Death of a Fur Industry Exposes Covid’s Enduring Threat

At Knud Vest’s farm an hour’s drive west from Copenhagen, a deathly silence pierces unusual wafts of fresh air. Rows and rows of cages are empty, with nothing left but mud and hay. The smell of fertilizer is gone, along with the animals.

For breeders of small, furry European mink like the 74-year-old Dane, the Covid-19 pandemic has been more than just a threat to his health. The past weeks wiped out his business of more than five decades, and spawned a political crisis in Denmark that’s turned into a cautionary tale of the coronavirus’s potential to endure as a menace.