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U(D54G1D)y+,!=!$!$!z PITTSBURGH — Some of the very medical centers that have endured the worst of the coronavi- rus outbreak in the United States found the gloom that has long filled their corridors replaced by elation and hope on Monday as health care workers became the first to take part in a mass vacci- nation campaign aimed at ending the pandemic. Hundreds of those who have been on the front lines of fighting Covid-19 — a nurse from an inten- sive care unit in New York, an emergency room doctor from Ohio, a hospital housekeeper in Iowa — received inoculations in emotional ceremonies watched by people around the country. “I feel like healing is coming,” said Sandra Lindsay, an intensive care nurse who was among the first health care workers to be vac- cinated on Monday morning, at Long Island Jewish Medical Cen- ter in Queens, an early center of the virus. But the vaccinations came as the nation surpassed 300,000 co- ronavirus deaths, a toll larger than any other country. Even as applause rang out at hospitals na- tionwide, many intensive care units remained near capacity and public health experts warned that life would not return to normal un- til well into next year. Plunking down in wooden chairs and rolling up their sleeves were physicians, nurses, aides, cleaners and at least one chief ex- ecutive who said he was getting the vaccine early to encourage ev- eryone on his staff to do the same. Dr. Jason Smith, the first Ken- tuckian to receive the Covid-19 vaccine, showed off the smiley- face Band-Aid a health care worker applied to his arm. “Didn’t even feel it,” he said. A group of nuns in Sioux Falls, S.D., blessed the vaccine as it arrived, before it was whisked into a freezer. Seth Jackson, a nurse in Iowa City, found himself crying on the way to the hospital to get his shot. Robin Mercier, a Rhode Island nurse, rejoiced in feeling one step closer to being able to kiss her grandchild. “This is the marking of getting back to normal,” said Angela Mat- tingly, a housekeeper at the Uni- versity of Iowa Hospital, who was fifth in line as shots were dis- pensed on the 12th floor. One of those who had spent months studying the safety of the vaccine was herself vaccinated. “This is the culmination of a lot of hard work in our clinical trials,’’ said Dr. Patricia Winokur, 61, the principal investigator of the clini- cal trial of the vaccine and a pro- fessor at the University of Iowa. ‘HEALING IS COMING’: U.S. VACCINATIONS BEGIN This article is by Campbell Rob- ertson, Amy Harmon and Mitch Smith. Dread Persists as Death Toll Tops 300,000 WASHINGTON — American imports from China are surging as the year draws to a close, fueled by stay-at-home shoppers who are snapping up Chinese-made furniture and appliances, along with Barbie Dream Houses and bicycles for the holidays. The surge in imports is another byproduct of the coronavirus, with Americans channeling money they might have spent on vacations, movies and restaurant dining to household items like new lighting for home offices, workout equipment for basement gyms, and toys to keep their chil- dren entertained. That has been a boon for China, the world’s largest manufacturer of many of those goods. In Novem- ber, China reported a record trade surplus of $75.43 billion, propelled by an unexpected 21.1 percent surge in exports compared with the same month last year. Leading the jump were exports to the United States, which climbed 46.1 percent to $51.98 billion, also a record. That surge has defied the ex- pectations of American politicians of both parties, who earlier this year predicted that the pandemic, which began in China, would be a moment for reducing trade with that country and finally bringing factories back to the United States. “The global pandemic has prov- en once and for all that to be a strong nation, America must be a manufacturing nation,” President Trump said in May. “We’re bring- It’s a Made-in-China Holiday Season for Cooped-Up Americans By ANA SWANSON Pandemic, Expected to Cut Trade, Boosts It Continued on Page A23 FARGO, N.D. — As Dr. Rishi Seth rolled up his left sleeve on Monday to receive one of the United States’ first Covid-19 vac- cines, he thought of his patients back in the Special Care Unit. There was the Uber driver who had walked out of the hospital af- ter being on a ventilator. The dy- ing father who said goodbye to his two college-age daughters