The Trickle-Down Economics of Trash Picking

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SAN FRANCISCO — Threeblocks from Mark Zuckerberg’s$10 million Tudor home in SanFrancisco, Jake Orta lives in asmall, single-window studioapartment filled with trash.

There’s a child’s pink bicyclehelmet that Mr. Orta dug out fromthe garbage bin across the streetfrom Mr. Zuckerberg’s house. Anda vacuum cleaner, a hair dryer, a

coffee machine — all in workingcondition — and a pile of clothesthat he carried home in a WholeFoods paper bag retrieved fromMr. Zuckerberg’s bin.

A military veteran who fell intohomelessness and now lives ingovernment subsidized housing,Mr. Orta is a full-time trash picker,part of an underground economyin San Francisco of people whowork the sidewalks in front ofmultimillion-dollar homes, rum-maging for things they can sell.

Trash picking is a professionmore often associated with shan-tytowns and favelas than a city atthe doorstep of Silicon Valley. TheGlobal Alliance of Waste Pickers,a nonprofit research and advoca-cy organization, counts more than400 trash picking organizationsacross the globe, almost all ofthem in Latin America, Africa andsouthern Asia.

But trash scavengers exist inmany United States cities and,

The Trickle-Down Economics of Trash PickingBy THOMAS FULLER

Jake Orta searching through a garbage bin outside Mark Zuckerberg’s home in San Francisco.JIM WILSON/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Continued on Page 24

For months, former Vice Presi-dent Joseph R. Biden Jr. hewed toa tortoise-like strategy for the2020 presidential race: Repeat-edly delaying his final decision, hehoped to skirt a long stretch ofcampaigning as a front-runnerwith a target on his back.

That approach carried risks.Mr. Biden missed the chance to re-cruit top-level aides, including for-mer Obama advisers, women andpeople of color, because he had notformalized his campaign. He lefturgent questions about his poli-tical vulnerabilities lingering, andhe has not deployed researchersto review his vast record, becausehe has not hired any.

Still, the former vice presidentpersisted with his unrushed strat-egy — until this past week, when itappeared to backfire in strikingfashion.

Mr. Biden has faced accusationsfrom multiple women who cameforward to complain that his pen-chant for close physical contactmade them feel uneasy. RivalDemocrats demanded that he ac-count for his treatment of thewomen, and President Trumplobbed taunts that offered a pre-view of how he might attack Mr.

Biden Tiptoes Toward a Run,

And StumblesBy JONATHAN MARTIN

and ALEXANDER BURNS

Continued on Page 23

Politicians have had strongopinions on what the FederalReserve should and shouldn’t dothroughout its 105-year history.

They have pushed for lowerinterest rates and easier money,or for this or that policy on bankregulation or consumer protec-tion. They have summoned Fedleaders to the White House orCongress to persuade and cajole.

In that sense, there is nothingnew in President Trump’s ag-gressive approach to the Fed.This week, he called for lowerinterest rates and new quantita-tive easing, and he signaled an

intention to appoint two vocalsupporters, Stephen Moore andHerman Cain, to the board ofgovernors.

What makes Mr. Trump’sapproach to the Fed so unusualis that he has repeatedly, publiclyundermined a Fed chief he ap-pointed (Jerome H. Powell), and,if successful, he would put twoofficials with a background inpartisan politics in the innersanctum of Fed policymaking.(Mr. Moore was a founder of theClub for Growth, which supportsconservative candidates foroffice, and Mr. Cain ran for presi-dent.)

“It’s more overtly political thananything we’ve seen since atleast the ’80s, and historicallywhen we’ve had political appoint-ments and interventions in theFed, there have been unintendedconsequences that last,” saidJulia Coronado, president ofMacroPolicy Perspectives and aformer Fed staffer. “It may beexpedient in the near term, butwhat’s good for the next year ortwo may not be good for the nextdecade.”

All presidential appointees tothe Fed’s board of governorscome with their own political

What’s on the Line if the FedBecomes a Partisan Battlefield

By NEIL IRWIN

President Trump wants to putHerman Cain in the innersanctum of Fed policymaking.

MOLLY RILEY/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Continued on Page 25

NEWS ANALYSIS

Late Edition

VOL. CLXVIII . . No. 58,290 © 2019 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, SUNDAY, APRIL 7, 2019

Last May, an elderly man wasadmitted to the Brooklyn branchof Mount Sinai Hospital for ab-dominal surgery. A blood test re-vealed that he was infected with anewly discovered germ as deadlyas it was mysterious. Doctors

swiftly isolated him in the inten-sive care unit.

The germ, a fungus called Can-dida auris, preys on people withweakened immune systems, andit is quietly spreading across theglobe. Over the last five years, ithas hit a neonatal unit in Venezue-la, swept through a hospital inSpain, forced a prestigious Britishmedical center to shut down its in-tensive care unit, and taken root inIndia, Pakistan and South Africa.

Recently C. auris reached NewYork, New Jersey and Illinois,leading the federal Centers forDisease Control and Prevention toadd it to a list of germs deemed“urgent threats.”

