Michael Waters | Vox

There’s a new way to get a loan — but it comes at a cost

2025-11-10T12:46:16-05:00

Next time you’re turned down for a loan because of a low credit score, you might find that your rejection comes with a caveat. The lender is willing to reconsider — if you just let them see inside your bank account.

Across the country, financial companies are racing to get a look at your checking account, hoping it’ll fill in the gaps left by credit scores, which only take into consideration certain debt and loan information, such as missed payments, credit card balances and limits, opened and closed accounts, bankruptcies, and collections.

In this new world of “open banking,” lenders no longer need to settle for just the data that appears on a credit report. They can now analyze all of your day-to-day transactions, your recurring payments and deposits, and the trajectory of your account balance. And they do it live — recalibrating your creditworthiness as your assets rise or fall.

Lenders, landlords, and credit bureaus insist that bank account data will help them expand access to credit. But the problem is that not everyone will benefit from turning over their bank accounts to creditors. And while open banking is optional for now — and you can opt out of live connection with your bank at any time — the technology is gaining traction, with major credit bureaus, mortgage companies, and smaller lenders embracing the trend. It isn’t hard to imagine that one day lenders will view opting out as a sign you have something to hide.

The rise of “open banking,” explained

When you apply for a loan, a lender pulls your credit report from one of the three major credit bureaus — Experian, Equifax, or TransUnion. These credit bureaus also typically sell your credit score, which is calculated by two other private companies, FICO and VantageScore, using that underlying credit bureau data. (VantageScore is jointly owned by the three credit bureaus; FICO is independent.)

It’s a complicated system. Basically, what’s important to know is that credit bureaus have immense amounts of data on you — but there are notable gaps. Credit bureaus only receive limited information from Buy Now, Pay Later companies, for instance, even though BNPL loans represent about 17 percent of all unsecured consumer debt. They often can’t track multiple income streams, if someone is a gig worker or freelancer; they also can’t see cases where workers are regularly getting wage advances. Most importantly, credit bureaus have no way of knowing how much money you have on hand.

To creditors, a checking account can therefore feel like a silver bullet. Suddenly, through your expense and deposit history, all of those hidden debts and payments become visible. Lenders will see if a borrower has thousands of dollars in wealth squared away, if they receive side income from a dog-walking app or a DJ career. Lenders particularly scrutinize your “recurring expenses,” like the size and frequency of your rent and utility payments, and your overall cash flow, said Kelly Thompson Cochran, deputy director of the research firm FinRegLab. Ashley Knight, a senior vice president at Experian, the largest credit bureau in America, told me that many lenders want to know how much money you bring in each month. “How much is it? How frequent is it? Stability of that is where lenders are looking.”

The quest to profitably lend to more Americans, including those with low credit scores, has pushed a wide swath of companies to embrace open banking. In the last three years, mortgage and auto lenders like Rocket Mortgage and Zillow have started requesting read-only access to the bank accounts of people they might otherwise reject because of low credit scores. AT&T has used bank data to make decisions about lease-to-own phone and other device installment plans, and so have credit unions like Pennsylvania’s Inspire Federal Credit Union. Some fintech companies, like the credit card issuer Petal, are basing most of their credit decisions on the data pulled from an applicant’s bank account; the lender Varo claims that 90 percent of its loans are granted or denied based on the same process.

In June, Experian announced that it was going to start selling lenders a “Cashflow Score,” based entirely on data from bank accounts. With a borrower’s permission, Experian will analyze the overall account balance, expenses, and direct deposit income across a two-year period, and then generate a score measuring their creditworthiness. (The Cashflow Score program is new, but Experian told me that 17 million users have connected their bank accounts to similar Experian programs.)

Giving a lender or a landlord an automatic view of your bank account might improve your credit score, but it is also welcoming an ominous amount of surveillance into your daily financial life.

And in September, PayPal announced that bank data was helping it decide which customers to approve for Buy Now, Pay Later loans, making it one of the highest-profile companies yet to embrace the idea that your bank account can say as much about your likelihood to repay a loan as your credit score.

Over 100 million Americans have already granted permission to one of these third parties to access their checking accounts, according to a 2023 report from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Most of those connections probably involve Venmo or Cash App; only a small portion of those 100 million people have likely greenlit use of their bank account for credit decisioning. Still, while it’s hard to quantify how many lenders are giving up bank access for credit decisions, “we know it’s going up,” said Cochran.

Bank data is even beginning to filter down into credit scores. While the Cashflow Score that Experian produces is not the same as a traditional credit score, both FICO and VantageScore, the two makers of credit scores in the US, now offer scoring algorithms that incorporate bank account data. You have to opt into these services, but if you do, your daily purchases and payments will start nudging your score up or down.

The mixed bag of live bank access

For Americans with thin (or poor) credit histories, turning over your bank account could be a way of, say, making a debt that went to collections look a little less bad. “Having cash flow data that is up to the moment can be a really helpful supplement,” Cochran said. “It’s showing other parts of their finances beyond just how they repay their existing credit lines.

It’s not far-fetched: A study from the Urban Institute suggested that a little under 20 percent of people who were originally denied mortgages might have been approved if bank account data, including rental payment history, were factored into their applications.

Giving a lender or a landlord an automatic view of your bank account might improve your credit score, but it is also welcoming an ominous amount of surveillance into your daily financial life. What will happen to your credit score if your income changes — say, you lose a freelance gig — and your cash flow is suddenly reduced? How will you think differently about a big purchase if you know that a lender will be scrutinizing your overall bank balance?

Let’s say you lose a critical income stream or a freelance gig—allowing access to your bank account might actually make you look worse. “It is true that you might improve the outcome for individuals,” Raúl Carrillo, an assistant law professor at Boston College Law School, told me. But some of the claims of the industry, “like ‘we’re going to solve the racial wealth gap,’ seem pretty far-fetched to me.”

For now, lenders seem focused only on top-line data points, like monthly cash flow. Plaid, a fintech company that connects lenders to bank accounts, specifically estimates for lenders how much money you bring in (or lose) each month. But there are few hard limits on the data they can use to set interest rates or make loan decisions.

“Lenders are always looking for new sources,” Michelle Young, credit product lead at Plaid, told me. Recently, Young asked a group of customers what kind of alternative data they were most interested in for assessing creditworthiness. “They were like, ‘Everything,’” Young said.

The open banking industry is not well-regulated. While it is subject to broad guidelines, like the 1970 Fair Credit Reporting Act, that govern data collection and transparency, there are no federal laws that specifically address open banking. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s open banking rule — devised during the Biden administration, then scrapped and quickly revived during the Trump administration — is now undergoing public comment. The new rule might not set any further limits on the types of information that creditors can use for underwriting.

Few lenders seem to be basing loan decisions on the specific items you purchase, but they could — and, historically, they have. In 2008, American Express cut customers’ credit lines in part because of their shopping histories. Cardholders found that they had lost access to credit because, according to the credit card company, they had shopped at similar stores as people with “poor repayment history with American Express,” among other factors. Around the same time, the now-defunct credit card company CompuCredit cut credit lines when customers spent money on products it associated with credit risk, like “cash advances, marital or personal counseling, tire retreading and car repairs, pawn shops, direct marketing merchants, and certain types of entertainment.”

With live access to your bank account, your basic day-to-day behaviors could be used against you. With a lender overseeing their checking account, it isn’t hard to imagine someone skipping over an important purchase for fear it will damage their credit. For lenders, everything is fair game. “The ethos is data maximization,” Carrillo said. “The model is, collect as much data as possible and sift through it on the back end.”

Update, November 5, 2025, 2:30 pm ET: This story has been updated to include more information on the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

Clarification, November 10, 12:45 pm ET: This story has been updated to clarify the guidelines the open banking industry is subject to and to more accurately reflect how lenders, landlords, and credit bureaus interact with your bank account data.

How 1970s VCR dating paved the way for Tinder and Hinge

2021-02-09T11:49:10-05:00

Video dating is nothing new. | Sarah Lawrence for Vox

Starting in February 1976, lonely people across Los Angeles drove to a windowless, one-room office on the 18th floor of a building in Century City — the first outpost in what would soon become a national dating franchise called Great Expectations. There, in a room crammed with two TVs, a set of chairs for interviewing, and a stack of cassette tapes, they stepped into the future of dating.

The company’s founder, a 26-year-old named Jeff Ullman, ushered members over to a video camera, where he recorded a three-minute conversation introducing each person to the world. Ullman cycled through questions like, “Do you work hard? What makes you angry? What really motivates you? What are you looking for in a man/woman?” Then he added each videotape to the Great Expectations library and let members peruse the rest of the tapes. Appended to each was a one-page résumé outlining the person’s height, location, job, and so on, so that members could filter out candidates before popping in a tape. This was “videotape dating,” or “video dating” for short.

Great Expectations members were an eclectic set: Among other things, members announced in their videos that they were seeking out “someone who believes in 85 percent of women’s lib,” someone who craved “an innocuous transcendental experience” or who lived “the combined lifestyles of Henry II, Sir Thomas More, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Monsieur Rick.” Another declared that all he really wanted was to “stare into a woman’s eyes, get drunk with friends, and have high times.”

But the ability to watch — and then select — potential dates from a series of videos was fundamentally new. Ullman’s central idea was that a video recording could showcase a more honest version of a person. As one reporter for a New Jersey home magazine put it at the time, the beauty of video dating was “the impact of seeing someone ‘alive’ on the screen, talking about himself honestly and openly.” Plenty of people had “marvelous” personalities that would not typically show up on a written questionnaire — only in a video profile could those personalities shine.

People loved the richness of the medium, according to Dawn Shepherd, an English professor at Boise State University who has researched the origins of online dating. “You get many of the benefits of meeting someone in person without having to, well, meet them in person,” she said.

In the past 12 months, in the name of pandemic safety and of highlighting a different side of users’ personalities, modern dating apps have stumbled on that same thesis all over again. Most of them now encourage users to add videos into their profiles; Hinge and Bumble are making video chats a central part of their apps; and the newest crop of dating app startups are largely video-first. The dating app Lolly, for instance, is being pitched as TikTok meets Tinder. As Tinder put it in a press release introducing its two-second video feature Loops, adding in video helps people “show more personality, which is the best way to get more right swipes.” The video dating that started in the 1970s is a mostly forgotten innovation, but as modern dating apps increasingly remake themselves to center video elements, they are unknowingly borrowing from early companies like Great Expectations.

Shepherd said that while developers might not have created modern dating apps explicitly with video dating in mind, “I think in some cases, you can draw a direct line from video dating to contemporary online dating and contemporary dating apps.”

That parallel runs deeper than just an increased emphasis on video. The fundamental structures of modern dating apps were first perfected in the 1970s. Video dating offered a way for people to sift through potential dates remotely, and it was the first truly intimate example of, as Shepherd put it, the “browsing people” model of dating that we know today.

It was the first truly intimate example of the “browsing people” model of dating that we know today

Great Expectations was not the earliest video-dating service. The idea gained ground a year earlier, when a New York-based company called Videomate launched with the ad: “Now, you can see and hear your date on closed-circuit TV before you date. It’s fun! It’s riskless! It’s new!” For $60, members received a 90-day membership that covered the cost of a video recording and access to the company’s cassette library. The early reviews, like one September 1975 article from the Associated Press, compared video dating to “window shopping.” “You can look but you don’t have to buy,” one customer told the wire service.

