Need a bit of comfort at the end of another long week? (Not even sure what the end of a week feels like any more?) My colleague (and journo-dad) Mario Koran has a lovely piece from earlier today about parenting, pandemics, and the wise advice of the people behind Sesame Street. In these extraordinary times, the Guardian’s editorial independence has never been more important. Because no one sets our agenda, or edits our editor, we can keep delivering quality, trustworthy, fact-checked journalism each and every day. Free from commercial or political bias, we can report fearlessly on world events and challenge those in power. Your support protects the Guardian’s independence. We believe every one of us deserves equal access to accurate news and calm explanation. No matter how unpredictable the future feels, we will remain with you, delivering high quality news so we can all make critical decisions about our lives, health and security – based on fact, not fiction. Support the Guardian from as little as $1 – and it only takes a minute. Thank you. More than 5,000 confirmed coronavirus deaths as of 5 pm tonight in New York City alone. And that is almost certainly an undercount, with many people dying of coronavirus in their homes not being counted in the official figures. Socially distant car protest for prisoner safety in Richmond, Virginia Another way to organize a protest under a stay-at-home order? Protest in your car. Dozens of people rallied from their cars in Virginia’s state capital Friday afternoon to address the state’s failure to keep incarcerated inmates safe during the coronavirus pandemic, ABC 8News Richmond reported. “I don’t want my son to die alone…free my son,” Shontrese Otey, who has a 19-year-old son in Richmond City Jail, told 8News. She was holding a sign that read, “My son is essential to me.” "Light a candle" protest to free all New York state"s prisoners What does protest look like under a stay-at-home order? This evening, activists are lighting a candle in solidarity with more than 90,000 people typically incarcerated in state prisons and jails in New York state, as coronavirus threatens to turn crowded, unsanitary prisons into death traps. The protest is being organized by New York prison abolition activists, under the hashtag #FreeThemAll4PublicHealth. The protesters are calling on New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and other local and state leaders to use their power to release everyone incarcerated in the state. Move homeless into hotel rooms, advocates plead after major shelter outbreak Sam Levin Sam Levin Advocates have been pleading for weeks that San Francisco move people out of homeless shelters and into hotel rooms, given that the conditions inside these facilities are often unsanitary and crowded, making it easy for a virus to quickly spread. Now, there has been a major coronavirus outbreak inside a homeless shelter in San Francisco: nearly 70 residents at MSC South have tested positive, which is roughly half of all the people who were tested. San Francisco’s mayor, London Breed, said the city is now moving the rest of the MSC South residents who have not tested positive into hotel rooms and quarantining those with Covid-19 inside the shelter. Jennifer Friedenbach, the director for the Coalition on Homelessness in San Francisco, said these kinds of outbreaks will happen at every shelter if the city doesn’t immediately move all residents to hotels. Some have suggested the coronavirus fatality rate for unhoused people could be significantly higher than the general population, with a 10-20% dying and 30% hospitalized, she noted. “This was preventable and predictable. You can’t leave people in congregate settings, you just can’t,” said Friedenbach, adding that the city needs to test residents of all shelters given their potential exposure at this point. “They’ve waited so long.” Those who remain in other shelters are now also facing strict lockdowns, where they are even more at risk of contracting the virus, said Leah Simon-Weisberg, an attorney with the Eviction Defense Collaborative. “Locking them in a congregate shelter and packing hundreds of people into one place is only endangering their lives,” she said. Drone footage: pandemic San Francisco The effect of the three-week-long lockdown on daily life in San Francisco is revealed in drone footage showing empty streets and deserted landmarks. San Francisco and the counties around it was the frist region in the US to announce a ‘stay-at-home’ order on 16 March, restricting all but essential activities. Black doctor says he was handcuffed outside his own home in Miami A black doctor who has been testing homeless people for coronavirus in Miami was handcuffed by a police officer outside his own home, and only released after his wife emerged from the house with identification, he told the Miami Herald. The doctor said he was putting old cardboard outside of his home for pickup. “Miami police, informed of the doctor’s claims, said Henderson had not called the department to complain but that they were sending an investigator to the house to look into what happened,” the newspaper reported. Read the full story. Report: Wisconsin tracking cases of coronavirus linked to