(CNN)An anesthesiologist in Arizona turned to eBay for N95 masks. A nurse in Ohio said she and her colleagues are forbidden from wearing any masks for fear that it would spread anxiety. A nursing home employee in Arkansas who developed a fever said she couldn't get tested.

The scarcity of equipment is at a critical stage, where medical workers are being asked do something that weeks ago would have brought reprimand or even termination: reuse supplies.

Although many hospitals and clinics are scrambling to refill dwindling supplies, the stories from health workers reflect a shaken American health care system that was caught flat-footed by the fast-spreading global pandemic.

Millions of people across the world have lost their jobs, and trillions of dollars have been wiped off the value of stock markets.

Bezos, 56, benefited this week from the best three-day stock market rally since 1933 helping Amazon’s share price to recover almost all of its losses this month to trade at about $1,920, though that was slightly down on their peak of $2,170 in February. Bezos owns about 12% of Amazon’s shares.

There is no suggestion that Bezos acted improperly by selling the shares or that he was acting on non-public information about the impact of the pandemic. But his timing was near-perfect. The share sales, which represented about 3% of his total holding, were much greater than Bezos had made in previous months. The stock sold was as much as he had sold in the previous 12 months, according to analysis by the Wall Street Journal.

Last week, my friends and I were squeezed into a booth at Heyn’s, an ice cream shop in Iowa City. While the coronavirus was on everyone’s mind – we were liberally spritzing from my home-made bottle of hand sanitizer - hardcore social distancing had not descended upon the town yet.

“In!” we said, thoroughly sick of our own company. After a lot of back and forth about platforms, I suggested we download Houseparty.

Ready to get literally anything lit, I persuaded everyone to download the app and meet up in an hour. I brought out the wine, sent my new username out and waited. Slowly people started popping up on my phone screen. We broke into smiles and all started speaking at once. The audio immediately became a garbled mess.

It is conventional wisdom that populists are against “elites” – and experts in particular. But rightwing populists aren’t opposed to all elites – they only denounce professionals who claim authority on the basis of special knowledge. Their perverse version of rightwing anti-authoritarianism implies that there is nothing wrong with the wealthy; in fact, the latter can be superior sources of wisdom. Trump putting the advice of “business leaders” above that of infectious disease experts is likely to yield deadly results. But it’s important to understand that the systematic denigration of professionalism started not with the populists – Reagan, Thatcher and other cheerleaders for neoliberalism led the way.

But this picture is itself simplistic. Populists are not by definition liars. They are only committed to one particular empirical falsehood: the notion that they, and only they, represent what populists often call “the real people” – with the implication that other politicians are not only corrupt and “crooked”, but traitors to the people, or, as Trump has often put it, “Un-American”.

These supposed movers and shakers contrast starkly with professionals who claim authority on the basis of education and special licensing – think lawyers, doctors and professors. Such figures can automatically be maligned by rightwing culture warriors as “condescending” – after all, they tell other people what to do, because they claim to know better. According to Nigel Farage, for instance, the World Health Organization is just another club of “clever people” who want to “bully us”.

We are all still in this together. But some of us are now falling so much deeper into it than others.

No wonder some were furious, then, when it emerged that Prince Charles had been tested despite suffering from what’s said to be only a mild case of coronavirus. Buckingham Palace insists it was done for sound clinical reasons, and even if it wasn’t, one princely test makes no practical difference to the ability of hundreds of thousands of key workers to get one.

Houses that normally sit shuttered and forlorn until Easter started opening up again the minute the schools shut – and so many people have been trying to book hideaway cottages on remote Scottish islands that ferry crossings are being restricted. Tiny communities with no cases of their own are understandably afraid of what wealthy urban refugees may bring with them, and fear curdles all too easily into resentment.

New York City has recorded 85 deaths from coronavirus in 24 hours, with the number of patients on ventilators doubling, while hotspots emerge in New Orleans, Chicago, Philadelphia and Detroit and early-hit states such as California and Washington continue to battle the virus.

“We are holding on,” said Mitch Katz, the head of the NYC Health and Hospitals system. “It is very rough, it is very challenging, but all of the hospitals are working above their capacity to meet the need.”

De Blasio described Donald Trump’s aspiration that the US could “get back to work” by Easter Sunday, 12 April, as “false hope” and said the city was prepared to be on a stay-at-home footing for its 8 million residents at least through May.

A record 3.3 million people filed claims for unemployment in the US last week as the Covid-19 pandemic shut down large parts of America’s economy and the full scale of the impact of the crisis began to emerge.

The release offers the first official glimpse of the severe economic downturn that the US faces as companies shutter businesses and states across the country move to prevent people from gathering in crowds in an attempt to contain the virus.

