Morning Update: Doctors push aggressive strategy to control coronavirus

Good morning,

This week, The Globe and Mail will consider how the pandemic is changing our cities with our new project and collection of stories: Future of Cities.

You’ll read and hear more about the big challenges our cities face, and the big solutions they need. For example, we’ve got 13 prescriptions for our ailing cities from urban innovators. We explore drone deliveries and a sky full of robots, and just generally how the pandemic is propelling urban revolutions.

The coverage from this issue ranges widely: Decarbonizing urban transportation, diversifying a city’s economy, and a blast to the past of how pandemics have previously change cities.
We’ve also published opinion and analysis on topics such as the single-family home, the rebirth of the promenade, seizing opportunity from the pandemic to change our cities, and the survival of urban centres.
And don’t forget to check out the art for our weekend package by illustrator Kathleen Fu.

Our coverage continues through the week, leading up to a virtual summit on Thursday we’re co-hosting along with Tortoise Media, an innovative UK startup.

This is the daily Morning Update newsletter. If you’re reading this on the web, or it was forwarded to you from someone else, you can sign up for Morning Update and more than 20 more Globe newsletters on our newsletter signup page.

Doctors push aggressive strategy to get COVID-19 cases down to zero

With provinces such as Alberta, Ontario and Quebec recording more than 1,000 new cases a day, some doctors and politicians have proposed implementing “circuit breakers,” two-week economic lockdowns to bring COVID-19 cases under control.

But as public-health experts push for tighter restrictions, with some arguing that even two weeks wouldn’t be enough, economists are warning that a full-blown lockdown could add hundreds of billions of dollars in new government debt.

Related COVID content:

COVID-19 cases surge among First Nations in Manitoba during second wave
Alberta considers shortening COVID-19 isolation period for sick health care workers
B.C. restaurants are allowed to be open, but customers have fled

Solitary confinement persists in prisons, new reports say

One year after Ottawa declared it had eliminated unconstitutional isolation techniques in penitentiaries, outside observers say the harmful practices persist behind prison walls.

A pair of independent reports slated for release on Monday argue that Correctional Service Canada continues to segregate inmates alone in cells for upward of 22 hours a day – otherwise known as solitary confinement – for reasons that go beyond the agency’s pandemic response.

‘This is a heartbreaking exercise’: Inside Canada’s efforts to bring Syria’s White Helmets to the West

In 2018, Canada promised to shepherd hundreds of Syria’s famed White Helmet medics and their families to new homes in the West, pledging to “let no one be left behind.”

Nearly 2½ years later, it’s a bargain that remains unfulfilled for dozens of the Syrians who only got as far as a refugee camp in Jordan before being stalled by security concerns.

Government documents obtained by The Globe and Mail reveal the agonizing decisions diplomats had to make about who would get out and who would stay behind.

In this photo provided by the Syrian Civil Defense White Helmets, which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, Syrian White Helmet civil defense workers carry a victim next of destroyed houses hit by Russian airstrikes, in Maaret Musreen village, in Idlib province, Syria, Thursday, March 5, 2020.The Associated Press

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ALSO ON OUR RADAR

Peace deal after Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict sees winners and losers swap places: In the southern Caucasus Mountains at the border of Europe and Asia, this weekend was a turning point in a decades-long conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over isolated and mountainous lands that both sides believed were rightfully theirs.

Trump concedes ‘nothing’ on U.S. election; Biden aide says seamless transition vital: The President briefly acknowledged losing the election in a morning Twitter post but then backtracked, saying he concedes “nothing” and vowed to keep up a court fight that election-law experts say is unlikely to succeed.

Rocket attacks on Eritrea spark fears of dangerous escalation of Ethiopia war: Analysts are worried that the war could draw in Middle Eastern powers, which have increasingly sought influence in North Africa and the Horn of Africa.

MORNING MARKETS

World stocks gain on vaccine optimism: Global stocks eyed a fresh record high on Monday as strong corporate earnings and hopes of a COVID-19 vaccine bolstered investor sentiment. Just before 6 a.m. ET, Britain’s FTSE rose 0.81 per cent. Germany’s DAX and France’s CAC 40 advanced 0.65 per cent and 1.26 per cent, respectively. In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei finished up 2.05 per cent. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 0.86 per cent. New York futures were higher. The Canadian dollar was trading at 76.24 US cents.

Looking for investing ideas? Check out The Globe’s weekly digest of the latest insights and analysis from the pros, stock tips, portfolio strategies and what investors need to know for the week ahead. This week’s edition includes why bank stocks are a buy, rating robo-advisers and ETF strategy for newbies.

WHAT EVERYONE’S TALKING ABOUT

The Biden climate revolution will be slow, but the pipeline part may be too fast for Ottawa

Campbell Clark: “For Mr. Trudeau, that means working with Mr. Biden on climate over the next four years may be in large part about trade.”

Canada’s parks are the ultimate essential service

Colin Campbell, Tory Stevens, Alison Spriggs: “As governments around the world work to ‘build back better’ for a post-pandemic world, we have to ensure that protected areas are on that agenda.”

Rethink mink: Denmark’s COVID-19 outbreak linked to fur farms should worry Canadians

Jessica Scott-Reid: “Indeed, the public should be asking whether farming mink is worth the potential risk. After all, as a fashion product, mink is increasingly falling out of favour.”

TODAY’S EDITORIAL CARTOON

LIVING BETTER

Woman sitting at night at table in a dining room, reading on her digital tablet.draganab/iStockPhoto / Getty Images

Blue light can strain more than your eyes

Blue light is a short-wavelength, high-energy visible light that primarily affects us via sun exposure, but it is also emitted to a lesser degree from the screens of our phones, computers and televisions. It contributes to skin dullness, spots, wrinkles and dryness.

Experts explain the ins and outs of blue light, which, as it turns out, can be bad or good – and even beautifying – depending on its context.

MOMENT IN TIME:

The Globe and Mail adopts wirephoto technology

Unique in this country is the wired photo room of The Globe and Mail in its new home in The William H. Wright Building in Toronto, which pioneered this fast, modern news photo service. Technician L.T. (Lou) Kellie is pictured operating the receiver, which may be linked to any telephone on the continent, or with the British Isles and Europe via transatlantic radio for picture reception, May 1938.John Boyd/The Globe and Mail

For more than 100 years, photographers have preserved an extraordinary collection of 20th-century news photography for The Globe and Mail. Every Monday, The Globe features one of these images. This month, we’re celebrating the invention of wirephotos.

In this 1936 photo, Globe and Mail darkroom technician L.T. Kellie holds the first photo ever wired into Canada. The image of Wallis Simpson posing with the King’s private secretary and two friends in Cannes, France, was telephoned to London, radioed to New York and phoned to The Globe office in Toronto on Dec. 8, 1936, in time to be published on the front page the next day. The Globe was the first newspaper in Canada to take advantage of AP’s new wirephoto network. Two days later, Globe staff photographer John Boyd attached a portable transmitter to a phone at the Hotel Quinte in Belleville, Ont., and sent the first wirephoto over an entirely Canadian circuit back to his editor, Duncan Halliday, in Toronto. Wirephoto technology enabled The Globe to create a library of images that could, at any time, be retrieved, rescanned and published – all in the era before digital photo reproduction. Solana Cain

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