THE BIG STORY

The masks are coming

Health officials across the US are beginning to advise everyone to wear some kind of face covering when they go outside. It’s a change in message from the early days of the outbreak, when they advised that only the sick should be wearing them — in part because of concerns that panicked buying of masks would contribute to a shortage at the exact moment hospitals and frontline workers needed them the most.

But one big thing has changed since then: it’s now clear that a lot of people can be infected with the coronavirus, and spreading it to others, without experiencing any symptoms. That makes “only wear one if you’re sick” a much more complicated message, and increasingly, it’s just being shortened to “wear one” — although in most cases, regular healthy people are being advised to wear bandanas or homemade cloth masks, which are still proven to help limit the spread of the virus.

At the same time, the government is moving to ease the shortage of the hospital-grade N95 masks that are known to be much more effective. Earlier this week, BuzzFeed News reported that the FDA was not allowing the import of KN95 masks, a variant of the N95 that is widely considered to work just as well. Last night, we broke the news that the FDA will now allow the Chinese-made masks to be brought into the US.

Ahmad Gharabli / Getty Images

STAYING ON TOP OF THIS

Some things will not go back to normal

The lockdowns will end one day, the social distancing will end, and yes, you will indeed one day in the not too distant future be going back to restaurants and bars and watching live sports. But that doesn’t mean we’ll be returning to the world as we remember it, writes Ryan Brodercick.

What might change in the long run? China and other countries may have an entirely new argument to make for the benefits of authoritarian government, and ideas about privacy and personal rights are shifting everywhere. The switch to a fully digital world, from classrooms to shopping and entertainment, happened overnight, and as the physical world reopens, some of our new habits will stick.

“What’s happening to our entertainment is only reflecting what is happening to the way society works now,” Broderick writes. “We have moved online, and it is hard to imagine going back.”

Na Kim for BuzzFeed News

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SNAPSHOTS

Google is using its vast stockpile of location data from billions of cellphones across the world to show how the coronavirus lockdowns are working. “We have heard from public health officials that this same type of aggregated, anonymized data could be helpful as they make critical decisions to combat COVID-19,” the company said.

Amazon said all its warehouse workers would get paid sick leave for coronavirus cases. But workers being sent home due to fevers are finding out that it doesn’t really work that way, especially when testing isn’t available.

The FDA is easing its long-running ban on accepting blood donations from sexually active gay and bisexual men. New rules will allow blood donations from anyone who has not had sex with another man in the previous three months, down from the previous 12-month limit.

The coronavirus outbreak could be a tipping point for how we view influencers. They’re small businesses, and are beginning to be seen that way by the government and their followers.

Protesters at an Amazon warehouse in New York this week. (Jeenah Moon / Reuters)

ADDICTED TO APOCALYPSE

Why is Netflix recommending so many doom movies?

You finish your long day at the office, which is your house, staring at a computer screen that streams a constant feed of terrible news about the state of the world. You clock off work, head home (move from dining table to couch) and kick back for some rest and relaxation (six hours of streaming TV and movies).

What do you watch? For Krystie Lee Yandoli, it’s a bunch of movies about the end of the world. She began with Contagion (fantastic) and then Outbreak (a classic!) before getting into the more niche stuff: How It All Ends, a 2018 straight-to-Netflix disaster film, and Carriers, a 2009 post-apocalyptic horror film that you almost certainly haven’t seen unless you’re freebasing disaster movies like she has been.

“I was concerned enough with my behavior that I checked in with a professional to see just how bad an idea my obsessive viewing actually was,” Yandoli writes. “I wanted to know: Is it copacetic to watch a string of apocalypse movies in the midst of what seems pretty close to an actual apocalypse? Or was I doing this at the serious cost of my own emotional well-being?

“People are naturally going to turn to Netflix because of escapism,” the professional told her. “But everything is best in moderation. I realize what a cliché that sounds like, but I wouldn’t watch 45 romantic comedies and I wouldn’t watch 45 doomsday movies back to back.”

Carriers, a disaster movie you probably haven't seen. (Paramount Vantage)

KNIVES OUT

Nobody could have seen this coming

Last year you probably saw a few viral videos of Norwegian performance artist Jan Hakon Erichsen and his elaborate home-made stunts involving knives. So many knives.

Jan Hakon Erichsen on Twitter

I regret to inform you that Erichsen injured himself on Wednesday. And you’ll be shocked to learn it involved knives (he’s fine, don’t worry).

"I was making a video for this series of videos where I balance on different furniture in different kinds of ways," he told BuzzFeed News. "So I set up some furniture I was going to balance on and then that's when I fell…”

Courtesy of Jan Hakon Erichsen

When most of us take a fall, we might be worried about banging our heads on a coffee table. But none of us are Jan Hakon Erichsen. He fell onto what he describes as his “knife sculpture,” which is exactly what you don’t want to fall into.

Courtesy of Jan Hakon Erichsen

"It just looks really menacing and I thought it looked cool standing in my window sill,” he said. “I didn't think about how when I was balancing I could fall into it, which was really, really stupid."

Look on the bright side: It’s extremely unlikely that you’ll fall into a knife sculpture this weekend,
Tom