Nearly every state cited the impact of Covid-19, the labor department said. Service industries broadly, particularly accommodation and food services, were hard hit although states also cited healthcare and social assistance, arts, entertainment and recreation, transportation and warehousing, and manufacturing industries.

At the start of this week, as millions were following US government advice to combat the coronavirus pandemic by physical distancing and staying indoors, Donald Trump abruptly declared that people needed to soon return to work.

The policy of returning to normal, nearly all epidemiologists warn, carries a threat of catastrophe: of allowing the virus to spread just as the measures proven to curb it are starting to work.

On Sunday, the Fox News host Steve Hilton railed against the idea of long-term social distancing. Hilton claimed “working Americans” will be “crushed” by an indefinite work shutdown. Hilton mused that there could be a situation where “the cure is worse than the disease”.

The government has put the brakes on the housing market until the coronavirus restrictions are over, telling people to delay their home moves if possible and not to allow new viewings.

“Where the property is currently occupied, we encourage all parties to do all they can to amicably agree alternative dates to move, for a time when it is likely that stay-at-home measures against coronavirus will no longer be in place,” the guidance said.

Renters have also been advised not to move by the government, which also banned any evictions for the next three months from Friday in England and Wales.

Mike Ashley has issued a public apology after his spat with the government about trying to keep his Sports Direct chain open when non-essential businesses were ordered to close.

“I am deeply apologetic about the misunderstandings of the last few days,” Ashley said in an open letter. “Given what has taken place over the last few days, I thought it was necessary to address and apologise for much of what has been reported across various media outlets regarding my personal actions and those of the Frasers Group business.”

Ashley said on Friday: “Our intentions were only to seek clarity from the government as to whether we should keep some of our stores open. We would never have acted against their advice. In hindsight, our emails to the government were ill-judged and poorly timed, when they clearly had much greater pressures than ours to deal with. On top of this our communications to our employees and the public on this was poor.”

The US has agreed on a $2tn stimulus package, the largest economic stimulus in US history, in response to the economic impacts of Covid-19. While corporations will be the biggest recipients of the bailout, some of that money will be paid directly to Americans hit by the pandemic.

Congress will spend about $250bn for checks up to $1,200 per person that will go directly to taxpayers.

To be eligible for the full amount, a person’s most recently filed tax return must show that they made $75,000 or under. For couples, who can receive a maximum of $2,400, the cutoff is $150,000.

Struggling to breathe, a heavily pregnant British woman has pleaded with people to stop going out as she battles coronavirus in hospital.

Mannering, a beauty therapist from Herne Bay, Kent, is six and half months pregnant and found out after four days in hospital that she had tested positive for Covid-19.

In a video from her hospital bed she begged people to stay at home. “I’m telling you now, if you are going to meet your friend for a stupid beer or a sea walk because the weather is nice, you are going to take this home and you are going to kill someone, one of your family members.

The number of confirmed cases of Covid-19 continues to grow in the US. Mike Pence, the vice-president, is overseeing the US response to the coronavirus.

Confirmed cases 85,919 (Today: +2,083) Deaths 1,297 (Today: +88)

State/territory Confirmed cases Deaths New York 39,140 461 New Jersey 6,876 81 California 4,040 82 Washington 3,207 150 Michigan 2,844 61 Illinois 2,542 26 Florida 2,484 29 Massachusetts 2,417 25 Louisiana 2,304 83 Pennsylvania 1,813 18 Texas 1,658 24 Georgia 1,642 56 Colorado 1,430 19 Tennessee 1,097 3 Connecticut 1,012 21 Ohio 870 15 North Carolina 755 3 Wisconsin 728 10 Indiana 657 17 Maryland 583 4 Nevada 536 10 Alabama 531 1 Missouri 520 9 Arizona 508 8 Mississippi 485 6 Virginia 468 10 South Carolina 456 9 Utah 396 1 Arkansas 349 2 Minnesota 344 2 Oregon 317 11 District of Columbia 267 3 Oklahoma 248 7 Kentucky 247 5 Idaho 191 3 Iowa 179 1 Kansas 172 3 Rhode Island 165 0 Vermont 158 9 Maine 155 0 New Hampshire 154 1 Delaware 143 1 New Mexico 136 1 Hawaii 106 0 Montana 90 1 Nebraska 82 0 West Virginia 76 0 Puerto Rico 64 2 North Dakota 57 0 Alaska 56 1 Wyoming 56 0 South Dakota 46 1 Guam 45 1 Virgin Islands 17 0

Even at their most effective – and draconian – containment strategies have only slowed the spread of the respiratory disease Covid-19. With the World Health Organization finally declaring a pandemic, all eyes have turned to the prospect of a vaccine, because only a vaccine can prevent people from getting sick.

This unprecedented speed is thanks in large part to early Chinese efforts to sequence the genetic material of Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. China shared that sequence in early January, allowing research groups around the world to grow the live virus and study how it invades human cells and makes people sick.