According to Shepherd, video dating arrived thanks to the convergence of two separate trends: On one hand, these services sprang up right as VCR technology was entering the mainstream, which meant that making and sharing videos was easier than ever. At the same time, the cultural revolutions of the 1960s had cleared the way for a new openness to relationships and dating.

A few other dating businesses had sprouted up beforehand, namely a late-19th-century service called the Wedding Ring Circle, which sold photobooks that listed out singles in the area and their hobbies. But the pace of innovation accelerated in the middle of the 20th century, and “in the ’70s and ’80s, all of these dating services pop up,” said Shepherd. “There was a company called Dinner Work that would arrange dinner parties where people would meet. There were travel agencies that would do singles travel.” Some computer dating services were also cropping up, although they were extremely limited in scope.

Most video-dating companies — which had names like Visual Dates Ltd., Teledate, Introvision, Date-a-Max, and VideoDate — flamed out within a few years, unable to convince people to spend hundreds of dollars a year on their services. But Great Expectations blossomed. By the end of 1976, it had traded in that one-room office for a fancy space in Westwood.

On a video call, Ullman — who now runs a CBD company called GoodFOR — told me that even before his company had taken off, he knew he was onto something big. “We’d go to bars, and we’d hand out these little cards, and the big headline said ‘bars hate us,’” Ullman said. Bar owners, needless to say, did not take kindly to the suggestion that video dating rendered them irrelevant. “They’d throw us out even though we were in the parking lots,” he said.

“No more wasted time in singles bars. No more losers.”

Buoying the company’s growth was its intensive mailer campaign: Great Expectations blanketed households across the US with ads that proclaimed, “No more wasted time in singles bars. No more losers.” In total, Ullman told me he sent out close to 1 billion mailers.

Ullman spread his company across the country on a franchise model. The new Great Expectations locations — called “Member Centers” — were mostly found on the bottom floors of office buildings, and they featured big tables where people could sort through written profiles (black binders indicated men, red binders indicated women) and about a dozen private booths for viewing videotapes. (“Our Member Profile binders were made of leather, and not vinyl or plastic,” said Ullman. “Why? Members aspired to quality.”)

As the service ballooned, it became a small pop culture hit. The central romance in the 1979 film A Perfect Couple, written and directed by Oscar winner Robert Altman, takes place thanks to Great Expectations. Video dating also made a cameo in Cameron Crowe’s 1992 movie Singles (where Tim Burton played the video-dating employee who filmed each interview). Ullman became a regular on the talk-show circuit, and he was always a bit of an eccentric figure. When one of his competitors, VideoDate, went under, the LA Times reported that he ripped the company’s sign off of the front door and brought it home with him as a “trophy.”

MADtv — a ’90s-era competitor to Saturday Night Live — regularly parodied the company as “Lowered Expectations.” One representative sketch featured a fictional employee pitching the service: “Would you describe yourself as shy? Old-fashioned? Not on anyone’s A-list?” he said. “That doesn’t mean you can’t find … somebody. And that’s why Lowered Expectations may be for you.”

As the company grew, so did the price of membership. By 1986, customers were paying $625 for the lower tier — a six-month plan where people could only submit their own cassette tape but not browse through the others — and $2,000 to both submit a tape and browse other people’s. (By the end of the company’s life, prices had gone as high as $3,790 in some cases for a multi-year subscription.)

At one point in the early 1990s, Great Expectations had 49 franchises and was earning $65 million a year in revenue. But Great Expectations never escaped the stereotype that people who signed up for video dating were inherently desperate.

In its orientation videos to new members, the company tried to address that stigma head on. “The users are saying things like, after I signed up, am I a loser? What am I doing?” Shepherd said. Then a Great Expectations employee cut in to say that what they were feeling was normal. “There’s a lot of members who feel the same way you feel, who have come here and joined Great Expectations because they don’t want to be alone,” a member services manager at the company said in one orientation video. But it never seemed to convince enough people. “It’s because of stigma that video dating never became the dominant way of facilitating relationships,” she said.

The rhythms of video dating, though, have lived on. When a member watched a video they liked, they would indicate it on a written form, which they turned over to Great Expectations. As on Hinge, the recipient was alerted when someone liked them, and only if the feeling was mutual could either person see the other’s full name or swap contact information. A Great Expectations employee called members to say that they’d found a match; Ullman called this a “mutual consent.”

There are other parallels. Just as Hinge is now monetizing itself by allowing users to pay $3.99 to send a rose, Great Expectations let customers send a “membergram” — a personalized note — for $2. Normally, selecting a date was impersonal; buying a membergram was the only way for a member to explain why they were interested.

And much like Raya, the exclusive celebrity data app used by Channing Tatum, Great Expectations figured out how to cater to famous members. Ullman launched “For Your Eyes Only,” a program where elite members could browse through other people’s tapes but keep their own hidden behind the front desk. Only if the celebrity found someone they liked would Great Expectations release the tape to that person; otherwise, no one would know that the celebrity was a member.

But the people who dated with Great Expectations also risked a level of awkwardness that modern dating app users are spared. After all, to browse matches, people had to show up in person to the Great Expectations’ offices. And running into an unrequited match — or a former date — was not uncommon. In 1996, one member recounted how a woman had opted to send him a membergram after seeing his video, a move he found “aggressive.” Then, while he was flipping through her profile and deciding whether to say yes to her, she walked into the building. “I had just watched her video five minutes before,” he told the LA Times.

Scott Soehrmann, a manager at an Illinois-based food manufacturer who joined Great Expectations in the ’90s, told me in an email that, soon after signing up for the service, he realized that his previous girlfriend was also a member. “That was kind of weird,” he said. “There were a couple of girls from high school in there too.”

But after a few dates, Soehrmann received a request from a nurse named Terri. When they met up, they hit it off. The pair are still married today. “My wife always likes to say she paid good money for me,” he said.

Video-dating services may have stumbled into a model of courtship that reflects the online dating world today, but by the 1990s, when the first set of dating sites popped up — starting with Kiss.com in 1994, then Match.com in 1995 — video dating didn’t really stand a chance. Online dating was far cheaper, and it could all be done remotely. (A revolt from Great Expectations franchisees, plus an investigation by the Federal Trade Commission for overbilling, also did not help.) Ullman sold his company to a financial services firm in 1995; it shut down several years later.

Yet as dating apps revamp themselves around video, the strands of that experiment linger. And Ullman, at least, isn’t afraid to take credit. On the video call, he told me, “We created every good thing that is on any dating service now.”

“For the first time in my life, I had money in my savings”: Workers on the relief of the $600 weekly benefit

2020-08-21T14:00:20-04:00

A man tapes signs to his car before participating in a caravan rally down the Las Vegas Strip in support of extending the $600 unemployment benefit on August 6, 2020 in Las Vegas, Nevada. | Bridget Bennett/AFP/Getty Images

Part of the Escape Issue of The Highlight, our home for ambitious stories that explain our world.

You’ve probably heard this talking point: Many of the 30 million Americans who received the extra $600-per-week unemployment benefits passed in the first coronavirus economic stimulus package earned more than they did when they worked full time.

The CARES Act represented a near-unprecedented, if temporary, expansion of the social safety net. According to one estimate by University of Chicago economists in May, as many as 68 percent of newly unemployed workers were on track to collect a higher salary under the enhanced benefits (that is, if they were able to actually get through to swamped unemployment offices to apply). But while some lawmakers have tried to use this phenomenon as a reason to slash the extra benefits — insisting, against all evidence, that it’s convincing people not to return to work at all — the fact that so many workers outearned their salaries with a $600 per week boost (an average of $15 an hour for a 40-hour workweek) only highlights the failures of the American labor system.

The numbers tell a clear story: The US is generally not kind to the working class. According to MIT’s Living Wage Calculator, a true living wage shakes out to about $16.54 per hour — but no state has a minimum wage that high. According to the researchers, two adults in a family of four would each have to work 75 hours a week at minimum wage to meet that living standard.

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The average American worker also puts in 1,779 hours a year — not the most hours among the countries in the 37-member Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development index, but well above peers like Japan (1,644) and Germany (1,386). The OECD Work-Life Balance rankings found that US workers have less leisure time and face higher rates of gender inequity in the workforce than many of the countries on the list. And in normal times, we spend the second-least on unemployment aid after the Slovak Republic.

This lack of a robust safety net, which at times feels held together by glue and duct tape, takes a psychological toll, and many workers know it. All of this made the temporary boost to unemployment benefits an unexpected bright spot for some Americans during this stressful time. As one Reddit thread documented, some people have quietly felt relief from the last few months of unemployment checks: For the first time in years, they were getting a break.

Those federal benefits expired last month. (President Trump has signed an executive order extending enhanced benefits of at least $300 a week, but payments may be slow to roll out and limited to several weeks of benefits. How many states will apply is also yet to be seen.)

As lawmakers continue to grapple with how much, and for how long, they ought to aid unemployed Americans, Vox talked to three workers about the extra benefits. For each, they offered a much-needed hiatus from the grind of the American labor system. They paid bills, helped out friends, and pursued long-neglected interests. Receiving the extra money didn’t change their minds about their desire for employment — but after years of panicking and overworking themselves, it finally gave them the chance to breathe.

Shannon Murphy, 25, retail worker in New York City

I work in Times Square, so naturally my day looks a lot different than the normal retail worker. We’d see 4,000 customers a day, and all of us work nine-hour shifts.

We would normally get scheduled for around 30 hours a week, but I would pick up shifts to get to 40. I worked myself to the bone. I was mentally, physically, and emotionally burned out. You need to smile 24/7, run around the huge store like a madman. Also, like other Times Square stores, we usually don’t close until 1 am, which meant I was getting home at like 2:30.

I’ve never had a comfortable amount of money in my bank account. If anything ever happened health-wise, I would have been screwed. I was exhausted all the time and just barely making rent. [I had] about $100-$200 per month [left over] for expenses like groceries.

When the pandemic first started getting really serious in New York and my job said we’d be closing for two weeks with pay, I was honestly relieved. I would be able to get some proper rest for the first time in more than a year. Applying for unemployment in New York was a nightmare at the time, [but] I got lucky and got my application through.

For the first time in my life, I had money in my savings. I saved every penny I could. The only time I ever really spent money was to get necessities and some new professional clothes.

When the state started opening back up, I was ready to get back to some semblance of normal. I missed work, I missed my coworkers, but most of all I just missed having somewhere to go.

But [now my hours] have gone down to about five hours per week. After taxes, that’s $50 a week. Pair that with the reduced unemployment, I’m bringing home about $660 a month. I have a good amount in savings [because of the unemployment benefits], but all of it at this point is going to rent. I’ll have enough to cover my rent until December. After that, I’m screwed.

I hate the amount of comments I see that those wanting the extra $600 extended are just no-good, lazy cash-grabbers who don’t want to go back to work. In reality, myself and many others are back at work, but not making nearly as much as we used to. Without that $600, I don’t know what the new year is going to look like for me.

We need to make a livable wage for every single citizen. It shouldn’t have taken a deadly pandemic for people to have some form of money in their bank accounts.