voting day Joanna Walters Joanna Walters The Wisconsin state health department is tracking new cases of the coronavirus to determine whether it was spread among voters during Tuesday’s spring election, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in this report spotted by my Guardian colleague Kenya Evelyn. “The state Department of Health Services and local public health officials are “monitoring” the relationship between new cases in the coming weeks and voting in person, agency officials said. “We will continue this important work to ensure that every case is followed up on, contacted, and anyone who may have been exposed notified,” Department of Human Services secretary Andrea Palm said in a statement. “We hope the extraordinary efforts taken by local clerks, public health, voters, and poll workers helped minimize any transmission but we stand prepared to respond if that isn’t the case.” Palm said if voters were exposed to the virus, DHS and local public health officials will see new cases beginning next week. “This information will allow our surveillance epidemiologists the opportunity to identify if the election had any impact on the spread of Covid-19 in Wisconsin,” she said. But a full picture of whether in-person voting led to more cases won’t be known for several weeks, Palm said. Thousands of voters came to the polls Tuesday after a failed last-minute attempt by [Democratic] governor Tony Evers to postpone the election. Public health experts warned before and after the election took place that allowing people to vote in person could reverse progress the state has made to contain the spread of the virus. From earlier today, a bigger picture look at Wisconsin from Sam Levine: Coronavirus in a major homeless shelter; stay-at-home extended in LA Lois Beckett here picking up our live US politics coverage from the West Coast. Here in California, Los Angeles county has announced an extension of its stay-at-home order until 15 May. And in San Francisco, one of northern California’s largest homeless shelters is experiencing a serious coronavirus outbreak, the city’s mayor said. Read more background on how San Francisco has failed its homeless population from my colleague Vivian Ho. Summary That’s it for me. The blog is now in the capable hands of my west coast colleague Lois Beckett. To recap: Trump said whether to ease physical distancing guidelines is the biggest decision he’ll ever make. New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, is cautiously optimistic the infection rate is slowing in his state. State officials are moving forward with vote-by-mail steps despite Trump’s unsubstantiated warnings. Trump said his appearances at the coronavirus taskforce briefings are the “saddest” ones he’s had to do. A fascinating report from CNN, about Trump trade adviser, China hawk and coronavirus tsar Peter Navarro… In short, Navarro … …publicly said Americans had “nothing to worry about” while he privately warned the White House that the coronavirus pandemic could cost trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of American lives. Axios and the New York Times reported the Navarro memos earlier in the week. So, CNN went and looked at Navarro’s comments to the media around the time he wrote those memos. Em Steck and Andrew Kaczynski report, in part: In Navarro’s second memo, dated 23 February, he urged for immediate funding to “minimize economic and social disruption”. “Any member of the Task Force who wants to be cautious about appropriating funds for a crisis that could inflict trillions of dollars in economic damage and take millions of lives has come to the wrong administration,” Navarro wrote. But at a press gaggle on 24 February, Navarro assured that coronavirus was “nothing to worry about for the American people” under Trump’s leadership. “Since the day that President Trump pulled down the flights from China to the US, he has been actively leading the situation in terms of this crisis with the task force. Nothing to worry about for the American people. “This country’s done a beautiful job under [the] president’s leadership [sic] in terms of managing this situation. He’s working on a daily basis with the task force and we’re taking steps to anticipate … where the puck’s gonna be. We’re skating there in defense of the American people and the American economy. So you can be sure you’re that in great hands with the Trump administration.” Our own Julian Borger has a lot more on the kind of hands you’re in with the Trump administration in the following profile of Navarro, including: Five of Navarro’s books cited a China hand with a particularly pithy turn of phrase called Ron Vara, who turned out not to exist. The name is an anagram of Navarro and the imaginary expert operated as an alter ego, confirming the author’s views. A former campaign adviser, Larry Remer, says: “I wouldn’t trust him to go out to get lunch and come back with everybody’s sandwich and drink order correctly. I don’t know how he could be put in charge of logistics. Former spokeswoman Lisa Ross says: “Peter can be a real bully and maybe that’s why Trump picked him. He wanted a bully to do the job.” Here’s the piece in full. It’s a hell of a read, under a hell of a headline: