Friday, Feb 21, 2020 | View in browser

Good morning.

We’re covering another shift in how China counts coronavirus cases, new clues about how the virus works and a rare journalist visit to Khalifa Hifter’s Libya.

By Melina Delkic

The New York Times

China changes rules for coronavirus count

For the second time in about a week, China has changed its criteria for confirming cases of the virus, making it increasingly difficult for public health experts to track the scale of the epidemic.

The government said today that it would now differentiate between cases that are “suspected” and “confirmed.” Cases would be considered confirmed only after genetic testing, a process that is difficult to conduct and whose results are often wrong.

If you’re feeling whiplash, you’re not the only one. “For an epidemiologist, it’s really frustrating when case definitions keep on changing,” one expert said.

Here are the latest updates and maps of where the virus has spread.

Impact: President Trump has commended President Xi Jinping’s handling of the crisis, but hard-liners within the Trump administration say Beijing can’t be trusted to disclose what it knows or properly handle the outbreak.

What to know: We answered questions about how to travel during the outbreak, including expert tips.

A bus carrying passengers from the Diamond Princess in Yokohama, Japan, on Thursday. Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images

Putting together clues about the epidemic

Public health officials are rushing to study the growing number of clusters of coronavirus cases in an effort to figure out how the disease works. For example, a party where one case spread to more than a dozen, or a church where 43 were infected.

The issue has taken on a special urgency since passengers were allowed to disembark from the Diamond Princess, a cruise ship in Yokohama, Japan, where 621 people had tested positive.

There are two likely explanations for the spread of these clusters of infected people: a “superspreader,” or person who has the propensity to spew more germs than others; or people catching the virus from infected surfaces. We don’t know how long the germs stay on surfaces, but similar viruses can live for a week.

On the treatment front, officials announced trials of two coronavirus therapies in China, for which early results may be available within three weeks.

Right now, doctors are trying a mix of solutions, including Tamiflu and Chinese herbal medicines. That makes it hard to tell what’s working and what’s not, says Donald McNeil, our infectious diseases reporter. He adds that “it’s unusual to get a clinical trial going this early in an epidemic.”

A driver was registered, his body temperature taken and his car sprayed with disinfectant in Beijing this week. Gilles Sabrié for The New York Times

Is China strangling its own economy?

As China tightens the reins on the movements of people and goods to stem the coronavirus’s spread, some business leaders are taking the rare stand against Beijing to get their workers going again.

One-third of small firms in the country are on the brink of running out of cash over the next four weeks, according to a survey. Another third will run out of cash in the next two months. And one analysis found that virus containment efforts were stopping the flow of commerce.

Resolving economic woes and keeping the virus at bay will be a delicate dance. Manufacturers do not have the luxury of working from home, like tech companies do, but returning to business as usual could put employees at risk.

Case study: At Amazon, which relies heavily on Chinese manufacturing, the effects could be seen sooner than at other corporations because the retail giant often keeps fewer items on hand. It’s already worrying about its inventory.

If you have 12 minutes, this is worth it

The fight for Libya

Ivor Prickett for The New York Times

In a nation where warlords and militias battle for control, a 76-year-old commander, Khalifa Hifter, says he can resolve the turmoil. His forces have been attacking Tripoli, the capital, for 10 months.

Journalists from The Times made a rare visit to Mr. Hifter’s eastern stronghold, Benghazi. What “the Marshal” has created there, their reporting found, is not the secular stability he promised, but “an unwieldy authoritarianism that in many ways is both more puritanical and more lawless” than that of Libya’s last dictator, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.

Here’s what else is happening

Australia: Two people were killed and several injured after a train from Sydney to Melbourne derailed, the authorities said. The train was carrying about 160 people.

Germany: A man opened fire on two bars in the central city of Hanau and killed nine people in what the authorities called a far-right terrorist attack. The suspect, a 43-year-old German, was found dead in his apartment, along with his mother.

From Opinion: Ahead of a possible Afghan peace deal, the deputy leader of the Taliban writes that “the killing and the maiming must stop” and lays out the group’s vision for a peaceful Afghanistan.

Helge O. Svela

Snapshot: Above, Whisky the Norwegian wonder dog and some of her toys. The Border collie is so smart that she knows not only the names of her toys but also the categories they belong to. What a good dog.

What we’re reading: This imagined scene from McSweeney’s of Billy Joel playing “Piano Man” for the characters he wrote the song about, who are aghast. “Hilarious,” writes Dan Saltzstein, senior editor for Special Projects.

Now, a break from the news

Linda Xiao for The New York Times

Cook: Creamy white beans and herb oil, served with salad and good bread, makes a perfect dinner.

Listen: Personal and societal disasters seem imminent on Grimes’s dark fifth album, “Miss Anthropocene.” We made it a Critic’s Pick.

Read: Douglas W. Tallamy’s “Nature’s Best Hope” examines grass-roots solutions for reversing wildlife decline. It’s new this week on our hardcover nonfiction best-seller list.

Smarter Living: Even the cocktail you choose is part of your carbon footprint. If you want a greener happy hour, check where your choices were bottled and go with the closest geographical option. Find other tips in this week’s Climate Fwd: newsletter.

And now for the Back Story on …

What we learned from 2016

Former Vice President Joe Biden's campaign staff in Marshalltown, Iowa, in January. Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times

We’re in the thick of the U.S. presidential election, with a few primary elections already completed and a slew of states set to vote in the coming weeks. “The Daily” recently spoke with Dean Baquet, The Times’s executive editor, to discuss the lessons learned from the last election and how they have informed our 2020 coverage. Here are excerpts from the conversation.

On his reflections from the 2016 election:

I think that the combination of post-economic crisis, and a sense that there are parts of America that were still shaken by the economic crisis, I think a lot of Americans — more Americans than we understood at the time — were rattled and were looking for something dramatic.

There were [Times] reporters out in the country who were writing stories about what was going on in the country. But we didn’t elevate them and say, “Wait a minute, there’s something powerful going on here.” We didn’t see that.

Dean Baquet, The Times's executive editor. Mike Cohen for The New York Times

On how The Times is approaching the current election:

We’ve brought in people from the business staff to go out to the country to talk about the effects of the economy. We are about to announce a plan to put writers in seven or eight states that we’re usually not in. And we give huge play now to stories about anxiety in the country. I think if you read The New York Times right now, you read a New York Times that reflects a country that’s in some turmoil, a country that’s divided much more than we understood in 2016.

And I don’t think we’ve labeled any — the campaigns would disagree — but I don’t think we’ve made anybody feel like the inevitable candidate. Or the long shot. I am extremely proud of where our coverage is right now.

On his thoughts on covering both sides of a story:

I do think that American journalism has a tendency to go for the easy version of what I call “sophisticated true objectivity.” And the easy version is, “O.K., this guy said this. This guy said that. I’ll put them together. You decide.”

True objectivity is you listen, you’re empathetic. If you hear stuff you disagree with, but it’s factual and it’s worth people hearing, you write about it.

(Some answers have been condensed and edited. You can listen to the full conversation, or read a transcript, here.)

That’s it for this briefing. See you next time.

— Melina

Thank you
To Mark Josephson, Eleanor Stanford and Chris Harcum for the break from the news. You can reach the team at briefing@nytimes.com.

P.S.
• We’re listening to “The Daily.” Our latest episode is the second of a two-part series about a digital underworld of child sexual abuse imagery.
• Here’s our Mini Crossword, and a clue: Unpaid bill at the bar (three letters). You can find all our puzzles here.
• Noah Weiland, who recently completed a stint writing our Impeachment Briefing, is starting a new beat in our Washington bureau covering health policy.