Coronavirus claimed its first victims in China, and the illness has now appeared in at least forty-eight countries, with cases soaring in Europe and the Middle East. On Wednesday, in response to criticism about his Administration’s response, President Trump held a press conference addressing the epidemic. His performance—as Brian Stauffer’s cover for this week’s magazine suggests—was not entirely persuasive. “We’re doing really well,” Trump said. That day, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that it had identified, in California, the first U.S. case that had not been contracted from travel abroad, and stocks continued to tumble worldwide. For more coverage, read:

John Cassidy on coronavirus and Trump:

From a political perspective, the virus presents two threats to the President. If COVID-19 spreads inside the United States, the White House could be held responsible for botching its response to the virus’s outbreak. Democrats are already sharpening their knives. “The Trump Administration has been asleep at the wheel,” Chuck Schumer, the Senate Minority Leader, said on Monday, on the Senate floor. “President Trump, good morning! There’s a pandemic of coronavirus. Where are you?”

The other threat to Trump is an economic one. If the stumble in the stock market is a one-off event, it won’t have much impact politically. But, if Wall Street goes into an extended slide, or if the broader economy gets hit badly as the virus spreads, it could change the political environment going into the election.

Megan K. Stack on living with coronavirus anxiety in Singapore:

As of this writing, ninety-two people on the island are known to have contracted the COVID-19 virus. First, it was travellers who’d been to the Chinese city of Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, but gradually the disease seeped into the community and began to spread. So far, no one in Singapore has died of the disease.

But fear, it turns out, is also a virus. A low-level fright of this little-understood malady has taken hold in the international school where my children spend their days, and in the sprawling condominium complex where we live, along with a mix of Singaporean families and foreigners. This fear has the uncanny power to force out the uncomfortable questions that usually lurk unspoken in the communities it invades. You start out talking about the virus and end up picking apart parenting styles or foreign relations.

And Michael Specter on a possible vaccine: