C M Y K Nxxx,2020-12-15,A,001,Bs-4C,E2

U(D54G1D)y+,!=!$!$!z

PITTSBURGH — Some of thevery medical centers that haveendured the worst of the coronavi-rus outbreak in the United Statesfound the gloom that has longfilled their corridors replaced byelation and hope on Monday ashealth care workers became thefirst to take part in a mass vacci-nation campaign aimed at endingthe pandemic.

Hundreds of those who havebeen on the front lines of fightingCovid-19 — a nurse from an inten-sive care unit in New York, anemergency room doctor fromOhio, a hospital housekeeper inIowa — received inoculations inemotional ceremonies watched bypeople around the country.

“I feel like healing is coming,”said Sandra Lindsay, an intensivecare nurse who was among thefirst health care workers to be vac-cinated on Monday morning, atLong Island Jewish Medical Cen-ter in Queens, an early center ofthe virus.

But the vaccinations came asthe nation surpassed 300,000 co-ronavirus deaths, a toll largerthan any other country. Even asapplause rang out at hospitals na-tionwide, many intensive careunits remained near capacity andpublic health experts warned thatlife would not return to normal un-til well into next year.

Plunking down in woodenchairs and rolling up their sleeveswere physicians, nurses, aides,cleaners and at least one chief ex-ecutive who said he was gettingthe vaccine early to encourage ev-eryone on his staff to do the same.

Dr. Jason Smith, the first Ken-tuckian to receive the Covid-19vaccine, showed off the smiley-face Band-Aid a health careworker applied to his arm. “Didn’teven feel it,” he said. A group ofnuns in Sioux Falls, S.D., blessedthe vaccine as it arrived, before itwas whisked into a freezer.

Seth Jackson, a nurse in IowaCity, found himself crying on theway to the hospital to get his shot.Robin Mercier, a Rhode Islandnurse, rejoiced in feeling one stepcloser to being able to kiss hergrandchild.

“This is the marking of gettingback to normal,” said Angela Mat-tingly, a housekeeper at the Uni-versity of Iowa Hospital, who wasfifth in line as shots were dis-pensed on the 12th floor.

One of those who had spentmonths studying the safety of thevaccine was herself vaccinated.

“This is the culmination of a lotof hard work in our clinical trials,’’said Dr. Patricia Winokur, 61, theprincipal 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 MitchSmith.

Dread Persists asDeath Toll Tops

300,000

WASHINGTON — Americanimports from China are surging asthe year draws to a close, fueledby stay-at-home shoppers whoare snapping up Chinese-madefurniture and appliances, alongwith Barbie Dream Houses andbicycles for the holidays.

The surge in imports is anotherbyproduct of the coronavirus,with Americans channeling

money they might have spent onvacations, movies and restaurantdining to household items likenew lighting for home offices,workout equipment for basementgyms, and toys to keep their chil-dren entertained.

That has been a boon for China,the world’s largest manufacturerof many of those goods. In Novem-ber, China reported a record tradesurplus of $75.43 billion, propelledby an unexpected 21.1 percentsurge in exports compared with

the same month last year. Leadingthe jump were exports to theUnited States, which climbed 46.1percent to $51.98 billion, also arecord.

That surge has defied the ex-pectations of American politicians

of both parties, who earlier thisyear predicted that the pandemic,which began in China, would be amoment for reducing trade withthat country and finally bringingfactories back to the UnitedStates.

“The global pandemic has prov-en once and for all that to be astrong nation, America must be amanufacturing nation,” PresidentTrump said in May. “We’re bring-

It’s a Made-in-China Holiday Season for Cooped-Up AmericansBy ANA SWANSON Pandemic, Expected to

Cut Trade, Boosts It

Continued on Page A23

FARGO, N.D. — As Dr. RishiSeth rolled up his left sleeve onMonday to receive one of theUnited States’ first Covid-19 vac-cines, he thought of his patientsback in the Special Care Unit.

There was the Uber driver whohad walked out of the hospital af-ter being on a ventilator. The dy-ing father who said goodbye to histwo college-age daughters on avideo chat. The four coronaviruspatients Dr. Seth had treated juston Monday morning, checkingtheir oxygen levels and reviewingtreatment plans before hestripped off his protective gearand joined a first wave of healthcare 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 SanfordHealth in North Dakota, a statethat 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 firstin a staggeringly complicated na-tional campaign, were a momentinfused with hope and pain forhundreds of America’s health care

workers.Even as doctors and nurses

lined up for the first shots, cheeredon their colleagues and jokedabout barely feeling the prick ofthe syringe, they also reflected ontheir grueling months in thetrenches of the country’s corona-virus nightmare. They havescrounged for protective gear andtried treatment after treatment.They have coordinated finalphone calls and held patients’hands when families could not vis-it. They have come running whenalarms warned that a patient wason the edge of dying.

“This is really for all of those pa-tients that unfortunately didn’tmake it, all those patients stillcoming through the doors,” Mona

Hope at Last for Those in the Medical TrenchesThis article is by Jack Healy, Lucy

Tompkins and Audra D. S. Burch.Getting Shots, but Not

Relief From Stressand Suffering

Continued on Page A7

MANDATE Businesses are reluc-tant to require the vaccine, butthey might have to. PAGE B6

FIRST SHOT A nurse at a Queenshospital wanted to lead by exam-ple and persuade others. PAGE A8

WASHINGTON — The scope ofa hack engineered by one of Rus-sia’s premier intelligence agen-cies became clearer on Monday,when the Trump administrationacknowledged that other federalagencies — the Department ofHomeland Security and parts ofthe Pentagon — had been compro-mised. Investigators were strug-gling to determine the extent to

which the military, intelligencecommunity and nuclear laborato-ries were affected by the highlysophisticated attack.