Lea Sorya, 26, optometrist technician in Richmond, Virginia

I’ve been living paycheck to paycheck for as long as I’ve been on my own. I worked as an optometrist technician during the day, and I would frequently pick up shifts at a local restaurant in the evenings.

The position was exhausting. I was considered part-time, paid $10 an hour. My employer made sure that my hours were capped at the maximum of 30 hours to keep me from getting any benefits by being full-time.

It gave me little time to do much else, but I’d run to my other job at a restaurant. [And I would] sell house plants on the side for extra cash.

The $600 extra was insane to me. I had never made that much on a paycheck before. It felt weird and unreal. I could actually pay all my bills for a change. I was paying off old debt that I could never make large payments on.

I ended up donating a lot of my money. At some point, I was sending money to friends who needed it more and were denied benefits.

I was able to work on my relationship [with my partner] and take time off to spend time in the mountains to clear my head. I’ve been able to learn a lot more about plants and horticulture.

Since quarantine, I’ve been using my downtime to put toward my business plan. I was hoping to [get] some money to save so I could invest in my own plant business eventually.

It’s been a lot of conflicting feelings on my end. I was happy because I finally had this sense of security, but I also felt guilty. I think about all those essential workers making less than me while I’m home and they’re at work.

Brynmor Ruiz, 23, store manager at video game retailer in Phoenix, Arizona

I’ve been with my company for seven years, since I was 16 years old. I was finally made a store manager last July.

I like the work I do. I get to share my enthusiasm for gaming and help people find a game to get lost in. I have a number of regulars who come in just to see me.

[But] as a store lead, it’s incredibly time-consuming. I’m required to work 44 hours a week. I’m hourly, so at least I get paid overtime. But the reality of the situation is that I’m always on call if my team needs me, so I don’t always have days off. Because of the extra work, I’d say [I work] more around 50 hours a week. During the holiday it probably pushed 55 to 60.

You can imagine the toll it takes. We constantly have corporate breathing down our necks about performance and pulling high sales. I’m one of the lower-volume stores. The pressure they put on us is immeasurable. I had a hell of a mental breakdown after the holidays [last year] and had to take an entire week off. As much as I love this job, to say it’s draining would be an understatement.

I was furloughed in the last week of April. After we were guaranteed the extra $600 a week, it feels almost awful to say, but it felt like I was somehow taking advantage of something. I was now making more on unemployment than I had been as a store manager. [My girlfriend and I] went from the fear of financial ruin to being better off. It was at least $200 more every two weeks.

Bills were getting paid easily. We were able to save and help our friends out who were in a tougher spot than we were.

I got to rest for the first time in so, so long. I’m a writer. It’s something I cherish above all else, and I promised myself I would never turn it into a career out of fear that it would ruin my love for it.

Before the pandemic, I had hardly any time to write at all, and I felt guilty about it when I did. I had such little time to myself outside of work. Shouldn’t I have been spending that time helping around the house? Taking care of errands?

But with the time off from work, I’ve had so many more opportunities. I can take a few hours to dedicate to writing, and I know that I can come back to a document if I lose steam for the day. I’m currently working on short stories and my first poetry book. I don’t have to worry about the once-in-a-blue-moon chance to kick-start a new idea. I’ve never felt happier with my writing. I am so scared of losing this feeling, even though I know it comes at a cost now.

Michael Waters is a writer covering politics and economics. His work has appeared in the Atlantic, Gizmodo, BuzzFeed, and the Outline.

Meet the 2020 grads entering the bleakest economy in decades

2020-07-22T08:43:51-04:00

Graduates facing uncertain job prospects also have had ceremonies canceled because of the pandemic. Here, a graduate holds up her diploma at a drive-through ceremony for the “Resilient Class” of 2020 in Los Angeles County. | Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images

Part of the July Issue of The Highlight, our home for ambitious stories that explain our world.

Many kids growing up in the shadow of the Great Recession have probably worried that they might graduate into a battered economy just like it. Last August, while I was entering my senior year of college, a piece of financial news sent me into a small panic about whether my own graduation would dovetail with a recession.

An economic crisis happened, sure enough, but it’s one far more catastrophic than anyone could have imagined. Plenty of graduates have had their jobs canceled or postponed indefinitely in the Covid-19 pandemic, and others found that the industries they’d trained for have more or less stopped hiring. Still others can’t get professional licenses to work in their chosen fields. Near the peak of the job losses in March, 31 percent of people ages 18 to 34 in an Axios-Harris survey said they were temporarily or permanently out of work.

“All my peers I’ve talked to feel that something was taken from us,” said Moxxy Rogers, a 22-year-old who just graduated from Portland State University.

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You can hear echoes of that sentiment in how 2009 graduates talked about their fortunes during the Great Recession, which stripped many of their moment of triumph and left them facing a post-grad economy that will impact their health and wages for decades.

The class of 2020 is not the class of 2009. And this pandemic has not been like the Great Recession: A Pew report found that, after three months of Covid-19, the unemployment rate jumped more than it did during the two worst years of the Great Recession. Graduating into this level of economic turmoil will continue to haunt the older members of Gen Z.

“Early career events like this tend to have scarring effects, they tend to persist over time,” William Gale, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told the Guardian. “The jobs available or the wages available won’t be as good as they would have been otherwise.”

Vox talked to five recent graduates of the class of 2020 to learn how they’re coping — and how they think graduating into a teetering economy will impact them in the long term. Their situations are different: One has a job, another is applying to grad school, some are stuck in career limbo. But most felt cheated out of their chance to celebrate the transition into full adulthood — and several have profound anxiety about the future.

“I’m extremely worried about my plan not working out. I think about it every day, maybe even every hour. … It’s never been more clear to me that there’s absolutely no security for me or for anyone,” said Matthew San Martin, who just graduated from St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas. “There’s no guarantee.”

These interviews have been edited for length and clarity.

Elena Panos, 21, living in Gilroy, California

Cosmetology certificate, Gavilan College

Right now: Waiting for a license

All through middle school and high school I was into musical theater. I ended up going to community college, which is Foothill College here in Los Altos. And while I was there, I was taking a makeup class. It was about prosthetics, makeup, and wigs.

I was really down one day, and one of my teachers said to me, “I see you have an eye for creating characters just with makeup. I can see a story behind this face that you made.” I was like, I need a drive in my life. I need to figure out what I want in a career. My dream became to work as a makeup designer in theater.

[My teacher] said, “You can go to cosmetology school and get your license, and that’ll open up so many more doors for you.” I was thinking of cutting hair as something to fall back on.

That was my last semester of college, and I enrolled straight into cosmetology school. My program took exactly two years.

Since everything is shut down right now, I can’t get my cosmetology license because I can’t physically go test. In my whole graduating class, only half of us have our licenses. We’re all just sitting in limbo right now, because we can’t work.

I’m supposed to move to New York City in August to further my education. I’m planning to go to the Make-up Designory [a trade school teaching makeup design]. I don’t even know if that’s going to happen.

It really scares me because my line of work is directly based on person-to-person contact. I can’t do my job without touching someone’s hair, without touching someone’s face, without having a packed room with an audience. It makes me think the theater industry is just never going to be the same.

Money-wise, I’m pretty lucky to have my parents supporting me through school, and I’m really lucky to have them financially supporting me still. I currently live at home with them. But definitely once I’m out of school, I’m worried about finding a place in the economy. That has always been a big source of my anxiety, but now it’s 10 times worse.

Even if Broadway reopens and shows start up again, no one’s going to want to hire a newbie. They’ll probably go back to their tried-and-true people who are established in the industry anyway.

I can’t see things going back to “normal” for probably the next five, 10 years. By then, it’ll be past my time where I should have been starting out and building my career, just as any other person in their early 20s does.

But I don’t regret what I studied. I don’t see myself being content with anything else in my life. I had a big realization that’s like, if I’m not going to be happy in what I’m doing, what’s the point? I’m trying to manifest my best life.

Brianna McGee, 17, living in Fresno, California

Graduated from Mountain House High School

Right now: Taking a gap year

My thought to take a gap year happened during my sophomore year. Being in high school really stressed me. For the last 14 or so years, most of my days were consumed with school. And I want to be a mental health counselor, and in order to do that, I’m giving up seven to 10 more years of my life to school.

I still want to take my gap year. My plans to travel got canceled, but I want to get a small job, something in retail or customer service, and get a little money out. Me and my cousin have a plan of moving and getting a place together. I like to do makeup, lip gloss, and lashes. [We] said we’ll put our heads together and start this business up.

I’m not so worried about the future of mental health counselors being impacted by the pandemic. Quarantine will have a long-lasting effect, so people will seek out help. With Gen Z, a good percentage of us are more aware and able to be more vulnerable. So I believe there will definitely be a need.

But I worry a lot about my motivation. I can’t say that I’ve never procrastinated before or put something off. But right now, when I’m working on something, I’m like, “Why does this even matter?” I wonder, “Is this going to help me in the long run?” because we’re in a pandemic. Is my hard work going to count?

My senior year, I didn’t think I was going to graduate. Depression hit everybody hard, but especially me. There were times where I wouldn’t even go to the Zoom lesson and my teachers would be emailing my mom. And I’m like, “No, no, I’ll get it done.” Then a week goes by, still not done. Two weeks go by, still not done. I was just laying in bed, sleeping until 4 o’clock in the afternoon.

Mental health issues are definitely real [in the] pandemic. There are a couple people from my class of 2020 that I have lost to suicide before graduation.

Hopefully, this is a chance for those who need help to recognize that they need it and seek it.

Jordan Kozar, 22, living in Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Bachelor’s in marketing, Louisiana State University

Right now: Applying for jobs

I ended up going to school for five years instead of the normal four. I started out in finance and had a change of heart, and I realized I had a lot more passion for marketing. Finance is a lot more working behind the numbers, not really working with people and customers.

Looking back at it, I wish I had graduated a year earlier and stuck with finance.

I’m currently living with my parents; I moved back home mid-May after I graduated. I’m applying to about five to 10 jobs a week.

There’s definitely a lot less entry-level jobs that I noticed compared to pre-pandemic. It feels like I’m having to compete against people that have more experience or that have been in the job market a lot longer that recently lost their jobs. I’ve broadened to look at industries such as fundraising and nonprofits. I’m also looking at the esports community because I’ve worked a lot in esports in general.

My biggest fear is having to settle for a job that doesn’t use a lot of the skills I have now and won’t help me in the future. There’s a lot more opportunity in other cities and states when it comes to marketing specifically, so settling for a job in Baton Rouge feels very limiting.

I’ve been trying to look at the positives. Employers aren’t going to look at a gap on a resume as hard anymore because of what’s going on. [In my free time now] I’m also trying to increase my current skills. I’m trying to learn how to code through online programs.

I would say right now I’m emotionally in a good spot. Of course, there are times when the process of finding a job and applying to jobs can be stressful and frustrating. I know that in the long run, though, it will pay off, and I have to be confident to get where I’m going. This pandemic has definitely taught me how to be more patient.

A lot of my friends that before didn’t plan on getting extra education, like a master’s or a doctorate, are considering that now. Some are actually doing it. My parents have even asked me if I want to do it.

Honestly, I’m keeping it in the very, very back as an option.

