Don't feel the knead? Tabatha Southey sets you straight.

Welcome to the Maclean's daily newsletter. As the coronavirus disrupts life in Canada, and Canadians get used to the notion of "social distancing" and "flattening the curve," Maclean's has expanded this newsletter to include everything you need to know about the global pandemic. You'll still find our best stories of the day at the bottom of the newsletter, but we'll also catch you up on news and notes from around the world.

QUOTE OF THE DAY:“Don’t circle May 14 on your calendar a ‘normal day,’ ”— Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi, on the news that some businesses in the province may reopen as early as two weeks from now, as Alberta eases its COVID-19 rules.

The number of Canadians who have been infected with COVID-19 is now more than 53,600, while 3,200 people have died of the virus. Worldwide, 3.3 million people have been infected with the virus while 235,000 people have died. 

The first major long-term care outbreak in Ontario was at the Pinecrest Nursing Home in Bobcaygeon. Within weeks, 29 residents were dead. In a major investigation, the Globe and Mail reconstructs those weeks of horror and tragedy. 

As more and more provinces unveil their reopening plans, residents of Lloydminster have a problem: which plan to follow? The town, which straddles the Saskatchewan-Alberta border, is now facing contradictory orders and timetables from the two provinces’ reopening plans. “It’s challenging, certainly, for myself and city council and administration, trying to disseminate the information,” Mayor Gerald Aalbers told the Toronto Star.

To forestall the arrival of COVID-19 in war-torn northern Syria with its vulnerable population of around four million refugees, the rebels that control the area have set up a quarantine centre for all Syrians coming home from Turkey, which has a growing viral outbreak, Reuters reports. 

Unable to strut on the world stage, Russian President Vladimir Putin is reduced to a series of video meetings with officials. Meanwhile, the virus is spreading in that country at an alarming rate and, as Andrew Higgins writes in the New York Times, “the pandemic has only highlighted what has always been Mr. Putin’s biggest vulnerability: a pronounced lack of interest or success in tackling intractable domestic problems like dilapidated hospitals, pockets of entrenched poverty and years of falling real incomes.”

Scientific American has an article arguing why it’s impossible to compare deaths from COVID-19 to those of the seasonal flu. As Dr. Jeremy Faust, an instructor at Harvard Medical School, explains, comparisons are based on a flawed idea of how the annual flu statistics are created. For one, they “are estimates that the CDC produces by multiplying the number of flu death counts reported by various coefficients produced through complicated algorithms.” Furthermore, there is “little data to support the CDC’s assumption that the number of people who die of flu each year is on average six times greater than the number of flu deaths that are actually confirmed.”

Danna Staff is an author in San Jose, California, who writes about science and especially about squid. On April 30, she encouraged neighbours walking by her house to write their questions about the cephalopods on the pavement in chalk, so she could answer them. The results are both joyful and informative. 

“This is the best weather forecast in the history of television news,” is how journalist Andrew Feinberg described this video. He’s right. For the record, Paul Dellegatto is the chief meteorologist for the Fox station in Tampa, Florida, and his very good dog is Brody. And yes, there are even more videos of Brody greeting cameraman Craig on Dellegatto’s  Twitter feed.

—Patricia Treble

As of the latest update, this is the number of confirmed cases in Canada. We're updating this chart every day.