Good morning. We’re covering the first vaccinations in the U.S., a surge in demand for Chinese goods and elaborate death rituals in Indonesia. | |  By Melina Delkic | | | Sandra Lindsay, a nurse, gets vaccinated in New York City on Monday. Pool Photo by Mark Lennihan | | | “I believe this is the weapon that will end the war,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York said at a rollout event, shortly before the Pfizer shot was given to Sandra Lindsay, a critical care nurse. Hundreds of sites were receiving vaccine shipments, with health care workers first in line. President Trump delayed plans for White House staff members to get early vaccines. | | | Grim milestone: The coronavirus death toll in the U.S. passed 300,000 on Monday — the same day as the start of the vaccinations. Over the past week, there has been an average of 210,112 new cases per day, an increase of 30 percent from the average two weeks earlier. | | | On Monday, Singapore became the first Asian country to approve the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, announcing that the first shipment would arrive this month and be given free to Singaporeans and long-term residents. | | | Cargo containers at the Port of Oakland in California. Jim Wilson/The New York Times | | | The surge is a byproduct of the pandemic, which has Americans channeling money otherwise used for vacations and entertainment into household items and toys. Demand is so strong that the cargo industry has been overwhelmed, with ports snarled and holiday deliveries delayed. “You’re trying to stuff 10 pounds of potatoes in a five-pound bag,” said the director of the Port of Los Angeles, which has seen more traffic in recent months than in its 114-year history. | | | Despite Trump administration restrictions on Chinese goods, including tariffs on its imports, there is little sign that global supply chains are returning to the U.S. | | | The numbers: In November, 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. | | | The Treasury Department was one of the agencies targeted by a recent hack. Patrick Semansky/Associated Press | | | The Trump administration said on Sunday that hackers acting on behalf of a foreign government — almost certainly Russian intelligence, according to federal and private experts — broke into key government networks and had access to email systems. | | | It was one of the most sophisticated and perhaps largest hacks in more than five years, infiltrating the Treasury and Commerce Departments and targeting national security-related agencies. A hunt was on to determine if other parts of the government had been affected. | | | The motive remains elusive, two people familiar with the matter said, and it was too soon to tell how damaging the attacks were. But the attacks may have been underway as early as this spring, meaning they continued undetected through months of the pandemic and the election season. | | | Details: The campaign involved the hackers inserting code into periodic updates of software used to manage networks by a company called SolarWinds. Its products are widely used in corporate and federal networks, and the malware was carefully minimized to avoid detection. | | | Kevin Frayer/Getty Images | | | China’s Communist Party, under its leader, Xi Jinping, has promoted the idea that the country is on a trajectory to power past Western rivals. China stamped out the coronavirus, the messaging goes, and its economy has come roaring back. | | | PAID POST: A MESSAGE FROM CAMPAIGN MONITOR | | TEST: Email Marketing 101: Never Sacrifice Beauty for Simplicity | | A drag-and-drop email builder, a gallery of templates and turnkey designs, personalized customer journeys, and engagement segments. It's everything you need to create stunning, results-driven email campaigns in minutes. And with Campaign Monitor, you have access to it all, along with award-winning support around the clock. It's beautiful email marketing done simply. | | | Learn More | | | | Google outage: The tech giant’s popular services — like Gmail, Hangouts, Meets and YouTube — went offline on Monday, halting work and classrooms around the globe. The company attributed the problem to an “authentication system outage” that lasted for about 45 minutes. | | | Big Tech in Europe: Companies like Amazon, Apple and Google are spending more than ever on lobbyists to stop European Union regulation against them. Despite the campaign, the industry has had few major successes. | | | Putu Sayoga for The New York Times | | | Snapshot: Above, retrieving a coffin during a ceremony in Lembang Ma’dong, Indonesia. The Toraja people of southern Sulawesi, one of the country’s largest islands, are known for their elaborate death rituals. The bodies of the deceased are kept at home, sometimes for years, until the family has enough money to pay for a funeral. | | | What we’re looking at: This week’s New Yorker cover by the artist David Hockney, and an accompanying Q&A with him. He reminds us that creativity doesn’t have to be limited to long-revered mediums — he’s painted hundreds of works this year on his iPad. | | | Christopher Simpson for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. | | | Cook: Flamboyant, fruity and exceedingly merry, this spectacular holiday trifle is a show-off dessert. As long as you have cake, custard, some kind of fruit or jam, and a fluffy cloud of cream, you can vary it as much as you like. | | | As coronavirus vaccinations get underway in some countries, we spoke with one doctor who tries to reach people where they are — often, on social media — with health information. Dr. Austin Chiang, based in Philadelphia, spoke with our OnTech newsletter. | | | Why do you make TikTok videos? | | | Part of what I’m trying to do is humanize our profession. I try to showcase being fun but also professional, and hopefully people can learn something. | | | As doctors, we don’t get any marketing or communications training, and yet we’re expected to contribute to our community and to public health. We’re going to have to meet patients where they are, and communicate information in interesting and digestible ways. | | | How might you approach coronavirus vaccines on TikTok? | | | The approach that I try to take is to leave room for the gray. If you say vaccines don’t cause any harm and are the best things in the world, it can alienate people who are vaccine hesitant. If we instead acknowledge that there are potential risks just like anything else in medicine and life, it’s a more effective message. | | | For coronavirus vaccines, I would probably do something with a voice over that explains my own reasons for getting vaccinated, and lays out the side effects and the risk-benefit analysis I’ve done in my mind and what we gain from the vaccine. I’m sure the coronavirus vaccines are confusing to everyone because they’re confusing to us, too. | | That’s it for this briefing. See you next time. — Melina | | Thank you
Carole Landry helped write this briefing. Theodore Kim and Jahaan Singh compiled the break from the news. You can reach the team at briefing@nytimes.com. | | | Were you sent this briefing by a friend? Sign up here to get the Morning Briefing. | | |