Moxxy Rogers, 22, living in Portland, Oregon

Bachelor’s in creative writing with a poetry focus, Portland State University

Right now: Working as an AmeriCorps college application coach

Many of us are feeling scared because it’s the worst job market to graduate into. There used to be a protection of, “Oh, you’re a student, don’t worry about those big world problems, your priority is being a student.” Now that protection is gone. We are all the normal, functioning humans in society that we’re supposed to be, but there’s no jobs for us. It’s terrifying to think that you did all this work for all these years, and maybe it was for nothing.

I fell in love with creative writing when I was really young. My mom’s a writer too. I think she basically raised me in a Barnes & Noble. I put myself through college, I would say, 90 percent on my own. I came from a relatively poor family, and my mom didn’t finish college. My grandma immigrated from Taiwan. She’s had three children and a bunch of grandchildren, and I was the first girl in my family to graduate from college. For me, it was really important.

[Now that I’ve graduated] I have a position with AmeriCorps starting in August. It doesn’t pay a lot, but that’s my security for now. It offers an opportunity of putting my loans on hold. While at AmeriCorps, I want to be simultaneously writing a novel or a memoir that I could send to literary agents in the hopes of getting it published.

Yes, the economy sucks. I put myself through school only to graduate into the worst job market America has ever seen. But I am a poet. I am a creator. I will never stop creating as long as I have breath in my body. All I can do is bide my time.

I want to be a director, producer, actress, and a screenwriter. I want to be a Broadway star. I want to write books until I’m old and senile. I know the pandemic and the immediate crisis will someday pass. I’m lucky that I have writing, and a lot of that I can do from the comfort of my home.

Matthew San Martin, 22, living in San Antonio, Texas

Bachelor’s in communications, St. Edward’s University

Right now: Applying to grad school

I was the editor-in-chief of the student-run newspaper, called Hilltop Views, and I was president of the student-run digital media organization. I also worked as an IT guy.

[In my journalism] I focused on marginalized groups of people both on my campus and in the greater Austin, Texas, community.

At first I thought that I would try to find work in my hometown. But the fact of the matter is that a lot of the publications that I was interested in working for are going out of business.

I can’t stress enough how [all the] plans I had to make money and start my career were thwarted by the pandemic. Literally every single plan I had to start my own publication was thrown away.

Right now, I’m applying to grad school to study how media plays a factor in communication and society. [It’s] for the hope of deferring my student loans even further. Hopefully with an extra degree I have a better chance of getting my foot in the door with a job interview.

I’m extremely worried about my plan not working out. I think about it every day, maybe even every hour.

I think, “Shit, man, what are you doing? This could backfire in the worst way for you.” But I figure it’s a toss-up between going to school online and trying to find work in my field to hopefully gain experience while I’m learning, or just start the rest of my life already.

There’s a part of me that can make the argument that yes, this is my only option. Because frankly, there is nothing that says that when this pandemic is over, for real, and everyone is able to safely go back to work, that a bachelor’s degree will be worth anything if there’s millions of 2020 graduates all competing for the same jobs.

As recent college graduates, we’re forced to put the past behind us and keep moving forward. There wasn’t really a time to be sad or dwell over anything. You just had to finish your degree and start making money to pay off loan debt. I don’t think myself or my friends ever processed what was happening until we were already weeks into our first stay-at-home order.

One other thing I’m worried about is the future of job interviews. The job interview rulebook has always been different for people of color, and you would think with such a big issue affecting everyone that the playing field would be leveled. But I’m worried that instead of employers taking notice of the usual stuff, they’re going to be taking notice of, “Do you have a stable internet connection? Do you have your own office or workspace? Are you able to work odd hours?”

It’s never been more clear to me that there’s absolutely no security for me or for anyone. There’s no guarantee, if I do find work, that it won’t be gone the next month.

I don’t anticipate the spread of the virus getting any better anytime soon. I don’t anticipate the job market clearing up anytime soon. I anticipate the repercussions of this to follow me for many, many years.

Michael Waters is a writer covering politics and economics. His work has appeared in the Atlantic, Gizmodo, BuzzFeed, and the Outline.

Will summer camp be open this year? 4 directors weigh in.

2020-05-27T12:30:05-04:00

Summer camp directors across the country are weighing whether to open their doors to kids during the pandemic. | Thomas Barwick/Getty Images

The future of summer camps has been decided. And among the 14,000 across the country — from a horse ranch in Wyoming to a science lab in Seattle — there is by no means a consensus.

Many camps have opted to write off 2020 as a lost cause, while some, especially in more rural areas, are expecting to hold camp as normal. Others tried to split the difference: This will be the summer of virtual camp.

The decision-making around whether to close is a strange patchwork. While some states and counties landed hard on one side of the debate — most prominently, Minnesota blocked all overnight camps from whirring into action this summer — most often, governmental guidance has remained vague enough that the decision about reopening has fallen to the camps themselves.

Camp directors have not taken that responsibility lightly. Summer camps have become a flashpoint for much larger challenges emerging out of the pandemic: Parents are seeing their usual child care plans erode, and summer camps — if they are allowed to open — provide kids a safe environment to make friends, play sports, or design science projects while their parents work. This is especially true for children from low-income families and with special needs who don’t have equal access to learning and community resources now that schools are shuttered. But both camp directors and parents have to weigh the positives against much larger fears about safety and affordability.

The summer camp directors that Vox spoke to know these concerns well. They have called up parents, listened in on local public health meetings, and drafted dozens of pages outlining how — and whether — their camps can safely welcome kids in the coming months.

In some cases, there might be reason for optimism. The YMCA and the American Camp Association, for instance, offered up the possibility that sleepaway camps with enough tests might be able to create a “bubble” — if all campers and counselors test negative, and they “shelter in place” together in the woods, their risk of contracting the virus might remain very low. However, this may not be plausible until deeper into the summer.

These interviews have been lightly edited for clarity.

“Kids need a place to go where they can be themselves outside of the classroom”

Angelica Holmes, director of Camp Founder Girls in San Antonio, Texas (established in 1924, revived in 2019)

2020 status: some virtual, some in person with social distancing

When the NBA officially closed [on March 11], we started thinking for the first time that maybe camp would be canceled. Around mid-March, applications started dwindling a little bit, and we did have to start talking about canceling. I just shut down. It was very overwhelming for me, the thought of not having camp, because I recognize the importance of our girls getting together.

Especially our camp, targeting a specific demographic of black girls, it’s really important for us not to cancel. Kids need a place to go where they can be themselves outside of the classroom, where they can get to meet a different group of people, and where they can stir up a passion for something that they won’t be able to experience throughout the school year.

[For the coming summer, we decided on] doing a happy medium. We’re going to have some virtual elements online and some in-person, social-distanced activities.

So, for example, we’re going to do a Yoga Day, where we’re going to have small groups of 10. Their yoga mats will be 6 feet apart. We’ll make sure to have all the cleaning supplies and we’ll have masks. We’re also planning in-person hikes and other activities our campers wouldn’t be able to do indoors.

The thing that is pushing us forward is the fact that now more than ever, if kids have been locked inside of their houses, we wanted to make sure that we could at least try to give them something to look forward to. [They need] some way to get out of the house and to have a change of scenery, even if it’s just for a couple of hours for a few days.

“Some of the adult staff members, because of age or other factors, fall into high-risk categories”

Jacob Cytryn, executive director of Camp Ramah in Conover, Wisconsin (established in 1947)

2020 status: canceled

We announced yesterday afternoon that we are canceling for the summer. We were thinking about two separate questions: Can we open camp? And if we can, should we open camp?

The question of “Can we open camp?” relies on a number of governmental and other regulatory organizations: the counties, the states, the American Camp Association. Then we had some logistical questions with our insurance carrier with whether they would provide liability and other insurances in the event of a Covid-19 situation. The question of our vendors’ abilities to provide food and cleaning supplies was also unanswered.

Then the second question is should we open camp even if we can? We have a medical committee made up of a team of doctors and nurses that work at our camp. How do they feel about us opening up? And how would I feel as executive director to take on that responsibility?

In March, I couldn’t fall asleep because I didn’t know what would happen to camp, to our staff, to me, if we couldn’t open because of Covid. There are so many unknowns about Covid six months into our experience with the disease, and we definitely haven’t figured out how to safely manage it in relatively sealed spaces with shared living. I would never want the people I take responsibility for to be guinea pigs in an experiment that will hopefully keep them safe.

There were questions like, could we provide the type of summer experience that is our brand in light of the recommendations that the government and the American Camp Association would require us to follow? Do we actually think our kids and adolescents are capable of following those guidelines even if we are fully committed to them?

[Another concern was] some of the adult staff members, because of age or other factors, fall into high-risk categories. Some younger campers and staff would fall into those categories because of health issues as well.

What we heard from our parents in March and April was a lot of hope, a hope that we can safely open. We’ve heard a small smattering of, “You should totally open,” but [there was] overwhelming support once we made the announcement that laid the groundwork for us to close. Last night I probably heard from over 100 people, and [only] a single camper parent felt we made the wrong decision.

“How do we balance the budget? In all honesty, we don’t. Camps running this summer won’t.”

Victoria Long-Leather, director of the Trailside Discovery Camp in Anchorage, Alaska (established 1982)

2020 plan: open

Starting as early as March, I started from the get-go making sure that we increase our communication with parents. I made a 12-parent advisory board. I sent a survey out to all the parents, and 90 percent wanted camp to still run, whether that was in a live format or in a different way. A lot of parents need child care, is the biggest feedback we’re getting. They need to go back to work. They have to have solutions out there for kids, and they’re also concerned about the social impact of not having school.

We developed a 52-page mitigation plan covering policies and procedures and hired a camp consultant. Our camps will be modified, but they will open.

We want to provide resources for as many families as we can, but it is challenging. Trailside is a nonprofit; the additional supplies, staffing, insurance, rental, equipment come at a cost.

[As we plan for our in-person camp,] our numbers are not where they previously were. Right now we have over 100 campers signed up. We usually have 220. We’re going into our reserves to fund the summer, because our numbers aren’t what we’re used to. And we’re actually seeing an increase in scholarship applications as well due to the financial impact that families have had.

How do we balance the budget? In all honesty, we don’t. Camps running this summer won’t. We didn’t want to financially impact our parents, so we removed any cancellation fees, our year-round staff has taken a pay cut, and we are tapping into our reserves to sustain ourselves. A $150k loss is a sacrifice needed to serve our community and provide an essential service to parents, caregivers, and campers.

We all see that things will be different now and for the foreseeable future. How we do everything from administrative tasks to buddy checks will change to “Social distance check,” “Mask check.”

“Social distancing is the opposite of what camp is supposed to be like”

Amanda Krasnoff, director of Camp Taconic in Hinsdale, Massachusetts (established in 1932)

2020 status: canceled

I’ve been a camper at Taconic since 1997 and a counselor since 2006, so collectively I’ve spent over 20 summers at Taconic. I met my husband at Taconic in 2008. He is from the UK, and we got married in London in 2014. Our son is 19 months old. This would’ve been his second summer with us at camp.

For the past two months, we explored all avenues that we may have had to take in order to open camp. After going over CDC, ACA [American Camp Association], and Massachusetts guidelines, along with the advice from many medical experts, we still felt that the likelihood of Covid-19 becoming present in our camp community was high.