Coronaviruses have caused two other recent epidemics – severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) in China in 2002-04, and Middle East respiratory syndrome (Mers), which started in Saudi Arabia in 2012. In both cases, work began on vaccines that were later shelved when the outbreaks were contained. One company, Maryland-based Novavax, has now repurposed those vaccines for Sars-CoV-2, and says it has several candidates ready to enter human trials this spring. Moderna, meanwhile, built on earlier work on the Mers virus conducted at the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland.

Millions of people in the UK will need food aid in the coming days, food charities are warning, as the coronavirus outbreak threatens to quickly spiral into a crisis of hunger unless the government acts immediately to reinvent the way we feed ourselves.

Supermarket distribution systems, based on “just in time” supply chains, are struggling to cope with a sudden surge in demand since Covid-19 took hold. The most pressing concern is finding a way to feed the country’s most vulnerable and isolated people.

Anna Taylor, the Food Foundation’s director, said that between 4 million and 7 million people in lower risk categories are also affected by severe food insecurity or loneliness, so having to self-isolate could tip them into crisis.

Wearing a face mask is certainly not an iron-clad guarantee that you won’t get sick – viruses can also transmit through the eyes and tiny viral particles, known as aerosols, can penetrate masks. However, masks are effective at capturing droplets, which is a main transmission route of coronavirus, and some studies have estimated a roughly fivefold protection versus no barrier alone (although others have found lower levels of effectiveness).

All viruses accumulate mutations over time and the virus that causes Covid-19 is no different. How widespread different strains of a virus become depends on natural selection – the versions that can propagate quickest and replicate effectively in the body will be the most “successful”. This doesn’t necessarily mean most dangerous for people though, as viruses that kill people rapidly or make them so sick that they are incapacitated may be less likely to be transmitted.

The team behind this research suggested that this may indicate the L strain is more “aggressive”, either transmitting more easily or replicating faster inside the body. However, this theory is speculative at this stage – there haven’t yet been direct comparisons to see whether people who catch one version of the virus are more likely to pass it on or suffer more severe symptoms.

Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro has tried to reassure his citizens over the threat of coronavirus by claiming Brazilians can bathe in excrement “and nothing happens”.

Without offering any scientific evidence, Bolsonaro continued: “I think it’s even possible lots of people have already been infected in Brazil, a few weeks or months ago, and have already got the antibodies that help it not to proliferate”.

On Thursday Brazil’s health ministry said that its coronavirus death toll had risen to 77, up from 46 on Tuesday. So far 2,915 cases have been confirmed.

Three hundred soldiers recalled to a barracks in Aldershot this week have complained they are being locked down without sufficient hygiene essentials amid concerns that their cramped conditions could lead to a coronavirus outbreak.

Although thousands of troops have been placed on standby to help tackle the coronavirus crisis, frustrated soldiers in Aldershot said it was not clear why they had been recalled to “essentially an open prison”.

“We even have a dozen or so people within camp who are self-isolating through showing symptoms, and no effort is being made for them to receive medical treatment at all. They’re just being told to stay in their rooms and if they have to smoke they’re to smoke out of their window.”

On bad days, when his employer made some excuse for not paying him his paltry daily wage, Ram Yadav’s main meal used to be dry chapatis, with salt and raw onion for flavour. Sometimes he just went hungry. For a ragpicker like him, one of the thousands of Indians who make a living bringing in plastic waste for recycling, eating in a cafe or restaurant was the stuff of fairytales.

Opened in October by the Ambikapur municipal corporation, the cafe is designed both to encourage awareness about the need to collect and remove plastic waste and to give a meal to anyone – ragpicker, student or civic-minded individual – who does so. The tagline? “More the waste, better the taste.”

Most Indian cities are struggling with huge amounts of unsegregated waste. There are few effective waste-management systems, and according to the country’s environment ministry the country generates approximately 25,000 tonnes of plastic waste every day – only about 14,000 tonnes of which are collected.

Working and socialising from home has brought new risks to everyday life, as webcam meetings and chatroom cocktail hours contend with privacy invasions, phishing attacks and “zoombombings” – uninvited guests abusing the popular video service to broadcast shocking imagery to all.

But the default settings of the service are configured in the expectation of trust between participants, meaning trolls can wreak havoc. Some zoombombers have used the screensharing feature to broadcast pornography and violent imagery. Others have revelled in the opportunity for exhibitionism, while security experts have said the file transfer feature that is switched on by default could be used to spread malware.

Other zoombombing instances have been more malicious. Ruha and Shawn Benjamin told NBC News of their experience when a racist troll – wearing nothing but a thong – gatecrashed their reading session for children stuck at home and began repeating the N-word multiple times. “Then we knew it was a malicious, targeted thing. My husband and I are both African American,” Ruha Benjamin said.