on a video chat. The four coronavirus patients Dr. Seth had treated just on Monday morning, checking their oxygen levels and reviewing treatment plans before he stripped off his protective gear and joined a first wave of health care workers to be vaccinated in hospitals across the country. “That’s why today is so emo- tional,” said Dr. Seth, an internal- medicine physician with Sanford Health in North Dakota, a state that has been ravaged by the vi- rus. “You’re still fighting a battle, but you’re starting to see the hori- zon.” Monday’s vaccinations, the first in a staggeringly complicated na- tional campaign, were a moment infused with hope and pain for hundreds of America’s health care workers. Even as doctors and nurses lined up for the first shots, cheered on their colleagues and joked about barely feeling the prick of the syringe, they also reflected on their grueling months in the trenches of the country’s corona- virus nightmare. They have scrounged for protective gear and tried treatment after treatment. They have coordinated final phone calls and held patients’ hands when families could not vis- it. They have come running when alarms warned that a patient was on the edge of dying. “This is really for all of those pa- tients that unfortunately didn’t make it, all those patients still coming through the doors,” Mona Hope at Last for Those in the Medical Trenches This article is by Jack Healy, Lucy Tompkins and Audra D. S. Burch. Getting Shots, but Not Relief From Stress and Suffering Continued on Page A7 MANDATE Businesses are reluc- tant to require the vaccine, but they might have to. PAGE B6 FIRST SHOT A nurse at a Queens hospital wanted to lead by exam- ple and persuade others. PAGE A8 WASHINGTON — The scope of a hack engineered by one of Rus- sia’s premier intelligence agen- cies became clearer on Monday, when the Trump administration acknowledged that other federal agencies — the Department of Homeland Security and parts of the Pentagon — had been compro- mised. Investigators were strug- gling to determine the extent to which the military, intelligence community and nuclear laborato- ries were affected by the highly sophisticated attack. United States officials did not detect the attack until recent weeks, and then only when a pri- vate cybersecurity firm, FireEye, alerted American intelligence that the hackers had evaded lay- ers of defenses. It was evident that the Treasury and Commerce Departments, the first agencies reported to be breached, were only part of a far larger operation whose sophis- tication stunned even experts who have been following a quar- ter-century of Russian hacks on the Pentagon and American civil- ian agencies. About 18,000 private and gov- ernment users downloaded a Rus- sian tainted software update — a Trojan horse of sorts — that gave its hackers a foothold into victims’ systems, according to Solar- Winds, the company whose soft- ware was compromised. Among those who use Solar- Winds software are the Centers for Disease Control and Preven- tion, the State Department, the Justice Department, parts of the Pentagon and a number of utility companies. While the presence of the software is not by itself evi- Agencies Race to Assess Damage After Being Hacked by Russia This article is by David E. Sanger, Nicole Perlroth and Eric Schmitt. The Department of Homeland Security was compromised. WIN MCNAMEE/GETTY IMAGES Continued on Page A23 Continued on Page A6 Sandra Lindsay, top, the director of critical care nursing at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in Queens, was among the first health workers on Monday to receive the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavi- rus vaccine. Workers in Pittsburgh, left, and Miramar, Fla., were also part of the inoculation effort. KRISTIAN THACKER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES SCOTT McINTYRE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES POOL PHOTO BY MARK LENNIHAN It began at 10 a.m. in New Hampshire, where electors met in a statehouse chamber festooned with holiday decorations and gave their four votes to Joseph R. Biden Jr. By noon on Monday, the battle- ground states of Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania, ground zero for many of President Trump’s fruitless lawsuits, had backed Mr. Biden too. In New York, Bill and Hillary Clinton voted for Mr. Bi- den along with 27 other electors. And when California cast its 55 votes for Mr. Biden