Taconic actually just decided not to open camp for this summer. Hearing from our own pediatricians, who we trust implicitly, really helped with our decision. In addition, sleepaway camps were put into “phase three” [of reopening] in the state of Massachusetts, and there is still a lot of gray area surrounding that. We weren’t sure when we would have been able to open.

Most of our campers and staff think of Taconic as their second home, and it’s hard to imagine not being there this summer. I think many of our families and staff saw camp as the light at the end of the tunnel. We still wanted to be able to provide that safe, carefree, and nurturing environment that we have done for so many years, so we were really holding out every last bit of hope that we could somehow do that.

[Ultimately,] social distancing is the opposite of what camp is supposed to be like. Campers and staff are constantly high-fiving, hugging, hanging out on each other’s beds, and playing sports. It would be impossible to monitor and enforce.

Why your pet is acting like a weirdo during quarantine, explained by animal behaviorists

2020-04-25T15:10:05-04:00

When Theo Savini, a human resources assistant in Chicago, started working from home last month, he began noticing a pattern: His dog Zelda — a corgi and English bulldog mix — would lie on his lap all day as he cycled through meetings. But the instant he stood up to use the bathroom, Zelda would start whining and scratching at the door as though he’d disappeared for hours.

Since Illinois issued its stay-at-home order on March 21, Zelda also can’t seem to get enough of the outdoors. Even after a 30- to 40-minute walk, she acts as though it never happened. “As soon as we get in, she runs right back to the door as if she wants to go out again,” Savini says.

Savini is spending too much time working? Whine. Her usual meal isn’t satisfying enough? Whine. When they go out for walks, she fights against the leash. And while she used to be frightened of heights — you’d be hard-pressed to find her so much as jumping off Savini’s bed — now, Zelda leaps onto the oversize trampoline in the backyard.

Across the globe, as the quarantine period advised by public health experts to fight the spread of the coronavirus stretches from weeks into nearly two months for some, pet owners are reporting that their furry companions are leaving old habits in the dust. Some pets are growing clingy. Others are pouncing on exercise equipment, gliding across countertops, or hiding in corners and shooting their owners concerned stares.

Shannon Shoaf, a writer in Clearwater, Florida, says her male cat has started running into walls and bouncing off them — something he had never done before. All four of her cats have begun hissing and growling, and even their purring seems louder than usual.

Ramona Misilei, a student in New Zealand, tells Vox that her cat, named Catia, used to spend all of her time in the backyard. Now Catia barely goes out, instead opting to smother with affection the family members she had long chosen to ignore, even Ramona’s 6-month-old cousin. “In the four years since we adopted her, this is the first time she has behaved like this,” Misilei says.

In Italy, where people have remained under lockdown since late February or early March, pets are also reportedly struggling with their new routines. One woman told Politico that she and her husband normally travel often, so the switch to a permanent homebound life has alarmed her dog. “He hasn’t really gotten over it and still spends much of the day on the sofa giving us suspicious looks,” she said. Another pet owner said that her cat tackles her yoga mat whenever she tries to do burpees.

This isn’t the first time that pets have weathered a pandemic lockdown. During the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, pet owners put face masks on their cats and dogs, a physical representation that pets were struggling with the outbreak just as much as people were. “She has made the best of it in good spirit, as we all have,” one pet owner who masked a 5-year-old bulldog told the Seattle Star in 1918.

A century later, we aren’t exactly masking our German shepherds or Scottish folds, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t affected. “Just like people, pets can respond with a wide variability to any change,” says M. Leanne Lilly, a professor of veterinary behavioral medicine at Ohio State University. Some pets, Lilly says, are reveling in the constant attention that comes with their owners being marooned at home. Some don’t seem to have any idea that their owners’ routines have changed — or if they do, they don’t care. But still others are finding the sudden disruption to be a stressful experience.

Their owners being at home 24/7 “does increase the number of opportunities for interactions a pet may not feel comfortable with,” Lilly says. At least for dogs, the sudden spike in foot traffic outside their homes as people walk their pets more frequently is raising their alarms that an intruder is coming: “Everyone being out with their dogs can make dogs feel much less safe in their homes.”

It’s too soon to tell what these reported new behaviors mean, if anything. One possibility is that because people with nonessential jobs are at home more, they’re finally noticing strange patterns of behavior in their pets that always existed, says Zenithson Ng, a professor of animal clinical sciences at the University of Tennessee. But animal cognition research does offer some potential guidance. Although it’s unknown yet the extent to which quarantine is triggering pet anxieties, a potential culprit of these sudden changes is what veterinary scientists call “displacement behaviors.”

Displacement behaviors are the tics that pets adopt to cope with new stressors. “In dogs and cats, these may present as mounting, pacing, vocalizing, scratching, or patterned behaviors like spinning,” says Lilly. “Just like we may play with our hair, pace in a circle, or chew our fingernails.”

Think of when dogs shake their fur like they’re trying to dry themselves off, even when they’re totally dry. Overgrooming is also a common displacement behavior, and so is paw lifting or repeated “jumping at objects, grabbing them and shaking.” In birds, displacement behaviors manifest in speaking more or striking crouching postures. Young horses, meanwhile, might gum at an adult horse with their mouths when they’re anxious.

One displacement behavior — yawning — turns up in cats, dogs, reptiles, and birds under duress. Several studies have concluded that humans, too, yawn more often when they’re nervous, although the reason why is a bit opaque. One leading theory is that yawning increases blood circulation, funneling air into the body and cooling the brain ever so slightly.

Displacement behaviors, however, raise the question: Why would animals be stressed at all? Yeah, they’re living in a pandemic — but they don’t know it.

To be sure, plenty of pets are reveling in the onslaught of human attention. “I actually think that most pets benefit from work-at-home orders, because they get to enjoy the extended company of their owners,” says Ng.

That goes for pets of all stripes: While we might stereotype dogs as the primary attention seekers, research from last year concluded that even most cats — paragons of social distancing in normal times — enjoyed human interaction more than all other tested stimuli, including food and toys.

But there are many reasons a separate cross-section of pets might become anxious under this extended quarantine. Disrupted routines are one; the same way quarantine is messing with human psychology, trickling into our dreams, our pets are also reeling from the sudden disruptions to their at-home schedules. Vets are recommending that pet owners try to maintain consistent feeding times to give pets as much structure as possible. Other contributors are different walk schedules and a sudden lack of personal space at home. Even pets that adore attention might need some distance from time to time.

“It’s really important that as owners we try to stick to ‘business as usual’ when it comes to the daily routines our pets are used to, and to ensure that they still have quiet, undisturbed places they can go throughout the day,” says Lauren Finka, a cat behavior researcher at Nottingham Trent University in England. “Their normal routine will be disrupted, which can cause anxiety because their sense of predictability and control may be challenged.”

Pets might also be internalizing some of the anxious signals their owners — concerned about their health, their jobs, their loved ones, their rent payments — are broadcasting. According to a paper published in January from Fabricio Carballo, an animal cognition researcher at the University of El Salvador, dogs experience higher levels of anxiety when their owners are reeling from stress, a process called “emotional contagion.” A 2019 study in the UK found a similar pattern in cats: When you’re stressed out, cats will pick up on it.

Pets might also be internalizing some of the anxious signals that their owners — concerned about their health, their jobs, their loved ones, their rent payments — are broadcasting

What all this means is that we humans might be part of the problem. “It is possible that owners are the ones behaving strangely, and their dogs are trying to adapt,” says Carballo. They “may be bored and ask their pets to perform new tricks, pushing them to behave strangely.”

If the internet is any indication, there’s plenty of evidence to back that theory up. TikTokers are turning their dogs into makeup influencers. Other internet users are remixing famous paintings with their pets as models — maybe none more successfully than the Dog With(out) A Pearl Earring or this gerbil-size art gallery. Very little about this moment can pass for normal.

“With owners working at home, the relationship and dynamic can certainly change. Perhaps there are more walks, more cuddles, and more overall attention,” says Ng.

But Ng’s biggest concerns center on what happens when the lockdown eases. For pets with separation anxiety, the transition out of a routine where their owners are home 24/7 and into one where pets may again be alone for long stretches won’t be easy. “We might recommend making it a smoother transition by gradually increasing the time away from home,” he says. “Also being sure to make more visits home or having a pet sitter come more frequently throughout the day may help.”

Humans are not the only ones attuned to the widespread societal shifts brought by the pandemic. As we look ahead to a gradual return to some aspects of regular life, we shouldn’t forget that our choices may have psychological effects on our pets. For the most anxious pets, another sudden rewrite of their routines could just fuel those bouts of whining at the bathroom door.

Michael Waters is a writer covering the oddities of politics and economics. His work has appeared in the Atlantic, Gizmodo, BuzzFeed, and the Outline.

“Take this day by day”: Advice from 5 people around the world who’ve been isolating for more than a month

2020-04-17T13:02:27-04:00

Over the past few weeks, at least a third of the world’s population — including all of India, El Salvador, and most US states — have gone into lockdown. Their lives have been marked by ambient anxiety about paying rent and staying healthy, a newfound passion for baking, and — at times — boredom.

Few people are equipped to deal with long-term isolation like this. But while much of the world has only just begun home quarantine, residents of China, Hong Kong, South Korea, Italy, and elsewhere have faced movement restrictions and isolation for multiple months now, some since mid-January. Meanwhile, some immunocompromised Americans have also self-isolated for months to protect themselves. Take it from these folks: While adjusting to a new at-home routine can be incredibly challenging, there are ways to make it work.

Vox spoke with people from across the world who’ve been isolating for months. For those in other countries, many of their anxieties felt different from those facing most Americans, about 12 to 13 percent of which are currently unemployed. Italy, for instance, has frozen layoffs, and South Korea boasts labor laws that make it hard for companies to fire people in large numbers. In much of China, life looked close to normal as far back as late February. Those sorts of protections are not available to the same degree in countries like the U.S.

So it makes sense that the people we talked to discussed playing word-of-the-day games with their kids, streaming live stand-up comedy sessions, and launching Zoom book clubs to pass the time. But they also spoke of the constant struggle of navigating child care and giving yourself space to mess up — Covid-19 is an unprecedented event in our lives, and there’s no one right or wrong way to handle it.

Interviews have been condensed and edited for clarity.

“Take this day by day”

Miguel Xia, 25, a recent graduate currently in Hangzhou, China
Socially isolating since late January, but restrictions have eased up.

I was first quarantined just a day after the Lunar New Year when I was in Qingtian. On January 25, my family noticed an ambulance outside of our apartment building and a few people suited up in protective clothing. Turns out a lady living on the third floor had come back from Wuhan and had developed symptoms.

When the whole town was eventually put in lockdown, each house was given six passes to go out and get essentials. Each pass allowed a person to leave the neighborhood and go to the nearest supermarkets and back. I chose to let my family use the passes since they really wanted to go out to walk.

Time lost all meaning. I soon started sleeping at 6 am and waking up at 2 pm. I napped a lot, mostly to pass the time. We watched TV and kept up with the news, occasionally playing cards or mahjong. We’d play board games for a few hours, then watch TV, then cook.

