to unleash the government against a private citizen because he owns a newspaper that sometimes criticizes him. So far Bezos hasn't reined in the Post. He has stood up to attacks that have cost him and his shareholders billions of dollars. Not every media owner has the deep pockets and the courage to do that. In the depths of Watergate, President Richard Nixon threatened the broadcasting licenses owned by then Washington Post owner Katharine Graham. What Trump is doing to Bezos and Amazon is worse. —DP Beware 'pre-print' studies, especially when they appear to confirm your political biases The world is studying and learning about the coronavirus in real time. Perhaps never before in history have so many researchers been so focused on the same topic at the same time. And perhaps never before have so many "pre-print" studies been released and mined for information. What's a "pre-print"? It's an early draft of a study that will be revised as it gets analyzed by other experts, the "peer review" process that acts as a quality-control mechanism in science and academia. In normal times, preliminary studies are often shared only with peers. But now, given the extreme time sensitivity, many coronavirus pre-print studies are being published everywhere, and their initial findings widely discussed and distributed. This is especially true when the initial findings appear to confirm the beliefs or hopes of a particular political team, with a built-in base of fans and amplifiers. For example, The New York Times dives into what happened last month when a Stanford pre-print study was published that appeared to confirm the beliefs and hopes of some conservatives. The study concluded that coronavirus infections were much more widespread than everyone believed — 85 times as widespread actually. If this finding had held up under scrutiny, it would have been excellent news. It would have meant that many more people had already been exposed to the coronavirus than everyone thought, and, therefore, that we as a society were much closer to "herd immunity." It might also have meant that the coronavirus was much less dangerous than everyone thought. These initial findings also happened to fit the narrative that was popular with right-leaners — namely, that the coronavirus panic was, at best, "dumb," and, at worst, a liberal hoax. Lockdowns weren't necessary, this story went. They were a gigantic overkill regulation pushed by members of a hyperactive Democratic nanny state. They were a cure that was worse than the disease. As Aleszu Bajak and Jeff Howe of The New York Times explain, the initial findings of the study were seized on and shared by conservative commentators. But, at the same time, peers of the scientists who published the study argued that the Stanford team had made some questionable assumptions that did not hold up under scrutiny. Within a day or two, in fact, it became clear that the study had overestimated the likely infection rate. Experts still believe the number of actual coronavirus infections vastly outnumbers the number of confirmed infections. But the difference is likely far less extreme than the Stanford study initially suggested. The same thing has happened with pre-print studies that confirm the "prior" or desired beliefs of left-wing commentators. The rapid publication of pre-print studies are critical and helpful right now. The faster scientists can learn from each other and fact-check each other's work, the faster we will collectively learn about the coronavirus and how to best protect ourselves from it. But everyone should keep in mind that pre-print means "preliminary and subject to change." —HB How speaking transmits the coronavirus: Some of the droplets you emit when you talk hang in the air for 8 to 14 minutes A new study — an edited study in a journal, not a pre-print — measured how long "respiratory droplets" hang in the air after people talk in an enclosed space with no ventilation. The answer? As long as 14 minutes. The experimenters had someone repeat the phrase "stay healthy" for 25 seconds in an enclosed room with stagnant air. They then measured how long it took the tiny speech droplets to evaporate or fall to a surface. 
The researchers conclude: "There is a substantial probability that normal speaking causes airborne virus transmission in confined environments." —HB Speaking of speaking ... some Wisconsin residents celebrated the ending of coronavirus restrictions by heading for places that fit the description for 'superspreader' environments described above — bars 
One effective way to transmit the coronavirus is to get close to someone in an enclosed indoor space with poor ventilation and speak loudly close to their face for a while. In Seoul, South Korea, for example, the country's reopening was put on hold after a single "spreader" visited three nightclubs on a single night. South Korea has already traced 153 new infections, primary and secondary, to this one night on the town. So for the sake of Wisconsinites, let's hope that no asymptomatic residents were among those who decided to celebrate by hitting the bars. —HB
NEWS French firm Sanofi reverses pledge to provide vaccine to the US first. The US is paying for most of its vaccine research and wanted top priority. French leaders are outraged and now the company promises a vaccine would be "accessible to everyone." COVID-19 survivors advised to wait 30 days before having sex. Is that good news? Is that bad news? Hard to say! A promising COVID treatment, convalescent plasma, seems safe. Now researchers need to figure out whether it works.
BUSINESS Don't worry about an audit if you took a PPP loan of less than $2 million. The Treasury Department will assume smaller borrowers acted in good faith when they asked for loans and will be unlikely to be investigated. Poorest Americans have been hit much worse by pandemic-related job losses. 40% of households earning less than $40,000 experienced a job loss in March. Midwestern farmers are shooting and gassing thousands of pigs and chickens every day. The coronavirus supply disruptions have created a backlog, and they have nowhere to sell the animals for slaughter.
LIFE People in Finland will teach you an online class on how to be happy. Why Finland? It's the world's happiest country. Every difference between US and UK McDonald's — portion size, ingredients, exclusive items. Insider ordered every single thing on the menu in both countries to find out. There's an entire Facebook group dedicated to terrible wildlife photographs. Gaze on some of the very worst, if you dare. What happens when you fly into Hong Kong these days. Register. Download app. Get tracking bracelet and thermometer. Pick up luggage. Take bus to separate facility. Drop bags in one place. Get test kit in another. Perform self-administered saliva test. Get taken to huge hall. Sit in chair spaced from everyone else. Wait eight hours for results.
YOUR LETTERS On Wisconsin making the right decision to rein in its governor's emergency powers: Booo to your promoting the notion of "creeping executive overreach" by governors. Polls continue to show the American people mostly think their states are not moving too quickly. People are generally not in a hurry to go back "out" — they are afraid of getting sick, getting their family members sick, etc. A governor's job is to keep the people in the state safe. I cannot think of a single state where the governor has over-reached. My own state (North Carolina) has been very cautious and as a result we are nearing a decent plateau while remaining mostly closed. My point is there is little evidence of governors trying to "grab" power — most of them are making anguished decisions every day and their poll numbers are extremely high. There do not have to be "two sides" to this. There is truth, there is science. Decisions are not easy since nobody knows everything about this novel virus, but the experts are amazingly consistent in their public health advice. Suggestions such as the one you made only serve to bolster the concept of there being two sides. I found it disappointing — I could hear that on Fox News any day of the week. — Kathy Underhill, NC
THE BIG 3* 
Hackers threaten to publish Trump "dirty laundry" stolen from law firm. They stole from a law firm that represents Drake and Lady Gaga, and just doubled their ransom demand to $42 million. McConnell says he "was wrong" about Obama pandemic plan. The Senate Majority Leader falsely claimed that the previous administration had not left a pandemic plan for the Trump administration. German cafe uses pool-noodle hats to enforce social distance. And it looks as weird as it sounds. *The most popular stories on Insider this morning.
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