Magnificent News: Coronavirus Updates: Anthony Fauci's emails

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Important developments in the pandemic.

By Ben Guarino
with Lindsey Bever

The Post's coronavirus coverage linked in this newsletter is free to access from this email.

The latest

The Washington Post obtained almost 900 pages of Anthony S. Fauci's emails through a Freedom of Information Act request. Fauci, the nation's top infectious-disease expert, frequently corresponded late into the night during March and April 2020. His inbox was filled by requests from journalists, government officials and advisers to Microsoft, the NFL and other organizations. On April 8, he wrote to a fellow scientist: "All is well despite some crazy people in this world." And, when forwarding an article about the Internet swooning over Fauci, the doctor wrote: "Our society is really totally nuts."

The World Health Organization released a new system to name virus variants on Monday, with the goal of avoiding location-based stigma. The group has labeled the variants using Greek letters. The B.1.1.7 variant, first discovered in the U.K., is "Alpha" under that system; the P.1 variant that emerged in Brazil is "Gamma." This does not replace the more technical letter-dot-number combinations, which scientists use to denote viral lineages.

In Hyattsville, Md., patrons at The Shop Spa barbershop can get a shave, a cut and a shot of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. It's the first barbershop in the state that's also a vaccine clinic, though supporters hope this model is replicated nationwide. As Stephen B. Thomas, a health policy professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Health, told The Post, barbers have "street credibility and can educate folks enough so that they want the vaccine." One barber estimated he was able to change people's minds on the vaccine about 60 percent of the time.

President Biden has ordered a review of the intelligence surrounding the Wuhan Institute of Virology to examine the possibility of the lab-leak hypothesis. The White House was told there's still lots of information to be assessed, according to one senior administration official. On Sunday, pediatrician and influential researcher Peter Hotez told NBC News that, "There's going to be covid-26 and covid-32 unless we fully understand the origins of covid-19."

Relaxed restrictions for those who are vaccinated, plus pent-up demand, meant conditions were ripe for lots of travel on Memorial Day weekend. Friday set a pandemic-era record for people passing through airport checkpoints – almost 2 million – as Americans took to the skies. And AAA estimated that 37 million people would travel 50 miles or more for Memorial Day, an increase of 60 percent over last year's holiday.

Other important news

Unvaccinated workers at Houston Methodist Hospital have filed a lawsuit claiming the hospital's mandatory vaccine policy violates state and federal law. Their suit misrepresents how well-tested the vaccines are, and the hospital president said the policy was legal.

Fans are once again filling sports arenas and stadiums. Cheers and chants have returned – but so has rowdy, even disturbing, behavior.

State health officials gave out the Johnson & Johnson vaccine at a popular Ocean City bar this weekend, kicking off a tour of pop-up vaccine clinics in Maryland.

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Your questions, answered

"I read with concern about healthcare workers who do not intend to get the coronavirus vaccine. As a patient, I want to know if a practitioner I intend to visit has been vaccinated. Does asking the practice violate the HIPAA rights of healthcare practitioners? Some personnel are self-employed; many are employees." —Patricia in Pennsylvania

Not at all.

HIPAA, or the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, is designed to protect a person's private health information from being shared without his or her consent. That means the medical practice you go to may not be permitted to tell you whether the individual practitioners have been vaccinated against the coronavirus, at least not without their permission. But the practice could tell you whether, in general, all (or none) of its practitioners are inoculated.

In any case, the law would certainly not prevent you from posing that question.

Nor would it keep you from talking to your practitioners directly. "And I would recommend that you do," said Art Caplan, a professor of bioethics and head of the division of medical ethics at New York University School of Medicine. Removing the third party — in this case, the practice — would also eliminate any potential HIPAA problems you might run up against.

As Kayte Spector-Bagdady, an associate director at the Center for Bioethics and Social Sciences in Medicine at the University of Michigan, recently told The Washington Post, HIPAA is "not really a prohibition on asking; it's a prohibition against sharing" information.

It's also interesting to note that depending on the job, employers can legally require employees to get the shots, assuming they can establish it is a legitimate job requirement and assuming they make reasonable accommodations for workers who cannot take the vaccine because of disabilities or religious reasons. Some hospital systems and group practices are starting to do it. So it's possible the practice you go to may require vaccination.

As to whether it's appropriate to ask people about their vaccination status, experts say it depends on the circumstances. But when it's relevant to your personal safety — such as in a health-care setting where doctors and nurses are hands-on and in close quarters — it seems to be a legitimate question and it's fairly likely you won't be the first or last patient to ask it.

Keep in mind: The practitioners have a right to decline to answer your question. "But I'd certainly be suspicious if they wouldn't tell me whether or not they're vaccinated," Caplan said.