The problem is, I actually live in Portugal. I just graduated with an engineering degree and went back to visit my family in Qingtian, outside Hangzhou. My plan was to go back to Portugal in February and then look for jobs in Germany or England. But obviously that didn’t pan out. Around that time, Europe announced that they’re going to cancel all inbound flights from outside of the continent. At the moment, I’ve started to look for potential jobs in China. I’m worried because I don’t have any friends here, and my Chinese language level is like a 6-year-old.

As someone who is still looking for work, my advice for quarantine is to do all the things that you needed to do but never had the time or energy. Organize your home, clean, practice a new language, call those old friends that you haven’t talked to in ages. They might also be in quarantine and be bored as hell, and it’s a good way to feel that everyone is in it together.

I’m a believer that mental health is affected by physical activity. Do something at home to work up a sweat, get the heart rate going. Get as much sun by the window as you can. Fresh air, too. And unlike me, try to keep a normal daily schedule.

I’m not as anxious as I could be about staying here because, in a way, China is a second home. But ultimately, it’s helped me most to accept my situation. I’ve pretty much decided that for the time being, I’m just going to stay here and look for an English-teaching job. I don’t know when I can go home. But focusing on the new reality helps me take this day by day.

“I think about three things I’m grateful for. It sounds really hokey, but after about a month I noticed that I sort of coaxed my brain into a more positive space.”

Nora, 25, an educator based in Beijing (currently in San Jose, California)
Has been socially isolating since late January.

Quarantine measures started in late January in Beijing, around the same time as Chinese New Year. I mostly stayed calm during the first few weeks.

I was used to being really busy, and it was nice to have some time to myself. I wrote, read, and did some painting, but I didn’t force myself to do anything. At night, I would go to my friend’s bar, which was closed to the public, and play games with him and a couple of other people. This was safe to do in Beijing because of the vast infrastructure that could be easily devoted solely to combating the spread of the virus. In order to ride public transport or enter certain public spaces, you have to wear a mask and not be running a fever. A security guard would usually take my temperature when I entered or left my residential compound or went to the store or got on the subway.

Helping others in my circle of friends take care of their mental health felt really good. When I felt worn down after about a month, my friends took care of me. We really banded together and created our own small community where we scheduled coworking days, small outings, or things we could do safely or via Zoom or WeChat calls.

However, I’m now stranded in the US indefinitely because of visa issues. China has closed its borders temporarily to foreign nationals and I’m in the Bay Area. Since people here don’t usually wear a mask and there’s less enforcement of directives, I find that I’m much more worried about actually getting the virus here than I was in Beijing, although I don’t advocate this approach for the US at all. I stay inside much more, and unless I need to go to the consulate or to go on a walk, I try not to leave my friend’s house whom I’m staying with.

Truthfully, I’m really worn down after about nine or 10 weeks of this, to the point that even my panic feels blunted. But what’s been helpful for me is to set up a sort of skeleton of a schedule, and then if I deviate from it, I don’t really punish myself for it.

I make sure to stay hydrated by drinking lots of hot water with lemon; the minor prep that goes into it keeps me grounded. My friend I’m staying with started a quarantine book club — we’re going to have a meeting on Zoom in a couple of days. I paint a lot more, and I listen to music to process my emotions.

Last year, before this virus, I started doing this thing where once a day I think about three things I’m grateful for. It sounds really hokey, but after about a month, I noticed that I sort of coaxed my brain into a more positive space. I still do it now and I think it’s been really helpful even despite my anxiety and a deeper preoccupation with illness and death. Once a day, I try to set aside some time to think about at least two people I know and think about what I appreciate and miss about them. Sometimes I tell them as much, sometimes I don’t. When and if I get to see my friends again, I will hug them very, very tightly, provided it’s safe to.

“My biggest piece of advice is to give yourself grace and just keep telling yourself this is not normal. This is a pandemic.”

Julie Cohen, a freelance writer in Sacile, Italy
Socially isolating since late February.

The weekend quarantine started, late February, there was a big Carnevale party. It’s a giant street party, shoulder to shoulder, and then the next day we essentially went on lockdown.

The first two weeks, school wasn’t open, but some restaurants were. My kids still had swim lessons, but they were trying to social distance at the pool. It was these ridiculous half-measures.

Finally, we were put on lockdown, which honestly was a relief. I think everyone was, in a way, like, “Okay, let’s get this moving. Let’s work on fixing this together.”

Now I have good days and bad days. My kids are 3 and 6, so they’re not easy ages. They take a lot of attention. It’s exhausting. My dream wasn’t to be a stay-at-home mom or a homeschooling mom. I don’t feel like I’m the best to give advice on “Try these six crafts.” Sometimes it can feel pretty overwhelming. Yesterday my 3-year-old emptied every single puzzle in the entire house into a laundry basket, like a puzzle soup. It’s just like that all day long.

Meanwhile, I had been trying really hard to keep my daughter up to speed with her Italian first-grade schoolwork, but now it looks like the kids won’t be returning to school this school year, so my drive to keep up with her reading and writing in Italian is getting less and less.

When I am looking for things to do or seeing what these other people are doing, I can start comparing myself and then I’m like, “Oh, why am I not great at managing my kids?” and, “Why are my kids not as independent?”

But I think that is just not helpful. If anything, my biggest piece of advice is to give yourself grace and just keep telling yourself this is not normal. This is a pandemic. Yes, we want to educate our kids. Yes, we want to keep them stimulated. We don’t want them to watch too much on screens. But at the same time, you have to keep yourself mentally healthy. You can’t beat yourself up.

“I’m just allowing things to change instead of responding with fear. Sitting with the change until it makes sense.”

Charis Hill, an activist and the co-creator of #HighRiskCovid19 in Sacramento, California
Has been socially isolating since early March

I have Ankylosing spondylitis, and I’m immunocompromised because of the medication. I was very nervous toward the end of February about leaving my house. By the first week of March, I finally quit all of that and started staying home except for emergencies.

Living with a chronic disease, I’m used to having a certain level of anxiety in my daily life. Chronic disease teaches you to adjust rapidly to new trauma. I’m professionally disabled, so I receive money from the Social Security Administration every month. Not enough to live on, but it is a constant.

Day to day, I’m intentionally not reading the news, not reading clinical research studies, because that’s not going to change how I live right now. Knowing more at this point isn’t going to change the fact that I need to do my daily self-care. I need to eat, I need to sleep, I need to survive.

Because of my chronic disease, I adapt in my normal life regardless of whether there’s a pandemic. So, with each new symptom in my body, I adapt to it. I think I’m approaching the pandemic in that same way, where I’m just allowing things to change instead of responding with fear. Sitting with the change until it makes sense.

I’m letting my anxiety tell me, “Okay, you need to rest now,” or, “It’s time to go outside and look at your plants.” But I’m also thinking about the future. When I’m going to have a potluck again or how I’m going to celebrate with people when they can be together again. Looking ahead in that way is helping a lot.

I’m even welcoming a stray cat into my house. It’s stressful, but it’s also good because it’s making me focus on nurturing a new thing. One way to adapt is to develop a new passion and give yourself permission to explore things that you never gave yourself permission to do before.

“We make events out of everything. Our kids are becoming real members of the household with their new chores and responsibilities.”

Jenna Pallio, an elementary art teacher in Milan, Italy
Has been socially isolating since early March

I haven’t left my apartment in weeks. My husband goes grocery shopping once a week, wearing a mask, and waits in line for one hour, sometimes two. I have two small children. Luckily we have balconies, so we just go out on the balcony. But they haven’t been out of the house in weeks, either.

I teach art, so I’m preparing video lessons and then I have one daughter who’s in kindergarten, so she has a program every day that her teacher sent her. I’m not that worried about losing my job because I am a teacher at an international school so I feel pretty secure in that. I do expect budget and pay cuts, but I think we will be okay. [Italy also has a freeze on laying off workers.]

I’m finding things I never thought would give me satisfaction now do. Like pizza night on Fridays are a huge deal. Or household chores that I hate. Because I’ve been home, I’m enjoying taking more time cooking and cleaning and organizing things, and also being okay with a huge mess at the same time.

We make events out of everything. Our kids are becoming real members of the household with their new chores and responsibilities. We tell them they are “helpers,” such as a lunch helper or a dinner helper. They started to mop our balconies and they love it.

We started doing “word of the day.” We’re making up games and jokes and routines to lighten up the day and make it fun for everyone. Last night we literally, like, drew faces on our chins and lip-synced songs together. I know it sounds crazy, but I feel so connected with my family and I do feel like we’re making memories.

A brief history of beards and pandemics

2020-03-26T12:50:50-04:00

Albert Calmette, the French bacteriologist who developed a vaccination against tuberculosis for children with Camille Guerin, with a beard in 1891. | Bettmann Archive

In the first years of the 20th century, New York City was in the throes of a tuberculosis hysteria. Although the disease had been an epidemic in the US since the mid-1800s, the rise of germ theory proved, for the first time, that tuberculosis was contagious. People panicked. As Frank M. Snowden recounted in his book Epidemics and Society, New Yorkers began demanding that public school students be tested for fever every morning. They avoided licking stamps at the post office. At the public’s urging, the New York Public Library began sending all of its returned books to the health department to be fumigated, and banks sterilized their coins.

But in the madness, no feature of American life fared worse than the beard. Health reformers began to zero in on whiskers as nesting places of disease. William H. Park, a doctor at the New York Board of Health, banned bearded men from working directly with milk supplies, announcing in 1901 that “there is real menace to the milk if the dairyman is bearded.” According to Park, the science was clear: “The beard, particularly when damp, may become an ideal germ carrier, and on an unclean man would have great facility for the transmission of disease.”

The idea that whiskers entrap germs, funneling disease toward anything they touch, has no factual basis.

Park’s central idea — that whiskers entrap germs, funneling disease toward anything they touch — has no factual basis. In terms of bacterial shedding, “there is no difference in bearded and non-bearded men,” said Carrie Kovarik, an associate professor of dermatology and medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. In her study of the phenomenon, Dr. Kovarik found that bearded people might actually carry fewer germs than their clean-shaven counterparts — perhaps because the “micro-trauma” that shaving inflicts on the skin opens up space for bacteria to congregate. But while Park’s lactic fearmongering might seem like the bygone panic of another era, the associations of beards with disease have proven strangely resilient.

In February, news outlets seized on a 2017 CDC infographic that showed how certain types of facial hair intrude on medical face masks. The CDC was not commenting on the cleanliness of beards, much less on their ability to spread Covid-19, but that didn’t stop the Daily Mail from exclaiming, “Could your facial hair put you at risk for the coronavirus?” These articles marked the resurgence of an old trope: In times of viral epidemic, beards become a scapegoat.

”Of course these anti-beard ideas are wrong, but the idea that beards are ‘dirty’ and harbor germs is a staple of 20th and 21st century thought, especially the early 20th century,” said Christopher Oldstone-Moore, a professor of history at Wright State University and a self-described beard historian.

When the New York Board of Health, in conjunction with the Milk Commission of the Medical Society of the County of New York, banned milkmen from growing beards in 1901, they were hewing to the new medical narrative on facial hair. In the 1890s, nurses had started shaving patients’ beards to bring down their risk of transmitting disease, pointing to studies suggesting that beards could accidentally entrap tuberculosis-laden spittle. In 1902, a syndicated newspaper editorial entitled “Shave The Microbe Infested Beard” made the hygienic case for abandoning facial hair, throwing out dubious claims like “doctors who wear beards report greater mortality among their patients than those who do not.” The editorial, which appeared in Rochester’s Democrat and Chronicle, the Dayton Daily News, and other newspapers, even pointed out that “most of the plague infected nations have worn beards,” only adding as an afterthought, “but that might be a coincidence.”