The man at Mount Sinai died af-ter 90 days in the hospital, but C.auris did not. Tests showed it waseverywhere in his room, so inva-sive that the hospital needed spe-cial cleaning equipment and hadto rip out some of the ceiling andfloor tiles to eradicate it.

“Everything was positive — thewalls, the bed, the doors, the cur-tains, the phones, the sink, thewhiteboard, the poles, the pump,”said Dr. Scott Lorin, the hospital’spresident. “The mattress, the bedrails, the canister holes, the win-dow shades, the ceiling, every-thing in the room was positive.”

C. auris is so tenacious, in part,because it is impervious to majorantifungal medications, making it

a new example of one of theworld’s most intractable healththreats: the rise of drug-resistantinfections.

For decades, public health ex-perts have warned that the over-use of antibiotics was reducing theeffectiveness of drugs that havelengthened life spans by curingbacterial infections once com-monly fatal. But lately, there hasbeen an explosion of resistantfungi as well, adding a new andfrightening dimension to a phe-nomenon that is undermining apillar of modern medicine.

“It’s an enormous problem,”said Matthew Fisher, a professorof fungal epidemiology at Imperi-al College London, who was a co-author of a recent scientific re-view on the rise of resistant fungi.

“We depend on being able to treatthose patients with antifungals.”

Simply put, fungi, just like bac-teria, are evolving defenses to sur-vive modern medicines.

Yet even as world health lead-ers have pleaded for more re-straint in prescribing antimicrobi-al drugs to combat bacteria andfungi — convening the United Na-tions General Assembly in 2016 tomanage an emerging crisis —gluttonous overuse of them in hos-

Fungus Immune to DrugsQuietly Sweeps the Globe

Lethal Infection Adds Alarming Dimensionto Dangers of Overusing Medicines

By MATT RICHTEL and ANDREW JACOBS

DEADLY GERMS, LOST CURES

A New Public Health Threat

A slide with inactive Candidaauris taken from a patient.

MELISSA GOLDEN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Continued on Page 1

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahusaid he would start to extend Israelisovereignty over the West Bank if givena fourth consecutive term. PAGE 8

INTERNATIONAL 4-16

Netanyahu Vows AnnexationIt may take officials two years to iden-tify what could be thousands of migrantchildren who were separated from theirfamilies at the border. PAGE 20

NATIONAL 17-24

More Pain for Split-Up FamiliesErnest F. Hollings was a revered popu-list who evolved into a social moderateduring a time of racial turmoil in SouthCarolina. He was 97. PAGE 26

OBITUARIES 25-27

A Senator for 38 YearsTwo programs that have never reachedthe championship game will play for theN.C.A.A. men’s basketball title onMonday night. PAGE 1

SPORTSSUNDAY

It’s Virginia vs. Texas Tech David Brooks PAGE 1

SUNDAY REVIEW

RIO DE JANEIRO — Even in death thehaggling went on.

Christian Esmério was going to be theone — his family had been sure of it.

He was 15 and towering, a soccer playerwith an easy smile that belied his prowessbetween the goal posts. Already there wastalk of contracts, and of buying a home forhis parents, who had poured all their sav-ings into the dream that their son might bethe next great Brazilian soccer export —the next Ronaldo, Ronaldinho or Neymar.

Now, his father stood in a daze of griefoutside a Rio office building, surroundedby lawyers. Just days earlier, Christian hadburned to death in a fire at the youth acad-

emy of one of South America’s most fa-mous soccer clubs, Flamengo. He was oneof 10 players killed.

The deaths lifted the veil over interna-tional soccer’s biggest production line, andraised sweeping questions about a brutalapparatus that chews up untold numbersof young Brazilian boys for every star itmints.

But for the moment, as lawyers sparredover how much money families of the play-ers killed in the blaze should get, there wasjust one simple question: What was Chris-

tian worth?“Dreams” uttered Rafael Stivel, who

runs a for-profit talent scouting operation,and he let out a sigh. Mr. Stivel’s group hadposted a note on Facebook mourning threeof its graduates who had died in the fire atFlamengo. Since then, the messages hadbeen pouring in.

They were not condolences. The Face-book post had inadvertently acted as anadvertisement — a signal to ambitious par-ents that Mr. Stivel’s organization could gettheir boys into not just any club, but thegreat Flamengo. They wanted Mr. Stivel togive their boys a chance.

The soccer world in Brazil is populatedby a variety of actors, some drawn byglory, but almost all attracted by the

A scout discovered Maradoninha, 11, two years ago. His family moved 1,200 miles to enable him to get first-class training.DADO GALDIERI FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Fire Destroyed 10 Lives, but Not the IllusionDreams of Soccer Riches

Survive Brazil Disaster

By TARIQ PANJAand MANUELA ANDREONI

Continued on Page 1

Today, sunshine mixing with someclouds, mild, high 64. Tonight,cloudy, periodic rain, low 53. Tomor-row, a brief shower or two, high 72.Details in SportsSunday, Page 10.

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