around 5:30 p.m. Eastern time, it pushed him past the threshold of 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the presidency, putting the official seal on his victory after weeks of efforts by Mr. Trump to use legal challenges and political pressure to overturn the results. With the Electoral College vote behind him, Mr. Biden called for unity while forcefully denouncing the president and his allies for their assault on the nation’s voting system. In an address in Wilming- ton, Del., Monday night, he said the Republican efforts to get the Supreme Court to undo the result represented a “position so ex- treme we’ve never seen it before,” and called the attacks on election officials at the local level “uncon- scionable.’’ Mr. Biden and that “it is time to turn the page” on the election. Praising officials who stood up for the integrity of the system, he added: “It was honest, it was free and it was fair. They saw it with their own eyes. And they wouldn’t be bullied into saying anything different.” [Page A19.] For all of the turmoil that Mr. Trump had stirred with his con- spiracy theories, lawsuits and baseless claims of fraud, the Elec- toral College vote that sealed Mr. Biden’s victory was mostly a staid, formal affair, devoid of drama. As it always is. Though supporters of Mr. Trump had promised to mount protests outside the statehouses in battlegrounds that the presi- dent had lost, Monday’s voting went largely smoothly; there were no demonstrations that dis- rupted the proceedings, and in some states, police presence out- numbered protesters. After Hawaii cast its four votes for Mr. Biden, he finished with 306 Electoral College votes, with no electors defecting from the slate. The vote follows six weeks of unprecedented efforts by Mr. Trump to intervene in the elector- ELECTORS AFFIRM BIDEN’S VICTORY; VOTE IS SMOOTH ‘Time to Turn the Page,’ Winner Says By NICK CORASANITI and JIM RUTENBERG Joseph R. Biden Jr. said on Monday the election “was hon- est, it was free and it was fair.” ERIN SCHAFF/THE NEW YORK TIMES Continued on Page A20 The singer put himself on the line as country music’s first Black superstar. He died after performing at a largely mask-free awards ceremony. PAGE C1 ARTS C1-6 Charley Pride’s Legacy Regulars at Turkey’s coffeehouses fear losing “our jokes, our laughter” as pandemic restrictions linger. PAGE A12 INTERNATIONAL A12-17 Losing Caffeine and Friendship Everything seemed to conspire against New York City’s food and drink busi- nesses. Now, indoor dining has been taken away again. PAGE A4 TRACKING AN OUTBREAK A4-11 Setback for Restaurants Alzheimer’s researchers are hoping to better understand the disease by study- ing a Colombian woman who had a rare genetic mutation, and who donated her brain to science. PAGE D1 SCIENCE TIMES D1-8 A Gift to Dementia Studies Ratings have hit new highs, but execu- tives and journalists at both cable news outlets are uneasy about what the next year will bring. PAGE B1 BUSINESS B1-6 CNN and MSNBC, Post-Trump Millions face a steep and immediate drop in spending power when federal jobless benefits end this month. PAGE B1 When the Checks Run Out Long lines, slow results and inconsis- tent advice have left many confused about when and how to get tested for Covid. We talked to the experts to an- swer your questions. PAGE D4 What to Know About Testing Bret Stephens PAGE A26 EDITORIAL, OP-ED A26-27 The agent Bill Duffy paid back his client Anthony Carter over 17 years after costing him an N.B.A. contract. PAGE B8 SPORTSTUESDAY B7-9 A $3 Million Error Made Right An investigative group provided evi- dence of Moscow’s role in the poisoning of Russia’s opposition leader. PAGE A16 Report Links Spies to Navalny A growing and broadly held distrust of the electoral system has important implications for democracy. PAGE A18 NATIONAL A18-25 A Legacy of the Trump Voter Objections to her policies’ effects on minorities may derail Mary D. Nichols, an expected Biden pick. PAGE A25 Favorite for E.P.A. Hits a Wall Attorney General William P. Barr lost favor after long bolster- ing President Trump. Page A25. Barr to Quit Next Week Late Edition VOL. CLXX . . . No. 58,908 © 2020 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, TUESDAY, DECEMBER 15, 2020 Today, sunny to partly cloudy, high 39. Tonight, partly cloudy, low 27. To- morrow, cloudy, increasing winds, snow late in the afternoon, high 32. Weather map appears on Page B12. $3.00