According to the piece, Americans were taking the anti-beard hysteria to heart. After an informal survey of Manhattan, the writer claimed that, unlike “some years ago when every third man on Broadway wore a beard,” he counted only 5 percent of men sporting beards. “It will not be long before we will be as whiskerless a race as in the days of Napoleon,” he concluded.

Anti-beard fears carried into the last major pandemic in American history: the 1918 Spanish flu. In 1916, just two years before the pandemic, doctors lambasted “the number of bacteria and noxious germs that may lurk in the Amazonian jungles of a well-whiskered face” for facilitating the spread of “measles, scarlet fever, diphtheria, tuberculosis, whooping cough.” By the time the flu pandemic struck the US in 1918, beards were declining in popularity, according to the Museum of Health Care.

That drop-off can be traced to factors beyond just hygiene. Oldstone-Moore said that while germ theory was a factor in the fall of the American beard, it was probably “not a decisive one.” In his mind, the shifting masculinity that linked a clean-shaven face to “youthful vitality” and “professionalism” was the biggest driver of the new shaving vogue. Another important variable: the rise of Gillette’s first disposable razor, which let people shave their beards outside the confines of the barbershop. But the mounting health concerns, paired with the arrival of a true flu pandemic, meant that Americans couldn’t ditch their beards quickly enough.

This imagined link between beards and disease, however, is a surprisingly modern phenomenon. “Explanations for the Black Death, for example, involved ideas of poisoned water, corrupted air, the evil alignment of the planets, or simply the wrath of God,” said Oldstone-Moore. “Beards, at least, did not get any blame.” Before people knew germs existed, facial hair was not so easy to scapegoat.

In fact, prior to Robert Koch isolating Mycobacterium tuberculosis in 1882 and proving that germs facilitated the spread of tuberculosis, beards were enjoying a high watermark in the US and Europe. After a longtime association with political radicalism, beards were a hot commodity — both as a marker of white masculinity, as Sean Trainor notes in “The Racially Fraught History of the American Beard,” as well as a signal of health.

Before germ theory, people believed that disease spread through “fumes and dust,” and beards acted as a kind of air filter to block out illness. The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal first hypothesized as such in 1843, publishing a letter that urged doctors to tell their sick patients to grow beards. “We believe it to be a fact which cannot be controverted, that with those nations where the hair and beard are worn long, the people are more hardy and robust and much less subject to diseases, particularly of a pulmonary character, than those who shave,” the journal wrote.

Even in 1881, just a year before the discovery of the tuberculosis bacteria, The St. James’s Magazine insisted that the fastest way to ward off disease was to grow a beard. Borrowing from a study of French railway workers, the magazine noted that when 53 participants shaved their beards, in the following few years, 39 fell ill.

“Mustaches and other beards are lurking places of disease germs.”

But that logic would hardly survive the decade. The new skepticism for facial hair spread so rapidly that it reshaped industries well outside of medicine. In France, restaurants became convinced that clean-shaven waiters were less likely to contaminate the food they served, and a 1907 bill to ban mustaches led to a general strike among the Parisian server class. Waiters claimed that such a law “under a democratic republic is grotesque and humiliating.” Even the education sector felt reverberations of the panic. In April 1910, the Fresno Morning Republican announced that the California health board was requiring all male teachers to shave their facial hair, believing that “mustaches and other beards are lurking places of disease germs and hence are likely to cause disease to spread.”

We tend to forget just how profoundly epidemics can impact our culture. As WIRED noted recently, Covid-19 is well positioned to reshape our relationship to handshakes, in large part because warnings from public health authorities strike at such a primal level. King Henry VI’s ban on kissing during the Black Plague, for instance, explains why even today the British are less likely than their European counterparts to kiss on the cheek as a greeting.

Given that the CDC is not calling for regular people to shave their beards, a health-conscious shaving movement probably will not emerge during Covid-19 — unless, of course, Maluma starts one. The only people abandoning their beards in large numbers right now are first responders, doctors, and other medical professionals that have to make room for respiratory masks. But the panic over the CDC chart suggests that beards haven’t fully escaped their tuberculosis-era reputation — and in times of pandemic, side-eyeing heavily whiskered friends might be an unfortunate national pastime.

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5 people on what it feels like to have Covid-19

2020-04-02T18:20:01-04:00

From left: Tina of Buckeye, Arizona; Chuck Armstrong of Brooklyn, and Laura of Philadelphia, have all tested positive for Covid-19 and have varying symptoms.

Shortness of breath, chest pains, fatigue, aches, coughs, fever — these are all common symptoms that people who have tested positive for Covid-19 are reporting.

While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has listed fever, cough, and shortness of breath as the three major indicators of Covid-19, some front-line doctors, including the American Academy of Otolaryngology, suggest that a wider set of symptoms might signal a Covid-19 infection — and that the intensity of the illness can vary wildly depending on the case. Some patients report losing their sense of taste or smell, for instance, and while some report only mild coughs, others say they struggled to breathe. While not necessarily diagnostic for Covid-19, the CDC also designates other experiences — like trouble breathing, pain or pressure in the chest, or bluish lips — as emergency warning signs that require immediate medical attention.

To understand how people who have received positive Covid-19 diagnoses are experiencing the disease, especially in light of overcrowding hospitals and a testing system that remains inaccessible, I spoke to several Covid-19 patients from across the US. Some had mild symptoms, like coughs and chills; others had to cancel scheduled phone interviews with me because they were feeling too weak to talk. Several reported multiple instances in which they couldn’t breathe. But all had the same message: This disease is serious, and we need to stay home as much as possible to keep it from spreading to more people.

These interviews have been condensed and edited for clarity.

“The desperation I felt when I couldn’t breathe was a horrendous feeling”

Luis Mancheno, 33, immigration attorney in Brooklyn

I stayed at home on a Friday morning two weeks ago because I had a lot of fatigue and body aches. Mid-morning, I started feeling chills and the body aches worsened. I took my temperature and I had a fever of about 101 degrees. For two days, I was unable to do anything. Finally the fever broke and the body aches almost ended.

Almost like clockwork, a dry cough started. Having read a lot about Covid-19, I messaged my doctor and let them know I had Covid-19 symptoms. My doctor said that there was not much I could do and that I just needed to stay home because testing was very limited and a positive test wouldn’t make a difference anyway.

By that Monday morning [March 16], I woke up not being able to breathe well. I couldn’t think or talk well because I was putting all of my energy toward breathing. There was also a really hard pressure on my chest that would not go away. That night, I went to the ER because my difficulty breathing worsened. The hospital staff immediately took me in and plugged me into an oxygen machine.

The ER doctor examined me and gave me the test for Covid-19. She also tested me for the regular flu and other viruses. They all came back negative. I was at the hospital for about four hours, after which the doctor told me I could go home. She let me know that they couldn’t keep me there because they needed the space for patients with more urgent cases. She warned me that I needed to come back to the ER, however, if I had difficulty breathing again.

On Wednesday night, right about before going to bed, I felt I could not breathe anymore. This time it was worse; I couldn’t really think clearly. I became extremely dizzy and I had difficulty walking. For the first time since my symptoms started, I became afraid for my life. My husband got me ready, packed me a bag up, and took me to the ER. It took us about 40 minutes, and luckily, by the time I got there, my breathing improved. I saw a doctor at the ER who confirmed that it was likely I had Covid-19 and who told me to go home because there was nothing else they could do for me.

On Saturday morning, as I started feeling a bit better finally, I received a call from the hospital to let me know I had tested positive for Covid-19.

It has been two weeks since my first symptoms appeared. I am finally feeling better. The breathing difficulty is almost gone, and my body is regaining strength. Covid-19 luckily only caused me temporary injuries, but it gave me a really big scare. The desperation I felt when I couldn’t breathe was a horrendous feeling I don’t wish for anybody.

“As a health care provider, I felt this weird moral failure of ‘what did I do wrong to get infected’”

Laura, 26, nurse in Philadelphia

I first noticed a headache that seemed to originate behind my eyes and through my temples [on March 16]. I had a dry cough and difficulty breathing that I only noticed when I exerted myself, like when I was running up the stairs, when I was playing with my dog, or when I tried to work out from home. I felt achy and had the chills. This only really happened in the morning the first day, and by the late afternoon I felt fine. When I woke up with the symptoms the next day, I decided to get tested.

Because I am a nurse and I was set to work in an outpatient clinic one week later, I needed to know if I should tell my boss to take me off the schedule. I ended up texting my friend who is an emergency medicine doctor. As a health care provider, I felt this weird moral failure of “how did this happen to me?” and “what did I do wrong to get infected?” My emergency medicine friend reassured me that it wasn’t my fault and that what is important now is that I take the proper precautions. She let me know of a drive-through Covid testing site at Penn Medicine that opened at 10 am that day. I quickly got in the car with my fiancé and he took me there.

I needed a referral from my primary care provider, but since I do not currently have one, I was able to get a referral from the doctor on site and make an appointment on my phone to get a place in line. The whole process took around 45 minutes.

I was told I would get a call in three to five days if I was positive and would get a text in up to 10 days if I was negative. My symptoms got progressively worse. I ended up losing my taste and smell with no noticeable congestion, along with additional gastrointestinal symptoms and overall fatigue. These symptoms would come in waves, and there were some afternoons where I would feel completely fine and others where I felt completely exhausted and immobilized. On day five, I got a call saying I tested positive.

I have been symptomatic for over a week now. Not much has changed. I am getting virtual check-ins twice a day to monitor my symptoms via Penn Medicine’s automatic texting program. I feel guilty not being able to help, as so many of my fellow nurses are on the front lines, struggling to take care of our loved ones amid a PPE [personal protective equipment] shortage, but I am happy I was able to get tested early to prevent the spread.

The most frustrating symptom has been not being able to smell or taste anything on top of having GI symptoms. It makes it really hard to eat. Other than that, I feel lucky for all the people who are doing all they can to keep people like me safe and healthy.

“They did X-rays and determined my lungs were filling up with fluid”

Mike, 57, IT worker in Seattle

I honestly thought I had the flu, a really bad flu. I was feeling very weak and achy. I felt short of breath. I had a fever that came and went. [On Monday, March 16,] I went to urgent care wearing a mask and hunkered in the corner of the waiting room. I continued to have a difficult time breathing. Tests for the flu were administered, and while they were awaiting the results, the doctor decided to do a chest X-ray due to the cough and breathing issues.

The flu tests came back negative, so they decided to administer the Covid-19 test. That test is not performed on site so it had to be sent into a lab. Also, the chest X-ray came back showing that I had pneumonia.

I received a positive result to the Covid-19 test Thursday afternoon [March 19]. That day was the worst day so far. I went to the ER, but of course the hospital was not equipped to handle patients that were positive for Covid-19. Basically, they were containing me until a bed could be found in another hospital. They did X-rays and determined my lungs were filling up with fluid. You feel like your lungs are going to explode. Fourteen hours of hell later, a bed was found.