United States officials did notdetect the attack until recentweeks, and then only when a pri-vate cybersecurity firm, FireEye,alerted American intelligencethat the hackers had evaded lay-ers of defenses.

It was evident that the Treasuryand Commerce Departments, thefirst agencies reported to bebreached, were only part of a farlarger operation whose sophis-tication stunned even expertswho have been following a quar-ter-century of Russian hacks onthe Pentagon and American civil-ian agencies.

About 18,000 private and gov-ernment users downloaded a Rus-sian tainted software update — aTrojan horse of sorts — that gaveits 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 Centersfor Disease Control and Preven-tion, the State Department, theJustice Department, parts of thePentagon and a number of utilitycompanies. While the presence ofthe software is not by itself evi-

Agencies Race to Assess DamageAfter Being Hacked by Russia

This article is by David E. Sanger,Nicole Perlroth and Eric Schmitt.

The Department of HomelandSecurity 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 inQueens, 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 NewHampshire, where electors met ina statehouse chamber festoonedwith holiday decorations and gavetheir four votes to Joseph R. BidenJr. By noon on Monday, the battle-ground states of Arizona, Georgiaand Pennsylvania, ground zerofor many of President Trump’sfruitless lawsuits, had backed Mr.Biden too. In New York, Bill andHillary Clinton voted for Mr. Bi-den along with 27 other electors.

And when California cast its 55votes for Mr. Biden around 5:30p.m. Eastern time, it pushed himpast the threshold of 270 ElectoralCollege votes needed to win thepresidency, putting the officialseal on his victory after weeks ofefforts by Mr. Trump to use legalchallenges and political pressureto overturn the results.

With the Electoral College votebehind him, Mr. Biden called forunity while forcefully denouncing

the president and his allies fortheir assault on the nation’s votingsystem. In an address in Wilming-ton, Del., Monday night, he saidthe Republican efforts to get theSupreme Court to undo the resultrepresented a “position so ex-treme we’ve never seen it before,”and called the attacks on electionofficials at the local level “uncon-scionable.’’

Mr. Biden and that “it is time toturn the page” on the election.Praising officials who stood up forthe integrity of the system, headded: “It was honest, it was freeand it was fair. They saw it withtheir own eyes. And they wouldn’tbe bullied into saying anythingdifferent.” [Page A19.]

For all of the turmoil that Mr.Trump had stirred with his con-spiracy theories, lawsuits andbaseless claims of fraud, the Elec-toral College vote that sealed Mr.Biden’s victory was mostly a staid,formal affair, devoid of drama. Asit always is.

Though supporters of Mr.Trump had promised to mountprotests outside the statehousesin battlegrounds that the presi-dent had lost, Monday’s votingwent largely smoothly; therewere no demonstrations that dis-rupted the proceedings, and insome states, police presence out-numbered protesters.

After Hawaii cast its four votesfor Mr. Biden, he finished with 306Electoral College votes, with noelectors defecting from the slate.

The vote follows six weeks ofunprecedented efforts by Mr.Trump to intervene in the elector-

ELECTORS AFFIRMBIDEN’S VICTORY;

VOTE IS SMOOTH‘Time to Turn the Page,’ Winner Says

By NICK CORASANITI and JIM RUTENBERG

Joseph R. Biden Jr. said onMonday 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 ascountry music’s first Black superstar.He died after performing at a largelymask-free awards ceremony. PAGE C1

ARTS C1-6

Charley Pride’s LegacyRegulars at Turkey’s coffeehouses fearlosing “our jokes, our laughter” aspandemic restrictions linger. PAGE A12

INTERNATIONAL A12-17

Losing Caffeine and Friendship

Everything seemed to conspire againstNew York City’s food and drink busi-nesses. Now, indoor dining has beentaken away again. PAGE A4

TRACKING AN OUTBREAK A4-11

Setback for RestaurantsAlzheimer’s researchers are hoping tobetter understand the disease by study-ing a Colombian woman who had a raregenetic mutation, and who donated herbrain to science. PAGE D1

SCIENCE TIMES D1-8

A Gift to Dementia StudiesRatings have hit new highs, but execu-tives and journalists at both cable newsoutlets are uneasy about what the nextyear will bring. PAGE B1

BUSINESS B1-6

CNN and MSNBC, Post-Trump

Millions face a steep and immediatedrop in spending power when federaljobless benefits end this month. PAGE B1

When the Checks Run Out

Long lines, slow results and inconsis-tent advice have left many confusedabout when and how to get tested forCovid. We talked to the experts to an-swer your questions. PAGE D4

What to Know About Testing

Bret Stephens PAGE A26EDITORIAL, OP-ED A26-27The agent Bill Duffy paid back his client

Anthony Carter over 17 years aftercosting him an N.B.A. contract. PAGE B8

SPORTSTUESDAY B7-9

A $3 Million Error Made RightAn investigative group provided evi-dence of Moscow’s role in the poisoningof Russia’s opposition leader. PAGE A16

Report Links Spies to Navalny

A growing and broadly held distrust ofthe electoral system has importantimplications for democracy. PAGE A18

NATIONAL A18-25

A Legacy of the Trump Voter

Objections to her policies’ effects onminorities 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, high39. 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