At 2:30 am on Saturday, I was transported to Good Samaritan Hospital. I was given a big injection of antibiotics, which made me immediately vomit. I was also put on hydroxychloroquine and another antibiotic twice a day. I started feeling better later that day, but still had heavy coughing fits. By the end of the day, the fluid was going down in my lungs.

On Sunday the same week, I was able to get the doctor to let me go home to finish recovering because it didn’t look like I needed a ventilator and there were plenty of other patients that could use the room. My oxygen saturation was good.

Since then, the coughing fits have been horrible and extremely painful. I was sent home with a rescue inhaler and the meds to finish off. I have gone all day today [Thursday, March 26] without a heavy coughing fit. I have been careful in my movements — climbing stairs and standing up from a chair — to try and not aggravate my lungs.

I have heard that there are some out there that feel this is really just like the flu. But it’s not at all. I had the flu pretty bad once that put me down for 10 days. It’s nothing compared to this.

“Friends and family leave everything I need on my doorstep”

Tina, 52, stay-at-home mom in Buckeye, Arizona

I first noticed my symptoms a few days after going to Disneyland. I woke with a sore throat and a little cough. It felt like an annoying tickle. Day two, the fever set in, the cough got worse, the sore throat was worse, and it began to be uncomfortable to take a deep breath. By the time I got back home to Arizona at the end of day two, I thought for sure I had gotten a bad cold or maybe the flu.

It gradually got worse every day. I started feeling very weak, having bad headaches. My neck hurt. I was nauseous. I couldn’t take a deep breath. My chest hurt, my ribs were sore, it hurt to breathe. After a few days, I called the nurse line, explained my symptoms, and was told to go to the emergency room right away. She called ahead to tell them I was coming. When I got there, they guided me through an entirely different entrance. They all wore head masks and robes and wore double gloves. I didn’t see one other patient the entire time I was there.

I was put in a room and kept isolated. They ran tests and X-rays, and I was told I had the virus and had to be on home quarantine for at least 14 days with no contact with anyone. Since then, my cough has gotten worse; I haven’t been able to control my fever. My body feels weak and tired all the time and is just sore. I still have the sore throat, and it hurts to swallow. I haven’t left my house. Friends and family leave everything I need on my doorstep.

I haven’t gone back to the hospital just for the fact that they have no cure and they can’t do much more there except put me on a breathing machine, which I don’t need yet. I pray each day that it will get better and the breathing doesn’t get worse and the fever will finally stay down. It’s a very scary position to be in. There’s no one to ask questions to because nobody knows any answers. Just hoping tomorrow will be better.

“Just felt exhausted the whole week”

Chuck Armstrong, 38, tech worker and theater producer in Brooklyn

I woke up on Tuesday, [March 10,] feeling sick. It was very minor — usually once a year I get a cold or a very minor flu. It’s usually just a 36-hour thing. I had some aches and chills but nothing that I thought would hamper my day-to-day at all.

Then Thursday, I start to get worse. I have a noticeable fever, I’m very tired, so I locked myself down. That was when I watched Tombstone (Val Kilmer deserved the Oscar). The next day I feel worse. My fever gets up to 102 but I never had a bad cough. My fever always got worse at night and better in the morning, from 99 to a high of 102. I’d been taking Advil PM to kill the fever, and that didn’t help. I still had the fever for another couple of days.

When I woke up on Sunday the 15th, the fever was gone. The cough and the aches, chills, fatigue persisted for the next week. I talked to my doctor the following day, but his office had set up a teleconferencing situation. He said, “You should try to get tested.” I live in Brooklyn, so I went to my nearest urgent care on Tuesday, and the urgent care did not have any tests. I went to CityMD, a walk-in clinic, and they were hesitant to give me one because I’m in my 30s and don’t have prior health conditions. I told them how long it had been going, and they gave me the test. They said treat it like you have coronavirus, stay home, socially isolate as much as possible.

I no longer had a fever, but I did have the persistent cough and really bad fatigue. I was sleeping 10, 11 hours a night, no problem. No loss of appetite, no nausea or anything, just felt exhausted the whole week. I found out on Friday [the 20th] that the test came back positive.

Why New York’s free college program is still costing its students

2020-02-13T12:29:56-05:00

Welcome to Laboratories of Democracy, a series for Vox’s The Highlight, where we examine local policies and their impacts.

The policy: Fully paid tuition for students from families that earn under $125,000 per year

Where: New York

Since: 2017

The problem:

In April 2017, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo inspired soaring headlines with the stroke of a pen. By signing his Excelsior Scholarship program into law, New York became the first in the nation to cover four years of college tuition for low- and middle-income students. The program, which targets students from families that earn under $125,000 per year, was quickly hailed as the nation’s largest “free tuition” experiment. “In this economy, you need a college education if you’re going to compete,” Cuomo said of the law.

Cuomo had reasons to be enthusiastic. College access has become an urgent issue for policy experts concerned about economic equity. Look no further than the student loan crisis, in which millions of Americans have been saddled with a total of $1.6 trillion in debt; the diverging gap between the rich and poor; or the US’s middling upward mobility scores, which show American children are very likely to remain in the same income bracket as their parents. With 35 percent of new jobs demanding a college degree at minimum, access to higher education has become a proxy for economic inequality writ large.

The Excelsior Scholarship applies to the state’s two public college systems, where in-state tuition alone costs around $7,000 per year at these schools, a figure that usually doubles when factoring in student fees, housing, and other expenses. Excelsior doesn’t pay tuition costs directly — rather, it covers any tuition costs left over after other financial aid programs. In exchange for funding, Excelsior students commit to enrolling full-time in college and working in New York after graduation for a certain number of years. Although Excelsior is designed to be more widely available than a traditional academic scholarship, Excelsior students are expected to maintain at least a 2.0 GPA in order to receive funding.

Other states are following. New Mexico is weighing a program that would fund two- and four-year public college for full-time students regardless of their economic background. California has its own bill that would fund full-time students through the Cal State university system.

But three years later, as Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are touting student loan forgiveness and universal college access on the presidential campaign trail, New York’s Excelsior experiment has underwhelmed on some expectations, leading critics to dismiss its claims of “free college” as symbolic. Its questionable success underscores that when it comes to college costs for low- and middle-income students, tuition is only one small part of the problem.

How it works:

When Navjot Kaur, a first-generation college student from Queens, enrolled at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, she joined an experimental program called CUNY ASAP. In addition to meeting the cost of tuition, CUNY ASAP offered her a free MetroCard to cover transport, paid for the cost of her textbooks, assigned her a personal academic advisor, and placed her in community meetings with other low-income CUNY students.

But after Kaur finished her two years there, she transferred to Baruch College, a CUNY senior college where she decided to major in political science. Baruch didn’t offer CUNY ASAP, so Kaur turned to Excelsior to supplement the state and federal aid she received.

Kaur first heard about Excelsior when it was announced in 2017, and applied the year after. “I told my sister, this sounds like a really good program, maybe I should give it a try,” she said. She fit the profile: She was a full-time student, and her parents earned well below the $110,000 income threshold for that year. But when she visited the financial aid office at Baruch for help, she was told the program wouldn’t consider her. She says she never received an explanation why. (When asked for comment, Baruch responded with a link to the Excelsior Scholarship requirements page.)

Kaur’s confusing experience might not be typical — she thinks it was a side effect of a rushed rollout — but Excelsior has rejected many other students. In 2018, only 32 percent of the 63,599 students who applied for Excelsior funding were granted it, according to a report compiled by the Center for an Urban Future. Part of that is a function of the budget — the state allocated only $71 million for the program in 2017, whereas this year it set aside $119 million — but the estimated 30,000 current Excelsior students is still well below the “hundreds of thousands” the state initially referenced. In almost every case, applicants were rejected not because they lacked financial need but because they didn’t meet the program’s per-year credit requirements.

“Excelsior isn’t something that fits a part-time student’s schedule,” Kaur said. “We have a lot of nontraditional students that come through the university. They’re working moms, they’re from nontraditional families.”

The exclusion of part-time students — who make up 33 percent of all CUNY undergraduate students and who are more likely to be first-generation college students — is one problem. But a compounding variable is that Excelsior, unlike CUNY ASAP, only covers tuition costs. Students need to pay for transportation, housing, advising, and textbooks on their own —costs that require a job to pay off.

“Tuition is expensive but it’s actually not the main expense in students’ lives if they are going full-time,” said Marcella Bombardieri, who wrote a 2017 report on part-time college students for the Center for American Progress think tank. “Those extra costs absolutely are what is holding students back from enrolling full time.”

To some extent, these twin problems have become self-fulfilling: Low-income students who don’t have their living expenses covered need to work in order to pay them off, but Excelsior’s credit requirements make balancing work and school especially difficult.

In this regard, however, Excelsior isn’t unique. Most states with two-year College Promise programs also require students to enroll full time, and only a few — namely the Kalamazoo Promise program in Michigan — allow their financial aid to be used on costs outside of tuition. Bombardieri notes that treating full-time enrollment as a blanket goal simplifies the needs of part-time college students — and risks leaving them out of financial aid programs altogether. “There are some part-time students who would maybe go full time if they realized they could get more financial aid,” Bombardieri said. “But there are tons of part time students who are going to school part time for other reasons. Maybe they get health insurance through their job, maybe they’re taking care of their families.”

To his credit, Cuomo has responded to some of these criticisms. He loosened the rules surrounding Excelsior’s 30-credit-per-year rule. Further, Cuomo announced his intention to relax Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) requirements for part-time students, a move that would help to cover at least one student living expense.

This January, Cuomo also proposed expanding the family income threshold for Excelsior from $125,000 to $150,000 — an important benefit for middle and upper-middle-class students, to be sure, but one that continues to sideline the needs of students from the lowest income brackets. That is a perennial problem of statewide attempts to meet tuition needs. Because few of these programs account for other living costs, much less academic advising, the poorest students are often overlooked. (The Excelsior program did not respond to a request for comment.)

For this reason, students like Kaur are leery of terms like “free college” to describe efforts like Excelsior. “It looks like the governor is on board with free college, but he’s actually putting up roadblocks to it,” Kaur said. “Higher education doesn’t need to be a political issue. It’s just a human rights issue.”

Still, in a 2019 study, the Education Trust concluded that New York, through its collage of financial-assistance programs, is one of the three most affordable states for low-income students enrolling in public colleges. That does not negate the fact that low-income New Yorkers continue to struggle to pay for school. But it does hint at a larger complication of “free” college programs like Excelsior: States don’t necessarily have the funds to make college fully accessible on their own.

“States are trying to solve a really big problem by themselves and there should be more federal support,” Bombardieri said. One reason these strict rules about full-time enrollment have developed is to keep tuition-assistance programs within budget. The fastest way to open up a program like Excelsior and cover the students who need aid the most may be to build a partnership between the federal government and individual states. As Bombardieri put it, “It’s very easy for people to fight about the details when there’s a much bigger conversation the country needs to have about supporting higher education.”

Michael Waters is a freelance journalist covering the oddities of politics and economics. His work has appeared in the Atlantic, Gizmodo, BuzzFeed, and the Outline.

Michael Waters | Vox

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Why New York’s free college program is still costing its students